While it hasn't been transformed to the same extent as Wild Shape, the Paladin's smite mechanic still sees some noteworthy changes in the recent playtest packet. I think it would be helpful to have a discussion thread focused on these changes and have included some of my thoughts as a starting point:
Unarmed Smite: As far as I'm concerned as a Dungeon Master, this isn't actually a change from the 2014 rules. If an unarmed strike counts a melee weapon attack, with its damage appearing specifically in the Weapons table, it clearly fits the requirements for Divine Smite. If that's not intended function, the developers should have addressed this in the errata rather than relying on a dubious semantic argument in Sage Advice. Regardless of the status of unarmed smiting in the current rules, though, I see absolutely no balance or flavor reason to disallow it in future versions.
As far as I know they did errata the Weapons table to remove Unarmed Attack from it. Like it's gone from current printings, it's not in the SRD, and it's not in D&D Basic. The whole weapon attack vs melee weapon attack vs unarmed attack vs attack action vs attack roll vs attack
thing is some incredibly frustrating, noodley, and not particularly useful semantics. It feels like it's a darling of someone on the design team at WotC, because otherwise it's just a series of really dumb distinctions to draw. It's a level of nuance and precision that does not serve the game well.
That said, I've never seen a DM even bat an eye at unarmed smite. First because it essentially never comes up, and second because it's actually pretty cool.
I think it's fine because not all paladins are humans in full plate anymore.
That said, I doesn't look like they've really done anything to address Dex being so potent in combat except to nerf the big ranged feats (which is a significant change).
Mechanically they kind of don't make sense, but only if you think the smite comes from the paladin, and not their deity or power. Imagine being an elven paladin whose every arrow has a thin gold wire spiraled around it. When the arrow strikes, a bolt of energy strikes the target from the heavens.
I'm not particularly concerned here, I guess. It's potent and continues to discourage melee, which isn't good. But, it's really Sharpshooter and Archery Fighting Style that really keep ranged combat so good.
One Smite Per Turn: While using multiple smites in one turn is a nice option to have, removing it seems like one of the fairest and least painful ways to scale back the class/ability's power. (which is probably needed).
I expected this and was only surprised that they similarly included spellcasting in the limitation. But I think it was needed, and I'm kind of frustrated they didn't make this change in 2016. Quite honestly, I don't understand why Divine Smite isn't just a first level spell, and then give paladin a class feature that gives a bonus 1d8 damage when casting a Smite of some kind. It's honestly even sillier now than it was before.
Or, I don't know, give Paladin it's own spell list and then when other classes can steal spells default to only including "Wizard, Sorcerer, Cleric, or Druid." They've always had oddball spells on the half caster lists that don't always work well when you get them 8 levels earlier like 5th level spells. The current designs mean the classes get 5th level spells at level 17, but they're required to be as balanced as a spell you could get at level 9. Just stupid.
Smite and Critical Hits: This wasn't specifically addressed in the videos, so it's not clear if it's intended, but the revised wording seems to separate smite damage from the attack damage that doubles on a critical hit.
I think this is true of all bonus damage dice now. It's boring, but I guess the swingyness of crits is a thing.
Still, I'm not really sure why we need to nerf
PC crits. Is there some D&D PVP arena out there? Elven Accuracy is so good that we need to nerf
crits instead of issuing functional errata on the broken feat?
I agree, they're a better design now.