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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ECMO3" data-source="post: 9292703" data-attributes="member: 7030563">I have seen that in action, and it is not that great as a Nova IME because it is unreliable.  A Paladin's Nova is dependant on smite damage and things which hurt your chance to hit kill this.  You can get very high numbers with good rolls, but a regular Paladin who took ASIs is going to average more on his Nova turn.  In another words you CAN nova harder with a PAM/GWM but you very rarely WILL nova harder than a more traditional paladin due to the awful attack bonus needed to do better than a guy with just ASIs.With those two feats with -5/+10 you are -7 to your attacks compared to someone who took ASIs. If you are not using the -5/+10 you are -2 on your attack rolls.  You are getting a 3rd attack you can use for smites, but consider TWF is considered weak and a Paladin who took ASIs can use TWF to get 3 attacks (and smites) on a turn with 2 hand axes.  They have a better chance to hit on all 3, meaning a better chance to land a smite on all of three and will do more base damage on the main action attacks even with d6 weapons due to their higher strength.When you really want to Nova though, Paladin's don't get a lot out of PAM because they can cast a smite spell as a bonus action instead, then divine smite on top of that.  You are trading one PAM attack with a possible smite if it hits for a smite spell that will land if either of the two action attacks hit.Banishing Smite as your Bonus action for example is 5d10 extra damage and you have a very good chance of landing that. Blinding Smite, which you get 1 level later than your second feat is 3d8.  You use your bonus for these and if you land either of your main attacks you get the damage on top of the weapon and divine smite damage. Plus, with Blinding Smite you have a decent chance of blinding the enemy on the first attack to get the next attack at advantage, driving up the hit chance and average damage even further.GWM alone would be competitive Nova if you were using Vengence and could get auto advantage, but you are still losing your bonus action the first turn to activate it and you are losing the damage from the bonus action that you would get with a smite spell.  Getting advantage on on both attacks, combined with the extra damage, would probably usually make up for that though.</blockquote>

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