I have a new proposal at the bottom. First though, some points have been brought up that deserve to be addressed.
Regarding my claims that Oath of Devotion is the only subclass where both Channel Divinity options are situational:
Oath of Ancients...and one that is easy for high-STR or high-DEX enemies to make a save against.
Sure. But every attack has a chance to miss too. It isn't the strongest option. But it is a perfectly reasonable option to try in any fight that involves melee.
Oath of Vengeance has one situationally useful CD and one that is fantastic but only used against bosses.
I'm not sure which one you are counting as which. Abjure Enemy is the one that looks more situational to me (though even then, I'm not sure if I would go that far, since you can use it to good effect in most fights). Vow of Enmity is your real bread and butter option. You might not use it on a 7 hp kobold, but any fight with more than a collection of mooks is going to benefit from this. And because it only takes a bonus action, you don't have to sacrifice your action to use it.
Oath of the Crown has one situational CD and another that's pretty mediocre in general.
Champion Challenge is something you can use most of the time. Turn the Tide is more situational, but the situation comes up fairly regularly. I might say one of them is just over the situational line, and one of them is just under. Added together, Oath of the Crown is usually going to be able to benefit from at least one of these in a fight.
Oath of Redemption has two incredibly situational CDs that are moreso than Devotion on their worst day.
? Rebuke the Violent is going to trigger almost every fight, unless your paladin is the only one taking any hits.
So, no, not every other subclass has "at least one non-situational, bread and butter ability."
I think we might just have different perceptions about how often some of those abilities come up, but in case I wasn't clear on what I mean by bread and butter abilities, I'll clarify. For every other paladin subclass I have at least one Channel Divinity option that I can benefit from using in just about any fight, and I'm just waiting to decide whether it's better to use it in this fight, or see if there is a better fight to use it in before our next short rest. That's the decision point, "Do I use it in this fight, or wait for the next one?" With Oath of Devotion, I have two situational abilities. I'm not asking myself "do I use it?" each fight. Rather, I'm waiting for a fight to come up where I think, "Hey, I can use my Channel Divinity here!"
This is going to make a huge difference in how often Channel Divinity gets used. Oath of Devotion just can't use their Channel Divinity class feature the same way as the others can, because of that lack of a non-situational option. They have to see the class feature itself in a different way. I don't like that.
As several posters above have mentioned, it's not just for ambushes. The thing lasts 10 rounds. If you're in a situation where you expect combat to happen within the minute, which is pretty often, go ahead and pop it and you'll still get use out of it.
In my experience there are very few situations where I can expect combat to happen in the next minute if I'm not making it happen by surprising the enemy. As soon as you declare a hostile action in a situation where both sides can see and interact with each other, initiative is rolled. About only way you can pre-cast is if your opponents are not aware of your presence. I mean, I suppose you could stand at the front door of a dungeon, buff up and then start running in, kicking in each door until you find something to fight. But hopefully you're going to check for traps and do a bit of evaluation in each room, which means you can't reasonably expect opponents to show up before the spell wears off, unless you already know they are there.
You can pre-cast spells when your opponents are aware of your presence, assuming you can't yet interact (say you're in different rooms with a closed door). But at that point they can also prepare and pre-cast any spells they might have. If they don't have spells, well that's just caster advantage for the party I guess. The point is that you are either in an ambush situation, or the other side is getting time to prep also.
You are mistaken. Redemption is the weakest, by far. And Crown is usually considered not much better; it's saved by one Oath spell from being at the very bottom. Devotion is average or slightly above average.
I only said it was viewed as the weakest PHB Oath. I haven't personally analyzed that claim, but I've seen it made and nothing that I can see in the PHB immediately leads me to disagree. I reference it as a way to assuage my concern over improving any feature of the paladin powerhouse at all. If this is indeed one of the weaker subclasses, than improving a problematic feature it has is less likely make it outpace the best subclass options.
My issue with sacred weapon proposal. It pretty much becomes the beat channel divinity in the game for any paladin if you make it a bonus action.
You're right. I don't like my proposed fix either, because it is too powerful. I have a new idea that I'll describe below.
I think there are a lot of situational times that it's good that ends up with it being a positive bonus.
Here's some off the top of my head.
1. Sometimes it doesn't take up an attack - like when the foe start more than one move away but less than two - you can move and activate.
...
5. Evaluating it in a vacuum is all we can do but not the full picture. Say the first round against tough opponents is "buff the pally" time and you beat your party with initiative. Missing an action for unbuffed attacks to later make the buffs you receive even more effective due to bonus to hit and damage may be worth it.
6. Say and average combat lasts 4 rounds. (Someone else said 3 and then more for harder.) If you have a 65% chance to hit and average 12 points per hit with 2 attacks, that's 15.6 per action for 62.4 total for four rounds. With +4 hit/damage you'd have 90% chance to hit for 12 points of damage with 2 attacks, that's 21.6 per action for 64.8 for three rounds. Huh, seems like it does more damage just off the cuff.
EDIT:
@rczarnec corrected me that it only adds to hit, so I updated the examples above.
For #1, Ready tends to be a good option there. If you are assuming you will be able to make a melee attack with them next turn, then you are assuming they are also moving to engage rather than trying to stay at range, so they are probably going to charge you. This isn't always the case, but I think it comes up enough to be a strong contender for that Action.
For #5 and #6, the math will tell. It looks like you've made a mistake in having a +4 mod increase accuracy from 65% to 90% instead of only to 85%. I think you'll find that if you recalculate things, it will take 4-5 rounds across the board (I've tried it at a few levels with both sword and board and greatsword) for giving up your action to break even or exceed the damage output of just taking the Attack action on the first round. One thing I will point out though, is that the higher your Charisma relative to your Strength, the better benefit you can get from this feature, but it still is unlikely to change those numbers unless you are rocking like a Cha 20 and Str 14 or something (I haven't done the math on that particular element).
What about shield of faith? Also a bonus action so can be done in the same round, worthwhile if you plan to wade into combat.
That's the best suggestion I've heard. If you know opponents are going to be able to get into melee range and attack you before you next turn, then this is a similar option to
compelled duel. It takes a spell slot though just to make the Channel Divinity feature useful.
Or divine favor? Also can be cast in the same round, and a decent bump to future damage.
If you can keep
divine favor up for a few rounds, it will probably let you catch up a round quicker than if you didn't use either feature, but, as with my
compelled duel example, it takes up a spell slot. And if you are planning on spending the slot, then you can just cast
divine favor, skip Sacred Weapon entirely and just attack on the first round, and you'll do more damage overall. So it's actually better to just not use Sacred Weapon at all.
Which highlights that Sacred Weapon just isn't really a good choice.
I'll dispute the premise that devotion paladins are the weakest. Or that the feature needs fixing.
Sacred weapon needs some more thought than vow of enmity - but has enough significant advantages (multiple targets, stacks with advantage) to balance it out.
I only referenced weakest in terms of PHB Oaths.
Once it is up it is superior to Vow of Enmity. But the action economy of getting it up is a huge issue, and ends up making it not worth using the majority of the time, which is my point.
Making sacred weapon a bonus action puts it over the top, and unnecessarily so.
I agree that it makes it too strong. I disagree that a fix is unnecessary.
My revised fix proposal is that when you use Sacred Weapon (as an action) you can make a single weapon attack as a bonus action.
While this is pure benefit at levels 3-4, at level 5 it means you are still giving up one of your attacks to use it.
So how does the math on this one work out? It takes 3 rounds for you to break even or surpass the damage you would do by just attacking all of those rounds (down from 4-5 in RAW). This means that if you assume a fight will hit the average length of 3 rounds, you can use Channel Divinity without fear that you're making yourself less effective than not using it at all. It's worth bringing up here that you need a good Charisma to make this work. I ran numbers with a paladin that started with both Strength and Charisma of 16, and after maxing Strength they turned to Charisma. At higher levels if your Charisma bonus is lagging by 2 or more you aren't going to be breaking even on round 3.
With this fix, the feature is what I'd call "acceptable". If the fight doesn't look like it's going to go the 3 round baseline, then don't bother. Otherwise you can probably use it, though you won't actually be getting much out of it until round 4+. By contrast, Vow of Enmity always benefits you immediately.
