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.

 

[Oofta]

I said take or leave, @Oofta . I left 4e, but respected what they did with it and ultimately bear WotC no enmity about it.

If you think the approach that 4E took, basically rewriting how the game and it's actions work, why bother with D&D? There's a ton of games out there, if D&D isn't your thing I simply don't see the point of repeatedly telling people who do like the game how terrible it is. Find a game that does work for you and play it.

 

[SteveC]

So, to claim that the paladin is just a worse version of itself... you would have to be claiming that delivering Divine Smites and literally no other ability was the entire point of the entire class. And if that is true.... then whoo boy, yeah, Divine Smite needed to be reigned in. Because it was overshadowing literally the entire class.

It's interesting that you say this. Having played in several campaigns with Paladins, I'd say that depending on the player, it might as well be the "divine smite class." Now that's depending on the player. I jokingly said to one of my friends "Hey, don't Paladins have a whole list of spells they can use?" That's a player who wants to play simple, direct characters who can do a lot of damage.

And in that game, the question is: did they do more damage than the rest of the group to the point where we were the all smite all the time team? No, they didn't. And I think that's the point. The DM for that game looked at the number of typical encounters for a game day and made it all work out. Sometimes we had an encounter or two to get through and that Paladin had emptied the tank. It taught them how to marshall their resources within the limits of the kind of game we were playing in. They balanced themselves, but only after the DM looked the situation over and did some math.

I haven't played a Paladin yet, but it's next up on the dock. I'm the sort of player who likes complex characters who can do things in various situations, so your analysis makes me think I'll enjoy things.

The nerf to smite is in lieu of having a more difficult conversation about what's involved with an adventuring day. From everything I've seen so far, it looks like that conversation did happen, but we won't have the results shared with us. Addressing the adventuring day is sort of my "white whale" of what to fix in 5XE, so I'll be interested to see what (if anything) they do with it as an official recommendation.

 

[occam]

I've literally never not once in my life seen a DnD adventuring day with 15 combat rounds in it. I do agree with you that WotC designed the game around this playstyle, but it's one of the most glaring reasons for game imbalance, because almost no one plays that way.

As someone who's played D&D for over 40 years, and 5th edition since it was still D&D Next, this sounded odd to me. So I went into my D&D Beyond records for Encounters I've run there, specifically for Lost Mine of Phandalin. When my group raided Cragmaw Castle, there was a total of 21 rounds over 5 encounters. They took two game days to clear out Wave Echo Cave: 36 rounds over 7 encounters on the first day (including one 13-round combat taking down the BBEG), and 28 rounds over 5 encounters on the second.

As @Minigiant pointed out, if you never play dungeons, then maybe you won't see 15 rounds of combat in a game day. But is it a mistake that the game is designed to accomodate dungeon crawls, when Dungeons is literally in the name of the game?

 

[Stalker0]

Having played with an Oath of the Ancients with a 20 cha and str at level 8, yeah, they needed to be toned down. +5 to saves makes a mockery of bounded DC's and resistance to magic damage makes 5E combat even more of a joke than it already was

Yeah I actually remained surprised that at the end of the day, the most "broken" thing about the Paladin (the save aura), was untouched.

And by broken I mean, the most "anti-bounded accuracy" class feature probably in the game. It really does completely change the saving throw game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If you think the approach that 4E took, basically rewriting how the game and it's actions work, why bother with D&D? There's a ton of games out there, if D&D isn't your thing I simply don't see the point of repeatedly telling people who do like the game how terrible it is. Find a game that does work for you and play it.

I did, but I also go where the action is, and I have thoughts about what everyone is talking about. And I explicitly said that I disliked 4e personally. You can respect something and still dislike it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

As someone who's played D&D for over 40 years, and 5th edition since it was still D&D Next, this sounded odd to me. So I went into my D&D Beyond records for Encounters I've run there, specifically for Lost Mine of Phandalin. When my group raided Cragmaw Castle, there was a total of 21 rounds over 5 encounters. They took two game days to clear out Wave Echo Cave: 36 rounds over 7 encounters on the first day (including one 13-round combat taking down the BBEG), and 28 rounds over 5 encounters on the second.

As @Minigiant pointed out, if you never play dungeons, then maybe you won't see 15 rounds of combat in a game day. But is it a mistake that the game is designed to accomodate dungeon crawls, when Dungeons is literally in the name of the game?

For a number of folks, the answer appears to be yes, it was a mistake, and one they seem to have no interest in correcting.

 

[Stalker0]

As @Minigiant pointed out, if you never play dungeons, then maybe you won't see 15 rounds of combat in a game day. But is it a mistake that the game is designed to accomodate dungeon crawls, when Dungeons is literally in the name of the game?

Your right that dungeon crawls still exist. But its equally true that many adventures have long bouts of wilderness exploration, with perhaps a single encounter.

The game narratively has added these in, but mechanically has never well supported both, and that's the issue. Once dnd decided it was going to be more than just a dungeon crawler, it really needed to look under the hood and examine its resource attrition = principal challenge mechanism core tenent. Now some would argue that is exactly what 4e did, tried to shift the power balance from a X daily resource model more into an encounter based one (which is far easier to balance whether you have 1 wilderness encounter in a day or 12 dungeon encounters). I think this is one area that might have gotten lost with 4e's poor reception, and has made us all poorer for it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Your right that dungeon crawls still exist. But its equally true that many adventures have long bouts of wilderness exploration, with perhaps a single encounter.

The game narratively has added these in, but mechanically has never well supported both, and that's the issue. Once dnd decided it was going to be more than just a dungeon crawler, it really needed to look under the hood and examine its resource attrition = principal challenge mechanism core tenent. Now some would argue that is exactly what 4e did, tried to shift the power balance from a X daily resource model more into an encounter based one (which is far easier to balance whether you have 1 wilderness encounter in a day or 12 dungeon encounters). I think this is one area that might have gotten lost with 4e's poor reception, and has made us all poorer for it.

The TSR editions handled outdoor adventuring reasonably well for my money. Level Up even specializes in it. This might be mostly a WotC 5e problem.

 

[Oofta]

I did, but I also go where the action is, and I have thoughts about what everyone is talking about. And I explicitly said that I disliked 4e personally. You can respect something and still dislike it.

You also said that they should take the same approach with 6E that they took with 4E which is what I was discussing. But there's no guarantee you'd like it any more than 4E. Whether or not you "respect" their choice isn't particularly relevant to, well, much of anyone but certainly not to WotC who is in the business of selling a game.

 

[Stalker0]

Level Up even specializes in it. This might be mostly a WotC 5e problem.

Level Up certainly offers a lot more support for exploration in terms of options and things to find and such its true. But in terms of balance resources between rest and non-rest type classes..... in some ways its even more imbalanced now with "nova classes" as there are more things to nova in LU like maneuvers.