New UA Paladin Sacred Oaths are Oath of Conquest and the Oath of Treachery

I'm disappointed about no Oath of Liberty, but I'll take a look at what they are bringing, when they get around to getting the page to work.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I wish they would stop making the paladin flavour texts clearly "good" or clearly "evil".

Some of the wording of conquest could do with an adjustment that would make it much more generally useful. Currently the oath very much sounds like it prohibits you from being a member of an organization: Judge Dredd doesn't fit here because he's a policeman, not a ruling dictator.

The flavour text is far too heavy on "this is a bad guy".

Douse the flame of hope is fine as an oath: good or evil, having your foes NOT rise again is great.

Rule with an iron fist: Also fine, but perhaps remove the "once you have conquered".

Strength above all: This one is where it kind of falls apart, because it's the only one that forces you to rule. If you take this away, you can have Batman (willing to sort the place out, but unwilling to rule) and Judge Dredd (a member of an order keeping organization) under this Oath. Perhaps change it to "Never compromise: There is no partial compliance. There is no deal making. There is only law. Be strong enough to enforce it or fall to your own ruin".

Similar with the oath of treachery: if you're not going to give it tenets, then you can't really say "these guys are evil". Either give it a set of tenets revolving around making other people break oaths, tear down authority and generally free themselves from expectation OR cut the evil flavor text and make it a path you end up on if you don't fulfil your oath, but don't want to consort with demons and undead.

Also interesting note, my reading suggests that treacherous strike will let you make a foe hit themselves. Which is great, because it means it doesn't stop working against a solo foe.

 

[Jester David]

Not good enough.

Otherwise, why have an open playtest at all? Why did they have an open playtest of 5e, and classes WOTC clearly knew people wanted? Even on concepts WOTC already "knows" people want, feedback on whether the execution of it is headed in the right direction is important?

First, it's barely a playtest. It's a concept test.
How many people do you actually think are testing these classes via play?
Giving away everything, including the content that doesn't need as much testing, turns these articles into previews.

Second, WotC is a business. They're not going to give away the entire contents of a book to publically test. Even Paizo doesn't do that for their mass playtests.
If they give away everything, fewer people will buy the final product. And that's a foolish move.

Third, releasing everything reduces the amount of useful feedback gained. There's more content to be absorbed, so small details will be missed in order to absorb it all. The amount of discussion won't significantly change, just the percentage per new option: fewer people are going to be talking about each new option. There's higher odds certain options will catch the attention at the expense of other more fringe options.

Fourth, they are getting feedback. From the private friends & family playtest groups. They've been testing and looking at options for years.

Example: The recent Fighter UA. People have wanted an Arcane Archer for a while. But we'd also like to see the first drafts of how WOTC plans to execute bringing it about. As we've seen from the feedback, they're not exactly on the right track. Useful information.

Which is probably why we saw the arcane archer at all.
Very likely there was some internal concerns and mixed feedback from the F&F playtesters, so they decided to get wider opinions. To see if it worked for fighters, or if it would be better for rogues or rangers or wizards.

 

[CrusaderX]

I'm very disappointed they didn't give us an Oath of Liberty. Maybe someday.

 

[The Human Target]

So...

Death Cleric and Oathbreaker Paladin= must be evil.

Treachery Paladins and Hell Knights= no alignment restrictions?

What?

 

[BookBarbarian]

I think they look mechanically interesting and different from the Oaths we already have. That's a good thing.

Like other's I'm not so interested in tying Conquest to Hellknights, but that's easily fluffed away.

Regarding Treachery I link it's poorly named. There's nothing about it that really ties it to betrayal/treachery, though the abilities it gets would certainly help one who wishes to betray others. I think they should have gone a simpler route and named it Oathless since it has no Tenets. Or they should have come up with a better way to say Oath of Selfishness. I do think it makes a better Blackguard than Oathbreaker, which got necromantic abilities for for breaking it's Oath somehow.

 

[gweinel]

Although the UA was so far more miss than hit, this one was really unexpected. I really LOVED Oath of Conquest.

The God of War and Conquest and his mercenary units have now a new champion!

 

[BookBarbarian]

So...

Death Cleric and Oathbreaker Paladin= must be evil.

Treachery Paladins and Hell Knights= no alignment restrictions?

What?

I think removing alignment restrictions was always a good idea. I ignore them for Death Clerics and Oathbreaker Paladins.

I for one don't think there is anything inherently evil in Treachery's abilities, just a double dose of sneakiness and selfishness. If I can play a Good Rogue, I can play a Good Treachery Paladin. Conquest on the other hand... I think it's hard to justify conquering and subjugating as not evil but if anyone can do it it'll be my players ;-)

 

[Duan'duliir]

I just realised that the Treachery capstone says the bonus damage is equal to the paladin's level. Why bother saying that if it's always going to be 20 damage?

I doubt it, but future proofing for epic level play?

- Zynx, from the EN World mobile app

 

[Connorsrpg]

Oath of Conquest
Like it. Seems that the 7th & 15th level powers could both go to 7th level. Making room for a better 15th feature - even a reduced version of the 20th level feature.

 

[The Human Target]

I think removing alignment restrictions was always a good idea. I ignore them for Death Clerics and Oathbreaker Paladins.

I for one don't think there is anything inherently evil in Treachery's abilities, just a double dose of sneakiness and selfishness. If I can play a Good Rogue, I can play a Good Treachery Paladin. Conquest on the other hand... I think it's hard to justify conquering and subjugating as not evil but if anyone can do it it'll be my players ;-)

I agree with alignment restrictions being pretty stupid.

However, they exist for the paladin and it's weird for them to be absent here.

Especially two builds that scream evil in the flavor text.