D&D 5E On Past Tenses and Paladins

lowkey13 said:

Oh, the confusion. What if the fair damsel falls in love with the Paladin, as well?*

She goes back to the townfolk and says, "I am smitten by the Paladin!"

Should they react with outrage because he smote her?

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lowkey13 said:

Also, one sounds really funny (smote) and one rhymes with kitten.

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BoldItalic said:

Here, I think, we are on safer ground. There is an important difference between her saying "I am smitten by the paladin" and "I am smitten with the paladin".

Unless an ogre picked up the paladin and used him as an improvised weapon to bludgeon the unfortunate maiden (and who could blame him?), in which case she would indeed have been smitten with a paladin.

Tricky stuff, words.

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lowkey13 said:

So while reading another thread about Paladins, I got to thinking about smiting. Because OF COURSE the Paladin in the party is going to be smiting, and OF COURSE that Paladin is going to be #humblebragging about the smiting- because he's a Paladin. After all, Paladins run on inflated charisma and smug.

So the question is, how should the Paladin properly #humblebrag when recounting his tales of smiting yet another beast. You know, "Yada yada yada and then I used my Divine Smite* on Tiamat yada yada yada ..."

I ask this for the following reasons-

1. Because I'm a pedant.

2. Because I wanted to get the opinion of a Fellowship of Pedants.

3. Because I wanted to annoy people that play Paladins by correcting them.

Anyway, I thought of the following variations (along with a poll!)-

A. Smote.
B. Smited.
C. Smitten.
D. Smiting.
E. Smat.
F. Circumlocution (In the past, I used divine smite on Tiamat, and it was awesome!).
G. Doesn't matter. You shouldn't play a Paladin.



*Because all stories involving Paladins necessarily involve divine smite.

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