The Paladin Tank - D&D: Optimized #12

[Music] hey everybody welcome to dnd optimized the show where each episode we take a deep dive into one single character build for dungeons and dragons 5e and we do our best to optimize it to give you the greatest numerical advantage for the chosen role of that particular character built if you enjoy theory crafting and number crunching about d d character creation um or you're looking for ideas for your next character or ways to make your existing dnd character a little more powerful this is the show for you so welcome thanks for being here i appreciate having you my name is colby and um just wanted to give another thanks to everybody for all the um subscribes and likes and and comments and things lately um we're up to i think 225 subscribers last i looked which was a big jump from the week before so that's exciting thank you please continue to to share and you know spread the word i appreciate it and uh the dnd community is just awesome you guys are you guys are fantastic and uh it's been nothing but pleasure to uh to interact with all of you so thank you i asked in the last episode about um you know interest level in doing builds other than sustained damage which is what the vast majority of the episodes have been about so far as most of you know and i did you know the only feedback i received was yes please do more than just sustain damage um another tank build maybe you know healing etc etc so um i wanted to do another tank build this week because i've only done one and it's not particularly useful if you don't have anything to compare it to right so episode three i believe it was i did the bear totem barbarian which was really kind of a tanky control build for those who don't know tank meaning you know hard to kill hard to kill and also um you know maybe defensive minded trying to sort of defend uh your allies from from taking damage getting hurt etc that's that's what we mean by tank so most of the time when we when we at least when i think of a tank i don't think of a raging barbarian in a loincloth or maybe medium armor right and a two-handed weapon out there frothing at the mouth i think of heavy armor plate mail you know shield and sword with a helmet on you know just being virtually indestructible and so i wanted to go for something along those lines this time something a little more traditional a traditional tank and see how it compared so you know in dnd really your your only options for the most part for heavy armor wearing you know shield sword and shield type um archetype is a fighter and a paladin right um those are the two kind of classic archetypes here for for this particular type of character fighters are fantastic particularly because of all of the additional feats and ability score increases that they get access to compared to other classes that can really help them boost their stats get great feats and things like that but i think in this case for the purposes of being as hard to kill as possible um and also maybe support and heal and things the paladin just has has the edge primarily because of spells that they can get especially if you do a little multi-class dip which we're going to do just a little bit um the the the spells that you can get access to easily are just great for adding some defense and some armor class especially to you making you that much harder to hit eldritch knights get spells in the fighter you know line but they get fewer of them it takes longer to get where you want to get and the types of spells that you get access to aren't necessarily what we're looking for so it doesn't work as well paladins just have great healing abilities buffing abilities for their allies and so it just fit a little bit better in that that archetype that i was trying to do here with this tank build um fighters are great and maybe a little more offensive minded i think generally um than paladins unless you're smiting a bunch um so with all of that said i present episode 12 the paladin tank or the tankidin as we shall fondly call him um so let's jump into the build at level 1 um your race i'm going to recommend variant human as i do 90 of the time it seems i'm hoping that tasha's cauldron of everything that comes out next month as of recording we'll change that and make that free feet thing available to more races um but we need a couple well we we want a couple of big feats one in particular early on that's just going to be super strong and so variant human for the free feet is what we're going to recommend but there are plenty of other options that could be really strong you see a lot of goliaths and and a lot of half orcs and you know if your dm allows um the eberron book whatever it's called eberron eberron rising eberron something it can be pretty steampunky it's kind of sci-fi almost a little sci-fi in your fantasy i'm not a huge fan of it personally i know i'm gonna have to do i know i'm gonna have to do an artifice or build one of these times and i'm not looking forward to it but i'm gonna do it because i love you guys and i'm getting some requests for artificer builds um but anyway uh if you can do eberron the war forged is a great option for race here because you get a plus one ac and that's awesome and they're cool they look fun so anyway but we're gonna go variant human and the free feet that you pick up is the heavy armor master feat heavy armor master reduces anytime you you take damage from non-magical piercing bludgeoning or slashing so in other words weapon attacks for the most part right um it reduces the damage that you take by three which is really big especially early on it doesn't scale super well but you know what it helps throughout the game and especially early it's big um three damage per attack it could reduce an attack that you take to zero right um and and also just fyi well all of the numbers that we look at are kind of assuming non-magical in most cases um and so just so you know but obviously it's not quite as strong if you're just taking a hundred percent magic damage um anyway uh abilities your ability scores you're going to want to start with a 15 strength plus one from your feet the heavy armor heavy armor master feet gives you a plus one to strength um then a 15 constitution and take a plus one from your racial feature and then 15 charisma plus one from your racial feature and it's not going to leave you with a lot else if you're doing point by so you're going to have pretty low scores otherwise but starting with 316's is awesome and uh paladins really want all three of those abilities so um that feels really nice for your equipment obviously you're going to get chain mill you want a shield and just take you know whatever one-handed marshall weapon you prefer um on paladins i think i like a warhammer myself but a long sword too because it kind of gives that knight in shining armor but you could do a battle axe you could do a you could do a well you could do whatever you want but take something that does a d8 and is one-handed um let's see for um also sorry paladins get the well-known and well-loved lay on hands feature at this level which really adds to your tankiness because it lets you heal including heal yourself right um but it lets you do i think five five five hit points of healing per level of paladin uh per long rest and you can split that up however you want it's really great you can also use it to cure diseases and poisons and things too which is nice let's see at level two you get a fighting style and you're going to want to take the defense fighting style that's going to give you a plus one to your armor class [Music] the protection fighting style is also great it makes you a little less tanky but it lets you impose disadvantage on an enemy who's attacking an ally when that ally is within five feet of you um that's great that's really strong actually and and really fits nicely in the whole tank the purpose of the tank right to protect their allies maybe even better than the defense we're crunching numbers for survivability here so i took the defensive fighting style but feel free to go you know protection if um that's kind of more up your alley um what else you get spells paladin spells starting at level two and i'm going to recommend that you take shield of faith at a minimum shield of faith is a concentration spell and while you're concentrating on it it's going to give you a plus two to your armor class which you love um and so you know at you know with with that spell up chain mail shield defensive fighting style and uh and the shield of faith spell you are at a 21 armor class at level two and that's with chainmail um so that's really good you're going to be really hard to hit right out of the gate and where usually the early game is very dangerous for most characters it's not going to be that dangerous for you at level three you get a paladin feature divine health which makes you immune to disease that's great that much you know one less thing to be able to damage you and then you also get to choose a sacred oath um i'm gonna recommend oath of the crown for a few reasons um you get a free compelled duel spell which is nice it's probably the closest thing that dnd has to a taunt you you don't force somebody to attack you but you give them disadvantage if they attack anyone else but you so that's even better than the the barbarian right which which gives the enemies advantage on attacking and the only thing better than giving an enemies advantage to attack you if you're trying to draw their fire is giving them disadvantage to attack anybody else um so that's great and definitely you want to use compelled duel their channel definitely channel divinity options are nice you know paladins like clerics get a channel divinity feature which once per short rest lets you channel divinity and do something cool um and it's going to change based on your oath and and the uh the oath of the crown gets two options one is just a straight up heel and it's fantastic um turn the tide uh and and and it can do a group heal as long as you or whoever you're trying to heal is below half health so that's fantastic and then you get champion challenge champion challenge could be awesome or it could be not particularly useful depending on if you go in my opinion rules as written or rules as intended so let's just talk about it for a second this is the description as a bonus action you issue a challenge that compels other creatures to do battle with you that's important remember that each then it says each creature of your choice that you can see it it goes on to describe the sort of specifics of each creature of your choice that you can see within 30 feet of you must make a wisdom saving throw on a failed save a creature can't willingly move more than 30 feet away from you so the description of it is that you're compelling other creatures to do battle with you the the nuts and bolts of it is if they fail they're safe they can't move away from you talk with your dungeon master about this right and make sure that you're both clear on how this is going to work in game if it were me i think i would say you know if if your intention is to do a big group taunt and it's your channel divinity which you don't get to use that often right yeah you know i'm going to generally if they fail their save make these creatures attack you that could backfire on you and get you killed so watch out um but you know it seems to me that rules as written might the intention might have been a little more than than uh sorry rules as intended might might have been a little more than what they ended up rules as written there anyway figure it out um it can be good either way even if it's just a hey people can't move away from you that could stop them from running it could maybe prevent them from getting to an ally depending on where you and your ally are situated so anyway really like really like the oath of the crown it also brings some more great tanky and support features as you level which we'll talk about at level four you get an ability score increase or feat i'm going to recommend taking constitution because we are going for survivability after all so that's nice to give you some more hit points um and then at level five you get an extra attack always welcome and your second level spells and spell slots um second level spells don't do a ton for our tankiness there's there's a couple of okay options protection from poison which can be good if you're fighting enemies that do poison damage and lesser restoration gives you a nice kind of help your friends cure type spell which is great at level six we are going to take one level and one level only of sorcerer um yes we're multi-classing the sorcerer paladin or sorcodin as it is commonly called is a well-known and well-loved multi-class i've used it before in the assassirer build it's often it's often they're often put together in order to give the paladin big smite damage right more spell slots higher level spell slots so that you can smite stuff and do big damage we are really just here for one thing one and a half um the shield spell sorcerers have access to shield they are a charisma based spellcaster you have a high charisma it's very easy to get there and the way that shield works is you cast it as a reaction it's a level one spell as a reaction when you get hit by an attack it will bump your ac by five potentially causing you to not get hit by that attack and it will last your ac will be at that plus five level until your next turn the beginning of your next turn so you're effectively bumping your armor class by five um as you know at will um and that's incredibly strong um so that's what we're here for another decent spell you could pick up is absorb elements so absorb elements will basically just if it's fire acid cold lightning thunder maybe poison i don't know damage spell damage basically it will absorb a d6 per spell level of that damage so it's another way to kind of not take damage if you're not getting hit with a weapon right um so a couple of nice reaction based defensive based spells that that you otherwise wouldn't be able to get access to as a paladin um also as a sorcerer at level 1 sorcerer you get a sorceress origin i would probably take divine soul it it seems to make the most sense i think thematically for a paladin you get a favorite of the gods feature which is nice it lets you if you fail a save or miss an attack um you get to add a 2d4 roll to that failed save or missed attack potentially letting you make the save and obviously if we're looking for survivability that's nice it's going to let you make an occasional saving throw that you would have failed otherwise but listen if you you know have this great idea for a character that worships the god of thunder or something and you want to go the storm sorceress origin uh go for it i would recommend divine soul it's not a huge deal there um damage report for those who watched the baritone barbarian episode you'll recall that i kind of wanted to come up with um some new stats that we could use as a sort of control or baseline to to kind of compare other tanky builds to to one another the dtpr or damage taken per round you know to kind of calculate how much damage is this character going to receive on average and rtd or rounds to die you know so at that damage per round how long is it going to take for them to die those are kind of the i think the a couple of stats that just let us get a feel for how tanky is this character how hard are they to kill um go ahead and watch that episode if you want a more in-depth explanation of my reasoning etc etc but basically for a control at each level i just kind of picked some monsters to say okay you know we're gonna do a boss fight we're gonna do a just kind of regular run-of-the-mill fight both of which are um are a sort of medium difficulty as per the difficulty builder encounter builder um assuming a party of four and so we get a boss fight we get a regular fight to kind of compare okay well you know how does this tank build stack up at level six against that tank build at level six so sorry for the long preamble but um at level six you assuming you still just have chain mail with your shield spell activated and your divine shield or shield of faith sorry active you're at a 26 armor class um against a you know so the boss fight is a young white dragon against a young white dragon that dragon is only going to do 5 damage per round 5 dtpr right and it's going to take you 10 rounds to die at that rate now again we're not including any sort of special attacks legendary actions bonus bonus actions any any sort of special things breath weapons in this case you know anything like that it's really just you know this monster is hitting you okay so a bite and two claws is what the dragon's doing and that's what we're using for our control against a just an average regular encounter we're using four berserkers they would do 3 damage per round to you you'd take 3 dtpr and it would take you 17 rounds to die and then just for fun against 10 kobolds they would do two damage per round to you and uh it would take you 25 rounds to die i'm rounding these numbers oftentimes there are decimals in there um and yes i realize you're going to run out of spell slots before 25 rounds against 10 kobolds right so no you're not necessarily going to have a 26 armor class the entire fight um the the the the purpose of these numbers is just to give us you know sort of a baseline it just serves as a function to let us know at this rate of damage how long would it take my character to die right you know that said you're not going to need to cast shield a lot of the time against these enemies they're going to miss miss miss even because you're going to have a 21 armor class right which is really high so no you won't have access to shield all the time i i know that i understand um but i think that the the numbers serve serve a serve a good purpose anyway anyway really strong really strong tanky numbers it's going to take these things forever to kill you even if they're just focusing all of their attention on you and trying to kill you it turns out that a high armor class and a minus three per hit um non-magical anyway is really strong particularly at early levels it will get less strong as we go but it definitely stays useful throughout all right at level seven we're going back to paladin and we're going paladin the rest of the way um you get uh so paladin six you get uh your aura of protection your first aura it's awesome paladin auras are the best um you and every ally within 10 feet get to add your charisma modifier to uh their saves which is just great for for increased survivability um at level eight paladin seven you get a oath of the crown feature divine allegiance um this is this is nice so this is a great tank feature right basically when someone within five feet of you they have to be five feet of you uh a friend takes damage you can as a reaction take damage for them and this by the way is another reason why i think it's best to go defensive or the defense fighting style as opposed to protection because you're using your reactions a lot for things as a paladin including this divine allegiance feature so if they take damage you can take the damage instead that's nice it's a bummer that you can't instead force the enemy to attack you because you're probably gonna have a much higher armor class than your uh than your ally and um you know you're just gonna have to take the damage uh anyway so you get penalized for their squishiness they should know better um but anyway it's still great and a great way to uh to be a tank and to help out your allies at level nine paladin eight um you get another ability score increase which i would say take constitution max it out and now you're at a 20 constitution which is great you have a lot of hit points you get third level paladin spells as well the one that i definitely make sure you get is aura of vitality another great aura it's concentration but it just gives some nice healing every round uh to you or a friend um and it's and and you can do that healing as a bonus action which is great of course you'd have to drop your concentration to do it so you lower your armor class by two but um still if you need healing it's nice you also get to revivify so you can bring your friends back from the dead as long as you act quickly because you only have a minute um from when they die damage report at level nine so i'm assuming at this point you've managed to find yourself some plate mail some plate armor um so you're gonna you're gonna have a armor class that's two higher than previously um i don't think that's too big of an ask by level nine it's expensive but um it's not uncommon right so just save your money borrow some money from your friends if you need to um so with your shield active your shield spell and your shield of faith you are at a 28 ac and you have 101 hit points so boss fight at level 9 is versus a young blue dragon and that young blue dragon against that young blue dragon your damage taken per round is five all of five damage per round you will survive for 21 rounds at that rate um versus four hobgoblin captains for our kind of average encounter for hobgoblin captains it's the same five uh damage taken per round 21 rounds to die and versus ten kobolds it's still two it's going to be two forever they only hit you if they crit um and you you will live at that rate for 51 rounds so sorry kobolds all right at level 11 paladin 10 you pick up aura of courage which makes you uh and anyone within your aura immune to being frightened that's fantastic um at level 12 paladin 11 you get improved divine smite which lets you add a d8 an extra d8 of radiant damage when you land a weapon attack never say no to extra damage at level 13 paladin 12 you get another ability score increase or feet since we're capped on constitution i would recommend going toughness the toughness feat it's going to give you an extra two hit points per level and that continues to scale throughout so that's for you right now 26 more hit points very nice you also get level 4 spells there are some nice aura of healing and aura of like curing options as well as protection from death itself check out the spells they're cool um [Music] damage report boss fight is an adult white dragon here and you will be taking nine damage per round from an adult white dragon and at that rate you will survive for 19 rounds 19 rounds to death um still so tanky against uh you know for for an average typical medium difficulty encounter five helmed horrors and they will only do six damage per round to you and you'll survive for 29 rounds at that rate and versus 10 kobolds two damage per round 86 rounds to die um at level 15 paladin level 14. you get cleansing touch as a paladin feature which lets you end one spell effect on yourself or an ally super nice again all about both surviving and helping right that's what the paladin does so very well with this build um level 16 paladin level 15 you get an oath of the crown feature called unyielding spirit um it gives you advantage on your saving throws to be paralyzed or stunned so again you're just that much harder to kill you've got advantage and resistance and buffs and bonuses on just about anything that the enemy can throw at you at this point as well as an incredibly high armor class level 17 paladin 16 you get another ability score increase or feet knock yourself out um if you're looking for more weapon damage go strength if you're looking for better spell effects and bonuses to your auras and things like that which is what i would probably recommend go charisma although give serious consideration to shield master feat basically it lets you kind of use your shield to shove enemies but more importantly essentially lets you take less damage or no damage even when you are having to make a deck save against an area effect like a dragon's breath attack for example you're kind of using your shield maybe hiding behind your shield to reduce or eliminate the damage which is fantastic you get level 5 spells so that's the that's the max level for paladins right and and rangers those kind of marshall slash spellcaster classes level five is the highest level of spell i would go definitely go circle of power um it's a concentration spell like all these rs spells are but it gives everyone advantage on saving throws versus magic and if if they would have taken if they would have taken half damage when they make their save they take zero damage so so strong and really shores up you know both ends for you as far as defensive goes you've already got a high armor class giving yourself resistances and advantages on saves and taking no damage if you make your save these kinds of abilities just make you super super strong against all damage types which is fabulous so level 17 final damage report your boss fight is against the classic red dragon the adult red dragon you have 28 a 28 armor class still with shield and shield of faith but 223 hit points you are a butterball of hp and uh so you're going to take 18 damage per round in this fight on average and it will take this adult red dragon 13 rounds to kill you at that rate for an average run-of-the-mill fight five earth elementals you're going to take 10 damage per round and it'll take five earth elementals 23 rounds 23 rounds to die for you there and against 10 little kobolds they will still do 2 damage to you and it will take them 112 rounds to kill you so take a nap get yourself something to eat yeah by the way at this level not using any spell slots any of your spell slots for smite you would be doing 17 damage per round to an adult red dragon um an adult red dragon has 256 hit points so it would take you 15 rounds to kill it um it was only going to take them 13. so advantage red adult red dragon but not by a lot now granted i'm not using legendary actions or layer actions or breath attacks but i'm also not assuming that you have any magic items right magical weapons magical armor um and i'm not using lay on hands to heal myself or any of these things so you know advantage adult red dragon but i i think you got a fighting chance to go solo um it would be fun to try it out so final thoughts um look comparing this build to the beartotem barbarian is not a true apples to apples comparison right when we're looking at who's the better tank um the tankidin is surprisingly for me was a lot tougher to kill um i didn't think he would be to be honest i undervalued high armor class the the the most most people would say at high levels your armor class becomes obsolete because monsters have such a high plus to hit that it just kind of stops mattering the reality is when you crunch the numbers on average and especially when you get a 28 ac versus i think my bare totem barbarian had like a 17 or something um it makes a big difference right and and that little minus three to every hit it adds up um so yeah very very hard to kill despite the fact that the baritone barbarian has resistance to almost all damage they just get hit so much more often now that said you know the the strengths of the baritone barbarian are resistance to everything like i've mentioned tons of hit points um and arguably you know they do a better job like i've mentioned of being a fulfilling filling the role of the tank that is get the enemies to attack you right because they're they are a still a big threat and very easy to hit so it's just they're just a juicy target that that the enemy would be more likely to prioritize right um so you know all of that said um the the baritone barbarian is going to do more damage on average they're going to kind of be better at controlling the battlefield a little bit with their sentinel and their polar master feats long reach locking enemies down you know potentially protecting the back line in that way whereas the tankidin is just a lot harder to kill but also brings a lot of great heals and buffs and ways to kind of bolster and help um their their allies in ways that the barbarian really just can't um if you are up against a lot of enemies that do tons of magic damage and only magic damage the survivability gets a little closer but but even then the tankidin really is just a lot more durable um so anyway both are a lot a lot of fun to play you know as a tank adding you may be more durable but you're probably going to have a harder time getting the dm to attack you or i mean the monsters dms our friends not food that doesn't really work anyway tank it in so much fun both classes just a ton of fun really just really depends on you know are you interested in being pretty hard to kill but uh attacking in a frothing foaming rage and also walking down the battlefield and doing some pretty good damage while you're at it or are you all about just being really hard to kill really really hard to kill um and also healing and buffing your allies and taking damage for them and um and doing it all in in righteous glory either way uh you're gonna have a lot of fun doing it so that's the episode today thank you everybody for watching really appreciate it as always please do subscribe like comment you know i i've really enjoyed on on the youtube uh version anyway of the show um lots of comments feel free to further the discussion um if you have ideas for improving it questions comments verbal abuse you know throw it out there and of course you can reach us on social media we're on facebook we're on twitter and you can always email me at dnd optimized at gmail.com especially if you have a build that you'd like me to take a look at give me as much detail as you can on what you have in mind for that build as far as class and and your goals and all and and maybe even spells that you want to base it around whatever the case may be send it to me get me as much detail as you can and i will do my best to optimize it for you thanks everybody really appreciate it have a good you

Channel: d4: D&D Deep Dive

Views: 79,413

Keywords: D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, dnd, 5e, Paladin, Tankadin, Sorcadin, Tank, Guide, Character Optimization, Oath of the Crown, Build

Id: GpuKWTIPXs8

Length: 37min 12sec (2232 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 08 2020