D&D (2024) 2024 Player's Handbook Reveal #3: "New Paladin"

"the paladin who, if they were in a movie, would ... have impossibly white teeth".


New Paladin preview: here are some notes, focusing on what's new and changes from the playtest materials. Last time we saw the Paladin was in Playtest 6 [=PT6 below].
See also this comparison at D&D Beyond (by someone who saw the video before it was streamed!)

OVERVIEW

• spellcasting starts at level 1, specifically called out as an advantage for multiclassing. (Same for Rangers).
• Lay on Hands and Weapon mastery at 1
• Paladin's smite at 2, along with fighting style.
• NEW: Paladin fighting style restriction is removed (all are available). You may forego fighting style to learn cantrips. [The option to get cantrips was given in Tasha's. They're letting us have it, but it's not called a "fighting style". I suspect this ties to the decision that fighting styles are feats now, and this would be weaker than magic initiate (which also gives a level 1 spell).]
• Paladin's smite gives you the spell Divine smite, with one free casting.
• channel divinity [CD]: uses increase: start with 2, plus 1 on a short rest.
• divine sense in CD option (as in PT6). duration lasts 10 minutes.
• Find steed spell at level 5, cast 1/day with no slot. Redesigned so that spell can be upcast, with a unique steed statblock. [This strongly implies that it's a class-specific spell, not on others' lists. Awesome. (Will a Lore Bard be able to select it? I hope so, and the discussion of spell lists (see below) makes me think they might, since identifying class-specific spells is harder.)]
• Abjure Foes a CD option (given at 9 in PT6)
• Auras are single things, with a single radius, that gain abilities/functionality (not separate auras as in 2014).

SUBCLASSES

Oath of Devotion.

• NEW: Sacred Weapon is part of the attack action. (PT required a Bonus action).
• Smite of Protection (level 15 in PT6)
• Holy Nimbus (level 20) is a bonus action (as in PT6).

Oath of Glory ("...this for me is the paladin who, if they were in a movie, would look at the camera, have impossibly white teeth, with a little sparkle on them as they smile")

• Peerless athlete lasts an hour (as in PT6)
• NEW: Aura of Alacrity affects allies if they enter your aura on their turn (they no longer need to start there)
• Oath of Glory has a new spell at level 17: Yolan's Regal Presence. Created by the Queen of the Elves, and makes others kneel before you and take psychic damage. [It's said that others can cast this spell too -- if right, then it's a 5th level spell and Clerics (likely) will be getting this at level 9. Perhaps he misspoke, and it's a class-specific spell.]

Oath of the Ancients

• Nature's wrath range "has been extended"
• Aura of Warding as in PT6 (resistance to Necrotic, Psychic, and Radiant)
• Undying Sentinel at 15 as in PT6 (you don't return with 1hp, but [?] 3x class level.

Oath of Vengeance

• NEW: Vow of Enmity part of attack action (not Bonus action); can transfer (as in PT6)
• NEW: Level 20 Avenging Angel activated as a Bonus Action, and lasts an hour (not 10 min as in PT6)

NEW RULES

• new area of effect: it's been there since 2014, but hasn't been named. It's for AOE that emanate from a character or monster -- the Emanation.
• new approach to spell lists. Spell list is part of the class description (as we saw with the Artificer). Entries give the school, whether it needs concentration, and required components. [I presume spell descriptions will still be at the back of the book: this is referring to the lists currently on PHB 207-11.]
• oath spell lists, patron spell lists, etc. have all been vetted and updated throughout.

 

[Wolfpack48]

All the reaction to an OP class being nerfed.

 

[mellored]

You don't even need to be Paladin/anything. Just be Bard and you can have the spell. If there's some way to finagle it onto a Wizard, e.g. via Magic Initiate (since Paladins now start as spellcasters), Bladesingers will now make amazing divine smiters. Because that was a subclass that TOTALLY needed a power-up.

Smites using a bonus action is a nerf to every smite build. Not a buff.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Smites using a bonus action is a nerf to every smite build. Not a buff.

So what you're saying is...

Everyone got worse at smiting. But other people became better at stealing it from Paladins than they were before, which is to say, that it became possible at all.

 

[Nadan]

And with MI? Which is what I was arguing about?

And, again, I'm not saying this is BETTER than existing Bladesinger. I'm saying Bladesinger is better at it than a Paladin is. Which, given the sheer number and level of spell slots a Wizard would have, is demonstrably true. And Bladesingers get EA.

Let's do a level by level break down for a bladesinger with MI (pal) and a paladin in term of smite effectiveness shall we? I will skip Feat level.
Lv.1 to 2 wizards really shouldn't be near at front, paladin already start smiting
Lv.3 bladesinger can approach front now, but they need use first turn's BA for bladesong so no first turn smite, paladin don't have this problem as devotion and vengeance can use their feature without action cost. Bladesinger can smite with Lv.2 slot.
Lv.5 Paladin have extra attack, higher chance to land smite now, even highter if doing dex duel-wield build, thanks the nick mastery. Bladesinger can smite with lv.3 slot now but they really shouldn't do that cause it just extra 1d8 than Lv.2 slot.
Lv.6 Bladesinger have extra attack but no first turn smite still, can use BB or GFB.
Lv.7 Bladesinger have Lv.4 slot now.
Lv.9 Bladesinger have Lv.5 slot now, but you only have 1 slot. Paladin got Lv.3 slot now
Lv.10 Both got trait not relate to smite, bladesinger got second Lv.5 slot
Lv.11 Bladesinger got Lv.6 slot but you really shouldn't blow it on smite. Paladin got extra 1d8 per hit, higher dmg per hit using smite than bladesinger. Bladesinger need use 1 level higher slot to have same dmg.

I think this is enough, you can see when it come to smite is bladesinger really better at smite than paladin? I don't think so, more low level slot don't really help it when you got limited to 1 smite per round. Using higher slot to smite can boost dmg up a little bit but it is 1d8 per slot, not really a good trade.
And bladesinger need use first turn's BA for bladesong, or they will burn their slot on Shield very quickly cause you need melee attack to have smite.

 

[mellored]

So what you're saying is...

Everyone got worse at smiting. But other people became better at stealing it from Paladins than they were before, which is to say, that it became possible at all.

We don't know if magic initiate or magic secrets includes paladin spells.

But yes, dipping paladin 1 instead of 2 makes it a bit more accessible.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

The thing everyone forget is, we do have a precedence with Eldritch Blast and Hunter's Mark, which are poachable and there are builds that do benefit from poaching them from Warlock and Ranger. Warlock at least has Eldritch invocations to make it harder to outdo it, but Ranger has nothing and, for example, Paladin or Monk benefited greatly from it.

That might have been partially true 10 years ago (and I believe that Pundit has vastly overstated his influence on the development of 5e), but it hasn't been a factor in a long time.

But if they pushed the game towards being only balancd when played in their way and it still hasn't been fixed, we can easily point out they're at fault for creating the problem.

 

[Var]

Hm, maybe this shouldn't be looked at in isolation?
Summing up a bunch of stuff that was said by others in the last 30 pages. Started out really not liking the BA for Smites change whatsover, slept on it and got to this as my personal bigger picture:

1. 2014 no Subclass Paladin with GWM+PAM could attack 3 times and Smite off all 3. But you probably wanted a crit to actually do that. This resulted in massive outliers that if you get your Nova off, you're down your highest Spellslots for double value (assuming you managed to crit twice) and the encounter is trivialized. But you're also significantly less effective for the rest of the day.
That's undoubtedly fun for the Paladin at least once, but honestly it gets boring trying to pull it off every major encounter all campaign long. Also not so much fun for the DM and likely the other players getting downgraded to side characters in boss encounters. Don't think anyone disagreed here so far that a 1 Smite per Round limit is a reasonable change to address this.

2. Adding in combat/damage relevant Subclass changes.
2024 Paladin with Subclass can use Vow of Enmity or Divine Weapon + attack twice. If we take the 1 Smite per round as a reasonable change for the whole class, you're good to go. Same Action Economy in the opener as 2014. But you gain tactical Flexibility. VoE doesn't eat your BA, Divine Weapon doesn't eat your Action. So you could actually decide to not Smite - or it's simply not worth it for a myriad of reasons.
Maybe you just miss, maybe whatever you're hitting is low HP and smiting is overkill, maybe you really want to cast a Bonus Action Spell or use Lay on Hands (which is very functional healing as a BA). New Paladin is straight up better in those cases.
You're still entirely able to drop a Smite on a Crit to capitalize on outlier level ressource efficiency whenever that happens - now also with the option to use any of the Smites after the fact, not just damage options.
And we get a free use of Smite per day, plus a 2nd charge of combat focussed Channel Divinity, plus CD itself got buffed to longer durations/baked in target swaps for VoE, granting overall higher level of effectiveness.

3. Smites are spells now. First and foremost matters for Counterspell. Which blows at least a 3rd level Spellslot and the Reaction. In a fight where we usually have multiple friends and likely 2+ full casters. And it's against a Con save for a Paladin with Aura, oh and if we fail that save we get the Spellslot back and are merely delayed?
On paper I agree, it's a nerf, straight up. On a real table it mostly makes the DM sweat more - whatever the Wizard can throw at the Encounter is probably gonna be at least as scary as whichever flavor of Smite the Paladin has in mind, but it's still potentially a good chunk of damage and a debilitating effect.

4. Some/most multiclass builds are where you'll really notice the BA Smite the most. Barbarian, Sorcerer, Monk, Barbarian all massively get in the way of having a busy BA baseline class.

5. Weapon Mastery is just a flat out buff for the class overall. Vengeance and Devotion with very easy access to Advantage and bonus chance to hit can make great use of however this shakes out with the revised Feats in detail.

6. Access to all Fighting Styles. If it's the same as the UA we still don't get a regular ranged bow/crossbow option, but Smites work on unarmed (which at worst gives us choices in prisoner etc situations) and ranged attacks with melee weapons like Daggers, Spear, Javelin... you couldn't Smite on those with the 2014 Paladin, let's see if it stays or if they changed it back to a different wording.
Assuming ranged Smites are gone again, we still get at least the Dex TWF build path option with Nick as a new option.


Really missing a lot atm, full Feat overview, other classes to multiclass with and of course general rule changes overall as well as the changes to spells all around. So far this seems like a good starting point for me to be cautiously optimistic.
Worst case the 2014 Paladin nova builds still just gonna be there if you want it in all its glory. It's a choice to make and that's not really bad in my book.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You can even get a "Hexblade Dip" with a feat now: Eldritch Adept for Blade Pact as your background feat, and you're attacking with Cha, smiting with Cha, spellcasting with Cha, etc. (Which, yes, this now means that you can have a Pact without a Patron!) Paladin 1 gives you good starting HP, and heavy armor+shields so you don't even need to pump Dex except for Initiative bonuses. All you pay is your first level (boo hoo, Bards have a crap capstone anyway; even the PT6 capstone was lackluster), a largely-wasted Str 13, and your background feat.

Eldritch Adept is not currently listed as an Origin Feat, so there is no indication you can do this. We also do not know if the Blade Pact will have any prerequisites, it might have a pre-req of "Warlock level 1" or "Pact MAgic Feature" to prevent exactly this use of the feat.

So, at worst, you can do this at Bard level 4, or potentially not at all.

And with MI? Which is what I was arguing about?

And, again, I'm not saying this is BETTER than existing Bladesinger. I'm saying Bladesinger is better at it than a Paladin is. Which, given the sheer number and level of spell slots a Wizard would have, is demonstrably true. And Bladesingers get EA.

The previous Magic Initiate feat could allow bladesingers to get Searing Smite, Thunderous Smite, or Wrathful smite from your same logic. How is this any different from that? Secondly, there is no indication that MAgic Initiate considers paladins to be a viable target for the feat. Since we have class spell lists, it could be back to the 2014 phrasing of allowing you to pick from the bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, warlock, or wizard class. No paladins. Finally, many many many people will likely see it as a waste of a feat to grab Divine Smite from the Paladin list, because Paladins lack cantrips. So you will lose out on the two cantrips to get only Divine Smite. And Divine Smite is not worth a full feat by itself.

I doubt condition smites will have any significant increase in use. The "Dead" condition is by far the most effective CC. The increase in versatility is good, but in practice I don't think it's going to make much of a difference.

Damage over time. Battlefield Control. Fear. Removing invisibility and granting advantage to allies. Flat out Banishment.

I think you underestimate the other smite spells.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

The previous Magic Initiate feat could allow bladesingers to get Searing Smite, Thunderous Smite, or Wrathful smite from your same logic. How is this any different from that?

Because those were just additions, while Divine Smite was a core class feature, that got turned into a spell. And just as Hunter's Mark being a spell and Eldritch Blast beign a cantrip, it now makes what was supposed to be the class' main damage thing into something anyone can get and it's only a matter of time befoire optimizers figure how to out-smite a Paladin.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Because those were just additions, while Divine Smite was a core class feature, that got turned into a spell. And just as Hunter's Mark being a spell and Eldritch Blast beign a cantrip, it now makes what was supposed to be the class' main damage thing into something anyone can get and it's only a matter of time befoire optimizers figure how to out-smite a Paladin.

Okay, now they can choose to take Searing Smite, Thunderous Smite, Wrathful smite, or Divine Smite (if the feat even allows it, which it probably won't) why is it perfectly okay not even worth mentioning if the Bladesinger grabs Thunderous Smite but Divine Smite makes the entire paladin class a trash option with no future? By the way, Paladin's get all four of these, not just one.

What you seem to be missing is that the optimizers have had every single option except Divine Smite this entire time. And none of them built something with that. Now Divine Smite works just like those spells, only with a little more damage. Will someone make a Bladesinger or a Bard that uses a 6th level spell slot to Divine Smite? Maybe. Depends on the wording of Divine Smite doesn't it? Since if the "at higher level" clause gives a max they won't do more damage than the paladin. But this all seems to be running on the worst possible scenario, with a lot of assumptions that are likely flatly not true.