D&D 5E Paladin: Why Are They Often Considered Highly Powerful?

[ccs]

A cleric who wants to do full damage with attacks has to invest in Strength, which is not otherwise very useful for a cleric; a wizard who wants a strong AC has to invest in Dexterity, which comes at the cost of investing in Constitution (probably the wizard's second most important stat after Int). And pity the poor bladelock.

Dex > Con. Always. A few HPs are nice. But with a high Dex I'll get hit less often. Meaning I'll lose less HPs and have to make fewer concentration rolls to maintain spells. Plus, no matter what class I'm playing, I'll have a higher initiative.

This is kind of missing the point. Of course you don't smite on every hit - you'd run out of spell slots very fast if you did. But when you're up against the Big Boss and you need to do all the damage, you can nova so hard it makes the wizard jealous. Furthermore, if you have a source of advantage, you're likely to crit at least once per fight, and you can choose to throw a top-level slot into that crit after you see the 20..

If as the Wizard I'm jealous of the Paladins nova damage? Then I'm a wizard.

 

[Mistwell]

You figure this how? The last time I checked I had the same 5% chance to roll that 20 as I did any other # on the d20.

Yes. That's quite rare. The law of averages says it's not going to come up very often, particularly when you figure in overdamage factors. But sure, you go on and argue crits are common because in theory you could rule a twenty 500 times in a row. I am sure that will be a very persuasive argument to all those people who find they tend to come up, on average, only 5% of the time, and then only a smaller percentage actually has meaning because not using the smite or using a normal smite would have still killed the target

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Take barbarian. Everyone always talks about the bear totem and yes, it's quite good. But what about the wolf barbarian? At 3rd level, he can give ALL party members (and other friendlies too) advantage against a target he's next to (and he can take standing next to heavy hitters just fine), from melee or range! That's as good or better than anything the paladin brings to the table right there.

I hadn't noticed that anyone was having trouble with hitting, personally. That's based on empirical evidence, rather than theorycraft, but the difference between 80% accuracy and 95% accuracy can be hard to spot at the table. (Likewise, with the barbarian's incredible ability to absorb damage, I never really noticed that characters were in much danger of falling regardless.)

The paladin giving ~5 to all saves is much more noticeable than the barbarian giving advantage on attack rolls, because not all saves are bolstered by your proficiency bonus, but all attack rolls are.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Paladins have an ability that has a very high cost per damage. 9 average damage on a level 1 spell slot in total.
It just happens that you also have the ability to add it to your normal damage, so the cost and damage per action is ok. It is ok. When you get extra attack the damage per action gets bettet. The cost becomes higher.
You can spend your resources faster in a not so efficient way.

A magic missile at level 2 is quite comparable to smite at level 2. The mage might just use it on range before the melee fight starts, doing 10.5 damage.
What the mage lacks is sustained autoattack damage after that, but to be honest, magic missile is usually not your most effective spell.

 

[Li Shenron]

Calculations are complicated, but a very rough estimation tells me that more or less at every level, the average daily bonus damage a Paladin does with Divine Smite (if she uses all her spell slots for that) is close to the average bonus damage a Rogue does with 6-7 Sneak Attacks.

Does a typical Rogue get 6-7 Sneak Attacks per day? IMXP the majority of the times a Rogue manages to get Sneak Attack, it's especially easy by ganging up in melee with an ally against the same target (it's not the only way, but it's the easiest). So eventually it might depend on how many encounters per day, how many rounds per encounter, and what is the Rogue's attack success rate.

Too many variables here for a reliable conclusion... it's probable that the average (all considered) number of Sneak Attacks per day is lower than 6-7, but we also have to keep in mind that this comparison is being done for a Paladin who essentially is giving up all other possible uses of her spell slots for fueling Divine Smite to the max.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

I think a lot of it comes down to the failure of the expected encounters per day paradigm that 5e was designed around. The simple reality, I've found, is that in most games this paradigm just doesn't play out, which significantly benefits classes that can blow all their resources quickly with an expectation of getting them back before the next big fight. Short of being in an active dungeon with constant threats, there's no real way to enforce the paradigm that doesn't come off as contrived.

This benefits paladins immensely since it means paladin players can essentially feel free to burn slots on smites.

 

[Hussar]

Sorry, gonna bang the fighter drum for a second.

I had a defense fighter and there was a defense paladin in the party. We both had almost identical stats. Right down to the same armor and whatnot.

I watched the paladin put my poor fighter in the dust virtually every session. He was outdamaging me by a very, very wide margin. Now, I was playing a champion fighter, not a battlemaster, so, that might have been the issue, but, it did seem like the paladin, considering that every other aspect was identical, was considerably better at doing my job than I was.

Not a conclusion, but, just a point. Everyone talks about the high damage types but tend to forget that the paladin steps REALLY hard on the fighter's toes.

 

[CapnZapp]

I wish people would stop with the analysis in a vacuum.

Yes the paladin has extremely good nova capability and adds a lot to the party with its auras.

But, it's not like other classes bring nothing to the table.

But this is not about those other classes.

The OP asked what it is that makes consider the Paladin one of the most powerful classes.

We replied.

In no way should that be taken as a slight against other classes.

That goes for Hussar too. No need to bang other drums.


Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[CapnZapp]

[MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION] I'm confused. You asked. You got answers.

Yet, you seem dissatisfied. Argumentative, even.

Did you sincerely ask what's good about the Paladin, or was your agenda to contest the notion it's good all along?

If the former, you have plenty of replies.

If the latter, I don't care for yet another "X is better than Y" thread (or in this case, "X is not better than Y")

Either way, I think I'm done here. See you elsewhere

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think a lot of it comes down to the failure of the expected encounters per day paradigm that 5e was designed around. The simple reality, I've found, is that in most games this paradigm just doesn't play out, which significantly benefits classes that can blow all their resources quickly with an expectation of getting them back before the next big fight. Short of being in an active dungeon with constant threats, there's no real way to enforce the paradigm that doesn't come off as contrived.

This benefits paladins immensely since it means paladin players can essentially feel free to burn slots on smites.

This is the primary factor right here, I agree.

If you only have 1 to 3 encounters in the day before you take a long rest, the paladin's spell slot table becomes almost "short rest based". A Battlemaster Fighter should theoretically be getting more overall Superiority Dice over the course of a day than a Paladin does with their spell slots... if the number of combats *and* short rests are part of the expected allowance of 6-8.

However, I think we've seen by thread after thread after thread that that allowance does not happen that often, especially to many tables. The way some people are speaking, it seems as though throwing a Vow of Enmity and then mega-critting is the norm and expected operating procedure for their table's paladin. Which kind of implies that a single big combat once per day is their norm (since VoE is a long rest resource.) Which, taken under that lens, absolutely makes the paladin very powerful at those tables. If you primarily only have one fight a day (which can imply a "large" battle with probably at least one very "powerful" enemy), and the table's Vengeance Paladin is throwing up a Hunter's Mark, Vow of Enmity, and then smiting over and over against that big enemy... then sure they are doing to do massive damage each and every battle (because everything refreshes after each one.)

But someone above pointed out the Paladin being weaker versus multiple enemies... which I take to mean both "multiple enemies" during a single fight, and "multiple enemies" over the course of an entire adventuring day. If your table actually does manage to have 5, 6, 7 combats in the day... and those combats involve 5, 8, 12 enemies at a time... the Vengeance Paladin ends up having to lose more slots Hunter's Marking more often, has to pick and choose which fight and which enemy to use VoE on, and ends up with so many targets that blowing through all of the spell slots smiting and then having none left over for the rest of the various fights becomes a real possibility. And once that happens... once the Paladin has "blown" all their stuff... the rest of the day for them can be painful. Which is why in the few times I've seen a Vengeance Paladin in play *at* a table that has more fights and more short rests, the player ended up being much more judicious with their spell slots and did not choose to nova all the time.

At the end of the day... like everything else in the game, how something plays to make it seem "overpowered" or "underpowered" is going to be contingent on the style of play at an individual table. And yes, at the tables that usually do one large battle each day and then are able to long rest... the classes built on long rest mechanics will seem much more powerful than the ones who operate on short rests. But of course, the opposite is true for the opposite tables. After all... I have a Battlemaster player with the Martial Adept feat who now has like seven Superiority Dice per short rest that is throwing out extra damage *and* parries *and* riposting *and* tripping enemies giving everybody else Advantage *and* Commander Striking the rogue to take advantage of that... *and* of course having their own short-rest based "nova" via Action Surge. So while the BM F doesn't have that "Wow!" effect like a paladin would in a single fight... they are doing a lot more varied stuff and helping out their teammates over many more encounters.

Which is pretty much the way the classes were meant to be built after all.