D&D 5E Paladin Pole-arm Master damage

[Pauln6]

Our current campaign includes an optimised tunnel fighting polearm master paladin and it's becoming obvious that the build is too powerful compared to the other PCs.

Are there any simple solutions that could reign in this build without screwing over other similar builds?

Options I thought of were:

General paladin fix: Improved Divine Smite: Whenever you hit a creature with a melee weapon, the creature takes an additional 1d8 radiant damage. You can deal this damage no more than twice per turn.

Tunnel Fighter: While in your defensive stance, you can make a number of opportunity attacks without using your reaction equivalent to your proficiency bonus.

 

[Shiroiken]

Not familiar with Tunnel Fighter, but the paladin has only one major weakness: fighting at range. Flying creatures and blocking terrain absolutely ruin their combat, because they lack any significant ranged attacks. Even Dex based paladins suffer this issue, as you can't smite at range.

Hordes are also a bit of a problem for paladins, because even with the PAM extra attack, they just can't do crowd control as well as an AoE spell.

 

[Pauln6]

Not familiar with Tunnel Fighter, but the paladin has only one major weakness: fighting at range. Flying creatures and blocking terrain absolutely ruin their combat, because they lack any significant ranged attacks. Even Dex based paladins suffer this issue, as you can't smite at range.

Hordes are also a bit of a problem for paladins, because even with the PAM extra attack, they just can't do crowd control as well as an AoE spell.

The issue with Tunnel Fighter is that in combination with polearm master, it allows unlimited attacks on enemies who approach so the real problem is the extra damage from divine smite multiplying across many many attacks.

 

[Krachek]

Change PAM attack from opportunity to simple reaction,

 

[Pauln6]

Similar to Sentinel? That looks simple and effective and preserves the intention of the stance.

 

[Krachek]

Yes, it also break the combo sentinel—PAM, which is a bonus.

 

[Oofta]

The devs have stated that UA options may well be unbalanced, that they throw them out there in potentially broken state just to see what breaks. So you may need to tweak the feat to make it work for your group.

But the other problem seems to be the style of adventure being run. I almost never do dungeons, so I'm not sure how big of an issue this would be in my campaign. After the first "wave" gets smacked around the enemy learns and avoids that PC. If you are literally doing dungeon crawls and the enemy has no other routes, that is partially the fault of the design of the encounter.

Best solution? Work with the player. Talk to them about your concerns and figure out a way to fix the issue. Maybe tweak the feat, say it can't be used against creatures more than 5 feet away, limit it to certain number of attacks, just don't allow UA material, etc.

On a side note, paladins can be quite powerful if the group rests as often as they want, if you're only getting a couple of fights between rests their smites will be a big power boost.

 

[Salthorae]

The problem isn't with PAM or Paladin, though as @Oofta notes they are both powerful in their own right.

The issue is using an Unearthed Arcana Fighting Style from 2015 in concert with those other things. I would assume that if it didn't make it into play in the last 4 years, that it was probably deemed problematic in some way.

Could be the unlimited Opp. Attacks it grants!

 

[Oofta]

The problem isn't with PAM or Paladin, though as @Oofta notes they are both powerful in their own right.

The issue is using an Unearthed Arcana Fighting Style from 2015 in concert with those other things. I would assume that if it didn't make it into play in the last 4 years, that it was probably deemed problematic in some way.

Could be the unlimited Opp. Attacks it grants!

I didn't think to check the date - it's a good reason to not use UA articles without considering it's impact. They aren't rules for the game, they're beta versions of rules that may or may not work in practice.

 

[jgsugden]

Tunnel fighter is the problem. If you change it to grant one extra reaction per turn that can only be used for an OA and it becomes more reasonable, but it is one of the few features from UA articles that I do not allow.