Anyway, if Shield of Faith is popular at your table, I would expect Warding Bond to be popular too.
Heh. From a tactical perspective, I agree with you 100%. But, sadly, you don't know my players.
They are smack-talking, manhood-measuring, ally-robbing, NPC-killing murder-vagabonds. The only time they're happy to cast spells on other PCs is when it's a "broken arrow" area-of-effect damage spell. They shed a few crocodile tears, then explain with wide-eyed innocence that it's an "efficient" choice that they're targeting the
fireball on the rest of the party, because the surrounding enemies will take even more damage than the targeted PCs.
Then the caster screams "yessssss!" and vigorously thrusts his hips when the PC rogue rolls a natural "1" on his Dex save.
They'll rush over to a fallen and dying PC ally who has a
healing potion on their body, grab the potion, then drink it themselves because they've taken a few hits. "Don't worry, bro. You only have 1 death box. You'll stabilize".
When they open treasure chests, the most common action is to immediately go for a Sleight of Hand to purloin the most obviously valuable item. I've seen a
paladin attempt this. A CG-aligned paladin, but still...
In tactical combat, it's a regular sight to see an AC 21 fighter retreat behind an AC 13 wizard to avoid onrushing enemies, as long as he wins initiative. "Don't worry, bro. You can always cast
shield... Ooooh! Three critical hits! That's
gotta hurt! Bwahahahaaha!"
During the days of 4e, they managed to lose 232 characters.
In 4e. I kept a record of every one. They've lost 87 characters (and we're on our 7th campaign) in 5e so far. And they love it. They will never change their behaviors, because there's nothing they find funnier than screwing over another player. This is how they play D&D; this is how they unwind after work, and without their kids around. Now, imagine what that's like for me as their DM for more than a decade...
In summary... no,
warding bond doesn't seem to get a lot of play at my table. Strange, eh?
