You are a paladin. You are a warrior who fights against evil in the name of a sacred oath you are sworn to uphold. The most iconic paladins are devoted to the service of justice and the protection of those who cannot protect themselves, but some paladins are committed to delivering vengeance upon the enemies of their god or protecting the natural order of the world. Your oath grants you powers beyond mortal ken, allowing you to fight with blade and sacred spell in tandem. While fighters and barbarians may outclass you in terms of sheer combat prowess, your ability to heal, smite, and magically manipulate the battlefield makes you a warrior of truly epic power and versatility.

When roleplaying your holy warrior, you will find that every paladin has a different personality and sense of decorum. Likewise, all paladins fight in a way unique to them, using different weapons, spells, and even tactics based on their sacred oath. This guide will serve as your introduction to the paladin in Dungeons & Dragons. We'll cover class features, explain how to play a paladin, and more, with a focus on material found in the Basic Rules and Player's Handbook. We'll focus on your early-level options so as not to overwhelm you.

• Building a Paladin
• Paladin Class Features
• Paladin Spells
• Paladin Subclasses
• Making Your Paladin Your Own

Building a D&D Paladin

When you're ready, head over to D&D Beyond's character builder. Below, we'll discuss the options you'll be presented during your paladin's character creation.

Step 1: Choose a Species

While characters of any species can be good paladins, most paladins tend to hail from naturally strong or charismatic species. Strength and Charisma are your most useful ability scores, as the former allows you to deal more damage with your attacks and the latter improves the power of your divine abilities. It also helps you live out the fantasy of being a knight in shining armor, sweeping lords and ladies off their feet, or the proselytizing holy warrior, swaying the common people to your divine cause.

• Dragonborn are ideal paladins, as they gain a bonus to both Strength and Charisma. Their primordial link to the dragon gods Bahamut and Tiamat invokes a powerful story of good versus evil that any paladin would want to explore.
• Half-elves get nice bonuses to Charisma, some defensive bonuses through Fey Ancestry, and some good utility options to make your paladin more well-rounded.
• Humans make for iconic paladins as well, especially given that the Twelve Peers, the legendary Knights of Charlemagne, were history’s first paladins. Their well-rounded ability scores and early access to a feat (if using the variant human) are useful to any paladin.
• Any species with an inherent bonus to Strength or Constitution, such as dwarves or half-orcs, make for good warriors. While such paladins may lack Charisma, their physical might will more than make up for it.

Step 2: Choose Your Class

Choose paladin as your class (unless your dedication to your oath is faltering). This will grant you some class features right off the bat. We'll touch on all of these features in the Paladin Class Features section. For now, let's focus on your two skill proficiencies.

• Many paladins are the face of their party, thanks to their high Charisma score, and investing in the Persuasion or Intimidation skills will help you navigate challenging social situations.

Step 3: Ability Scores

Now it's time to set your ability scores! These stats provide a baseline bonus to every roll your paladin will make over their adventuring career.

• Place your highest ability score in Strength. 
• Your next highest score should go into Charisma. Generally, paladins need to be strong of arm first and strong of spell second, but if you want to focus on spellcasting instead of swords, you can reverse this order.
• Constitution determines your hit points and allows you to concentrate on spells while being attacked, so choose this third.
• Fill in the rest as you see fit.

Step 4: Description

Choose any background that fits your character concept. This is a chance to be creative! How did you become a paladin? Were you an acolyte trained from birth as part of a religious order? Were you a hermit that heard a god whisper a secret in your meditation? Or were you a folk hero driven to pursue vengeance by a grievous murder committed in a village you were protecting?

Step 5: Equipment

Finally, determine your equipment. For an easy selection, click on “EQUIPMENT” when prompted to “Choose EQUIPMENT or GOLD”.

• Given the choice between a martial weapon and a shield or two martial weapons, a defense-focused paladin should pick the weapon and shield, whereas more offensive paladins should pick two martial weapons, preferably a two-handed weapon and a ranged weapon like a heavy crossbow. A paladin that wants more flexibility could pick a shield and a longsword, because the longsword’s Versatile trait lets you use it in one or two hands, depending on the situation.
• Given the choice between five javelins and one simple weapon, the javelins are almost always the better choice, unless you want to pick a simple weapon to fit your character concept.
• Paladins that focus on their religious nature or who spend lots of time in cities may want a priest’s pack, while paladins with a warrior or traveler’s mission may prefer the explorer’s pack.
• The shape your holy symbol takes is an opportunity for you to make a character decision! How do your wear the symbol of your god, and what does it look like? Remember the final scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Do you pick the humble wooden symbol or the ornate golden one?

Paladin Class Features

1st Level

Divine Sense:  This allows you to detect supernatural good and evil, which can help you prepare effectively for battle and suss out the true nature of duplicitous creatures—such as a vampire pretending to be a regular human.

Lay on Hands: This ability provides a powerful and granular feature that allows you to heal wounded allies with a touch. It’s always worth hanging onto a few points of Lay on Hands healing just in case your party’s main healer falls unconscious in the middle of a fight.

2nd Level

Fighting Style: You get to choose a Fighting Style, which gives you a bonus to some form of martial capabilities. Here's an overview of some more popular options:

• Defense: This grants you a +1 bonus to AC whenever you’re in armor; that’s essentially equivalent to a rare magic item!
• Dueling: If you're wielding a melee weapon in one hand and nothing else, you'll get a bonus to your damage with that weapon.
• Great Weapon Fighting: This allows you to reroll low rolls on your weapon’s damage dice, making it easier to deal massive damage with a large weapon.
• Protection: This allows you to impose disadvantage on any attack against an ally within 5 feet as your reaction, as long as you’re wielding a shield.

Spellcasting: At this point, you can prepare a number of 1st-level spells equal to your Charisma bonus plus half your paladin level rounded down (minimum of one) from the paladin spell list. If your Charisma modifier is +2, this means you can prepare three different spells at 2nd level. We talk about which spells to take a look at in our Paladin Spells section.

Divine Smite: You gain the ability to bring down the wrath of your god upon your foes, dealing major damage when you hit with a melee weapon attack, especially against fiends and undead.

3rd Level

Sacred Oath: At 3rd level, you choose your Sacred Oath! More details on the benefits of each oath in our Paladin Subclasses section.

Divine Health: You also gain the Divine Health feature, which makes you immune to disease.

4th Level

Ability Score Improvement: At 4th level, your paladin improves their ability scores. You can choose one ability score to increase by 2 or increase two scores by 1. Most paladins want to maximize their Strength or Charisma scores as quickly as possible to be better warriors or spellcasters.

You can also forgo this ability score improvement and choose a feat, which is a new permanent ability that can further customize your build. Feats are optional rules not covered within the Basic Rules, so talk to your DM before you choose one. If you're interested in enhancing your paladin with a feat, see the below options based on your preferred playstyle:

• Great Weapon Master: This feat allows you to do massive damage at the cost of accuracy, but the tradeoff is usually worth it.
• Heavy Armor Master: This feat reduces the damage you take from nonmagical damage, allowing you to survive longer on the battlefield, especially against swarms of weak creatures.
• War Caster: The War Caster feat allows you to more easily maintain concentration on your powerful support spells while still taking damage.

5th Level

At 5th level, you gain Extra Attack, allowing you to attack twice whenever you take the Attack action instead of once. This marks a massive increase in your potential damage, especially in combination with Divine Smite.

Paladin Spells

As warriors clad head to foot in shining armor and armed with a mighty blade, paladins are primarily front-line warriors who can also use their powers to beguile enemies and heal allies when needed. Similar to a cleric, paladins know all of the spells on their spell list but can only prepare a certain number of them per day. You can change your prepared spells whenever you complete a long rest, but it helps to have a basic loadout of spells you can rely upon when you don’t want to spend time and energy hand-tailoring a spell list to the day’s unknown challenges.

You can only prepare a number of spells equal to your Charisma modifier plus your half your level in this class. (See the “Spellcasting” section of the paladin class if you need more information.)

Finally, be aware of the Oath Spells granted to you by your subclass starting at 3rd level. These spells are always prepared, and can help round out your arsenal. If this list suggests that you prepare a spell that you already have as an Oath Spell, just pick another spell to prepare instead.

1st-Level Spells

• Bless: Give up to three allies (or yourself) 1d4 on every attack roll and saving throws for a minute.
• Command: Fail your Charisma check? Command is a great way to get your enemy to listen to you, for one word at least.
• Cure wounds: Decent healing if you're out of Lay on Hands.
• Heroism: Immunity to the frightened condition and some temporary hit points for your favorite hero.
• Protection from evil and good: Very good buff for when you run into certain enemy types.
• Searing smite: It's like a Divine Smite, but instead of radiant damage it lights your target on fire!
• Shield of faith: A bonus action and a 1st-level spell slot for a consistent +2 AC makes this a great buff for all occasions.
• Thunderous smite: Deals a bit less damage than your Divine Smite, but it can knock your target prone.
• Wrathful smite: Deal some psychic damage and frighten your foes!

2nd-Level Spells

• Aid: Increase party members' maximum hit points by 5 for an entire adventuring day. Luck favors the prepared!
• Branding smite: A good way to deal with those pesky invisible enemies. Unfortunately, you have to be able to hit them first.
• Find steed: What is a knight in shining armor without their trusty steed? This can summon a variety of mounts, from warhorses to camels.
• Magic weapon: Haven't found a magic sword for your paladin yet? No worries! This allows you to get past an enemy's resistance to nonmagical weapons and gives you +1 to attack and damage rolls!

Paladin Subclasses

When building your paladin, you should think about how you will contribute to your party. If you want to smite evil and focus more on dealing damage, you will want to build an offense-focused paladin. If you would rather deal less damage but have more staying power, or if your mission is to spread the message of peace throughout the land, consider a more defensive build instead.

Even though you don’t choose your Sacred Oath (also known as your subclass) until 3rd level, your Fighting Style, choice of weapons, and spell selection will still give you a way to find a niche in the party at low levels. Once you do choose a subclass, your role in the party will become even better defined. That said, you can use the first two levels of play to decide what path you ultimately want to go down for the rest of the campaign.

In the below table, we provide a brief description of each of the paladin subclasses. Beyond that, we go into detail on the Oath of Devotion (found in the Basic Rules), the Oath of the Ancients, and the Oath of Vengeance (both found in the Player's Handbook).

Oath of Devotion

This is the archetypical paladin subclass. They have vowed to defend the weak and uphold justice and their subclass features reflect this mission.

Playstyle: Oath of Devotion paladins are meant to get in between the forces of darkness and those they are trying to protect. They get access to great spells that focus on protecting themselves and others and their other features provide passive buffs that will aid yourself and others in combat.

Key Benefits: Your Sacred Weapon Channel Divinity allows you to stack your Charisma bonus onto your weapon attacks. This, combined with the paladin's baseline Aura of Protection and spells, makes this class ideal to focus Charisma over Strength as your primary stat.

Oath of the Ancients

Have you ever wanted to play a druid who could wear full plate? The Oath of the Ancients paladin has a distinct druid-like flare that they use to drive away the forces that seek to do nature harm.

Playstyle: Oath of the Ancients paladins are given plenty of tools to hamper foes and give themselves the upper hand in combat. These paladins like to go where the fighting is thickest and wreak havoc on their enemies.

Key Benefits: With your Nature's Wrath Channel Divinity option and ensnaring strike, you have plenty of ways to restrain creatures. This can allow you to strike with advantage, potentially causing massive damage with your Divine Smite. On top of this, getting resistance to all damage dealt by spells and being able to automatically come back from 0 hit points once per long rest make you even tankier than other paladin subclasses.

Oath of Vengeance

Oath of Vengeance are pure offensive powerhouses that excel at fighting enemies one-on-one.

Playstyle: Single out a target with your Vow of Enmity Channel Divinity to get advantage on your attacks and don't stop swinging until they stop moving. If that's not enough, you get access to hunter's mark, hold person, haste, and banishment, some of the best single target spells in the game for martial spellcasters.

Key Benefits: Beyond their ability to give themselves advantage on attacks against a foe and their killer spell list, Oath of Vengeance paladins can chase down their foes wherever they try to run. With misty step, dimension door, and their 7th-level feature Relentless Avenger, they can traverse the battlefield freely, going wherever an enemy needs destroying.

Making Your Paladin Your Own

Paladins are a class uniquely tied to a code of honor (or dishonor) and carries the baggage of decades of moral quandaries. Depending on the campaign you’re playing in, you and your DM should talk privately and figure out if you want your paladin to have strict black-and-white morals or find a more nuanced worldview. This discussion will help you pin down the tone of your campaign and exist more authentically within the game world—that is to say, to have more fun while roleplaying your character.

Paladins are my favorite character class. They seamlessly blend roleplaying and combat, and come prepackaged with interesting character choices. Their versatility in combat is rivaled only by the diversity of ethical codes presented by their sacred oaths. No matter how many different paladins I make, I can always find something completely unique in my latest character.

No matter what choices you make as a paladin, be sure to make them big and bold. Paladins are many things, but subtle is never one of them.

James Haeck (@jamesjhaeck) is the former lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and theCritical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, and is also a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his partner Hannah and two wilderness defenders, Mei and Marzipan. 

This article was originally published on August 8, 2018, and was updated on March 16, 2023.