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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Var" data-source="post: 9383705" data-attributes="member: 7022819">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.</blockquote>

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