I'm currently new to D&D and currently playing in my first campaign. My character is a brass dragonborn oath of ancients paladin who is the tank of the party. I was thinking of making him more focused on controlling the battlefield while taking some hits for the part ,so I came across 3 feats that would be helpful.
The 3 feats are:
Sentinel
Polearm Master
Dragon's fear
I was wondering if these were good to use or I need to use something else. Just asking for advice. I am currently thinking of either running spear and shield so I can have higher Ac or a glaive for that reach and slight boost to damage.
Sentinel is a classic feat for a tank controlling the battlefield but if you took the protection fighting style it probably won't get used as often. So if you did not take protection as a fighting style than it is a great way to go but if you did polearm master and mounted combatant are both creating battlefield controlling feats. Mounted combatant would be combined with your horse from find steed.
When it comes to battlefield control, Dragon's Fear is the correct choice. Knocking out potentially several targets from coming any closer is huge, easily it would turn the tide of a battle.
Before we even discuss the feats more information is required. What fighting style are you going to choose? What weapons are you starting with? What are your overall stats? In order to best help you these questions need to be answered.
For tanking, I would strongly recommend taking sentinel first. It just does what tanks want to do. It does kind of occupy your reaction, though, so if you chose the protection or interception fighting styles, you'll also want to ask your DM if you can use the 'Martial Versatility' option from Tasha's Cauldron to retrain your fighting style to something else. Defense would be the obvious, but boring choice. Blind Fighting (from Tasha's) can help counteract the Dragonborn's lack of darkvision, plus it can be a very strong combat tool if other members of your party happen to use vision-obscuring spells like Fog Cloud or Darkness. Blessed Warrior (also from Tasha's), can be a nice utility option to pick up the Guidance cantrip if nobody else in your party has it, plus one additional cantrip which can be used for Light (again to help with the lack of darkvision) or a fallback ranged attack for when you just can't close to melee (sacred flame or toll the dead).
Dragon Fear is also a strong option - provided that +1 ability score actually increases the modifier of the ability score you apply it to. I prefer sentinel for tanking, and the improved dragonborn breath weapon out of Fizban's isn't as desperately in need of an alternative use, but if you opt for this over sentinel it wouldn't be a mistake or anything. I'm biased against it because I like oath of conquest, the paladin subclass all about frighten effects, and it suffers some unfortunate anti-synergy there, but on a non-conquest paladin it's a nice bit of extra control, especially since the changes to how dragonborn breath attack works in Fizbans seems to mean that dragon fear should also be usable as a single action out of your attack action, rather than requiring an entire action of its own. The one other concern I will point out is that it requires your allies to be pretty disciplined and carefully targeted themselves. No good to pop dragonfear only for a party wizard to then fireball the entire enemy group, giving the ones you targeted extra chances to save out. So whether Dragon Fear is a good option for you really comes down to your assessment of how well your party operates.
Polearm Master is an excellent feat, arguably even the best feat, for a paladin... who wants to optimize for damage output. If you're aiming for tanking than it's a secondary consideration after sentinel, and while the sentinel/PAM combo /is/ amazing for tanking and battlefield control, Paladins rely heavily on multiple stats AND have other feat priorities (most notably propping up their own concentration saves with either resilient con or warcaster), so taking two whole separate feats that don't do any of that on a character that doesn't benefit from a variant human's bonus racial feat is going to be paying a pretty steep price for it when moving into the levels 8 to 11 range. And no point saying you can start working it all out at levels 12 and 16 when most campaigns do not get that far.
Basically, Multi-feat combos are for variant humans, fighters, and rogues. My rule of thumb for non-Vuman paladins is to take your 1 (one) MOST build-defining feat at level 4 - ideally something that's also powerful like polearm master or sentinel, but if your character concept absolutely requires something else so be it (if you just gotta have a familiar then maybe ritual caster or magic initiate. If you gotta dual wield longswords then dual wielder. optimization is nice, but character concept is everything). After level 4, put your ASIs into concentration save (warcaster if multiclassing, resiliant con otherwise, lucky can do if you don't rely too heavily on concentration spells, as it also helps with other rolls) & ability scores (this can include half-feats like Fey Touched, Dragon Fear, etc, provided they're rounding off odd scores in key stats). Remember that almost every paladin will be rolling for weapon attack and damage more than anything else, so even small variations in your weapon attack stat will add up big over time. Also from level 6 on you add your charisma mod to all of your saves and all of your nearby allies' saves, and that is absolutely huge. If there were a feat "add +1 you all your saves and all the saves of your nearby allies" that would be the flat out best feat you could take, and that's what +2 cha means for you until your cha maxes out at 20. So you don't want to let either your weapon attack (whether strength or dex) or your charisma fall behind, even if the feats you might get instead do look pretty cool.
Likewise, concentration spells are a big deal for a half caster, who needs to make your limited spell slots last to get the most out of your core class chassis, but as a melee character, you're going to be taking a lot of hits and thus rolling a lot of concentration spells. Yes, aura of protection helps a lot, and if you have to you can mostly get by on smites and not have to worry about concentration. But warcaster / resilient / lucky will often be the difference between keeping and dropping bless, or shield of faith, or crusader's mantle, or spirit shroud, and those are big effects that matter a lot.
So anyway, yeah, if I were you I'd pick Sentinel, or maybe dragon fear, but then focus on concentration saves and stats for the rest of your foreseeable career.
If you're in a campaign like icespire peak where you're facing lots of dex saving throw requiring lightning and cold breath type effects and if you're often in proximity to area-based hazards like if allies use spells like cloud of daggers then shield master may get into the running if your paladin hadn't taken great weapon master fighting style.
Dragon’s Fear is awesome and it’s the feat I selected to my Dragonborn Paladin as well. But he is a Conquest one… it’s a perfect combination.
Sadly, Dragon Fear has some anti-synergy with Aura of Conquest, in that Dragon Fear allows new saves whenever a target takes damage, and Aura of Conquest deals a small amount of damage to frightened targets that start their turn in the aura. This effectively gives every target a second free saving throw to escape the frighten effect ~before~ the aura has a chance to lock them down or the condition has a chance to impose disadvantage on their attacks. As a conqueror, you'll often be better off keeping any enemies who fail a save against dragon fear OUT of your aura, specifically to deny them follow up saves.
It's not a bad feat for conquerors, but as a combo it frustratingly adds up to somewhat less than the sum of it's parts.
If you're playing a conquest paladin and looking to get a frighten effect out of your racial selection, you're better off looking at Fallen Aasimar or Winter Eladrin, imo.
hello,
I'm currently new to D&D and currently playing in my first campaign. My character is a brass dragonborn oath of ancients paladin who is the tank of the party. I was thinking of making him more focused on controlling the battlefield while taking some hits for the part ,so I came across 3 feats that would be helpful.
The 3 feats are:
I was wondering if these were good to use or I need to use something else. Just asking for advice. I am currently thinking of either running spear and shield so I can have higher Ac or a glaive for that reach and slight boost to damage.
Hi Bababooey and welcome!
Sentinel is a classic feat for a tank controlling the battlefield but if you took the protection fighting style it probably won't get used as often. So if you did not take protection as a fighting style than it is a great way to go but if you did polearm master and mounted combatant are both creating battlefield controlling feats. Mounted combatant would be combined with your horse from find steed.
When it comes to battlefield control, Dragon's Fear is the correct choice. Knocking out potentially several targets from coming any closer is huge, easily it would turn the tide of a battle.
Before we even discuss the feats more information is required. What fighting style are you going to choose? What weapons are you starting with? What are your overall stats? In order to best help you these questions need to be answered.
For tanking, I would strongly recommend taking sentinel first. It just does what tanks want to do. It does kind of occupy your reaction, though, so if you chose the protection or interception fighting styles, you'll also want to ask your DM if you can use the 'Martial Versatility' option from Tasha's Cauldron to retrain your fighting style to something else. Defense would be the obvious, but boring choice. Blind Fighting (from Tasha's) can help counteract the Dragonborn's lack of darkvision, plus it can be a very strong combat tool if other members of your party happen to use vision-obscuring spells like Fog Cloud or Darkness. Blessed Warrior (also from Tasha's), can be a nice utility option to pick up the Guidance cantrip if nobody else in your party has it, plus one additional cantrip which can be used for Light (again to help with the lack of darkvision) or a fallback ranged attack for when you just can't close to melee (sacred flame or toll the dead).
Dragon Fear is also a strong option - provided that +1 ability score actually increases the modifier of the ability score you apply it to. I prefer sentinel for tanking, and the improved dragonborn breath weapon out of Fizban's isn't as desperately in need of an alternative use, but if you opt for this over sentinel it wouldn't be a mistake or anything. I'm biased against it because I like oath of conquest, the paladin subclass all about frighten effects, and it suffers some unfortunate anti-synergy there, but on a non-conquest paladin it's a nice bit of extra control, especially since the changes to how dragonborn breath attack works in Fizbans seems to mean that dragon fear should also be usable as a single action out of your attack action, rather than requiring an entire action of its own. The one other concern I will point out is that it requires your allies to be pretty disciplined and carefully targeted themselves. No good to pop dragonfear only for a party wizard to then fireball the entire enemy group, giving the ones you targeted extra chances to save out. So whether Dragon Fear is a good option for you really comes down to your assessment of how well your party operates.
Polearm Master is an excellent feat, arguably even the best feat, for a paladin... who wants to optimize for damage output. If you're aiming for tanking than it's a secondary consideration after sentinel, and while the sentinel/PAM combo /is/ amazing for tanking and battlefield control, Paladins rely heavily on multiple stats AND have other feat priorities (most notably propping up their own concentration saves with either resilient con or warcaster), so taking two whole separate feats that don't do any of that on a character that doesn't benefit from a variant human's bonus racial feat is going to be paying a pretty steep price for it when moving into the levels 8 to 11 range. And no point saying you can start working it all out at levels 12 and 16 when most campaigns do not get that far.
Basically, Multi-feat combos are for variant humans, fighters, and rogues. My rule of thumb for non-Vuman paladins is to take your 1 (one) MOST build-defining feat at level 4 - ideally something that's also powerful like polearm master or sentinel, but if your character concept absolutely requires something else so be it (if you just gotta have a familiar then maybe ritual caster or magic initiate. If you gotta dual wield longswords then dual wielder. optimization is nice, but character concept is everything). After level 4, put your ASIs into concentration save (warcaster if multiclassing, resiliant con otherwise, lucky can do if you don't rely too heavily on concentration spells, as it also helps with other rolls) & ability scores (this can include half-feats like Fey Touched, Dragon Fear, etc, provided they're rounding off odd scores in key stats). Remember that almost every paladin will be rolling for weapon attack and damage more than anything else, so even small variations in your weapon attack stat will add up big over time. Also from level 6 on you add your charisma mod to all of your saves and all of your nearby allies' saves, and that is absolutely huge. If there were a feat "add +1 you all your saves and all the saves of your nearby allies" that would be the flat out best feat you could take, and that's what +2 cha means for you until your cha maxes out at 20. So you don't want to let either your weapon attack (whether strength or dex) or your charisma fall behind, even if the feats you might get instead do look pretty cool.
Likewise, concentration spells are a big deal for a half caster, who needs to make your limited spell slots last to get the most out of your core class chassis, but as a melee character, you're going to be taking a lot of hits and thus rolling a lot of concentration spells. Yes, aura of protection helps a lot, and if you have to you can mostly get by on smites and not have to worry about concentration. But warcaster / resilient / lucky will often be the difference between keeping and dropping bless, or shield of faith, or crusader's mantle, or spirit shroud, and those are big effects that matter a lot.
So anyway, yeah, if I were you I'd pick Sentinel, or maybe dragon fear, but then focus on concentration saves and stats for the rest of your foreseeable career.
Dragon’s Fear is awesome and it’s the feat I selected to my Dragonborn Paladin as well. But he is a Conquest one… it’s a perfect combination.
If you're in a campaign like icespire peak where you're facing lots of dex saving throw requiring lightning and cold breath type effects and if you're often in proximity to area-based hazards like if allies use spells like cloud of daggers then shield master may get into the running if your paladin hadn't taken great weapon master fighting style.
Sadly, Dragon Fear has some anti-synergy with Aura of Conquest, in that Dragon Fear allows new saves whenever a target takes damage, and Aura of Conquest deals a small amount of damage to frightened targets that start their turn in the aura. This effectively gives every target a second free saving throw to escape the frighten effect ~before~ the aura has a chance to lock them down or the condition has a chance to impose disadvantage on their attacks. As a conqueror, you'll often be better off keeping any enemies who fail a save against dragon fear OUT of your aura, specifically to deny them follow up saves.
It's not a bad feat for conquerors, but as a combo it frustratingly adds up to somewhat less than the sum of it's parts.
If you're playing a conquest paladin and looking to get a frighten effect out of your racial selection, you're better off looking at Fallen Aasimar or Winter Eladrin, imo.