Divine Smite was fine as it was in 2014. Put it back, you cowards.

This should be a reaction, not a bonus action. Since you cast it when you hit something.

At least the instantaneous smites, the ones with 1 min durations should then be a magic action for balance,since they add more effects and can damage the target each turn.

Quote from StefanNilsen >>

This should be a reaction, not a bonus action. Since you cast it when you hit something.

At least the instantaneous smites, the ones with 1 min durations should then be a magic action for balance,since they add more effects and can damage the target each turn.

The 2024 rules on spellcasting do explicitly say that some spells are cast with a bonus action in response to a triggering effect. That's a new thing for the 2024 rules, but it's not an error.

The fact that it's a bonus action and not a reaction is likely intended to largely restrict it to only being used once per turn, and only on your own turn. I think there was a sense that Paladins' potential to deal an extremely high amount of damage in a turn by using smites on several attacks was a bit much.

Is something broken with this spell on D&D Beyond, or am I missing something here? I'm trying to build a paladin in a game that's using the 2014 rules, and I have the 2014 PHB which *very clearly* says the paladin can cast Divine Smite, but when I go to select the paladin spells, it's just not an option, even though I have access to many other varieties of smite if the character is leveled up, and this page says "Available For: Paladin (Legacy)" so I can't figure out what's up. Is there some buried toggle or check box I have to enable to use it? Thanks!

Quote from UncertainKittyPrinciple >>

Is something broken with this spell on D&D Beyond, or am I missing something here? I'm trying to build a paladin in a game that's using the 2014 rules, and I have the 2014 PHB which *very clearly* says the paladin can cast Divine Smite, but when I go to select the paladin spells, it's just not an option, even though I have access to many other varieties of smite if the character is leveled up, and this page says "Available For: Paladin (Legacy)" so I can't figure out what's up. Is there some buried toggle or check box I have to enable to use it? Thanks!

Divine Smite was not a spell in the 2014 rules. It was just a class feature that Paladins had.

The 2024 rules changed this such that it's now a spell (which is what this page is for) but that doesn't affect the 2014 version of the Paladin class.