I don't see a debate. You can crit with an attack that does damage The 2024 smite has no attack roll, so it's like a lightning bolt with no save. Crits would not apply to anything but the base attack damage. This is not like sneak attack damage which is a class ability that simply adds extra damage dice under certain circumstances.
Wait a minute, are people assuming that, because the Smite spells are cast after hitting a target, they can completely ignore the rule of 1 spell per turn unless one is a Bonus action and the other is a Cantrip (which paladins don't get)? As far as I know, that limitation still applies unless I missed it somewhere in Playtest 6. When a Paladin gets their second Attack at 5th level, they are still limited to just the one spell per turn.
For a given definition of “waste.” It’s certainly non-optimal. That doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t worthwhile. It depends on the situation.
There is nothing in addition to those points. First, you're wrong. There is an action cost. Second, before these changes I could smite doing more damage with no action cost, no risk of silence working and no ability to be countered. Now those things work on smite. Further, smite wasn't broken before unless the DM broke things by not engaging the adventuring day and only having 1 or 2 encounters. That's not a problem with the ability.
They already had that. They sucked without the changes that allowed their use after a hit, but that change made them usable. Further, they did not need to alter base smite to use those spells. Nor does the existence of those spells require smite to be made into a sucky ability in order to balance their use.
No. No they didn't. You can buy that line if you want to, but before there was smite, and then there were smite spells which were different. No "parity" was required since they weren't supposed to be the same to begin with. This is a line they are giving in order to encourage people to buy into the nerf. And it seems that some people are snapping up what they are selling.
False Equivalences are false. One does not equal the other.
I believe @Stalker0 was referring to the current 5E14 Divine Smite where you can smite on every attack you make, not on the revised version in the playtest that is a spell.
I disagree that Counterspell is a "common ability" amongst enemies that most parties face. While there are probably some tables where the PCs face off against spellcasting humanoids as their primary antagonists... I would venture to say that most tables use the wide variety of enemies found in the Monster Manual, most of whom do not cast spells... let alone have Counterspell in their prepared or innate spell lists.
Well, that's what I get for hastily skimming through the threads because I'm so far behind
Crits do apply. It's nearly the exact same wording.
Yep, if an effect is adding damage dice to an attack, as such, it’s Smite-able.
Correct, which is one of the "corrections" this new model applies. The OG paladin's divine smite is not a true spell, and so doesn't follow spell casting restrictions. This version does.
