Paladin Subclasses Ranked: D&D

hey up demancers chris here i've been ranking all the subclasses in d d and this is where we rank so far if you want to see this image a little bit bigger there's a link for it in the video description last week we discussed the monk and we filled out the lower tiers since monk for some reason seems to combine the weakest chassis with the most poorly designed subglasses today we're going to be discussing paladins so we are really going to change gears if you like the content on this channel consider supporting me through patreon patrons of this channel can see these videos early and non-monetized and my top level patrons can join me for a session of d d each month today i want to recognize james thomas jazzan john matera john cripps joseph robidow joseph van horn joshua samuel lappl justin bennington caden cripps and kesuki isobe thank you all so much for your support let's get started so first we'll go over the ranking system if you've seen this part feel free to jump to the next time stamp on the video so here is how it will work i will not be discussing any subclass that is not official content so subclasses that are third party or play test material are not included this is a power ranking so i'm not taking into account how well they are designed in this ranking or my personal preference this will take into account how powerful they are as a single class build as well as how powerful they are when multi-classed i will be assuming feats are allowed and used and that all the optional class features in tash's cauldron of everything are allowed as well just some things to note as well features are weighted by how soon they are received a feature you get at level 3 is much more valuable than a feature you get at level 10 because these features see way more gameplay when you actually play the subclass so this is not a comparison of which of these subclasses are more powerful at 20th level i don't think that's very relevant to players this is a comparison as to which you will find most powerful assuming you are starting at low level and advancing levels through gameplay a feature you have for a hundred percent of that time is five times more valuable than a feature you're gonna have for twenty percent and although i will consider all three pillars of gameplay i will be weighing the combat tier most heavily the combat here tends to be the tier that is most reliant on mechanics and mechanics is what i'm looking at here i also assume you will not be playing as a solo character so features that work well with teammates or even better improve your teammates will be considered in the ranking now before we begin i'm going to address a couple common misconceptions before they come up a bad feature does not make a subclass less powerful i can add 10 terrible and practically useless features to the most powerful subclasses and they're still the most powerful i'm only looking at features that make a subclass better secondly just because a feature can be replicated with a feed does not mean the feature isn't good feats are not free and they can be very powerful they can even be more powerful than a subclass feature so a feature that can be replicated by a good feat can still be a great feature improving the power level of the subclass and the person playing that subclass has one extra feat they can use on any of the many potent feats in the game i guarantee you're not going to have enough feats and having one more is a big benefit these rankings of course are subjective and i don't expect anyone to agree with them in their entirety and i do have some personal biases which will probably become apparent i like spells i think they can be very powerful and that's going to be clear enough as we move forward also i should say i like to make my saving throws and i don't care who knows it give me a way to do that more reliably and i'm likely to consider a subclass more powerful because of it finally i don't assume you will be limited to one encounter per day i don't assume you will have short rest whenever you want so features that can be used more often i consider to be more powerful than single-use ones now this is a very common rating system in d d for the ranking of classes and subclasses and it includes anywhere from the s tier being the highest and the d tier being the lowest and i will not be using it instead i'll be using this expanded tier chart that includes an e and f tier here are the criteria i will be ranking the subclasses with if i give a subclass an st ranking i don't just think it's powerful i think it's probably too powerful i think there are some potentially game breaking mechanics involved and these are going to come into play without requiring high level play at all my issue with these subclasses is you have a real possibility of invalidating other player character features this can lead to overshadowing other players and so if you're a power gamer these options are for you if you aren't i think i would think carefully before selecting an stier subclass if i give a subclass an a to your ranking i think it's a very powerful option characters using an a tier subclass are easy to optimize and have features that should be show stoppers in gameplay stomping down challenges with abandon we may not break the game but we're definitely going to make it a fair bit easier if i give a subclass a bto ranking i think it's a good subclass optimizing a b tier subclass should result in a very effective character that has a strong contribution to a party of characters even with limited optimization a b tier subclass is probably still going to be reasonably effective if i give a subclass a c to your ranking i think it's a decent option optimizing a c tier subclass may require a bit more thought about how to make the best use of the features but they can still be quite effective if handled with some thought and consideration if i give a subclass a d tier ranking i think it's serviceable optimizing a dtier rank subclass will lead to a decent character that can usually still pull their weight but i wouldn't expect to stand out if i give a subclass an e to a ranking i think it's a weaker option an e tier subclass needs some extra effort to make a character that contributes effectively at all or perhaps the contributions they make end up being extremely narrow or rely heavily on other characters helping them out it's still possible to make a character that can be somewhat effective with an e-tier subclass but if you just play it as it's presented you can probably expect a disappointing experience if i give a subclass an f-tier ranking i think it's basically unredeemable an ftr ranked subclass differentiates from an e-tier sub-class because it is bound to disappoint and there just aren't any good ways to optimize it to make it worthwhile and the ftr subclasses along with the s-tier subclasses i think can be a problem when considering a team of players because they create pretty overwhelming imbalance subclasses aren't balanced against each other that's normally okay but when you have these extreme cases on either end it can weaken the game when subclasses receive the same rank i will be placing subclasses i think are more potent more to the left of the chart with the weaker further to the right so at the end of this series i will have a comprehensive list from top to bottom of every class and subclass combination in the game all 114 of them we'll start with the things that every pilot and subclass is going to share we have strong hit points at d10 all the armor proficiencies shield proficiency all weapon proficiencies wisdom and charisma save proficiency and two skill proficiencies at level one we get two features one is pretty much what we call a ribbon feature or a feature that is more about flavor than mechanics and the second is pretty potent so our ribbon is divine sense this allows you to use an action to sense any celestial fiend or undead within 60 feet of you that's not behind total cover you can do this a number of times equal to one plus your charisma modifier per long rest so the not behind total cover restriction really ensures this is almost never useful the creature that is hidden is probably behind cover you can't sense creatures in the next room because of cover and if something isn't behind total cover then unless it's both invisible because otherwise we would see it anyways if it's within 60 feet and hidden because invisibility alone doesn't prevent you knowing a creature's location then this isn't finding any of these creatures that you didn't already know were there in the case where you do have an invisible creature this still doesn't allow you to see it so it is still getting the benefit of invisibility where this can sometimes be useful is if you're interacting with the creature and you suspect it might be undead or fiend then you can confirm that suspicion and really that's pretty much it lay on hands is the other feature gained at level one and this allows you to use your action to restore a number of hitpoints to yourself or an ally you touch up to five times your paladin level you have a total pool of five times your paladin level so a first level paladin could heal five hit points once or one hit point five times or any combination totaling five alternatively the paladin can expand five hit points of healing to cure disease or neutralize a poison normally neutralizing a poison would require a second level spell which would require a third level character paladins are the class that can do this right from level one thing that makes this feature really good though is the scaling twice as good at level two and ten times as good at level ten so it never becomes weaker five hit points of healing is decent at level 1 and 50 hit points of healing is decent at level 10. lay on hands ensures your paladin will be a decent healer even without expending any spells at level 2 the paladin gets a fighting style they can choose from defense dueling great weapon fighting or protection with tasha's blind fighting and interception both became available and they're both decent fighting styles and blessed warrior became available that is unique to paladins which gives you two cantrips from the cleric spell list so with fighting styles we should note that probably the most potent fighting style which is archery is not available to paladins but they do get some decent options here defense is decent dueling is pretty good blind fighting and interception are both good and blessed warrior honestly i'm not a huge fan of the claire cantrip list you do get guidance but someone in your party can probably cast it already and there's not a whole bunch more i mean i guess a range can trip like told the dead might be okay on a character that's likely going to be in melee so i mean it's okay but it wouldn't be my first selection that's for sure but we also get spell casting at level 2. like with the artificer or the ranger the paladins simply can't compete in spell casting with casting centered casters as they advance at half the rate and honestly that doesn't make them half as good at spell casting as we advance in levels half casting refers to the advancement rate but because the advancement rate scales as we get to higher levels the pure casters are more than twice as good at casting as the half casters but spells can make a big difference and in the case of paladins although i wouldn't call their spell list one of the better ones they do get a lot of spells that complement what they can already do they also get a lot of spells that cast with a bonus action meaning they can still use their action for attacking with weapons on that turn and so unlike with a full caster where bonus action spells can often conflict with what they would do in their action that's less of a concern with a paladin we do need to look at spells differently when we are a paladin versus playing a wizard so a second level paladin casts wrathful smite and they still get to attack with their action but when they hit with an attack they do more damage and have a potent fear effect added on they fit seamlessly with what the paladin is already doing paladins prepare spells and they can prepare a number equal to their charisma modifier plus half their paladin level at low levels this is actually not bad on its own but a paladin is also going to get an additional two spells automatically prepared for every level they can cast starting at third level when they choose their oath like with clerics and some druid subclasses these spells are set they're not necessarily piled in spells and how good these spells are really can play into how good a paladin subclass is probably less dramatically though than with a full caster for again the same reason because spellcasting is a lower part of what a paladin does one thing we should also consider with paladin specifically is that again some kinds of spells work better with what a paladin already does than others do i'll get into specifics as we discuss the subclasses paladins are also unique with their spell casting in that they can also convert their spell slots into smite attacks when a paladin hits with a melee weapon attack which again really pushes a paladin towards melee they can expend a spell slot to do 2d8 extra radiant damage which is super reliable plus an additional d8 per level of spell slot up to a maximum of 5 d8 if the opponent is a fiend or undead you increase the damage by an additional d8 so the way i remember this is it's a number of d8s of one plus the spell slot level and then one more for fiends or undead here's my experience with smite i find a lot of players spend all their spell slots on smites they burn through them quickly and they honestly may as well have not have been a spellcaster at all but spells are good and i often find a paladin spell can be more effective than a smite but you do need to pick your spells carefully because they definitely aren't all better than smites and you need to expend them carefully too because some spells that might be better than smites need to be used at the right time for that to be the case one time i do think it's definitely worth smiting is on a critical hit against a potent enemy since you decide whether to smite after the attack role is made you can wait for that crit on that important enemy and then you do double the damage dice even the extra die you might get for a fiend or undead is also doubled even a first level slot is doing 48 damage or 18 on average or 27 against a fiend or undead that's a lot of damage for a first level slot but that doesn't mean i always use a smite on a crit depends on the enemy depends on how many hit points i think they have left if i'm going to drop them anyway then spending a smite is just a waste also if it's not an important combat and i didn't think i was going to have to spend a spell slot do i want to expand a spell slot to make it over a little faster there is a balance there you need to consider most important thing to remember though is there's a trade-off you don't get to be a half caster and do smite attacks every smite attack you do makes you less of a caster usually there's a good balance one thing about paladin spellcasting is that it's based off your charisma modifier which without some multi-classing is not going to be the modifier you're using for your weapon attacks now depending on what spells you select your charisma may not matter angiocharisma never matters for smites but depending what paladin subclass you select and how many levels in paladin you're going to achieve you're probably going to want that high charisma anyways but you know what if you're just grabbing two levels of paladin in a build i think you can definitely get away with a 13 which is the minimum you needed for multi-classing anyway at third level just like at second level paladin gets a fair amount of stuff first we're going to pick our subclass and we'll get two features from that right away secondly we gain immunity the disease which honestly it's pretty small disease doesn't come up in play in most campaigns at all and third we get an ability to expand a channel divinity to restore a spell slot now our subclass is going to give us a couple other ways to use that channel divinity so basically we're getting three different options for channel divinity two through our subclass or recover a spell slot and it's one first level spell slot at level three and this scales with our level eventually we could recover a third level spell slot now our channel divinity is recovered after a short rest but the recovering spell slots has an additional limit we can only do this once per long rest until we get to seventh level and eventually we can do this three times a day at high level whichever subclass we choose we get two features at level three and they are both always ways to expand our channel divinity so that channel divinity is really stretched thin at third level because we have the option of recovering a spell slot or we have our two subclass features so one use per short rest of all these things combined and we need to take that into account these aren't like different features they're almost like different options for the same feature then we get another feature at level 7 15 and 20. for the purposes of ranking these subclasses as i mentioned in the ranking portion of the video i'm going to be considering the level 3 features very relevant and the level 7 features fairly relevant but in those long eight levels that follow i would assume most campaigns are going to be over before the 15th level feature is ever received now i should mention the oath tenets so paladin is kind of unique in that your subclass selection also informs you on role-playing restrictions regarding on how you play your own character the idea is you must take this oath to gain your powers and if you break the oath the powers of that subclass could be forfeit generally in regards to subclass ranks i'm not really going to take these into account presumably if you take the subclass it's probably in line with how you're going to play that character anyways and these aren't really mechanical restrictions like none of them forbid you from using any of your features also i've never and i mean never seen a paladin player forced to play a subclassless paladin because they broke their oath usually oath breaking is just a narrative tool to describe how the paladin became the oath breaker subclass which when taken is usually the subclass the player wanted anyways paladin gets the standard ability score increases at 4 8 16 and 19 and then they get extra attack at level 5. this is fairly standard for weapon used in classes but you know what it is still a solid feature there's a reason why a lot of builds take five levels of a marshall subclass before multi-classing out and that's to get extra attack but with paladins we usually see a 6 level and that's because of aura of protection this feature at level 6 despite all the great stuff a paladin gets already is really perhaps the most defining feature of the class the paladin and all their allies within 10 feet of them gain a bonus on every saving throw they make equal to the paladin's charisma modifier so if you are reaching six levels in paladin you absolutely want the best charisma score possible because this is huge saving throw boosts are great and i discuss in the ranking portion of the video how important i consider them but most of them require reaction or affect a single creature or both and are often limited in use sometimes all three of those limitations and those features you know what they're still really good but this requires no reaction can affect several creatures and applies to every saving throw the difference between a party with a paladin at level six and without is actually significant for this feature alone now there is a matter that it's not always convenient for the entire party to be within 10 feet of the paladin nor is it always tactically the best move but generally you can still expect multiple party members to benefit from this at any time and when you know a savings throw is coming you can definitely arrange for the whole party or at least most of the party to be within the aura and regardless of its limitations this is just simply the best ability for boosting saves in the game period and it's gained at a level where it will be relevant for the lion's share of most campaigns this is a huge boost to paladins and honestly maybe the biggest draw of the entire class at level 10 creatures in the or are immune to being frightened as well and we start to get into enemies that can have frightening presence as part of their multi-attack routine so this too is pretty relevant and potent the last class feature i'll mention is improve divine smite probably gained near the end of your campaign if you are straight classed this comes in at level 11 and it adds a d8 radiant damage to every melee weapon attack you make and you don't have to expend a spell slot this of course can be combined with your regular smite attacks so base paladins get a lot aura protection is one of those features that stands out among all classes as a game changer add on some spell casting smiting full armor full weapons good hit points extra attack and a fighting style and the paladin ends up being one of the strongest chassis in the game you just can't go wrong with a subclass when the base class is this good i should also talk about multi-classing because paladins do multi-class well although straight paladin is never a bad choice there's a lot more going on between levels one and six or seven depending on your subclass than there is later on so there is a lot of reason to consider multi-classing at that point and paladin's multi-class quite well the strength here is charisma because there are so many charisma-based classes warlocks have some features that mix really well with paladin sorcerers give spells with the great spell list and a lot more slots even if you just smite with them and metamagic can work well with paladins as well even if it's just a quickened attack hand trip and bars provide those same slots and inspiration works well with paladins too so a paladin has a lot of good options for multi-classing though i would say in most cases i would be looking for at least six levels of paladin to get that aura so let's get into the subclasses and we'll start with the oath of conquest this was featured in xanathar's guide to everything so first let's look at the old spells i think probably the biggest standout here is armor of agathis this is a fantastic spell for a paladin and we get it right away and it's not available to other paladins armavagothis gives temporary hit points which as a melee character is useful it also punishes the enemies who attack us again super useful for melee paladin and it doesn't use concentration and it has a decent duration and the spell scales really well too this is the one way i would say that this spell isn't quite ideal for paladins because as half casters higher level slots are not something we specialize in still scaling it to second or third level can be well worth the slot command also good spell though as an action cast that you casting in combat we are sacrificing one of the main advantages of playing a paladin which are weapon attacks so when you pretend to be a full spellcaster with a half cast in class you really aren't comparing to the full spellcasters still being able to contribute this way is still helpful but in general with a martial class spells that combine with what we already do rather than replace what we already do i think shine more at fifth level we get spiritual weapon and the value of this i have to say really depends if you have a good use of your bonus action it's probably not worth it if it's going to be a short battle probably not worth it if the enemies are spaced more than 20 feet apart probably not worth it if i was fighting in a battle where i expected at least four rounds of combat with either one big enemy or a bunch of enemies not too far apart and i have no other use for my bonus action then it's probably not a bad way to spend a second level slot fear is a good spell and it is still a good spell at level 9 but i will note that we may not be built around maintaining concentration and we aren't proficient in constitution saving throws so that's something to consider also keep in mind that our dc on our spell might not be as high as a full caster the full spell casters are going to be getting the magic items that boost dc we're likely not giving it to the half caster and we're splitting our ability scores between our weapon attacks and our spell casting but fear is still a good spell even on a paladin we are waiting a pretty long time to get it though so overall i consider this a pretty good list of spells at third level we get two uses for our channel divinity the first is conquering presence we use an action and potentially frighten all our enemies within 30 feet using our channel divinity and i should mention that channel divinity is recovered when we take a short rest so we could potentially do this multiple times in between long rests the frightened creatures get an additional save at the end of each of their turns to end the effect frightened is a pretty good condition fragment creatures have disadvantage on all attack rolls and ability checks while they can see us and they can't move closer to us once a creature is frightened unless they can move out of sight leaving the initial 30 foot range doesn't help them either so this is quite good we have a big area we have no friendly fire we have a decent mass debuff happening and i mean at level three when we get this this is probably better than any second level spell a full spell caster can cast and we don't have to worry on concentration either and this works on most enemies in the game the only ones it doesn't work on are those that are immune to frightened and there are some of those and we're going to come across more of them as we get to higher levels but still the vast majority of creatures in the game this works on so this is really solid our second channel divinity option has got its strike when we make an attack roll we can use our channel divinity and get a plus 10 on the roll and this is after the roll is made so plus 10 is a huge bonus i mean i talked about this with war clerics in my cleric subclass video but plus 10 is turning almost any miss into a hit but unlike with war clerics we're a paladin so that attack role can have a hard hit behind it we might also be counting on landing a hit with something like a wrathful smite or other spell effect so the stakes of missing or hitting can be really high this is also working really well with feats like great weapon master so this is just really good on a paladin but it's only for one attack per short rest and it's instead of our mass frightened so frankly most of the time i'm probably going to go for the mass frightened still this is a solid option to have for when you need it and so at level 3 we get some solid features neither of the channel divinities are bad they're actually both pretty good i would say one is significantly better than the other but the plus tend to hit you can absolutely use that and get a reasonable effect out of it one thing i will mention and this affects all paladin subclasses is since these features are both tied to our channel divinity we're only getting one of those for short rest although good these features are really really limited in use and i did consider that when ranking the paladin subclasses at level 7 we get aura of conquest if the creature is frightened of you its speed is reduced to zero if it's within 10 feet of view and if it starts its turn within 10 feet it also takes psychic damage equal to our paladin level and neither of these effects provide a saving throw so let's talk about synergy because conquest already has the features built into the subclass to take great advantage of this our mass frightened effect channel divinity is basically getting a huge boost here also at level 9 we're getting the fear spell which is already a good spell before this was added on but amazing afterwards reducing a target's movement to zero is a big deal and frankly the damage here isn't bad either and it's automatic and potentially mass and doesn't require us to expand any resources or actions this aura is tactically just really really strong and again we don't need to do anything with our build and we get good options to take advantage of this wrathful smite by the way is one of the best first level paladin spells already and that works amazingly well with this as well so at conquest at level 3 we get some good channel divinity options and at level 7 we get a debilitating aura that we can take advantage of easily by doing things we're likely to do anyways here's the drawbacks though some creatures are immune to the frightened condition and when that happens your options become far more limited i mean the plus tend to hit with channel divinity is still a decent option and we're still a paladin with paladin good stuff but you know the subclass features do lean heavily into using the frightened condition but against creatures not immune to frightened conquest is an absolute beast i've seen this in action one character debilitating several enemies then locking them down and ripping them apart it's really impressive to watch so i think conquest is a solid subclass built on an excellent chassis the stuff you need to make this work is all built in you don't need to multi-class or be super careful about the feature selections it's just there i mean you can even go more over the top with a certain warlock dip you know what i'm talking about but even without that this is just really good impressive results with easy optimization this ranks hey our next subclass is oath of devotion this is the classic paladin theme and was in the player's handbook of course so starting out with our old spells the big standout here i guess is sanctuary sanctuary is gained right at level 3 and it's a good spell it's a bonus action to cast so it works nicely with the weapon user and it doesn't use concentration so you know it's a good fit on a paladin other than sanctuary there are some okay spells here but none of the others really stand out so overall the oath spell list is okay thanks to sanctuary largely then we get our two standard uses for channel divinity the first is sacred weapon this allows us to use our action and our channel divinity to enhance a weapon that we're holding this provides a bonus to hit equal to our charisma modifier for one minute our attacks with that weapon are also magical and it emits light so the bonus here is really good bonus to hit are always good but especially when they affect all your attacks this combines nicely with things like great weapon master or sharpshooter because you can do this with ranged weapons as well to really boost your damage the problem with sacred weapon and this is actually a pretty big problem is it requires an action to set up and the duration is short enough that we really should expect to need to use that action in combat to set this up so although this is adding a great bonus to weapon attacks we are giving up our attacks to set this up in the first place not only that we're giving up those attacks in the early stage of combat when they may be more important tactically now given a long combat then this is probably still worthwhile or if we have a chance to prep right before combat then this is really good but those are situations we just can't count on so that action to set this up ends up really hurting and a lot of the time even for really important combat we really can't count on this being a strong option our second option is turn the unholy which is like a cleric's turn on dead feature except it also works on fiends this is really strong if you're fighting the right enemies so if you happen to be fighting undead or fiends this is really good and if you aren't then of course it's not an option at all so we end up with two channel divinity options which either might be really good in the right circumstances but not circumstances we can really count on but at least we can recover spell slot if we can't use them our seventh level feature provides you and friendly creatures in your aura immunity to the charm condition now if you don't do anything with this at all charm comes up in game play here and there so immunity even within your aura is going to be useful where i find this more useful though is synergy with other party members who might otherwise have to worry about friendly fire so the wizard can toss a hypnotic pattern into the center of combat and their allies are immune that can be really good so this is a feature that on its own is useful but not all the time but where it really shines is if you coordinate with your allies to take the best advantage of it then it can be quite good devotion can be a really good subclass if you're in a campaign where undead or fiends are coming up they have some great options with both their old spells and their channel divinity that can make a big difference if you are playing in a campaign where you often get a chance to prepare before combats then sacred weapon is fantastic but there are a lot of ifs involved here in my experience most of the time you can't prepare for combat and although both undead and fiends are fairly common most enemies you fight aren't going to be either of those you may not even find them common in some campaigns at all still devotion is a paladin so they always do have options also there are options to make this really good if we do some coordination with the spellcasters in her party after level seven so devotion overall is still really good it ranks a solid b you can expect your devotion paladin to do really well with some good decisions and or some fitting circumstances her next subclass is oath of glory this was featured in mythic odysseys of theros and then it was reprinted again in tashes looking at her oath spells heroism is you know fairly solid at first level providing immunity to fear and some replenishing temporary hit points but there's a concentration requirement and it's not a bonus action to cast magic weapon can be really helpful on a paladin at low levels or if they're having trouble finding a magic weapon but i would expect at least eventually for it to become irrelevant but at lower levels it's not bad and it's a bonus action to cast haste which is an okay spell is practically made for paladins movement boosts are best on melee characters armor class boosts are best on melee characters and plus two armor class is solid and then add on an extra action either for another attack or some other options this also gives us an attack on the turn we cast a spell here is the warning about haste though if you are going to cast a spell you need to protect your concentration there's a number of ways to do this but you need to do it if you cast haste on yourself and then just have your concentration broken that can be worse than now casting the spell in the first place so overall the spell list here is okay nothing really special though at third level we get our standard two options for channel divinity first it's peerless athlete this provides advantage on athletics and acrobatics checks a carrying capacity boost and a jumping distance increase for 10 minutes main thing here is if you want to maybe do some grappling this is an easy way for advantage and with a duration of 10 minutes you could probably squeeze multiple combats out of this something else really relevant here is that this uses a bonus action more often than not channel divinity uses your action but in this case it's our bonus so we can activate it when we need it rather than activating it before the combat and then hoping we need it the second is inspiring smite so after you deliver a divine smite you can use your bonus action to give temporary hitpoints to yourself and your allies within 30 feet which is a large enough range that it's not unlikely to be all of them and the temporary points is 2d8 plus your level in paladin so this is actually a fair amount of temporary hit points right at level 3 and it does scale with your level like with peerless athlete it's using your bonus action which is nice though there's the additional requirement here you have to complete the smite attack beforehand but you know what that's certainly not a deal breaker it limits it somewhat but we're a paladin delivering a smite attack isn't a big ask so both these channel divinities are notable in that they both use bonus actions so they are leaving your action open for attacks and then these can combine with them neither of the effects here are huge but neither are bad extra temporary hit points is something you can use in almost any combat and get decent value from and the number here isn't bad at all 2d8 plus your paladin level is pretty solid the peerless athlete is more circumstantial but if you want to do grappling then you can certainly build around it that jump bonus can also come in handy once in a while i've personally gotten some value of it in play at level seven we get aura of alacrity which increases our walking speed by 10 feet and any ally that starts to return next to us has their walking speed increased as well so the first thing i should address here is the range generally our 7th level features on a paladin subclass have a 10 foot range not universally but for the most part but this requires the ally be right next to us to get the bonus also movement boost definitely benefit some characters more than others fortunately one of those characters that can really benefit from movement is the paladin and that's us so for this to benefit our allies there needs to be more planning more consideration of positioning that kind of thing if we're mounted fortunately our mount will always start its turn within five feet so it should always get the bonus this isn't one of the best seventh level features for a paladin subclass but you know what it is okay though bit less ally friendly than we would normally expect from paladin subclass and plus 10 movement speed is nice but let's face it it's not a huge benefit or anything but it is far from useless so i think glory is okay if we're to compare to devotion i think its abilities are less flashy but they are more broadly applicable and for that reason i think they end up being fairly close though you know what when devotion shines it really shines so i think it does have an edge but this like devotion makes for a strong character build and ranks a solid b next up is the oath of redemption this was featured in xanathar's guide to everything first up oath spells i already talked about sanctuary and redemption gets it i would love sleep if we got it earlier but you know what level three honestly it's not that great anymore and it's going to become totally useless really soon we just don't get it when it's good our fifth level options honestly don't do much for me common motions can be okay to suppress some conditions but it's really not standing out as a good paladin spell where we first see some really interesting options isn't until we get to level 9 but you know what then we get counter spell and hypnotic pattern do i want counter spell on my paladin yes please you can't really have too many counter spells in a party so it doesn't matter that some other casters have been rocking counter spell for four levels already this is still a really solid add-on it's a reaction to cast so it's not really interfering with what we can do either so it's a nice fit on a paladin hypnotic pattern is a great spell but here i have to say it is a little less impressive than it usually is so i went over this a bit with conquest paladin and the fear spell and honestly in power level hypnotic pattern and fear are very comparable except with conquest we get synergy with our aura and here i can't help but think how good hypnotic pattern would have been on the devotion paladin but with redemption we just get zero synergy so we can give up our attacks and we can cast this likely with a lower dc than a primary caster and we can simulate it to maybe a lesser degree to what a primary caster could do at level five and then rely on our concentration but you know what hypnotic pattern is a good enough spell that it's still a good add-on but i'm just saying i'm less excited to see it here than on my fifth level bard now what i will say is if you go to high levels there are some nice spells up there but i wouldn't expect to see them in play in most campaigns so i think this is a better than average spell list for eighty percent of the time that most campaigns go it's going to be okay but for the last 20 it's good and then we get our standard two uses for channel divinity the first is emissary of peace that gives you a plus five bonus to persuasion checks using your bonus action so this is another one of those examples we're using a bonus action to activate a channel divinity but i kind of wonder whether there's any benefit to it being a bonus action here persuasion is a skill that absolutely gets used and paladins are charisma based but are we using persuasion in combat not really and do we need it to be a bonus action if we're not in combat probably not still plus five persuasion is circumstantially beneficial frankly i would prefer expertise than expanding a resource on it though the second is rebuke the violent and this uses your reaction and your channel divinity to punish a creature that damages one of your allies within 30 feet makes a saving throw and if it fails it takes the same damage it just dealt an unsuccessful save it takes half so let's say you got an enemy mage and they cast finger of death on one of your allies and your ally fails their saving throw well this could be a fantastic reaction but for this to be good that's really what you need for an important enemy to deliver one single instance of huge damage if you're fighting several enemies you're generally not going to get that if you're fighting one big enemy usually it's using multi-attack to deliver several instances of moderate damage critical hit may come into play here but still that base damage needs to be decent before the total damage of a single instance of damage is all that big even when you apply a critical so for example let's say you're fighting one big enemy and it has a three attack multi attack maybe it's a dragon use this on one of those attacks and you're using your once per short rush channel divinity to deliver a third or a sixth on a successful save of its one turn successful combat routine in damage back to the creature maybe close to twice that if used on a critical that's honestly still not all that much but sure you know what you're fighting an assassin and it gets a critical and then there's a sneak attack and there's poison in play well then this could be really good so if you got the right circumstance this can be good but i think most adventuring days it's going to be okay at best i don't think either of these is all that impressive neither are bad but once utility and one is occasionally really good but usually it's it's not bad but it's okay then at level seven you get the aura of the guardian this allows you to use your reaction to take the damage an ally within 10 feet of you would have taken and it can't be reduced in any way this one i just straight out don't like transferring damage can be a pretty effective tactic but here we have some limitations that are going to make it difficult to use effectively for one don't expect your paladin to be the character that can afford to take a bunch of extra damage and secondly and this is more important you can't reduce it so resistance sporting bonds all the ways we might make use of this as a regularly viable tactic aren't really available where we definitely see a lot of variants in paladin subclasses is with the seventh level feature we get some really strong auras like we saw with conquest already we have samoras with strong potential if some good decisions are made like with devotion we see some relatively minor but okay auras like glory and then we have auras like this which i think is difficult to use effectively and i think most of the time it's really just not that useful it's definitely a disappointment does that make a redemption a bad subclass absolutely not because this is a paladin and there are no bad paladin subclasses because you are a paladin what i will say is that before level 9 i consider this below what i would normally expect from a paladin subclass there's nothing here that's useless their one channel divinity is always going to be useful to some degree the persuasion bonus is okay and the aura still can prevent an ally going down in an important moment so it's not a useless aura but they just don't line up with the other options available now once we're level 9 and we're counterspelling well then this makes up some ground and i think this still makes b rank as a good subclass but this is leaning more on the strong paladin chassis than we normally are next we have oath of the ancients this was one of our player's handbook options so looking at our oath spells at level one we get in snaring strike which is kind of the ranger version of the smite spells available to paladins and honestly i don't think it's as good on a pal than as it is on a ranger we're not as good with ranged attacks which combined really nicely with this spell still i think it's okay on a paladin misty step at level five though is great i mean really great paladins don't teleport their spell list doesn't involve teleports and i mean period i've used and seen paladins that get amazing value of this spell over and over again and the bonus action casting meshes really well with the paladin as well this spell is good on a wizard but great on a paladin whether they get it through multi-classing or their subclass so frankly this is the biggest standout spell we've seen on an oath list so far in my opinion honestly if you offered me misty step at level 5 or counterspell at level 9 on a paladin i'll take misty step thanks plant growth is a good spell too no concentration available at level 9 though it is circumstantial so the oath spells here good then we get our two channel divinity options and we see the other side of the ancients paladin first is nature's wrath we use our action to target a single creature that makes a saving throw and they get to choose which saving throw they want to do and if they succeed nothing happens and if they fail they're restrained but they get an additional savings throw after each of their turns this is just awful so you know what we'll ignore it next we get turn the faithless that is like a cleric's turn undead except it works on fae and fiends so if we compare this to the channel divinity on the devotion paladin this works on fey and that one works on undead which is the more common foe it's not even close not even close sophie's well if you're playing descent to avernus sure otherwise sure some of the time so this isn't useless because when you can use it it's good just like turn undead but i expect it to be used less than if he had just played a devotion paladin then at level 7 we get aura of warding this provides resistance to the damage from spells to you and those in your aura which i have to say when i first read the player's handbook this was the paladin subglass feature that i was most excited about then i played it and i've seen several people play it since and i have to say there are a lot of sessions you play where you don't take spell damage so in those sessions this is doing nothing then you get hit with a fireball and you're really excited finally i get to use my feature and then people make their saving throws of course they have your bonus so they're probably going to make the savings throw and then some characters weren't in the aura and some in the aura already had resistance to the damage or resistance options or evasion and then you add up the damage this actually prevented and you realize you waited several sessions for this moment and it was okay now there are some spells that do a ton of damage and this is an effective way to mitigate that if i get hit with finger of death and i have this great but of the paladin features that i see overrated this is number one this aura is okay but it's not something you can really do anything to optimize it's an okay layer of protection against damage that's circumstantial so it's fine but ultimately i found it's not as powerful as it sometimes claimed to be so ancients has a good spellist but with their channel divinity i mean you can recover a spell or maybe you're fighting fiends or fae and otherwise the aura is okay but it's not as good as a lot of people think it is and this is on the paladin chassis which is great so guess what ancient spaldings are really good and they're solid b but they aren't one of the more powerful paladins i'd place them right about here their seventh level feature isn't as good as some people think but it's definitely still way better than redemptions next up oath of the crown this one was featured in the sword coast adventures guide you know the book that brought us such treats as battle ragers purple dragonites and sun soul monks so let's start with the oath spells command i spoke about before and it's not a bad addition wording bond is normally not a bowden spell and it's okay probably on its own better than the redemption aura for ally protection then level 9 is really good aura vitality is a paladin spell already but it's a good spell and then spirit guardians which honestly is a perfect spell for a class that's going into melee anyways so the spell list here is pretty good like with redemption though it takes off a bit later at level nine then we get two channel divinity options the first is champion challenge this is a bonus action so that's nice and we can target each creature of our choice within 30 feet and they must make a saving throw or well let's just say most of the time you're not going to even notice the difference whether they made or failed or saving throw this one is just that crappy so we're going to ignore it our other option or should i say our only option is turn the tide which is also a bonus action and it can heal a d6 plus our charisma modifier to ourself and our allies within 30 feet which on its own wouldn't be terrible but not fantastic but then it only heals them if they're already below half their hit points so this is sad a 10th level glory paladin can use their bonus to deliver temporary hit points so they could stack on a character with full hit points for 19 on average this isn't going to be half that much and it scales much worse and only allies that are below halfway points are gaining at all this it's just not very good yet it is the better option of the two so it's either that or a spell slot and with that you're dealing with maximum uses as well so this honestly is not a good start for our oath of the crown then at level seven we get an aura that looks a lot like the paladin redemption aura now the distance here is five feet instead of ten feet not that the redemption aura was something we were likely going to be using anyways but technically speaking this is objectively even more limited oath of the crown actually reminds me a lot of redemption in that the channel divinity options aren't great the seventh level aura is extremely similar this one is technically worse but you know what they're both bad but they get some spells at level nine that are good so this is neck and neck with redemption i think it's just a little bit worse but they are very close so is oath of the crown bad no it's good because you know what it's a paladin next up author the watchers this is our newest paladin edition natasha's cauldron of everything so are spells at level three u these spells are both rituals and we can't cast ritually so you at level five meh c invisibility of course has some value here and there moonbeam is really losing steam with a half-caster just not doing all that great on the full caster it's okay on a half-caster yeah then at level nine here we go again with counterspell which i discussed with redemption so the spell list here is not good at all until we get to level nine then at level nine it's counterspell but you know what if we're going to compare this to the redemption list that also gets counter spell this one is worse at level 3 we get two channel divinity options first is watch as well this requires our action and it can give a number of creatures up to our charisma modifier advantage on intelligence wisdom and charisma saving throws for one minute this reminds me a bit of the devotion paladin's secret weapon in that it has the same issue it's using our action and the duration is not great which means unless we have a chance to prep for combat we're using our action in combat to set this up and in most combats you're not going to want to do that but you know what if you come up against mind flayers and their intellect devour minions that kind of thing then this is totally worth the action so once in a while this is really good but most encounters you're not going to want to spend the action the second is absurd the extra planar this is like turn undead except it's usable on aberrations celestials elementals fey or fiends so count it up five creature types but aberrations sometimes celestials almost never elementals sometimes fae not very often fiends sometimes so this is probably coming up more often than turn undead or maybe even the devotion paladins turn variety but it's definitely not coming up two and a half times as often or anything but still this is usable in any combat against creatures that aren't beasts constructs dragons giants monstrosities oozes plants or humanoids so let's face it it is still being used the minority of the time that this is still the best of the turn this thing features then we get our level 7 feature which increases our initiative and the initiative of our allies in our aura by amount equal to our proficiency bonus so basically plus three bonus when we first get this but scales to plus four at level nine so this is the best subclass feature the watchers paladin gets and i think it's arguably the best subclass feature any paladin subclass gets the only other level 7 or i think is even comparable to this is the conquest paladin except i do think this one edges out even conquest level 7 aura because this is going to impact every single battle you have so from levels 1 to 6 i think watchers is pretty average they have a weaker spell list but they have some good channel divinity options though i'll note that both of them are circumstantial i'd guess in an average adventuring day maybe 50 50 you'll be able to use either of them effectively but when you do need them they're both very good level seven is the turning point though this is where watchers pulls ahead of most paladins i think watchers and conquest are actually very comparable though i think watchers does gain the slighted edge here because the aura is better honestly up to level 7 i'd say conquest is better but watchers i think is better afterwards and assuming we get to level 12 i think watchers is better more of the time so this is a rank very close to conquest but i think it edges it out next up is ulta vengeance this was one of our original players handbook options so first the spells third level is okay hunter's mark can be okay on some builds i have to think eventually it's going to conflict with polar master bane it's not a terrible spell it's okay paladin isn't the first class i'm going to consider it for though then at fifth level misty step which i already talked about with ancient spalding and this is a big standout and at night level haste which i talked about with glory paladin now i can't help but notice dimension door is right there but 13th level we just probably aren't going to make it that far so the list here is good but misty step is doing most of the heavy lifting so let's talk about our channel divinity options amateur enemy reads a bit like our standard turn this kind of creature feature but it's actually really different it's a single target the range is 60 feet not 30 feet if the creature fails to save they aren't just frightened but their speed is reduced to zero and even if they make their save their speed is still reduced by half and fiends and undead have disadvantage on the saving throw so there's a lot to unpack here but what it boils down to is this this is really good against a single tough undead or fiend can occasionally be good otherwise but you can fairly reliably lock down and undead or fiend with this unless they have legendary resistance and remember even some of the top level fiends things like pitfein's and balors don't have legendary resistance for some reason so although this is technically usable on all types of creatures i would still consider this pretty circumstantial but i've absolutely seen it win combats by locking down half the enemy our second option is not circumstantial though and this one you will use vow of enmity allows you to target a single creature with your bonus action and you can advantage on all attacks against them for the next minute this is a super reliable way to get advantage and unlike features like reckless attack it's impacting reaction attacks as well so this is good like all those level three paladin abilities keep in mind it is super limited in use but when you're playing a melee damage dealer advantage on all attacks is really good then at level 7 we get relentless avenger which is not a buffing aura at all this one is really different than most paladin's 7th level features so what happens is when we hit a creature with an opportunity attack we can move half our speed as part of the reaction and that movement doesn't provoke opportunity attacks so some really circumstantial extra movement honestly i'd put this in crown territory one of the weakest 7th level paladin subclass features so vengeance gets good spells most of their channel divinity use is going to be used to set up advantage which is solid and then there's a letdown seventh level feature i think it puts it in the middle somewhere power wise probably between glory and devotion still really solid overall but if you are going to multi-class maybe leave at level six because from levels one through six vengeance is as good as any of them and finally the oath breaker this is one of the example npc subclasses presented in the dungeon master's guide one thing about altbricker though is it is actually referred to as an option in the player's handbook for a pc that breaks their oath so i think there's a bit more support for it being used in play by a player than say a death domain cleric so let's start with the spells inflict wounds it's just not good on a paladin honestly it may actually be worse than you just taking the attack action hellish rebuke also bad on a paladin why well because it's going to do less damage on average than if you just use that slot for smite and with less reliable damage type level 5 has darkness which can combine nicely with the blind fighting combat style but darkness plus a method to see through it doesn't necessarily work well in every party then animate dead is okay at level 9 but nothing special overall this is one of the weaker oath spellers then we have our two uses for channel divinity first we get control undead so you can target a single undead if it makes a saving throw nothing happens but you know what if it fails it serves you for the next 24 hours now there is a challenge rating limit but a fourth level pal then could control a ghost for 24 hours that's pretty good for a fourth level character but this is one of those big risk big payoff features there is a significant chance you're going to lose your action and your channel divinity for nothing and of course only on undead overall i am not a fan then we get dreadful aspect and this is the best third level channel divinity option for paladins in the game it's basically the conquest mass fear ability which if you remember is a good ability except this one doesn't give additional saving throws unless the creature moves further than 30 feet away and even then they just get a saving throw that is astoundingly good for a third level feature then we get aura of hate and that's at seventh level this provides our paladin and any fiends are undead within 10 feet of the baldon a bonus to melee weapon damage rolls equal to our paladin's charisma modifier so bonus to all damage rolls is nice and if we have summoned or created undead they can benefit from this as well which is nice or someone fiend would benefit from this as well also nice but this is also the biggest achilles heel of the oath breaker subclass because this is also a bonus to the damage of enemy fiends or undead in our aura and we cannot turn this off for enemies that's a big problem because what this means is when you do face fiends or undead and you will some of the time then they all just got tougher because of you and that's really unfortunate because believe me this is going to happen and it's going to hurt just imagine when you get swarmed by lesser enemies or something like oh if you've got a maryland that's attacking over and over and you're boosting their damage every single time they will get a bigger boost out of your aura than you will believe me seven attacks and you're gonna give them plus five damage on all of them so aura of hate ends up being a mixed bag sometimes it's good and sometimes it's actually worse than nothing this kind of swing i don't think is good tactically either because it can take a challenge that would have been hard and turn it deadly and even if that doesn't happen often once may be enough so is old breaker bad no not remotely you're a paladin but i will say this if i was an oath breaker i would strongly consider multiclassing after level six then you get aura protection the other great paladin features and you get a great channel divinity option and then you just skip the bad part entirely and as i mentioned paladin's multi-class well at level six so oat breaker is good but there is some planning required as long as you remember to multi-class to sorcerer warlock or bard after level six which isn't hard this is a good multi-class and that's a good break point then i think i'd place it right ahead of ancients for that nice channel divinity alone so what you should notice is that we saw less variance in ratings than any of our previous classes even the consistently weak monk spanned three ratings so why is that well because other than a single extremely limited use channel divinity and some half casting spells known a paladin is a paladin right up to level seven there's actually very little variance between any of the subclasses from levels three through six it's level seven where we start to see some divergence and it's no coincidence that the paladins with the strong oribus at seven ended up one rank ahead still if you multi-class after level six which a lot of paladins do then the difference is even smaller so here's our final rankings now i know the screen can be hard to see so check the video description for a full size version and just as we filled out our below c ranks last week we filled out our above c ranks this week so what we're starting to see here now is really a bell curve most of the subclass is settling at sea or near c with fortunately few cases of s or f tiers next time we're going to move on to the ranger one of those classes that we got a major divergence of opinion on so i'll provide my opinion on the next segment i hope you'll join me otherwise until next time i'm gonna sit back relax and have some fun d d is for everyone thanks everybody and i'll talk to you soon you

Channel: Treantmonk's Temple

Views: 199,500

Keywords: dnd, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Optimization, Guide, Wizard, Wizards, charop, ultimate, best, most powerful, paladin subclasses, paladin subclasses ranked, paladin tier list

Id: _r-Ld-O8Okg

Length: 68min 27sec (4107 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021