D&D 5E An Argument for Why Paladins are the Strongest Class in 5E D&D

Finally, in 5e we have the Paladin class that we wanted. In 2e and 3e this holy warrior was sub par. But now...

• Really High Nova DMG. (You can also keep Str at the initial 14-15 and take Gauntles of Ogre Power/Girdle of Giant Strenght ASAP)
• To strengthen your entire party: Auras. Aura of Protection of course, but also Aura of Devotion, Aura of Courage, and eventually magic resistence from your Holy Avenger. (I will also choose Inspiring Leader Feat)
• Healing & Utility spells. So that you can be a good Tank. Plus, Banishment rules!
• Social Pillar: High Persuasion. You can be the Face and the leader of your party (no need to leave the leadership to those puny Bards or Sorcerers), as Is convenient for your Noble background.
• If you want, you can fight mounted, at little or no detriment of your other abilities.
• No MAD for ability scores (you need only high Cha, decent Con and Str) or for magic items (you really need two: Gauntles/Girdle and a magic weapon, ideally an Holy Avenger), maybe a bit for feats.

Yeah, this is the Paladin I always wanted.

The only class that is strongest in 5e is wizard. Diviner Wizard.

But then you have the stink of Paladin all over you. That's at least a -2 to all social interaction, plus the general ennui and existential angst that comes from spending too much time that close to some god's d-bag hitman.

Enrico Poli1 said:

Finally, in 5e we have the Paladin class that we wanted. In 2e and 3e this holy warrior was sub par. But now...

• Really High Nova DMG. (You can also keep Str at the initial 14-15 and take Gauntles of Ogre Power/Girdle of Giant Strenght ASAP)
• To strengthen your entire party: Auras. Aura of Protection of course, but also Aura of Devotion, Aura of Courage, and eventually magic resistence from your Holy Avenger. (I will also choose Inspiring Leader Feat)
• Healing & Utility spells. So that you can be a good Tank. Plus, Banishment rules!
• Social Pillar: High Persuasion. You can be the Face and the leader of your party (no need to leave the leadership to those puny Bards or Sorcerers), as Is convenient for your Noble background.
• If you want, you can fight mounted, at little or no detriment of your other abilities.
• No MAD for ability scores (you need only high Cha, decent Con and Str) or for magic items (you really need two: Gauntles/Girdle and a magic weapon, ideally an Holy Avenger), maybe a bit for feats.

Yeah, this is the Paladin I always wanted.

The only class that is strongest in 5e is wizard. Diviner Wizard.

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I think it is a bit much to assume you are just going to get Gauntlets of Ogre Power/Girdle of Giant Strength and a Holy Avenger all in one campaign. I'd say one of those, maybe, and then probably just the Gauntlets. I don't feel like any magic items should just be assumed to get in a campaign. Especially Legendary ones.

I've already said my peace on the Paladin aura.

They do have decent healing/utility spells but not overwhelmingly so.

Any CHA based character by default is decent in the social pillar. I don't think this is necessarily something to force the Paladin into. Any character can be the face of the party. I actually like characters being the face of the party that aren't high CHA characters. Makes it more fun than roll persuasion/intimidate/deception with your + 17 maxed out, expertise skill set every social encounter.

Anyone can fight mounted with little or no detriment to their character. Hell, even the "mounted" subclass Cavalier isn't really much better at mounted combat than a wizard.

Paladins are kinda MAD, again, not assuming magic items. You need high STR and CHA and a decent CON for being in melee. You can lower MAD by just taking a few levels in Hexblade which gives you CHA to attack/damage plus some free short rest smite slots but that's another topic/thread.

I think the Aura save bonus should be capped at the Charisma bonus or half the paladin's proficiency bonus, whichever is lower so that it doesn't monkey with the maths too much. +1 to +3 is still pretty sweet. The risk is otherwise that DMs are tempted to tease up save DCs to keep challenging the group and that screws up everyone outside the Aura.

I also think that their Divine Smite power should be limited to twice per round to prevent the worst outlier abuse builds and that boosting damage to attacks with spell slots should be limited to once per round. Once the damage spike per round is brought under control, they're great.

I find Paladins are a bit MAD between a casting stat, combat stat, and CON for hit points and concentration. Multiclassing helps but that also delays access to abilities.

I mean, I guess if a person continues the time honored tradition of "no I really did roll those scores at home while no one was looking" paladins are so famous for.

Minigiant said:

In that "single target melee Nova" niche they can't be beat. The Big Paladin lobbied hard to make Paladins the Kings of SMITE!.

They and the Bard lobby got their money's worth.

I wish the Ranger lobby was so organized. But we all want different things and half our gold goes to funding different genocides. More Demonbane arrows, you fools!

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LOL, that bard lobby group was soooo huge compared to rangers.

It's more likely the few of us who bothered to respond on bards ended up with each carrying more impact than all the people who didn't care enough to bother. What impacted rangers was the design decision to restrict action economy more that "lobbying".

I'm not a fan of any class that can run through its daily resources in under a minutes, and paladins surpass even wizards in that capacity.

While I'd prefer to address the issue by simply making a nova strategy sub-optimal, I'm really not sure that it can be done, given the basic 5E framework.

At level 1 a Paladin kind of sucks. It is basically a Fighter without a fighting style. Five points of Lay on Hands is handy, but for self healing I'd rather have a second wind, and it really pails next to being a heavy armor granting domain cleric who can throw down Healing Word along with a slew of other magical talents.

At second level Paladin basically jumps up a mile. They get a ridiculous amount of stuff, and are, depending on level, at or near the top at least through the second tier of play, and few things up overall group effectiveness like Paladin auras.

Eventually the quadratic-ness of spellcasters will always crush all else.

Aebir-Toril said:

No other class is able to function across so many domains (front lines, healer, assassin) so effectively, and the oath of a Paladin is little constraint at most tables.

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So far as I see front line fighting is the only real claim a Paladin can make to being more versatile than a Bard. They are not a full spellcaster, and their claim to skills basically consists of having high charisma, if you actually prioritize that in your build for a rather MAD class. I'd say if we are talking about choice in terms of building towards a variety of talents Bard is the clear winner. In terms of what versatility of talents a particular character can simultaneously have, it's a bit of a squeaker.

To me the Achilles heel of the class is simply that, mechanically, Paladins all feel basically the same, whereas I'm in a group where I and another player are both Wizards and my conjurer focused on utility, and elemental damage plays and feels way different from his necromancer focused on psychic damage and raising the dead. The variety of spell list simply creates an extreme versatility in both theme and playstyle. Several other classes have rather robust variety in build types based on spell types, subclasses, or, in the case of the fighter, just being intended to accommodate several radically different types of combat builds.

But that is by no means to say that Paladins don't rock the damned house down doing what they're built for.

TwoSix said:

As for the cluster of PCs, I look at it the other way; the best way to avoid a fireball is to stand far apart so that no one bothers to cast a fireball on you. Clustering around the paladin just makes a generally poor tactical decision (grouping up tightly) into a less bad but still bad decision, unless single target but strong save effects are being deployed.

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What percentage of encounters in your campaign involve monsters using fireballs (or dragon breath or similar)? Clustering around the paladin is helpful against so many more creatures in the MM than it is harmful because of the odd AoE attack.

Sabathius42 said:

What percentage of encounters in your campaign involve monsters using fireballs (or dragon breath or similar)? Clustering around the paladin is helpful against so many more creatures in the MM than it is harmful because of the odd AoE attack.

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In the game I'm DMing, I guess about half? Game started at 9th, currently 12th, and the party runs into a lot of spellcasters.

In the games I play, probably about a third to a half. We only have one paladin, and in that game I play an archer, so grouping up isn't really viable for me. The barbarian and the cleric have benefited from the paladin aura a few times, though. Still, we've been hit with various cleaves and area attacks enough that we tend to stay apart unless we know something has a strong effect that requires saves.

Ashrym said:

LOL, that bard lobby group was soooo huge compared to rangers.

It's more likely the few of us who bothered to respond on bards ended up with each carrying more impact than all the people who didn't care enough to bother. What impacted rangers was the design decision to restrict action economy more that "lobbying".

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It really more that the paladin, warlock, and bard came into their archtypes in 3e. 4e showed how they look at at full power. So all 5e had to do is revert the 4e versions into a more traditional frame. Ranger and Sorcerer didn't get such solidification.

So Paladin hits all the aspects of its expected archetype and was free to power them up. Combined that with compatibility of how many people play....