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

[Mephista]

Help me out on this. Why is the Paladin considered to be so darn good (as in the "effective" sense) by so many people?

Very good defense, very good damage (access to some of the best melee options in the game, and smites are a very powerful nova option!), very good exploring options (the Detect/Locate series of abilities are very helpful), and Charisma as a key ability, which "allows" a player to take social skills. They have gishy skills, but don't suffer from Concentration issues like other gish builds, nor AC / HP woes.

In short, the paladin is a mix of good abilities that synergize really well on the field. Its a solid, well built, flexible class. Its the whole package taken together that really stands out. In many ways, its the warrior equivalent of the wizard in 5e.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

Which kind of implies that a single big combat once per day is their norm (since VoE is a long rest resource.)

Vow of Enmity is a Channel Divinity option and paladins renew their Channel Divinity resource on a short or long rest.

 

[FrogReaver]

Paladins aren't the highest damage dealer. They aren't the best healer. They aren't the best at charisma skills. They aren't the best at utility. They can't take the most damage. They do have really good saves.

However they do solid damage. Probably tier 2 damage with the ability to do tier 1 damage for a combat or 2 per day. (Many campaigns only have 1-3 combats per day...). In those campaigns he would consistently be a tier 1 damage dealer.

He's a tier 3 healer. Lay on hands is great. Spell slots can be used for healing if required.

He's tier 3 at charisma skills.

He's tier 3 at utility.

He's tier 3 at hp (aka taking a hit)

He's tier 1 at saves.


In more broad terms: because of his hp, saves and healing abilities he is very survivable. He's very good at damage and even more so in lower encounter per day games. He has above average utility between spells and charisma skills.

That's why people think he is very strong

 

[CTurbo]

Paladins do have good staying power. The party could be on their 20th encounter of the day, and all spell slots, Lay on Hands, and Channel Divinity could be exhausted, and the Paladin can still be effective with a high AC, decent normal weapon damage, and the ALWAYS on Auras.

 

[Mephista]

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.

The Fighter doesn't get toes. >.<

In this case, I'm not joking. The paladin is pretty much DESIGNED to be a sword and board defensive figure. You were trying to beat out the paladin at what it was built from the ground up to be. What it excels at. No surprise that you were out performed in the very area you both took.

I'm personally of the opinion that, while Fighters do get solid benefits, they're basically generalists. You don't expect a Fighter to be a better knife fighter than the Rogue. The ranger (arguably, since its not as solid of a class as others) gets to be a better archer, by virtue of access to sniping abilities and spells that making kiting easier, as well as a number of tricks with a bow that Fighters just can't duplicate, even with action surge and expertise dice. Fighters can swing a mean greatsword, but they're competing against great axe barbarians, who come with innate advantage, to see who's better; without a trick to get advantage or increased accuracy for themselves, or provided one by another party member, the Fighter suffers here.

The Fighter really shines when you can build something more specialized using a large number of synergetic feats, whereas other classes have to balance the need for higher stats (extra charisma on a paladin, for instance, is always attractive) more than a Fighter does.

 

[Spookykid]

Paladins do have good staying power. The party could be on their 20th encounter of the day, and all spell slots, Lay on Hands, and Channel Divinity could be exhausted, and the Paladin can still be effective with a high AC, decent normal weapon damage, and the ALWAYS on Auras.

and that extra d8 damage at 11th is always on

 

[DEFCON 1]

Vow of Enmity is a Channel Divinity option and paladins renew their Channel Divinity resource on a short or long rest.

Gah! Well, I feel stupid. I have no idea why I thought it was long rest based. Goes to show how many times my players ever actually used it...

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

Gah! Well, I feel stupid. I have no idea why I thought it was long rest based. Goes to show how many times my players ever actually used it...

It's very, very odd but for some bizarre reason, every paladin I've ever seen played has been vengeance, and yet every paladin player seems to forget about VoE. If I was playing a vengeance paladin, it'd be constantly on my mind to use VoE.

 

[Eltab]

The Paladin abilities plus my personality added up to a character that dominated my Tiamat group.
- First Defender to play in the group long-term; taught the wizard to hide behind me for safety, not run around in circles shooting cantrips over his shoulder.
- Lay on Hands saved the Rogue from drowning when she was making Death Saves.
- Protective auras kept most monster attacks from hurting me (when I remembered to include the +mods).
- Smite an insubstantial undead with Radiant; be the only PC in the room who can actually hurt them.
- High CHR (but lousy STR) to talk NPCs into doing what I want them to, without having to draw sword.
- Me: "Let's kill all the tadpoles before they can grow up to become bullywug warriors." Group: "And he's the Paladin ?!"
- Favorite spell Moonbeam, used to create bottlenecks so the enemy can't get around or past me without taking damage.
- Tried to save the Cleric when she got surrounded by enemies (by distracting them and breaking up their circle); rear-guarded the group retreating from defeat.
- Get self into fight with lots of guards (and blocking carriage's progress); this distracts from the Rogue who snuck up from behind. Disengage action plus high AC = run away unscathed.

 

[Mort]

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.

Monster ACs are lower in this edition true, and for the most part PCs hit more BUT a 15% increase in hits is nothing to sneeze at, also advantage tends to really flatten out bad rolling streaks. If we are going anecdotal - Just this Friday, the party fighter went 5 rounds without rolling above a 6 to hit (3rd level sword and board so 1 attack per round) advantage would have made a massive difference, and in fact the first time he did hit was after the cleric's guiding bolt.

(Likewise, with the barbarian's incredible ability to absorb damage, I never really noticed that characters were in much danger of falling regardless.)

My experience differs. The VERY first roll of the very first combat of the very first 5e game was the party mage going from full (6 HP) to dead (-14 HP) - critical from a crossbow. No other fatalities so far, but plenty down to unconscious and making death saves (the party, it should be noted, does not have a barbarian in it).

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.

The barbarian's ability kicks in at 3rd level, this paladin ability doesn't kick in until 6th (which also mostly precludes getting this ability as a dip ability - a very good thing). Further +5 to all saves MAY happen at very high levels. At 6th, you're looking at +3 at best (unless the PC got ridiculously lucky on rolls, or in point buy prioritized CHA over strength AND took their ASI to CHA over strength too - which while totally fine has drawbacks). +3 is still amazing but it's not +5. Also the Barbarian's ability allows for more tactical flexibility as the Paladin's aura requires anyone benefiting to be within 10' (the 30' expansion comes way too late to discuss here) of the paladin. As the paladin has almost no range capability, this is a significant factor.

But even here, at least we're comparing and that's how you see if things are OP. Analyzing in a vacuum just seems futile.