D&D 5E Narratively Nonmagical Paladin

[Voadam]

I am playing a 5e paladin in a new campaign and I have been playing him as narratively non-magical. Smites are anime super punches hitting really hard. Lay on hands is 4e warlord style encouragement restoration of hp. Detect evil is picking up on the literal but faint smell of fiends. I plan on having all my spells be either healing or saved for smites.

This is in part to contrast to the other paladin in the group who is a backwoods half-elf all natural work out bro nature paladin who is very hippy spiritual and theistic of a good nature god.

I could see specific paladin spells being issues for my narrative conceit, but sticking to healing and smites seems to cover most of that. Anything else I should be thinking about that could trip things up?

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Anti-magic effects are rare, and Paladins rarely have spells dangerous enough to want to counter or dispel, so the actual rules interactions that distinguish spells and other abilities shouldn't be an issue most of the time.

Most buffs like Bless or Heroism could be flavoured as inspiring or combat advice. The other spells they get are the detection ones mostly which you seem to have covered by the character picking up on faint or subliminal clues.

It is a little awkward having to do it this way, but possible. Playing a Bard as a non-magical tactician is about as close as my group has got to an actual Warlord for example, and it worked out mostly OK.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

Most of their abilities should be fine, there are some very magical stuff like that capstone that can make you fly, but it's easy to avoid.

For lower level stuff most likely to come up, the Find Steed spell is extremely useful, but can be hard to justify depending on where the party is.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Would help to know your subclass, since that's what determines your Channel Divinity options. I'm guessing not Ancients, since that's already covered by hippie paladin. Redemption and Crown taking damage on someone else's behalf would be pretty tricky to explain, though you might flavor it as the attack hitting you instead of them (or, with your DM's permission, allow it to move you to being between the target and the origin of the attack, the "fall on the grenade" idea.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Man, this is something I miss about Castles & Crusades. There, both the paladin and ranger are non-magical by default, and if you want spells for them, you need to do the class-and-a-half multiclassing. And since you can multiclass into whatever spellcasting class you want/can qualify for, we had a ranger who had cleric spells alongside a ranger with traditional druidic magic. It was a great system. (It also gave you a 20-level version of the 3E assassin prestige class, if one added illusionist spells to the non-magical assassin class.)

 

[Voadam]

Would help to know your subclass, since that's what determines your Channel Divinity options. I'm guessing not Ancients, since that's already covered by hippie paladin. Redemption and Crown taking damage on someone else's behalf would be pretty tricky to explain, though you might flavor it as the attack hitting you instead of them (or, with your DM's permission, allow it to move you to being between the target and the origin of the attack, the "fall on the grenade" idea.)

I haven't picked one yet, we just started the campaign and just advanced to second level. Narratively so far vengeance seems a possibility as we start off being wronged by a bunch of people (a judge, a king, etc. in a LE type society) and I've already brought up composing death curses. Glory from Tasha's seems kind of appropriate too as he's been a heroic male model type of guy so far.

I am not familiar with the Crown oath, where is it from?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I haven't picked one yet, we just started the campaign and just advanced to second level. Narratively so far vengeance seems a possibility as we start off being wronged by a bunch of people (a judge, a king, etc. in a LE type society) and I've already brought up composing death curses. Glory from Tasha's seems kind of appropriate too as he's been a heroic male model type of guy so far.

I am not familiar with the Crown oath, where is it from?

Not surprising, it's from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. TL;DR: You're a paladin bound to a monarch, rather than a principle.

 

[Voadam]

Not surprising, it's from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. TL;DR: You're a paladin bound to a monarch, rather than a principle.

Yeah, that's not happening for this character. The king of the land we are in instructed judges to convict large numbers of people so they'd have convicts to send into dangerous dungeons in search of a legendary magical cure for his daughter. The judges then have widely used their authorities to pretextually arrest non-citizens and press-gang them into Dungeon Crawl Classics style meat grinder funnel dungeons with promises of citizenship if we made it through and vast rewards if we recovered the healing MacGuffin.

That was the backdrop for game one where we were shackled and led to the dungeon entrance, given a short sword each, and sent in with crossbow soldiers at the entrance to prevent ditching.

Vengeance seems possible for the wrongful conviction and my composing a death curse in game one. But also rappelling down a tunnel with a fellow PC on my back, and killing a carrion crawler climbing up the tunnel to eat convicts by dive bombing to knock it to the ground for lethal falling damage. Then there is the extraplanar world threat we uncovered in the dungeon so order of the Watchers from Tasha's is another possibility.

 

[bedir than]

Yeah, that's not happening for this character. The king of the land we are in instructed judges to convict large numbers of people so they'd have convicts to send into dangerous dungeons in search of a legendary magical cure for his daughter. The judges then have widely used their authorities to pretextually arrest non-citizens and press-gang them into Dungeon Crawl Classics style meat grinder funnel dungeons with promises of citizenship if we made it through and vast rewards if we recovered the healing MacGuffin.

That was the backdrop for game one where we were shackled and led to the dungeon entrance, given a short sword each, and sent in with crossbow soldiers at the entrance to prevent ditching.

Vengeance seems possible for the wrongful conviction and my composing a death curse in game one. But also rappelling down a tunnel with a fellow PC on my back, and killing a carrion crawler climbing up the tunnel to eat convicts by dive bombing to knock it to the ground for lethal falling damage. Then there is the extraplanar world threat we uncovered in the dungeon so order of the Watchers from Tasha's is another possibility.

It'd be simple to have the Crown swear their oath to the people, rather than the unjust leader

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

It'd be simple to have the Crown swear their oath to the people, rather than the unjust leader

yeah, a Crown paladin could swear an Oath to the ideal of an enlightened ruler or replacing the current tyrant by a just and wise leader.

Or having their oath toward the sick daughter, swearing to cure her so that no one else would be forced to delve in death traps.

Conquest paladin could be a good idea to conquer the dungeon then go back against the king and take his crown.

My favorite (and probably the less magical paladin) would be a Glory paladin, turning the dungeon delving into some kind of personal challenge vs a death sport. A dungeoneering gladiator if you like.