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.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

No, there's no guarantee. But I'm discussing what I think about the situation, not advocating for what would be best for WotC's pocketbook or for my gaming interests. 6e would be a better move creatively, whether I like the result or not, and I care a heck of a lot more about creativity than I do about business. I'm sure they'll be ok, especially since a new game would obviously be designed to appeal to all these new players WotC is courting.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Well, supply and fatigue/strife are more significant factors in LU than their vague equivalents ever were in WotC 5e. But yeah, it's certainly not perfect. Better base to spring from than WotC's IMO though.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

There's more to encounters than draining party resources and causing attrition. There's more to encounters than being tactically challenging. You can still make encounters interesting even if the party is doing less than one encounter per day.

 

[Oofta]

No, there's no guarantee. But I'm discussing what I think about the situation, not advocating for what would be best for WotC's pocketbook or for my gaming interests. 6e would be a better move creatively, whether I like the result or not, and I care a heck of a lot more about creativity than I do about business. I'm sure they'll be ok, especially since a new game would obviously be designed to appeal to all these new players WotC is courting.

But they are designing a game to appeal to the new players. It's called D&D (2024).

 

[Minigiant]

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.

I think this is where some of the 4e Renaissance is getting it's strength.

People slowly realizing that they have to compromise on something to get what they want.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But they are designing a game to appeal to the new players. It's called D&D (2024).

I think there's a fair amount of discussion about whether or not they could be a better job.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think this is where some of the 4e Renaissance is getting it's strength.

People slowly realizing that they have to compromise on something to get what they want.

Agreed. the real questions are:

1. What is it that you want?

and

2. What are you willing to compromise on to get it?

 

[Oofta]

I think there's a fair amount of discussion about whether or not they could be a better job.

Better for whom? Because they did a pretty massive playtest. In addition I don't see you giving a lot of specifics on what would work better, just saying how bad stuff is. At a certain point, it's not a conversation.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Better for whom? Because they did a pretty massive playtest. In addition I don't see you giving a lot of specifics on what would work better, just saying how bad stuff is. At a certain point, it's not a conversation.

I'm hardly the only person who isn't completely sanguine on 5.5, if that matters to you.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

It is completely fair that some people enjoy playing the class in terms of just simple damage dealing. And I agree that a look at the adventuring day is likely a discussion worth having. But I will also say that limiting the paladin to a single smite per turn isn't just addressing the adventuring day. It also addresses the "bag of hitpoints" problem.

Many times people analyzed the paladin's damage, and it was noted as being one of the highest single-target damage dealers in the game. The thing that often held it back simply being that they would run out of resources, but that doesn't address everything.

Consider a mid level paladin, level 12 or so, who is dual-wielding longswords. That Paladin can deal 20d8+15 damage to a single target that is a Fiend or Undead. This is with regular longswords, no crits, and just swinging their weapons and smiting with 2 fourth and a third level slot. That is an average of 105 damage, and not impossible to hit 155 damage on a good series of rolls.

Looking at the Fiends? Even CR 22 fiends are losing 50% of their health to that. Go down to the level these paladins are at, with CR 13 or 15 fiends, and you are dealing 85% or more of their hp in that single round of combat. Which I won't deny feels awesome.. but it means if I want to have a boss monster last more than a single round, then I need to double their HP if a paladin was on the team. I even had a game once where we were in a rather difficult fight with a Demilich, and afterwards I asked the paladin player why they didn't Divine Smite. The reason, they said, is that they wanted the fight to last more than a single round, and if they had used Divine Smite, it would have destroyed the boss almost instantly.

And this was a uniquely paladin effect. Maybe a Battlemaster with Action Surge dumping everything into a single round of combat could get close to this, but the fighter or barbarian in general cannot spike this high. Which is a problem for climatic fights at the end of the day. So I think there were a lot of levels of consideration given to this change.