In the latest UA video, it was noted that some classes are nearing ready for writing up for the book and while Paladin is one of those, I think it still warrants one discussion around the class and probably it's most problematic feature, Divine Smite. Additionally I feel like it's worth bringing Eldritch Smite into the picture as that usually operates similarly. I have been thinking of ideas as to how the feature could be re-designed to open up a bit more spellcasting but to limit the NOVA potential (esp with crits) from the current state it is.
Also, I believe having smites as spells, clouds how smites should be used, we have seen issues where Searing Smite was left as a Cleric Spell doing 10d6 (~35) damage while Paladin is using Divine Smite was only doing 5d8 (~22.5). I believe it'd be best to move all smites to be part of the Divine Smite feature.
Paladin 2nd Level: Divine Smite
Once per round, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one Divine Smite charge to deal extra magical damage to the target, in addition to the weapon's damage. The extra damage is determined by the type of effect applied and adds your Charisma Modifier to the damage roll of the effect. The default effect is Divine but the effect can be changed as a bonus action, effects that have a saving throw use your Spellcasting DC as their DC.
You get two Divine Smite charges, which recover on a long rest, you can also recover charges when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack on a round that you have not already used a Divine Smite by expanding a spell slot. When a spell slot is expanded, you recover a number of charges equal to half of the spell slots level, round up and you immediately expand one charge to perform a Divine Smite. You gain an additional Divine Smite charge at paladin level 5, as well as at paladin levels 9, 13 and 7.
You immediately gain access to the following effects:
Divine - you deal 1d8 radiant damage and the damage increases by an additional 1d8 if the target is a fiend, undead or has been turned from you by one of your channel divinity uses.
Searing - you deal 1d6 fire damage and the target catches fire. At the start of each of its turns until the spell ends, the target must make a Constitution Saving Throw, a target that is vulnerable to fire damage makes the save with disadvantage. On a failed save it takes 1d6 fire damage. On a successful save the target takes half damage and the effect ends. The effect also ends if any any creature takes an action to douse the flames, one minute passes or another effect occurs which douses the flames (such as the creature falling into a river).
Thunderous - you deal 1d6 thunder damage and sound rings out to 300 feet of the target. If the target is a large or smaller creature, it must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be pushed back and knocked prone.
Wrathful Smite - you deal 1d6 psychic damage and if the target is a creature they must make a Wisdom saving throw or become frightened of you for one minute.
As you increase in Paladin level, the following effects will become available to you at the given levels:
Branding - 5th level Paladin - you deal 1d6 radiant damage and the damage increases by 1d6 if the target is a creature that is currently invisible. The creature becomes sheds dim light in a 5-foot radius for one minute, the creature can not become invisible while while shredding light for this effect and becomes visible if already invisible.
Blinding - 9th level Paladin - you deal 1d8 radiant damage and the target must make a Constitution saving throw or become blinded for one minute. A creature blinded by this effect makes a Constitution saving throw at the end of each of it's turn, on a successful save, it is no longer blinded by this effect.
Staggering - 13th level Paladin - you must have a spare divine smite charge to use this effect, you deal 1d6 psychic damage and the target must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, you expand the additional divine smite charge causing the target to have disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks until the end of it's next turn, and it can not take a reaction over the same duration.
Banishing - 17th level Paladin - You must expand 4 divine smite charges to use this effect, you deal 3d10 force damage. If the target is reduced to 50 hit points or lower, you banish it as if banished by the Banishment spell and you must maintain concentration on the banishment as if you had cast the Banishment spell.
As for the Eldritch Smite invocation for Warlock
Eldritch Smite
Prerequisite: Level 5+ Warlock, Pact of the Blade
You gain the Paladin's second level feature, Divine Smite but replace progression in the Paladin class with the Warlock class. You replace the default effect from smite to the effect Eldritch which is listed below. You start with 2 charges of Divine smite, 3 charges of Divine smite at warlock level 11 or higher, or 4 charges of Divine smite at warlock level 17 or higher. If you are already benefiting from Divine Smite from levels in the Paladin class, your charges are instead equal to the charges you get from that source + 1.
Eldritch - you deal 1d8 Necrotic damage. If the target is a huge or smaller creature then you may expand an additional charge to knock it prone.
This also fixes double dipping, where you could use both Eldritch Smite or Divine Smite at the same time as well as limiting warlock progression to match that of Paladin.
I am expecting there maybe a lot of strong opinion on this one and am happy to hear them. Perhaps people prefer 5E smites (despite how OP'ed they got), others believe UA6 is better or some prefer this version.
This overall removes the scaling to spell slot level but can still use spell slots to power this feature, it lowers the Nova and instead distributes the damage to a more consistent form where smites can be used more often instead but maintains the one per round limit of UA6.
Class mentioning another class's feature just feels weird. Eldritch Smite doesn't need to be that obtuse, it's fine as it is, but if you wanna make it fairer, you can make it have the same BA-usage as the new Smite-spells do.
All other Smite-Spells should be Paladin & Sub-class exclusive.
Class mentioning another class's feature just feels weird. Eldritch Smite doesn't need to be that obtuse, it's fine as it is, but if you wanna make it fairer, you can make it have the same BA-usage as the new Smite-spells do.
All other Smite-Spells should be Paladin & Sub-class exclusive.
It's easier than re-writing the entire thing, the BA thing is kinda weird to be honest, Rogues do not use a bonus action to sneak attack, Battlemasters do not use bonus action to use superiority die and monks do not, it places Divine Smite in a weird niche, meanwhile Paladin has to use both spell slots and action economy.
Class mentioning another class's feature just feels weird. Eldritch Smite doesn't need to be that obtuse, it's fine as it is, but if you wanna make it fairer, you can make it have the same BA-usage as the new Smite-spells do.
All other Smite-Spells should be Paladin & Sub-class exclusive.
It's easier than re-writing the entire thing, the BA thing is kinda weird to be honest, Rogues do not use a bonus action to sneak attack, Battlemasters do not use bonus action to use superiority die, it places Divine Smite in a weird niche.
It makes sense because they are retroactive and since they are spells, they would otherwise need to be part of the attack action and therefore taken before.
I don't think it breaks the game to have them be once-per-turn and not require a BA, but making them take up a BA allows them to be more powerful and/or less restrictive compared to other features like sneak attack or maneuvers.
It makes sense because they are retroactive and since they are spells, they would otherwise need to be part of the attack action and therefore taken before.
I don't think it breaks the game to have them be once-per-turn and not require a BA, but making them take up a BA allows them to be more powerful and/or less restrictive compared to other features like sneak attack or maneuvers.
Multiple Superiority Die are retroactive like disarming attack, distracting strike, etc. Sneak attack is also Retroactive, Divine Smite is historically a feature, not a spell. The spells were mostly under-utilized for various reasons. There really isn't a need for Divine Smite to be a spell.
It feels like the pre-established mechanic you're looking for here is either akin to Expertise Dice/Battlemaster Maneuvers or the new Rogue Cunning Strike. Or, alternatively, a variant of Channel Divinity (or even Tasha's Psionic dice). I think either of those patterns would work and align better than something new.
Paladins already have Channel Divinity, so if Divine Smite were to consume that, it would need to follow the Cleric's full progression of uses, and it would probably end up too limited.
Personally I think expending spell slots works. Just limit to one use per round, and possibly BA.
The proposal is unnecessarily confusing, why have a separate resources that you use another resource to recharge? that's 3 different resources for the Paladin to keep track of for no apparent reason.
The proposal is also a major nerf that makes Smiting utterly pointless. Divine Favour costs 1 BA and gives you +1d4 radiant to every attack. PAM gives me an attack as a BA that deals 1d4+STR damage. I can use Weapon Mastery to Push or Knock prone an enemy. Why would I as a Paladin player use these smites?
The proposal is unnecessarily confusing, why have a separate resources that you use another resource to recharge? that's 3 different resources for the Paladin to keep track of for no apparent reason.
The proposal is also a major nerf that makes Smiting utterly pointless. Divine Favour costs 1 BA and gives you +1d4 radiant to every attack. PAM gives me an attack as a BA that deals 1d4+STR damage. I can use Weapon Mastery to Push or Knock prone an enemy. Why would I as a Paladin player use these smites?
I did consider Divine Favour with it, but you only cast Divine Favour once, it's a concentration spell. I wanted to avoid an extra resource but ultimately, smites being based off of spell slots is really the biggest issue with smites, smites still scale to spell slot, which means you're still going to see the 10d8 critical hit smites come into play at later levels, smites still mostly benefit for waiting from crits in their current design and so it's still going for Nova, it's just less predictably the case than it was before.
Also Paladin has had 3 resources for a while, dropping Divine Sense for this is still the same amount of resources, nobody was complaining about the amount of resources then, only that divine sense is kind of pointless and useless to 99% of campaigns, 99% of the time. And it's really not a nerf, smites do less damage but do more damage over the adventuring day since they would be used more consistently, that is until you get into critical hits, which really is the issue. Yes you could get a bit more damage by crit fishing, if you hit all smites on critical hits that is, altho chances are that is very unlikely to happen over the course of an adventuring day, early on with less slots, sure but as you get more slots, harder to keep up.
And let's not ignore the issue with Warlock, Eldritch Smite using the very limited pact magic slots has always made it a hard sell, it is entirely reliant on getting critical hits, which isn't a good thing for an Invocation. When the main have you have to sell it is that it has the added caveat that it only really does around the right amount of damage when you critical hit, you could take the spirit shroud spell instead in 90% of cases that aren't the knocking airborne creatures prone and do vastly more damage, using a prepared/known spell instead of a full invocation.
It feels like the pre-established mechanic you're looking for here is either akin to Expertise Dice/Battlemaster Maneuvers or the new Rogue Cunning Strike. Or, alternatively, a variant of Channel Divinity (or even Tasha's Psionic dice). I think either of those patterns would work and align better than something new.
Paladins already have Channel Divinity, so if Divine Smite were to consume that, it would need to follow the Cleric's full progression of uses, and it would probably end up too limited.
Personally I think expending spell slots works. Just limit to one use per round, and possibly BA.
I personally don't, I think the scaling is the biggest part of the issue with Divine Smite and hasn't really been resolved. Instead we see smites being made to use bonus actions, which is just weird compared to anything else that is similar and this is because Spell Slots don't scale the same way as martial features normally do.
Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack or an Unarmed Strike you can deal extra radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon’s damage. The extra damage is equal to 1d8+Charisma Modifier. The damage increases by 1d8 at Paladin levels 5, 11, and 17. Fiends and Undead take an extra 1d8 damage. You can use this feature a number of times equal to twice your charisma modifier per long rest and you can use this feature no more than once per turn.
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In the latest UA video, it was noted that some classes are nearing ready for writing up for the book and while Paladin is one of those, I think it still warrants one discussion around the class and probably it's most problematic feature, Divine Smite. Additionally I feel like it's worth bringing Eldritch Smite into the picture as that usually operates similarly. I have been thinking of ideas as to how the feature could be re-designed to open up a bit more spellcasting but to limit the NOVA potential (esp with crits) from the current state it is.
Also, I believe having smites as spells, clouds how smites should be used, we have seen issues where Searing Smite was left as a Cleric Spell doing 10d6 (~35) damage while Paladin is using Divine Smite was only doing 5d8 (~22.5). I believe it'd be best to move all smites to be part of the Divine Smite feature.
As for the Eldritch Smite invocation for Warlock
This also fixes double dipping, where you could use both Eldritch Smite or Divine Smite at the same time as well as limiting warlock progression to match that of Paladin.
I am expecting there maybe a lot of strong opinion on this one and am happy to hear them. Perhaps people prefer 5E smites (despite how OP'ed they got), others believe UA6 is better or some prefer this version.
This overall removes the scaling to spell slot level but can still use spell slots to power this feature, it lowers the Nova and instead distributes the damage to a more consistent form where smites can be used more often instead but maintains the one per round limit of UA6.
Class mentioning another class's feature just feels weird. Eldritch Smite doesn't need to be that obtuse, it's fine as it is, but if you wanna make it fairer, you can make it have the same BA-usage as the new Smite-spells do.
All other Smite-Spells should be Paladin & Sub-class exclusive.
It's easier than re-writing the entire thing, the BA thing is kinda weird to be honest, Rogues do not use a bonus action to sneak attack, Battlemasters do not use bonus action to use superiority die and monks do not, it places Divine Smite in a weird niche, meanwhile Paladin has to use both spell slots and action economy.
It makes sense because they are retroactive and since they are spells, they would otherwise need to be part of the attack action and therefore taken before.
I don't think it breaks the game to have them be once-per-turn and not require a BA, but making them take up a BA allows them to be more powerful and/or less restrictive compared to other features like sneak attack or maneuvers.
Multiple Superiority Die are retroactive like disarming attack, distracting strike, etc. Sneak attack is also Retroactive, Divine Smite is historically a feature, not a spell. The spells were mostly under-utilized for various reasons. There really isn't a need for Divine Smite to be a spell.
It feels like the pre-established mechanic you're looking for here is either akin to Expertise Dice/Battlemaster Maneuvers or the new Rogue Cunning Strike. Or, alternatively, a variant of Channel Divinity (or even Tasha's Psionic dice). I think either of those patterns would work and align better than something new.
Paladins already have Channel Divinity, so if Divine Smite were to consume that, it would need to follow the Cleric's full progression of uses, and it would probably end up too limited.
Personally I think expending spell slots works. Just limit to one use per round, and possibly BA.
The proposal is unnecessarily confusing, why have a separate resources that you use another resource to recharge? that's 3 different resources for the Paladin to keep track of for no apparent reason.
The proposal is also a major nerf that makes Smiting utterly pointless. Divine Favour costs 1 BA and gives you +1d4 radiant to every attack. PAM gives me an attack as a BA that deals 1d4+STR damage. I can use Weapon Mastery to Push or Knock prone an enemy. Why would I as a Paladin player use these smites?
I did consider Divine Favour with it, but you only cast Divine Favour once, it's a concentration spell. I wanted to avoid an extra resource but ultimately, smites being based off of spell slots is really the biggest issue with smites, smites still scale to spell slot, which means you're still going to see the 10d8 critical hit smites come into play at later levels, smites still mostly benefit for waiting from crits in their current design and so it's still going for Nova, it's just less predictably the case than it was before.
Also Paladin has had 3 resources for a while, dropping Divine Sense for this is still the same amount of resources, nobody was complaining about the amount of resources then, only that divine sense is kind of pointless and useless to 99% of campaigns, 99% of the time. And it's really not a nerf, smites do less damage but do more damage over the adventuring day since they would be used more consistently, that is until you get into critical hits, which really is the issue. Yes you could get a bit more damage by crit fishing, if you hit all smites on critical hits that is, altho chances are that is very unlikely to happen over the course of an adventuring day, early on with less slots, sure but as you get more slots, harder to keep up.
And let's not ignore the issue with Warlock, Eldritch Smite using the very limited pact magic slots has always made it a hard sell, it is entirely reliant on getting critical hits, which isn't a good thing for an Invocation. When the main have you have to sell it is that it has the added caveat that it only really does around the right amount of damage when you critical hit, you could take the spirit shroud spell instead in 90% of cases that aren't the knocking airborne creatures prone and do vastly more damage, using a prepared/known spell instead of a full invocation.
I personally don't, I think the scaling is the biggest part of the issue with Divine Smite and hasn't really been resolved. Instead we see smites being made to use bonus actions, which is just weird compared to anything else that is similar and this is because Spell Slots don't scale the same way as martial features normally do.
Divine Smite
Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack or an Unarmed Strike you can deal extra radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon’s damage. The extra damage is equal to 1d8+Charisma Modifier. The damage increases by 1d8 at Paladin levels 5, 11, and 17. Fiends and Undead take an extra 1d8 damage. You can use this feature a number of times equal to twice your charisma modifier per long rest and you can use this feature no more than once per turn.