D&D 5E What's Divine Smite Worth?

[Blue]

That's what I would do: delete Divine Smite. The preexisting Smite spells already fill the gap perfectly, while they were largely redundant beforehand.

As long as "fill the gap perfectly" you mean "don't do anything like it".

The existing smite spells take up concentration, so the paladin can't use other concentration spells. They take a bonus action to cast, where most of the ways that melee combatants get extra attacks uses the bonus action so you are denying them the options of all other weapon users. The smite spells applies to your next hit so they can't be applied multiple times in a round and you can't use it on AoO and your normal attacks.

Some of those may be benefits for you, but please don't make the false comparison that the smite spells and divine smite fill the same gap.

I play a paladin and I do use the smite spells occasionally - the extra rider besides straight damage can be quite useful. But the action economy of using my bonus action doesn't fit will with my feat choice of polearm mastery. If we adopted your draconian change, my choice would be to ignore my feat and use one smite a round, putting me well behind the other weapon users in the party in terms of damage dealt and needing to expend daily resources to do it, or to ignore the smite spells completely and do really lousy damage compared to them.

All of that said, all long-rest-resource users do better if there are only one or two encounters per day. The paladin isn't particularly egregious in that regard, full casters are likely worse. On the other hand, given the limited number of spells they run out well before 6-8 encounters per day. A 4th level paladin gets 3 divine smites per day, assuming no spell use. That's 6d8 extra damage for the entire day, a bit more against specific foes. While you can't actually break it up this small, that's 1d8 or less per encounter for 6-8. At 8th level it's less than 3d8 per encounter for 6-8/day. Consider a rogue of that level is doing +4d6 sneak attack per round, say +16d6 if they use their SA four rounds in an encounter.

 

[Blue]

The fact that Divine Smite stacks with other Smite spells is the real issue, IMHO. This gives the Paladin a powerful way to effectively ignore the normal limitation of one spell per turn. Divine Smite may not be a spell, but that's the problem: it does damage equivalent to a spell with no action required, no attack roll, and no restriction on using it with another spell (such as another Smite) which scales with level. So a Paladin can simultaneously burn two spell slots in one action for twice the damage he'd otherwise get.

The fact that he can also wait until he sees the attack roll (look a critical hit!) to decide whether to use that extra spell slot allows a Paladin to break D&D's action economy over his well armored knee.

It's a great sound bite: "If I pretend this thing which isn't a spell is really a spell, then it breaks the spell rules." Hey, it attacks are spells, then Extra Attack breaks the normal limitation of one spell per turn.

So, let's get back to the fact that it isn't a spell, and has been playtested extensively as not a spell, and the spells per turn rule doesn't apply to it since it's still not a spell. Oh, and you can cast more than one spell in a round as long as one taking an action is a cantrip, which can add a lot of damage per round at higher levels. Just as the Warlock.

Now let's see how much it matters. Assuming a 50% to-hit, a paladin levels 1-4 gets to use it every other round - slower than casting once per round. At levels 5-20 with extra attack you get 2 attacks at 50% so it's about once a round. Attacks of Opportunity and feats can increase this some, but it's all coming fromthe same well so even if you deliver an average of 1.5 per round with Polearm Master or Two Weapon Fighting as well as Extra attack, you'll still be running out quickly for later encounters. This is backed up by both theoretical (looking at total spell slots to smite damage) and practical (playing a paladin). As a half-caster, they don't get a lot of slots at the levels increase. That's one of the reasons why trying to balance them with the amount of spells cast by full casters isn't legitimate.

 

[spectacle]

All of that said, all long-rest-resource users do better if there are only one or two encounters per day. The paladin isn't particularly egregious in that regard, full casters are likely worse.

Actually no. A paladin can burn through all his spell slots in a single fight, whereas a full caster won't have enough actions even in a big fight to expend all his slots, except at very low levels.

That's why I favor a once per turn limitation on Divine Smite. It will prevent the paladin from completely overshadowing all other weapon users in short adventuring days, but will have limited effect on longer adventuring days where spell slots rather than actions to use them are the limiting factor.

 

[Ganymede81]

Stuff.

I'm sorry that you'd have to rebuild your character because Divine Smite would not synergize as well with Polearm Mastery, but that's not exactly my problem.

 

[GrumpyGamer]

Divine Smite is the core of the paladins combat routine. I would likely replace it with the fighter extra attack progression, but at that point why not just come up with a new fighter subclass to fulfill the role of the smiteless paladin?

 

[Blue]

I'm sorry that you'd have to rebuild your character because Divine Smite would not synergize as well with Polearm Mastery, but that's not exactly my problem.

Actually, the problem is that you would be denying the extra attacks thgat every other melee character can get from feats to paladins, so it affects the whole game. If that's not your problem, you're really wearing blinders.

 

[Blue]

Actually no. A paladin can burn through all his spell slots in a single fight, whereas a full caster won't have enough actions even in a big fight to expend all his slots, except at very low levels.

That's why I favor a once per turn limitation on Divine Smite. It will prevent the paladin from completely overshadowing all other weapon users in short adventuring days, but will have limited effect on longer adventuring days where spell slots rather than actions to use them are the limiting factor.

You completely ignore that a full caster will have higher level spells with more effect for the same number of actions. 5th level throwing an 8d6 fireball and hitting several foes in a single action will probably do more damage than divine smite for the entire rest of the combat. Say it hits four and two save, that's 24d6 (avg 84 dmg). A paladin hits enough to use up his entire selection of spells (6 times), that's 14d8 (avg 54 dmg).

And the caster still has multiple actions more to add to it, even with cantrips. And for the next battle the caster still has spells but the paladin is completely out.

So no, that doesn't hold water when you actually try it out.

 

[Ganymede81]

Actually, the problem is that you would be denying the extra attacks thgat every other melee character can get from feats to paladins, so it affects the whole game. If that's not your problem, you're really wearing blinders.

Naw, dude, that's your choice; you took that feat in lieu of something else. Anyways, you've already said before that you're perfectly winning to periodically forego your extra polearm attack in favor of a spell smite, so you will get absolutely zero sympathy from me.

 

[steeldragons]

I am not following how what a full caster does/does not have/can do have any bearing on what a paladin does/does not have/can do. A paladin is not, nor should be, viewed/treated/designed as a full caster.

I would equate Divine Smite with a Channel Divinity ability. So either replace it with a Channel of some kind [i.e. create a new one that can apply to any paladin since this has to replace a base class feature] or a (not channeled) power/ability that would emulate a "Channeling: Turn Undead or Aura of Protection" level of power.

 

[Blue]

Naw, dude, that's your choice; you took that feat in lieu of something else.

Why are you so focused on a character that I used as an example? Do you beleive that's the only paladin in 5e that will take a feat to get an extra attack?

As I've stated over and over but you don't seem to address, almost ever way to get one more attack takes the bonus action. Other weapon wielders can take advantage of their bonus damage without needing to forgo those. Your suggested change to the paladin gimps that, or at least makes it an either-or for smite or bonus attack that other classes don't have to make.

Anyways, you've already said before that you're perfectly winning to periodically forego your extra polearm attack in favor of a spell smite, so you will get absolutely zero sympathy from me.

No, you're reading what you want to read. I said they were useful for riders and I used them occasionally. That has been exclusively when I didn't have to opportunity to make a bonus attack with my polearm. Perhaps I dropped my last close foe with normal attacks and didn't have enough move left to get to someone else, or spent my action moving or doing some other non-attack option so the feat doesn't provide a bonus action attack. Reading into something I didn't say doesn't make a strong point.

Look, if you want to house rule it like this and run at your table, go for it. I've looked at how to do house rules to cut expected encounters down to 3-4 a day to better match my DMing preferences and what that would do for short and long rest resource economies vs. mostly at-will economies, and that would be a huge change so I understand tailoring for the feel you want.

I just don't see that in general for the game that divine smite is out of whack that needs a sweeping change. Several times in this thread I back up my statements with numbers and I don't see anyone saying it being too powerful supporting their argument the same way.

Show me paladins staying competitive over reasonably built characters and you'll convince me. There's two issues that different posters are talking about - over the course of a combat where things like extra attacks matter, and over the course of a day where total that can be put out matters.

Can someone show reasonable numbers that support removing divine smite that satisfies both?