Might be more accurate to say that what it doesn't sound like is the old school D&D approach 5e took. There is a strange pleasure some people take in the concept that wizards should be deep and complex to play but fighters should just be dumb meatbags who hit things and be hit by things. D&D is the exception here, not the rule. Depth across classes is pretty standard these days.
Might be more accurate to say that what it doesn't sound like is the old school D&D approach 5e took. There is a strange pleasure some people take in the concept that wizards should be deep and complex to play but fighters should just be dumb meatbags who hit things and be hit by things. D&D is the exception here, not the rule. Depth across classes is pretty standard these days.
Well, it's not a problem per se to have classes that are simple to play -- there are plenty of players who do not want to deal with complexity. The problem is that the simple classes are pigeonholed into certain roles and are generally designed to be inferior (look at the amount of grief the champion gets), particularly at higher levels.
Paladins have spellcasting, yes. They don't use it in combat because their whole gameplan is "burn every spell I can on Divine Smite". You might - might - see a paladin cast one buff spell at the start of combat, but that's it. Positioning themselves to hit their enemy with their hittin' stick is going to be more important than Maximizing Their Aura - that's on everybody else in the party to do, not the paladin. Moment-to-moment paladin gameplay mostly consists of "where do I need to stand in order to beat on this thing with my sword until it runs out of candy?"
Can you make paladins more complicated? Sure - if you want to be bad at paladin. And even if you don't consider it being bad at paladin, that still doesn't solve the other half-dozen martial classes being painfully one-note, boring, and essentially pointless.
Paladins have spellcasting, yes. They don't use it in combat because their whole gameplan is "burn every spell I can on Divine Smite". You might - might - see a paladin cast one buff spell at the start of combat, but that's it. Positioning themselves to hit their enemy with their hittin' stick is going to be more important than Maximizing Their Aura - that's on everybody else in the party to do, not the paladin. Moment-to-moment paladin gameplay mostly consists of "where do I need to stand in order to beat on this thing with my sword until it runs out of candy?"
Can you make paladins more complicated? Sure - if you want to be bad at paladin. And even if you don't consider it being bad at paladin, that still doesn't solve the other half-dozen martial classes being painfully one-note, boring, and essentially pointless.
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A Paladin who wants to burn everything on smites is not a very effectively played Paladin. To pick just one example, a Conquest Paladin can get a lot of bang out of a Fear spell.
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Paladins will use the majority of their slots on smite and that's just a truth. They will occasionally use slots for things like bless or if they get spirit guardians but it's mostly to augment their ability to get smites off
There are a multitude of useful things a paly can use spell sots for, not least of which are Shield of faith, Mirror image, Darkness, Hex, and Shield are my go to spells for my Paly. There are loads of others too depending on your build. I usually have either shield of faith or hex up, sometimes bless. One of my allies casts darkness on me or I cast darkness and mirror image. If I don't use shield of faith then I often have mirror image. They are just too good not to have.
There are a multitude of useful things a paly can use spell sots for, not least of which are Shield of faith, Mirror image, Darkness, Hex, and Shield are my go to spells for my Paly. There are loads of others too depending on your build. I usually have either shield of faith or hex up, sometimes bless. One of my allies casts darkness on me or I cast darkness and mirror image. If I don't use shield of faith then I often have mirror image. They are just too good not to have.
For me offsetting future damage is good but the best way to do that is to just kill the thing that is attacking you
That is why mirror image is just a meh choice for me.
You will likely have better benefit from just using your action to attack and kill something (or weaken it so someone else can kill it) vs using that same action to potentially avoid damage.
Hex is good tho... It's not effecting your ability to attack so that's a fine use. You also are augmenting your normal attacks so seems to fit with the smite strategy.
Shield is another fine one but it's not on the pally list so you are dipping to get it... Which generally may give you more slots to work with and makes sense.
There are a multitude of useful things a paly can use spell sots for, not least of which are Shield of faith, Mirror image, Darkness, Hex, and Shield are my go to spells for my Paly. There are loads of others too depending on your build. I usually have either shield of faith or hex up, sometimes bless. One of my allies casts darkness on me or I cast darkness and mirror image. If I don't use shield of faith then I often have mirror image. They are just too good not to have.
For me offsetting future damage is good but the best way to do that is to just kill the thing that is attacking you
That is why mirror image is just a meh choice for me.
You will likely have better benefit from just using your action to attack and kill something (or weaken it so someone else can kill it) vs using that same action to potentially avoid damage.
Hex is good tho... It's not effecting your ability to attack so that's a fine use. You also are augmenting your normal attacks so seems to fit with the smite strategy.
Shield is another fine one but it's not on the pally list so you are dipping to get it... Which generally may give you more slots to work with and makes sense.
With a Paladin, you are often offsetting not only damage inflicted on you, but on your entire party. Giving your entire party advantage on magic saves can go a long way. As I mentioned earlier, Fear also goes a long way. It is not always best to focus exclusively on maximizing damage output.
Just most of the time.... You may impose DIS on it's attacks but if it's dead it gets no Attacks at all.
There are a multitude of useful things a paly can use spell sots for, not least of which are Shield of faith, Mirror image, Darkness, Hex, and Shield are my go to spells for my Paly. There are loads of others too depending on your build. I usually have either shield of faith or hex up, sometimes bless. One of my allies casts darkness on me or I cast darkness and mirror image. If I don't use shield of faith then I often have mirror image. They are just too good not to have.
For me offsetting future damage is good but the best way to do that is to just kill the thing that is attacking you
That is why mirror image is just a meh choice for me.
You will likely have better benefit from just using your action to attack and kill something (or weaken it so someone else can kill it) vs using that same action to potentially avoid damage.
Hex is good tho... It's not effecting your ability to attack so that's a fine use. You also are augmenting your normal attacks so seems to fit with the smite strategy.
Shield is another fine one but it's not on the pally list so you are dipping to get it... Which generally may give you more slots to work with and makes sense.
With a Paladin, you are often offsetting not only damage inflicted on you, but on your entire party. Giving your entire party advantage on magic saves can go a long way. As I mentioned earlier, Fear also goes a long way. It is not always best to focus exclusively on maximizing damage output.
Just most of the time.... You may impose DIS on it's attacks but if it's dead it gets no Attacks at all.
No attacks >>Attacks at DIS
The goal is for them to get the dead before you do. It doesn’t matter how much damage you are doing per round if they kill you before you kill them.
Then why waste a turn imposing a debuff when you can just weaken or kill them outright?
It just makes more sense to always go for damage/kill unless you can't put out high damage.... paladins don't have that problem.
There are a multitude of useful things a paly can use spell sots for, not least of which are Shield of faith, Mirror image, Darkness, Hex, and Shield are my go to spells for my Paly. There are loads of others too depending on your build. I usually have either shield of faith or hex up, sometimes bless. One of my allies casts darkness on me or I cast darkness and mirror image. If I don't use shield of faith then I often have mirror image. They are just too good not to have.
For me offsetting future damage is good but the best way to do that is to just kill the thing that is attacking you
That is why mirror image is just a meh choice for me.
You will likely have better benefit from just using your action to attack and kill something (or weaken it so someone else can kill it) vs using that same action to potentially avoid damage.
Hex is good tho... It's not effecting your ability to attack so that's a fine use. You also are augmenting your normal attacks so seems to fit with the smite strategy.
Shield is another fine one but it's not on the pally list so you are dipping to get it... Which generally may give you more slots to work with and makes sense.
Smite is great against big single targets, but if you're greatly outnumbered by relatively squishy opponents it's typically not the way to go. Paladins also tend to make good tanks, so if circumstances allow it spells that help to be the wall between the enemy and the soft targets in the party can be just the thing.
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In general using standard action spells in combat for a character who isn't a primary spellcaster is a mistake. Mirror Image, unless you're able to cast it before combat starts, is basically trading a chance of negating up to three monster hits (they might not attack and/or hit you enough times for multiple mirrors to be consumed) for two attacks (at level 5, probably +7/1d8+6 each) and a smite (3d8).
There are times that tradeoff can be worth it, if enemies have particularly high-impact attacks the paladin is working hard to avoid. Mirror Image is a very powerful defensive layer. It's also not available to paladins at all outside of multiclassing, so I'm not sure why it even came up.
There are a multitude of useful things a paly can use spell sots for, not least of which are Shield of faith, Mirror image, Darkness, Hex, and Shield are my go to spells for my Paly. There are loads of others too depending on your build. I usually have either shield of faith or hex up, sometimes bless. One of my allies casts darkness on me or I cast darkness and mirror image. If I don't use shield of faith then I often have mirror image. They are just too good not to have.
For me offsetting future damage is good but the best way to do that is to just kill the thing that is attacking you
That is why mirror image is just a meh choice for me.
You will likely have better benefit from just using your action to attack and kill something (or weaken it so someone else can kill it) vs using that same action to potentially avoid damage.
Hex is good tho... It's not effecting your ability to attack so that's a fine use. You also are augmenting your normal attacks so seems to fit with the smite strategy.
Shield is another fine one but it's not on the pally list so you are dipping to get it... Which generally may give you more slots to work with and makes sense.
With a Paladin, you are often offsetting not only damage inflicted on you, but on your entire party. Giving your entire party advantage on magic saves can go a long way. As I mentioned earlier, Fear also goes a long way. It is not always best to focus exclusively on maximizing damage output.
Just most of the time.... You may impose DIS on it's attacks but if it's dead it gets no Attacks at all.
No attacks >>Attacks at DIS
The goal is for them to get the dead before you do. It doesn’t matter how much damage you are doing per round if they kill you before you kill them.
Then why waste a turn imposing a debuff when you can just weaken or kill them outright?
It just makes more sense to always go for damage/kill unless you can't put out high damage.... paladins don't have that problem.
This is very easy math. I’m going to try to make it even easier so that this doesn’t start looking like a graduate class in math. Because of that, I’m going to make some simplifying assumptions.
let’s examine the following hypothetical. The Paladin and his opponent have the same hit points and AC. They start off doing the same DPR.
Given those assumptions,
ONE is it better for the Paladin to reduce the enemy’s DPR by four or to increase his own by 3?
TWO is it better for the Paladin to raise his DPR by 8 for one round or to increase his DPR by 4 per round for the next ten rounds?
None of that makes sense.... You increase output by much more than that multiple smites. Each one is 3d8 or 13.5 damage or 27......vs doing 0 damage. This on top of your weapon damage.....
You know you can smite more than one time a turn right?
There are times that tradeoff can be worth it, if enemies have particularly high-impact attacks the paladin is working hard to avoid. Mirror Image is a very powerful defensive layer. It's also not available to paladins at all outside of multiclassing, so I'm not sure why it even came up.
Yeah most defending the spell casting are picking spells that requires multiple classes for some reason.... Not sure why.
Overall it's better the vast majority of the time to just attack is the point.
Is there time it's not? Likely but it's not going to come up nearly as often as it's just a better idea to smite
There are a multitude of useful things a paly can use spell sots for, not least of which are Shield of faith, Mirror image, Darkness, Hex, and Shield are my go to spells for my Paly. There are loads of others too depending on your build. I usually have either shield of faith or hex up, sometimes bless. One of my allies casts darkness on me or I cast darkness and mirror image. If I don't use shield of faith then I often have mirror image. They are just too good not to have.
For me offsetting future damage is good but the best way to do that is to just kill the thing that is attacking you
That is why mirror image is just a meh choice for me.
You will likely have better benefit from just using your action to attack and kill something (or weaken it so someone else can kill it) vs using that same action to potentially avoid damage.
Hex is good tho... It's not effecting your ability to attack so that's a fine use. You also are augmenting your normal attacks so seems to fit with the smite strategy.
Shield is another fine one but it's not on the pally list so you are dipping to get it... Which generally may give you more slots to work with and makes sense.
Smite is great against big single targets, but if you're greatly outnumbered by relatively squishy opponents it's typically not the way to go. Paladins also tend to make good tanks, so if circumstances allow it spells that help to be the wall between the enemy and the soft targets in the party can be just the thing.
Then Shield spell (since we appear to be assuming you have it) is the better choice.... You increase your AC and can still attack.
None of this paladin jabber is germane to any topic this thread has ever had, beeteedubs. Not the original topic I intended, not the half-dozen sub-topics it turned into, and not whatever topic got it animated from the graveyard.
Short version: D&D 5e did martial classes dirty, and no amount of "but some people like not having to think or learn the game or make decisions!" excuses that dirtiness. Even palldalladingdongs, arguably the stronkest/most overstacked class in 5e, don't get to do much of anything interesting beyond "I hit it with my hittin' stick". It's not okay, and it bothers some people. Including argumentative ghost *****es who're still trying to figure out how the bleeding hell this thread is back on the front page again.
None of this paladin jabber is germane to any topic this thread has ever had, beeteedubs. Not the original topic I intended, not the half-dozen sub-topics it turned into, and not whatever topic got it animated from the graveyard.
Short version: D&D 5e did martial classes dirty, and no amount of "but some people like not having to think or learn the game or make decisions!" excuses that dirtiness. Even palldalladingdongs, arguably the stronkest/most overstacked class in 5e, don't get to do much of anything interesting beyond "I hit it with my hittin' stick". It's not okay, and it bothers some people. Including argumentative ghost *****es who're still trying to figure out how the bleeding hell this thread is back on the front page again.
Of course, Paladins can cast, heal, have amazing cha based skills, in short, can do a hell of a lot IN THE HANDS OF SOMEBODY WHO KNOWS HOW TO PLAY THEM. Paladins, like about half the other classes in the game, require the player to develop skill to get the most out of them. it is understandable why somebody who lacks that skill would find them one note and boring.
Seems a bit condescending to me....
"Skills" aside no reason to say smite only paladin is a bad way to play... It's very good way to play
it is interesting how this whole discussion is being framed. One is given the choice of siding with the claim that martial classes are all boring and one note or is told that claims to the alternative are condescending to people who aren’t getting the full potential of those classes.
Only you are saying that someone needs skill to know how to play the class well....
I think the class can be played perfectly fine by just smiting everything. And in fact that's likely the "optimal" way to play from a pure damage and combat efficiency stand point majority of the time.... But it's also a bit boring and actually using your spells is interesting but likely less effective.
Playing either way is fine
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Or Pathfinder. Or the Book of Seven Swords. In any case, I don't think the core complaint with 4e was that it made martial classes interesting.
Might be more accurate to say that what it doesn't sound like is the old school D&D approach 5e took. There is a strange pleasure some people take in the concept that wizards should be deep and complex to play but fighters should just be dumb meatbags who hit things and be hit by things. D&D is the exception here, not the rule. Depth across classes is pretty standard these days.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Well, it's not a problem per se to have classes that are simple to play -- there are plenty of players who do not want to deal with complexity. The problem is that the simple classes are pigeonholed into certain roles and are generally designed to be inferior (look at the amount of grief the champion gets), particularly at higher levels.
Paladins have exactly ONE extra button in combat - "do I bother with Smite?". Otherwise they're barely more engaging than a typical Champion fighter.
Also why did we feel the need to resurrect this old dead thread to chatter about this? It had
failed toserve its purpose over a year ago.Please do not contact or message me.
[REDACTED]
Paladins have spellcasting, yes. They don't use it in combat because their whole gameplan is "burn every spell I can on Divine Smite". You might - might - see a paladin cast one buff spell at the start of combat, but that's it. Positioning themselves to hit their enemy with their hittin' stick is going to be more important than Maximizing Their Aura - that's on everybody else in the party to do, not the paladin. Moment-to-moment paladin gameplay mostly consists of "where do I need to stand in order to beat on this thing with my sword until it runs out of candy?"
Can you make paladins more complicated? Sure - if you want to be bad at paladin. And even if you don't consider it being bad at paladin, that still doesn't solve the other half-dozen martial classes being painfully one-note, boring, and essentially pointless.
Please do not contact or message me.
[REDACTED]
Paladins will use the majority of their slots on smite and that's just a truth. They will occasionally use slots for things like bless or if they get spirit guardians but it's mostly to augment their ability to get smites off
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There are a multitude of useful things a paly can use spell sots for, not least of which are Shield of faith, Mirror image, Darkness, Hex, and Shield are my go to spells for my Paly. There are loads of others too depending on your build. I usually have either shield of faith or hex up, sometimes bless. One of my allies casts darkness on me or I cast darkness and mirror image. If I don't use shield of faith then I often have mirror image. They are just too good not to have.
For me offsetting future damage is good but the best way to do that is to just kill the thing that is attacking you
That is why mirror image is just a meh choice for me.
You will likely have better benefit from just using your action to attack and kill something (or weaken it so someone else can kill it) vs using that same action to potentially avoid damage.
Hex is good tho... It's not effecting your ability to attack so that's a fine use. You also are augmenting your normal attacks so seems to fit with the smite strategy.
Shield is another fine one but it's not on the pally list so you are dipping to get it... Which generally may give you more slots to work with and makes sense.
Just most of the time.... You may impose DIS on it's attacks but if it's dead it gets no Attacks at all.
No attacks >>Attacks at DIS
Then why waste a turn imposing a debuff when you can just weaken or kill them outright?
It just makes more sense to always go for damage/kill unless you can't put out high damage.... paladins don't have that problem.
Smite is great against big single targets, but if you're greatly outnumbered by relatively squishy opponents it's typically not the way to go. Paladins also tend to make good tanks, so if circumstances allow it spells that help to be the wall between the enemy and the soft targets in the party can be just the thing.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
In general using standard action spells in combat for a character who isn't a primary spellcaster is a mistake. Mirror Image, unless you're able to cast it before combat starts, is basically trading a chance of negating up to three monster hits (they might not attack and/or hit you enough times for multiple mirrors to be consumed) for two attacks (at level 5, probably +7/1d8+6 each) and a smite (3d8).
There are times that tradeoff can be worth it, if enemies have particularly high-impact attacks the paladin is working hard to avoid. Mirror Image is a very powerful defensive layer. It's also not available to paladins at all outside of multiclassing, so I'm not sure why it even came up.
Please do not contact or message me.
None of that makes sense.... You increase output by much more than that multiple smites. Each one is 3d8 or 13.5 damage or 27......vs doing 0 damage. This on top of your weapon damage.....
You know you can smite more than one time a turn right?
Math looks pretty bad to me
Yeah most defending the spell casting are picking spells that requires multiple classes for some reason.... Not sure why.
Overall it's better the vast majority of the time to just attack is the point.
Is there time it's not? Likely but it's not going to come up nearly as often as it's just a better idea to smite
Then Shield spell (since we appear to be assuming you have it) is the better choice.... You increase your AC and can still attack.
None of this paladin jabber is germane to any topic this thread has ever had, beeteedubs. Not the original topic I intended, not the half-dozen sub-topics it turned into, and not whatever topic got it animated from the graveyard.
Short version: D&D 5e did martial classes dirty, and no amount of "but some people like not having to think or learn the game or make decisions!" excuses that dirtiness. Even palldalladingdongs, arguably the stronkest/most overstacked class in 5e, don't get to do much of anything interesting beyond "I hit it with my hittin' stick". It's not okay, and it bothers some people. Including argumentative ghost *****es who're still trying to figure out how the bleeding hell this thread is back on the front page again.
Please do not contact or message me.
Seems a bit condescending to me....
"Skills" aside no reason to say smite only paladin is a bad way to play... It's very good way to play
Only you are saying that someone needs skill to know how to play the class well....
I think the class can be played perfectly fine by just smiting everything. And in fact that's likely the "optimal" way to play from a pure damage and combat efficiency stand point majority of the time.... But it's also a bit boring and actually using your spells is interesting but likely less effective.
Playing either way is fine