Paladin Multiclass Tier Ranking in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

greetings my name is Monty Martin and I'm Kelly McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes Welcome to our Channel where we cover everything DND including advice for players and guides for GMS we upload new videos on Tuesdays and Thursdays so please subscribe to our Channel like this video and ring that Bell so that you never miss an episode today we are diving into our multi-class tier rankings once again and looking at the combinations that we can make with the Paladin in DND 5e there's a lot to talk about but before we do we want to talk about today's sponsor today's episode of our show has been sponsored by the progression fantasy epic 12 miles below by Mark arrows 12 miles below is a progression fantasy epic set around a pseudo-medieval society clinging to existence on Frozen post-apocalyptic Earth the story's Heroes face impossible odds a week to strong progression epic battles scavenge technology prophecy magic and mystery the story makes for great inspiration for lovers of d d and RPG and fantasy I personally think that all DMS can gather great inspiration from books that is the number one source to inspire us for our games of Dungeons and Dragons an inspiration leads to more inspiration in the literary RPG genre which are books that are based in Worlds that feel very similar and character progression that feels like the games of d d that we play at our home tables even just reading through the first couple chapters there is so much inspiration to be had in the characters settings and Adventures they go on that you can bring into your own games and so this is why I recommend books so highly as the best way that dungeon Masters and players alike can find inspiration for their games so if you're looking for your next fantasy novel to dig into make sure to check the links below and get your hands on 12 miles below as soon as possible and with that let's start talking about the paladins so if you're interested in seeing how we are ranking the Paladin multi-classing in this video make sure to check out our video where we detail this right up over there the Paladin is an interesting class because it it requires looking at multiple different ability scores when you're building it so how's it going to compare to the other classes when we multi-class into or out of Paladin we have to have a strength and Charisma of 13 at least in addition to what other prerequisites for whatever class we're jumping into might be the Paladin is also already one of the strongest classes in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition but it is quite a front loaded class gaining some of its most powerful features such as its armor and weapon proficiencies its fighting style the ability to cast Divine spells and smite most importantly as well as then gaining extra attack and the powerful Aura of protection at sixth level so this is why a lot of multi-class builds that utilize the Paladin often either take two levels of the class just to get smites or take six levels of the class so that they can get extra attack at level 5 and the aura protection at level 6. this also does generally mean though that you really want to have that Charisma Focus because paladin spell casting relies on Charisma for its saving throw DC's and you're going to power up that aura protection by having that monstrous Charisma score that said there's a lot of different ways to approach the Paladin and so as we go through all the classes we'll discuss some of the ways that you might build the character a little bit differently and give our overall rankings of course Kelly and I are super biased and we have our own thoughts and feelings about these things I've had a lot of paladins at our tables and we like the way that they play so because of that we have asked our community what their rankings are and we'll be going through those at the end of the episode there's a lot to discuss today so let's get smiting so kicking things off with the artificer in theory the concept here seems cool yeah you can be a paladin of a god of Craftsmen or Smith's you can be that instrument of divine wrath you are the Divine sword and you crafted it as well but there's problems right from the get-go first of all the multi-glass combo means that we have to have three stats at 13. we have to have intelligence Charisma and strength all at 13. and the artificer is very much a class that also wants to have a good con same with the Paladin the artificers spell casting was a reliant on int and the subclasses that we might blend in here give us ways to use our attack our intelligence for making melee and ranged attacks instead of our strength or dexterity but that doesn't necessarily mesh well together no because we're probably taking more levels of Paladin the question becomes when do you pick up your artificial levels so in that regard I imagine oh yeah we want six levels of Paladin but if we're imagining that we're going to be an artificer Paladin attacking with intelligence at what point are we picking up our artificial levels and are we building a weak Paladin who's more intelligence based than strength based it doesn't really gel for me the the only time that I think it would gel is if you're building like a high level character for a one shot and you go all in on intelligence maybe you can make like a cool armor yeah I think that you end up with this really bad progression for most of the character's life where you have to decide okay where am I building my ability scores where am I putting everything you could just decide though to not worry about attacking with your intelligence and just stick with strength and in that case you just focus on what you're picking out from the artifice or spell casting and the artificial class features which we talked about how the artificer doesn't scale as well as many other classes it's a half caster and many of the infusions require your artificial levels to be at a certain point before they power up so I think overall the Paladin loves being in a party with an artificer but not necessarily wants to combine these two together and I do things like one of the one of the major things you're getting from the artificer which is spell casting from the Arcane list there's better options out there for multi-classing yes for especially if you want to get Arcane spells that are going to augment what your Paladin is capable of I just think that the the infusions in this respect are not offering enough I think this is C tops but really I lean more towards D I'm gonna give it a c because besides the weak spell casting component and the fact that we're not going to use a bunch of those features I do think infusions are cool I do think that there might be some play with some of the armor abilities maybe on a paladin but I think it's all pretty weak I do too and and ultimately with the armor and the battlesmith which are the two that you would most naturally combine here again they're reliant on the artificial levels for their scaling and when you're multi-classing you just don't get that so I'm going to stick with d for myself I just don't I think it's a non-starter but moving along to something a little bit more interesting talking about the instrument of divine Wrath the Paladin Barbarian the Barbarian so the first thing that I think of is barbarians are armorless paladins are armored but that doesn't need to be the case barbarians do get medium armor and really the only thing that you're losing is your other way to account for AC which we can throw that aside and have medium armor shield and a sword and go go you'll have a respectable AC but you're going to be giving up some AC points if you want to use rage and Reckless attack with all of your other Paladin features not necessarily A Bad Thing the ability score prerequisite is easy for us to make it's just natural with what we want to do and well you can't cast spells while you're raging you can still Smite yeah and that's that's the thing here is that if we are raging Reckless attacking and smiting not much is going to stand up for that no no very very little is going to going to do that and it really helps for in particular one of the the things that Reckless attack enables you to do when you multi-class with Paladin is you can do crit fishing so instead of using your smites on every single attack use the advantage to your advantage because you're going to crit more often and only Smite on those crits and then you're going to get the really really really hard-hitting Critical Hits thanks to Reckless attack rage is great defensively whether you're going sword and board Paladin or whether you're going with a two-hander because it really increases the Paladin's overall survivability as well and I think in this case you really only need to dip two levels to get everything you want from Barbarian and then you can move along to another class or continue with Paladin and yeah we have I've I already have some ideas for how we can make three class builds using Barbarian Paladin as as a base I think this is an A plus I think it's borderline s is a dip right and and I also like the Thematic idea of Vengeance leading to anger I think Vengeance and conquests are right at home with a barbarian uh The Rage of conquest or the Rage of Vengeance both feel fitting Divine anger right yeah it it can be very fitting and it could be an interesting way of either framing your Paladin as like that instrument of the anger of the Gods The Rage of the gods or like the the anger at Injustice or that your Paladin is actually walking a very Thin Line and is letting themselves succumb to their rage and succumb to those dark impulses so I think there's a cool there's two cool story directions to take that you can do with this multi-class combo that still make it make a lot of sense I'm gonna play Judge Dredd yeah that would be cool although maybe it's a little bit colder than the raw rage this more this maybe feels like a more of a Punisher Punisher is the Paladin Barbarian yeah wow never thought of them like that but it's a cool concept I like that Punisher yeah you know it's definitely like the the anti-hero who does what must be done who is is yes enforcing the law but in the most brutal way they can conceive of it yeah yeah now as we move on to a much happier version of a combination here we look at The Bard for The Bard Paladin uh so you have a Minstrel Paladin I man okay so just an aside I used to play britonians in Warhammer fantasy and I still have there is the old regimen of rutonian questi Knight Miniatures their musician was a barred Paladin so he had a loot he was on Horseback he was singing it was it's a great miniature it's a classic one and I think that the the idea of the storytelling questing night yeah is a really cool concept it's like it's not only are you out there in the world telling those stories experiencing the stories but you're writing your own epic as you as you go along you don't even need to be the musician I think that just like Knights who are well versed in telling their own heroic stories is a really cool concept they come into each Tavern and people are like oh you're a great warrior tell us about your adventures and they they gather everybody around the campfire and share their tales and let's not let's just say right away one of the strengths of The Bard Paladin combo is we're really doubling down on Charisma and so the social Dynamic of this character is really taken up to the next level I think that you you have that Paladin principle that we'll see where you go maybe you are more of a Lancelot character so I was gonna say you could you could ham this up with one of the characters I've created and you've seen at the table before um uh brand Surefire yes who he's just a fighter but for the purposes of this he could totally be a barred Paladin because brand Surefire is named that because he's always working on his brand the Paladin Bard might be the character who mishears the king when they say to slay the dragon and instead embarks on an epic romance instead of a talo dragon killing I I don't want to know the logistics the Paladin Bard could be that character that I think of who is constantly embellishing their stories and when two people meet who both heard their stories and it's like I heard that he slayed two dragons in the next person's like he said five to me and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger over time flip side though this is a character who actually could have slayed five dragons because I think the Paladin Bard is very powerful you know just putting aside deception and and all the expertise is that we can build on the skill side of it and the role-playing side of it Bard and Paladin go really well together we don't really have to jostle around our ability scores too much we can have a good strength score a good Christmas score and a good Constitution score and so we're going to be able to make our melee attacks and have good barred and paladin spell casting and really awesome saving throws on this character I think bardic inspiration you get to add that to saving throws yes putting you hand that out to your party but they're also if you're level six Paladin if they're in your aura of protection and you're giving them bardic inspiration that's a protective Force yes it is but the damage dealing front is really amazing too because if you are a level six Paladin and a level five bard your character level when you're calculating the spell slots you have is equivalent to an eight level character which means that we've got fourth level spell slots so we actually have higher level spells than what we can cast using our Bard and Paladin spells but that means that we have those higher level slots to Smite with so we actually get a damage upgrade by taking these barred levels as well we could Bardock inspiration ourselves or we could be a swords Bard and use those bardic Inspirations on defensive flourishes to crank our AC into the stratosphere so now with this I think swords Bard is the Natural Choice I do too I do think that what you get is a pretty vivid picture of a character who can pump their own AC with blade flourishes can pump their party's defensive capabilities by combining their Aura and bardic inspiration can use their flourishes as well as smites to increase their own damage potential and has access to better utility spell casting this is a well-rounded character with a lot of options this one's going to bring you into main character syndrome if this is not s tier it's not s tier because the other ones are better than it I'm going to be giving out a few s tiers this episode for me this is one of them I think it's s okay I think that you could argue me down to an A but when you lay it out on the table this because I think this secret sauce with The Bard here is that it's bringing expertise into the mix as well as we gain more levels with with the character so I think that we're ending up with this really interesting mix of more damage better support more utility out of the spell casting I think that almost any way you measure it Bard 5 Paladin 6 is stronger than an 11th level Paladin what I think is interesting is I didn't I didn't think this would combine this well but we've asked each other the question many times what do you think the strongest two character party in DND five years Paladin bar is pretty high up there combining them on a single character is pretty strong I agree moving along to another class that has strong thematic links with the Paladin is the cleric and in many respects the Paladin is often considered well it's just a fighter cleric with a Charisma spin so one might think that multiclassing into cleric would be really good it would be a doubling down on your Divine spell casting it would give you your domain features from the cleric multi-classing and dipping into cleric is almost universally strong just for taking one or two levels to get whatever those features are but could we not do something similar with the cleric as we did with the Bard take five levels of cleric how does that stack up we're going to get Spirit Guardians out of this so here's here's what I think when we first start when we first started talking about the cleric and the Paladin you see a lot of ways to connect them yeah but you have to take into account that the cleric is a wisdom based spellcaster so you're already dividing that so it's not going to be as powerful as The Bard because the bar just pairs you it has the ability score Synergy here whereas now you're split in your focus and I don't want to I don't want to give any spoilers for later in the episode but here's a big thing we have other ways to get Spirit Guardians yeah and they work way better I think that this is one of those cases where I was tempted to give the cleric an a but the presence of another option which gives us almost everything we want out of the cleric multi-class but with better ability score Synergy means that this one really loses its ranks and I think it's a B I think that the dip of one or two levels of cleric you know yeah maybe Twilight into Twilight cleric or piece or whatever whatever it is is fine but I think that because you're still splitting between wisdom and Charisma it really makes it hard to figure out how your ability scores are going to line up I I think a b is a good place to put this because I do think there are options here and I think really what you're looking for is which cleric has the coolest Channel Divinity for your Paladin build yeah and beyond that though like yeah you're going to get access to some cool spells but again the choice is always going to be with the cleric do you want the passive buff spells you already have blasts on the paladin spell list so there's already a lot of overlap between the spell lists especially when it comes to those passive spells that don't rely on your ability scores but then when it comes to the damage dealing spells or the ones where your enemies are gonna have to be making saving throws things like or attack rolls things like spiritual weapon which you get as a conquest Paladin and spirit Guardians which you the savings throw DC for Spirit Guardians matters and so if you're going to be going into that with a 13 wisdom enemies are just gonna make their saving throws very easily and if you're going to pump your wisdom up higher now that's coming at the expense of your charisma which is going to lower the strength of your aura of protection which maybe you're fine with that but Aura protection is one of the most powerful features in the game and it's a really hard to justify knocking that back knowing what other options are on the table I think I'm actually going to give cleric a c okay I'm gonna for the dip for me for but I hear you moving on to the Druid uh we run into a similar problem but with less connectivity yeah we've talked about for the Druid that it could be cool dipping two levels into Paladin to get smites but I think the other way around the more Paladin levels we take the more Druid levels we take this starts to fall apart on that end like I think that again going with our example of a paladin 6 Druid 5 were getting even less than the cleric I mean there might be an option with spores Druid but that's the only one I could see and even then I feel like it's one of the weaker possibilities for a paladin multi-class I agree I you're not getting enough there to like I would rather stay a power well one of the interesting things too about that is that the spores druid lets you use an action to get that extra damage on your attacks but if you just went all the way to Paladin 11 you get that extra radiant damage on all your attacks anyways so you're taking those Druid levels that gets you that that extra necrotic damage a bit sooner but in a way that you can lose yeah so I even the spores Road argument I think is pretty weak here I think that this is actually a case where I do think that even a lot of paladins you will dip out at level six into something else I think that taking those as dread levels is probably just weaker I I think this is a du ranking a d for druid yeah it's pretty close it's pretty close to a d for me I can't really see a build that sounds appealing to me even even remotely yeah and again that's not to say that the opposite might not work yeah but if you're going if you're like I am a paladin player I've taken six levels what am I going to multi-class into after my six levels Drew it's one of the lowest choices here you know what I do want to take two levels of little as a as a paladin fighter because I love getting Second Wind action surge in another fighting style and maybe three levels for Battle Master Maneuvers I was gonna say I two levels yes three levels probably uh Battle Master Maneuvers don't interfere with smites so now we can Battle Master maneuver and smite on the same attack we can action Surge and I just gotta throw it out there you want to really be the Punisher you're going to play a paladin level six with two levels of Barbarian and two levels of fighter and now you can action surge rage Reckless attack Smite that's gross now you know what though the downside of it is but you've got six spell slots and maybe yes and I'm saving them all for the Demon Lord yeah so like you've got one turn where you can rage Reckless attack action surge Smite Smite on four attacks and then you can follow that up next turn I honestly don't know what survives that I mean you're a one-hit wonder it's like yeah it's like it's like all right coming out here for 12 seconds guys then I'm going home it's like the adventure is going you're sitting in the back of the cart and they're like you're gonna help us with these goblins I don't fight goblins and then finally like towards the end of the campaign the demo Gorgon Rises up and you're like all right you shine up your sword and walk out you're like now it's my time and then you just murder it and go back to the wagon yeah yeah okay I think that this is a very strong dip is it an S tier dip fighter it might be I think fighter overall is probably a I I think that the more levels of fighter you take with the Paladin I think that it's stronger to take three levels of Barbarian three levels of fighter and six levels of Paladin than it is to take six levels of Barbarian or six levels of fighter combine that with the six levels of Paladin although we are just talking about multi-classing in a general sense and I think dipping is part of multi-class thing and I think it's I think it might be an S tier dip but yeah there are other options out there that are stronger I I think the Bard is a better character I think the Bard Paladin is a better character overall than the Barbarian Paladin or the fighter Paladin I see that and and honestly I I'm gonna give fighter a strong a I give it an A plus and I don't have a problem like I I honestly think that the challenge here with the palette is is that there's so many great combos with the Paladin that we actually have to seriously ask ourselves if we're putting five things in the S tier are they all asked here or as the truth is that two of them are like that some of them should come a tear down that's fair right and and that's that for for me I think that as soon as there starts to be more than five things in s tier that's where I think that we have to start analyzing and ask ourselves do all of them really are all of them really Equitable I I think it's an a I'm I'll stick with that sure I agree with you there are other s tiers that are more potent the Monk so we just covered the monk recently as well and the fundamental problem here is that it is you need strength 13 dexterity 13 wisdom 13 and Charisma 13 to do this I think this falls apart really quickly again if you are rolling for stats and you somehow roll all the highest numbers maybe there's a build here but I don't like to rely on the fact that rolling for stats is a thing and also if you're rolling for stats and getting all high numbers you're like one out of every thousand or two thousands that that argument like any if you take any class in the game or any possible combo in the game and give them high rolled stats they're gonna rock the world right so this could be good if you didn't have to worry about stats but we do and ultimately that's the thing that makes it fall apart it would be super cool to stun someone then Smite them or Smite and stun that would be cool if those work together it also would be kind of cool to be like a martial art boxer Paladin uh but I just don't think it works there's just too many things that are incompatible with these two characters I think this one's an easy detier just for failure to launch at the fact that the the ability scores don't work and another one that's surprisingly has the same problem to follow up the monk is the Ranger because the ranger actually has the exact same ability score prerequisites the monk so we run into the exact same problem with the ranger here too this is the problem with these specific classes is that each of these classes requires two ability scores to multi-class yeah and if you have two classes that require two different ability scores four things that have to be 13 which means that you have to spend just 20 out of your 27 ability points to just buy those and that still is leaving your con and your int at eight you can leave your end at eight fine now we want to get our condo at least 12 so we spend Four Points there so now we have three points left that we can use to bump one of the 13s to a 14 and I guess round our our con up to 13 so we can eventually take resilient Constitution so you end up in in both of these cases the Monk and the Ranger if there's just no point in even looking further into it because you're making that character yeah exactly the highest stat you can have is 14 so you get one thing that's 14 and everything else is plus one and again because with both the the Ranger and the monk the Ranger and the monk really do want to have wisdom for their spell casting or their other features both of them are naturally dexterity based classes we could do a strength based build with either of them but what that means is now our Paladin features are trash because our Charisma is only 13 and our monk or Ranger features are trash because our ability score modifier there is only 13. so the stunning strikes are never going to land because the savings row DC is so low the ranger spells it matters less but our our order of protection is plus one which is good but it's not like the super plus five plus six auras that other paladins can wind up with and our spell casting is kind of really gutted with that so I just I just think that it's also I think it's D I think it is a d as well it's weird the Paladin the ranger are like oil and water in that respect I I do feel like they they have a similar Vibe they're both half casters but one is like if you took fighter and Druid you get a ranger if you take fighter and cleric you get the Paladin so they feel like like cousins almost yeah they they do but it doesn't it doesn't pan out as we move on to the Rogue this is another one that actually at first glance I didn't like because and this is me Thinking Inside the Box we're going to talk outside the box in a second but inside the Box we have our big meaty Shield boys yeah and then we have our Slinky stealthy boys doesn't mix yeah but there is one Rogue subclass that suddenly brought the concept to life for me well you can play a dexterity based palette yeah so we still have to have our 13 strength and 13 dexterity to get in the door here so the ability score thing does kind of hurt there but that's not insurmountable we can then invest in our dexterity as our primary stat wear light armor use a shield and a Rapier so we can use the Finesse weapons with our dexterity so we can Smite and sneak attack outside of their Smite spells paladins might really like having cunning action to Dash and disengage and if we're dashing were charismatic why not be a Ponzi elf swashbuckling Paladin yeah swashbuckler asks you to invest a bit in your charisma yeah so if you're playing a swashbuckler you're already looking at dexterity Constitution and Charisma if you're a paladin you can play it with dexterity Constitution and Charisma strength needs to be 13. yeah that's fine uh the swashbuckler gains a lot from a decent charisma and sneak attack added on top of smites is pretty awesome yeah it's not bad and you can be on the front line you can use use your Rapier fight with dexterity have a great initiative I think it's a pretty strong character conceptually speaking and then you've got all that kind of extra skill I only honestly I think that you only need to take like three levels of Rogue you get the 2d6 sneak attack which is actually a pretty decent boost it's like getting a free Smite every round you can pull it off in terms of the extra damage not quite as much but it's still enough to carry you through those rounds that you're not smiting or once again you can stack it on top you could stack a sneak attack a Smite and a Smite spell now here's my question all right or you could play an assassin assassin sure swashbuckler sure but is this a situation is this Assassin's Creed you literally have a Creed that you live by yeah yeah I feel like this is the second or third time that we've brought up Assassin's Creed but uh yeah that feels like a Vibe but okay here's my question on this we've talked about some possible eight-tier combos overall is it a b because B is something where we can build a tier combos with the right subclass combination I think that it doesn't mesh again it doesn't mesh perfectly with the game plan that you'd normally want you still have you still do pay an ability score tax yeah to get this to happen because you're investing Five Points into your strength which you're gonna put at 13 and you're gonna set it and forget it right it does ask you to invest in a bit of a non-standard build and it also Cuts you off from using heavy weapons and let's face it great weapon Master Plus Paladin is a lot of damage as well and that might be counterbalanced there by by all the other other things so it's forcing you into this kind of sword and board swashbuckler build which will not ineffective I think that the Bard might do it better I agree and and that's why I think this is a b build because also when we're putting it when we're putting those points into strength if we're not using heavy weapons we're not wearing heavy armor and we're are not relying on Athletics it's just a 13 that's sitting there doing nothing strength is actually unfortunately a pretty useless ability yeah when you're not using it as your attack stat to attack with two-handed weapons it really is right so I just think that it yeah it it we lose points there although everything else meshes together well I I do think that it's not on the same level as because like let's face it the Barbarian is getting Reckless attack is gonna be taking great weapon Master is going to be getting that plus 10 like it's going to be doing a lot more damage Rogue is a kind B and I say that because it's a b that there are several options here oh yeah build powerful characters but overall you're gonna have to decide what you want to do yeah yeah as we move on to the sorcerer now we're cooking with gas all we need is charisma to get in here so once again just like The Bard we can take five levels of sorcerer and we're gonna end up with an 11th level character that is fourth level spell slots the ability score progression lines up perfectly we can still cast in our heavy armor because we're proficient with that from the very beginning so we've got a character that is smiting and casting spells and now we can take a sorcerer subclass to season this thing to taste with the spell list that we want we get meta magic amazing we we have our smites Magic you take green flame blade or booming blade Quicken that and smite on top of that plus extra attack beautiful yeah here's here's where I think this thing even dials up a further Notch and that is with the existence of the Divine Soul sorcer yeah yeah the Divine Soul sorcerer means that this is why cleric is actually a bad choice because this Choice exists this Choice exists it's like oh maybe I'll multi-class in a cleric to get Spirit Guardians no the the cleric sorcerer comparison is basically someone asking you hey I'm buying dinner do you want to go to a Michelin star restaurant or would you like me to take you to Wendy's it's like I want a burger well we have the nicest burger place in the city yeah or Wendy's you can get a burger at both not to knock on like I mean I mean I do love like okay I'm a sucker for like a bad Burger sometimes sometimes you crave a bad Burger sometimes you do but like you know I I when the option is there why like why yeah some days I'm like yeah I want to go to Wendy's but like if you presented two plates to me and one had a gourmet burger and one had Wendy's I'm probably going for the gourmet burger anyway the point is divine Soul sorcerer is a gourmet burger that gives you everything that you want in a burger yeah which is the Gilded leaf on top of it the burger is divine spell casting yeah and for the Paladin the sorcerers The Gourmet well let's put it this way Spirit Guardians we got spiritual weapon we can throw those down charge right in and you know what the icing on the cake on it is too we got shield and counter spell in the Paladin Arsenal the spell magic absorb elements yeah grab fly if you want to you can get some more teleports in there um and once again these are all things these are all spells that are really good to upcast and we are getting higher level spell slots than we would if we were just a single class Paladin so we've got lots of things to do with them and the cantrips really give us some cool options too because we can build weave the cant ribs in with quick and spell or we can just weave the spells in with Quicken spell and that's that's the whole thing is that you can throw down Spirit Guardians by quickening in it and still get your attacks in yeah yeah I think this is s tier it it unequivocally is it it really is sorcerer five Parliament six is by any metric stronger than a level 11 palette I also think that the beautiful thing here is it almost like yeah we're talking about the Divine soul but it almost doesn't matter which combo you make they all work yeah I think that if there's I think this is stronger than the Bard I would put it ahead of The Bard in in the ranking although I think the Bard is still s tier I think that in terms of the utility and the combat power we get a lot out of the source or multi-class I think the Bard pulls ahead with skills and social interaction but only on the back of being able to get expertise yeah yeah I think that as we move on to the Warlock yeah this one's interesting because when I say warlock Paladin so you hear hex blade yeah you hear hexblade and I want to be very specific in this hexblade Paladin is arguably the most s-tier combination out of anything we're going to talk about in this episode it beats the sorcerer it beats The Bard You're Now using your charisma for all of your attacks you know it's super gross too what the Warlock sorcerer Paladin it's pretty gross yeah yeah but that that's that's that's a specific build that I think is game breakingly good the Warlock the hexblade Warlock Paladin game breakingly good can't argue with it s tier absolutely but in ranking the Warlock we should consider all of the subclasses one does not make the whole classic right I know I mean we've said this for other classes before so you do get Eldritch blast you do get Elder's blast and you know the other thing that warlock brings to you is spell slots that regenerate on a short rest that you can use for smites and invocations are not something to be ignored there's a lot of customizability that you get with invocations I think that even if you weren't grabbing the pure hex Blade Power I think the Warlock is a very compelling choice just for the regenerating spells lost because if we if we just compare again Paladin 6 warlock 5 versus Paladin 11. in this character build we now have two short rest regenerating third level spell slots that's really strong regardless of what subclass we're taking you also get your pact pack to the blade might be handier but even if you're not doing back to the blade pack to the chain gives you a pretty oh that feels kind of cool yeah that that could be neat um and you do get the utility from the Warlock spells which again while they're more limited the the sorcerer really takes the spell casting to the next level whereas I feel like with the Warlock we're still doubling down on all of our melee right so I I think that overall if you're just looking for an amazing damage dealer that's and at the end of the day it lets us ignore our strength like we still have to put a 13 in strength but we get to crank our Charisma as high as we can possibly take it and and this is the counterbalancing fact to it is that with the Paladin Sorcerer And The Paladin Bard we still have to have that ability score investment in strength but over here we just put that 13 there and we crank the the Charisma up as high as it goes and we have a good con score and we wear medium or heavy armor and we just go to town I I think warlock overall I think that's an a with the asterisks that if you're choosing hexblade which is the obvious appropriate Choice here yeah I would almost in our in our tier ranking and maybe we should have done this we should have been like Warlock hex blade as separate so at the bottom of our screen right now warlock gets an a hex blade gets an S Plus yeah yeah it it really is super strong and so having played it like oh it's gross and as we come to the wizard sorry to gloss over the wizard but I'm just gonna say a pretty blanket statement here anything that we wanted from The Wizard were getting from either being a sorcerer or a warlock yeah yeah I I don't there is nothing for you here in this combination that you can't get from somewhere else better and because it is so grossly overshadowed by every other option it's a d tier and and this is where like going I feel like the artificer should be D as well because there's nothing that you can get from the artificer that you aren't getting better infusions invocations yeah at the wrapping up this Paladin video I think what's obvious is there's there's like a there's a bar and I think the Paladin above most of the other classes either a multi-classing option is not great at all or really really good I almost feel like this doesn't have a middle ground I do think though have we had any class that has had this many like is this s tier questions to it yeah it real like it's really strong and I I have to say in my years of playing fifth edition I've seen all of these in play I have seen the Paladin sorcerer I have seen the Paladin warlock I have seen the Paladin Bard I have seen the Paladin Barbarian I have seen the Paladin fighter those ones I see less often but I've seen and and that's that's the engine between the Charisma the Charisma based characters I think that's the thing is Paladin it's a vehicle for other Charisma classes to latch onto and I think Charisma is the key and I think that's kind of a theme of d d that like the Charisma classes just gel together I I know it's it's weird that it's such a powerful stat but it is it's the charisma-based spell casters that are now able to have a powerful melee force in converting their spell slots into smites well the beautiful thing about Charisma in the game of d d is that Charisma handles both the social pillar of the game and for a lot of these classes the combat pillar of the game as well and when you're getting into spells that are Charisma based you're also dabbing into the exploration part as well and the utility and all of that suddenly comes online and the Paladin has such great support it's such a great Frontline character and it's such a great damage healer that when you add the utility of The Bard when you add the social social interaction capabilities of The Bard or you add the extra spells that the sorcerer brings or you just make it all easier and all relying on Charisma by being a hex blade it just takes it up to the next level right and and I just think that like these are unequivocally the most powerful character builds that you'll see in DND 5e barring something insane that Colby has made now as we look at the community's votes on this it actually feels like we're on the same page here the community similar to us is quite divided on either things being great or things being not good at all this this was definitely the big slam dunk and I think that this is once again one of those cases where we asked the community to pick their top three and so naturally your top three are going to be sorcerer Warlock and bard but I'm surprised that single class Paladin came out ahead of The Bard and I'm also surprised that the fighter came out ahead of The Bard in the community ranking I am too I do think that fighter is a great dip but I I really like The Bard 84.4 said Paladin warlock now I don't disagree with the community here but I do think the community because we don't have a separate option that says hexblade when they are selecting warlock as the Top Choice they're saying hexblade yeah it is quite telling that the artificer the Druid the Monk and The Wizard are just slivers yeah the the Wizard actually got a full percentage point one percentage point one one point somebody's trolling us who gave it to the who picked the wizard as one of their top three is my question yeah but regardless I think that this this is appropriate it's a little different than some of the opinions we had but for the most part it's easy to say which are good and which are bad um I I don't disagree that the cleric could be more highly regarded than than the Rogue did we ultimately give them both bees I believe so yeah I mean I think I said cleric was a c but I'm I'm mostly persuaded by that because of the existence of the Divine Soul yeah and that that is certainly a factor here but but overall like the Paladin is just it's great it's great it's easily it's a crowd pleaser it's a favorite one of the things that's surprising with this is that in Prior editions of Dungeons and Dragons the Paladin had the most stringent multi-classing requirements where you couldn't multi-class the Paladin or you had to do a bunch of things to become a paladin in the first place and the paladins code of conduct and its inflexibility meant that there was a very narrow conceptual space of where you were allowed to take the Paladin but I really like how the fifth edition Paladin lets us conceptualize so many different takes on what it means to be a righteous Warrior and that that can take different forms that and that Justice can arrive in unexpected ways so if you've played some multi-class combinations with the Paladin or have any thoughts on the opinions in this video let us know about them in the comments below the videos that we make on our channel are made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of our patreon supporters if you enjoy the work that we do here on YouTube please consider becoming a patron of the channel by following the links in the description below and if you want to see a bunch of mean paladins check out our live play in the worlds of drachenheim which airs Tuesday evenings on Twitch you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we got plenty more tier ranking videos for fifth edition right up over here please subscribe to our Channel like this video and ring that Bell so that you never miss an episode thanks so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 76,326

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: NgMFjuYGKfs

Length: 48min 39sec (2919 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 27 2023