That's my usual approach for UA. I've been too excited for these. With the mixed bag that is Paladin 2024, my enthusiasm is more tame. I'll probably wait for Chris' video and commentary to avoid watching future videos twice. My favorite classes, thematically speaking, have always been Paladin, Sorcerer, and Wizard. The first two have often sucked. Even knowing what lay in store, it's tough to see the 5e Paladin get kicked in the nuts. I need time with the books to form strong opinions, but my current feeling is that the desired nerfs could've been implemented in simpler, better ways.
Same, but not as a substitute for the original. I have effectively 0 interest in what a corporation has to say about their own products because they are economically incentivise to be deceptive . It's the added value of an outside person with knowledge of the product that makes it worth watching.
When i watched the livestream I was like "holy shit this thing is so broken!" But that's because they sell every change as a buff, and since i've never played a Paladin i really couldn't find the differences or even how big the nerf on smite was. So this video is quite useful to see a little bit more under the hood of the small details they purposefully let out of the announcements!
@@alvinleonardo1263Don't you get at least one free smite a day? Obviously with the speed change that's not as cool but it does soften the nerf a little bit, if so
"We have fixed your awesome steed! Now it can be cast once for free, and it gets more powerful with upcasting." 20th lvl Paladin - "fear my awesome steed companion, demon scum!" Free casts a donkey... "Hmmm. That didn't turn out the way i hoped."
Free casts at the lowest level of spells where the whole point of the spell design is upcasting potency over base level functionality is such a dumb design conceit. The one free casting needs to scale or it's just a dead feature at higher levels. Kinda makes sense with Smite, makes less sense for Hex and Hunter's Mark, but makes no sense at all with a companion creature.
@@Shalakor absolutely. Just make it cast at your highest spell slot. And if that really offends their balance concerns, make it simply increase the upcast by +1 for free. E.g. you could use a 2nd lvl slot but make it a 3rd lvl upcast with the free cast
Disappointed that the alternate smite spells are not freely known, meaning we'll probably continue to see them almost never used. Playtest Rogue gave us a great framework for trading damage dice for rider effects that would have worked great for smite, but oh well.
That was the whole reason I was hyped about the change. Like it felt fair . You get a whole bunch of free preparations unlike any other class and exchange for a Nerf on your defining feature. But I guess that's probably why it's gone, no other class gets a whole slew of pre-prepared spells like that.
@@SamanthaVimes177From Tasha's, Ranger got several extra spells from the Primal Awareness variant for their Lv. 3 base class feature Don't think they got it in the UA, but a feature like that did exist
That is true, though the current bonus action spell thing is more streamlined ... Paladin will still be a powerhouse, just not so far ahead of the non-casting martials. Honestly, I appreciate that move, giving other players more incentive to play a fighter or barbarian.
I hope the "turning on a state have often now been changed from an action to a bonus action" applies to spells like the _Enlarge_ portion of _Enlarge/Reduce_ or _Tenser's Transformation._
@@roninhare9615what do you mean? Hunters mark already is a bonus action. I could be misunderstanding what either you or the main comment is saying but my interpretation is that they’re saying buff spells that transform you like enlarge will now be bonus actions, which makes them far more usable in combat without needing an ally to cast it onto you. As of now, most of these abilities you just waste a turn so you either have to have a turn to prepare or you just lose a turn. Hunters mark already is a bonus action so I don’t see why it would change.
@@bulldozer8950 sacred weapon is not a transformation, it’s a channel divinity option, and in the play test it was listed as a bonus action and they have since made it apart of your attack action. Hunters mark can get muddled with using bonus actions, if I were to take a stab at it, I would make it so on the first weapon attack on your turn, if your target is not your marked target, you may move your mark as apart of that same attack action. I’ve read many complaints about hunters mark being a bonus action as well as a spell that eats your concentration. In the play test they played with a few ideas for hunters mark and ultimately said they were going to make a “best of” the 2 play tests. I’m speculating, but I’m only going off the verbiage and feedback I’ve seen of the class over the years. Some may have varying options, and that’s okay, I’m just saying if they do this for hunters mark what they have done for scared weapon, I wouldn’t complain.
D smites are a spell. And a bonus action. That means that pole arm master Paladins just got nerfed , right? The bonus actions pole arm strike means no smites on any strike. Right ? That is - using Jeremy's words- an end to an iconic build
That one free use of Smite is the only one that will be practical to use, almost all other bonus action spells in the game are better use of your resources than the Smite spells. This has been a known mathematical quality for the better part of the decade 5E has been out. The versatility of Divine Smite is what made it worth using, the value of damage added has always been weaker than casting a spell with that same slot on a slot-by-slot basis.
@Shalakor a note on the damage side, smite on its own has actually always been much stronger than JUST it's own damage on a spellslot-to-spellslot basis for two reasons: 1. It automatically does full damage, no saving throws, only consuming the slot on a successful hit 2. It works alongside the attack action, rather than replaces it Imagine if the spell description were instead, "casting time: bonus action. Description: when you take the attack action, add 2d8 to one attack, only expending the spellslot if you hit, decide which attack the smite will count for with regards to critical hits" - that is much stronger than just 2d8 for a spellslot The closest comparison would be magic missile, which also doesn't miss per spellslot. Using a 1st level slot you deal 3d4+3 damage, average of 10.5 damage with no chance of criting Now compare that to a 16 str paladin who, for the sake of generosity, is for some reason using a dagger just to make the damage die as low as possible. Before level 5 your action will deal 2d8+1d4+3 damage, average of 14.5 damage with a chance to crit. After level 5 you're dealing 20 damage per action, while magic missile is still only doing 10.5 damage. And again, this is with a dinky little dagger The bonus action sucks, but on a spellslot-per-spellslot basis, for the sake of dealing damage smite is still on top because action economy beyond your BA is still a thing in the game Really, the main thing I'm annoyed by is simply the fact that it's a spell, meaning it can be counterspelled and barbarian paladin multiclasses have negative synergy
The DS changes are definitely a nerf. I would have preferred if JC had come right out and said that rather than pretending that WOTC had IMPROVED Divine Smite.
Stealing this from my comment yesterday I highly recommend checking D&D Beyond after recording your reaction to these videos. It looks like they are making dedicated post about the classes and their changes. So if there is any confusion or mispeak in the video theres another place to verify the information
As a DM I have mixed feelings about smite being nerfed to a spell. On one hand I will be able to balance fights a bit easier without crazy damage spikes but we lose the epic moment of getting a critical hit and turning it into a smite for epic crit moments at the table
We haven't seen the finalized version yet, but the playtest version did seem to still allow for crit smites. "As you hit the target, your strike glows with divine power. The target takes an extra 2d8 Radiant damage from the attack. The damage increases by 1d8 if the target is a Fiend or an Undead."
@@SirEliteGrunt You actually CAN choose to smite in response to seeing a crit with the playtest feature. See, the casting time on the spell was phrased as "bonus action, which you take immediately after you hit with a melee weapon attack or an unarmed strike". So after seeing a critical hit, you can then choose to use the bonus action to immediately apply a smite.
@@seisner6655What about on an opportunity attack? If that wording remains the same as the play test then I think it’s ok, unless you already used your bonus action for something else.
Weapon mastery might not seem like much to most. But it's a new basis seasoned Homebrewers can use to add easily integrated abilities into magic weapons. Like maybe a magic weapon Lance gets an additional mastery which can be used with it that allows you to dash, or make a dash attack that does extra dmg etc. i see many possibilities here. Unpopular opinion maybe but i like most of the paladin changes.
Definitely agree! Masteries as a system will likely be something we see tinkered with DMs and homebrewers throughout the community! Hell I could even see people releasing ‘enhanced masteries’ that try to bridge the gap between casters and martials even more. Also agree with the paladin changes - the paladin was a little too good before and needed to be brought more in line with other classes.
I can't believe they really went with the smite nerf, smite is now explicitly worse than sneak attack and for the last 10 years most people believed sneak attack was weak. Is it more damage than sneak attack, sometimes it is and some times it's not but sneak attack in completely free every turn forever. Very disappointed with this decision.
I remember that for like 1 play test they gave Rangers and/or Paladins (I forget the specifics) cantrips, then they took it away. Then when they added weapon mastery, I kinda wanted an option to have cantrips instead of mastery if you wanted. Using fighting styles instead is a much better choice, and I love that.
Blessed Warrior and Druidic Warrior for paladin and ranger respectively were already FS options in Tasha's, so no changes there. That said, I'd much rather they became default, or were swappable with Weapon Mastery. As a ranger, I'm going to pick Archery/TWF over cantrips ten times out of ten, which means I'd have to invest a feat to get something that one third casters get for free.
They could also just add "once per turn you can cast one of these spells" to Paladins Smite and set Divine Smite's Casting Time to "immediately after hitting a creature with a melee weapon or an Unarmed Strike, no action required", and It would be a huge fix. Paladins have low dayly uses for their features, low uses for spells...so they need their BA
This was my immediate thought. I need to see how this plays within the context of the full 2024 rules. If I end up displeased at that point, the above suggestion will essentially be the houserule I'd use.
@@5-Volt The bonus action smite especially hurts paladin multiclasses that have other uses for BA's, like bardadin, sorcadin, hexadin. Also some super useful spells like misty step, shield of faith, sanctuary.
Amazing that they recognized how annoying it was to have to spend actions to activate some abilities, but then moved backwards by making people use a bonus action to activate smite.
Yeah, one of the biggest pain points on 2014 was it was never worth preparing the Smite spells because they were less practical than base Divine Smite and made it to where you couldn't take other spells. Now both of those are worse and you might be better off not Smiting at all, even more so only going Paladin for the Aura and subclasses. And then using bonus action spells that play a supportive role for the party. Like, choosing to do a support build can be cool, but being mechanically forced into it not so mcuh
@@ShalakorHonestly, if your goal is damage, I’m not even sure that smiting would do more damage than just using the bonus action PAM attack every turn.
I feel that limiting the nova so you can't smite on every attack per turn is fair, but conflicting it with lay on hands and PAM hurts. Also, you can't smite on attacks of opportunity.
@@therandom58 it does more damage but it's like 2.5 damage at 1st level assuming +4 str, a spell slot doesn't worth this. It increases 4.5 damage per spell level after that but I would smite only on a crit.
I don’t like what they did to Divine smite. It feels like every other improvement they gave the class/subclass was them trying to make up for the nerf to Smite. If a DM doesn’t let me use the old smite with the new Paladin then I’m sticking with 5e paladin.
The only being able to smite once per turn (due to only having one bonus action and rules about casting multiple spells) kills my desire to play the 2024 paladin at 5th level and above, I like the idea of double smiting that one foe I have a grudge against into oblivion too much. 😞 such a shame. Luckily my dm doesn’t seem too keen on switching to the 2024 rules even though I think they are overall an improvement to the game as a whole.
I definitely see why it hurts to have nerfs like that especially when you have experienced unrestricted smites. I think the designers feel that it was making the paladin shine too brightly over other classes. And I think I agree
@@Lumpyrox1412The solution to that should be to make the other martials better, not nerf paladin. Unless there have been some massive nerfs to spells all over the board, casters are still gonna be a much better pick in basically every situation.
Bonus action smite and it being a spell is horrible for so many reasons. Let me explain why this smite change is bad 1. Magic immunity. Some creatures, like rakshashas or Tiamat, are immune to spells that are 5th level or lower. Paladins can’t get spell slots above 5th level without Multiclassing, and smites likely won’t be able to be upcasted past 5th level like before. And even if they removed the limitation, that would just means Paladin/sorcerer multiclass wouldn’t just be powerful, but it would be required. How else is a Paladin devoted to Bahamut supposed to smite Tiamat like a badass should? 2. Counterspell. Smites being spells means it can be counterspelled, which is stupid, Ludicrous and nonsensical. 3. Paladins can no longer smite when underwater or under the effects of a silence spell, or if their mute. 4. Paladins can no longer be effective dual wielders or polearm masters. Dual wielding already requires a lot to invest in so that it can work, why punish this further? BA smite removes more versatility and customization from paladins 5. Punishes missing with an attack. Now you can waste spell slots rather then being able to smite when you hit 6. You can’t smite and cast a spell on the same turn. Say you wanted to use a spell that is an action and uses a melee weapon, and you wanted to smite with it. Well you can’t, cause smite is a spell and you can only cast a spell once per turn 7. You can’t smite on opportunity attacks. Say you really need to smite this one enemy to prevent them from healing and soon, but you miss all your attacks… but then later you get a successful opportunity attack. Well doesn’t matter, cause you aren’t able to smite as an opportunity attack now
Let's go through this in order: 1.) The fact that Divine Smite got around Magic Immunity like that was preposterous anyways, but Paladins shouldn't've had a feature that allowed them to circumvent the immunity while Rangers and Artificers still had to deal with it 2.) See #1. Also, having a caster waste their Counterspell on me as opposed to another caster is a win in my book 3.) Underwater combat is not common, nor is Silence; the former is a condition that they should be aware of in advance (Water Breathing also exists), the latter should be a consideration when fighting enemy casters. As for mute characters, that is a consequence of your choice; I agree that it limits build ideas, but you can always hash a solution out with your DM (maybe, when casting, you speak with the voice of your god?) 4.) Nick Mastery exists for this reason. You have Weapon Masteries. Use one on a Nick weapon. There you go. TWF build. 5.) Even back in Playtest 6 (last version of Paladin), the BAct was taken immediately after landing a melee attack. I'd assume that clarification still applies here, so there is no "missing a Smite". This raises the other Smites, as they required Concentration, which can be broken before you land an attack to apply the Smite. 6.) This is a good thing in my eyes, as it makes the Magic action you choose to take on your turn matter; this means less mindless Smite spam, and also the various other Smites being used more. 7.) This is the only point I agree on, but not because your argument (that is covered in #5); even still, it's not a terribly huge loss in my eyes. This could be solved by giving Divine Smite a special trigger on landing a melee attack that uses your Reaction, thus giving a niche for Divine Smite (which is otherwise its damage, which ain't that much better, and later outclassed) and covering this edge case. I doubt WotC did something like that, but we'll have to wait and see.
1. Assumes magic immunity remains in the game. 2. Counterspell (in the playtest) requires a Con save to work (which Paladins get, plus have good Con scores, plus likely get + Cha to the save from 6th) and the Slot isnt expended if successful. If an enemy caster wants to save his reaction to blow a 3rd level slot on a Counterspell once he gets hit to stop a few d8 damage, instead of using a 1st level slot on a shield spell to stop the Smite and the hit entirely (or save the reaction and counterspell to nix a Save or suck from the Paladins caster buddy) be my guest. 3. Presumes Smite retains the V component. 4. Paladins gain weapon mastery. Most light weapons have the Nick property which no longer requires a bonus action for the of hand attack. 5. You spend the bonus action for the smite after hitting. You waste nothing. 6. Smite and spell on the same turn is pretty niche. 7. True.
So all of these sound great. I dont see an issue with any of these. Paladin was way overtuned compared to other martials and these shouldve always been the case.
@@TinyElePaladin is overturned compared to other martials, but that’s because the other martials suck so much. Paladin shouldn’t be brought down just because it managed to be an actually good class.
It gives me hope that they also revamped a lot of the spells, despite there never being a UA for them. Perhaps they realized that spell nerfs are absolutely necessary, but just didn't want to sift through whiny, entitled, never-GMed-before "feedback" about them. One can dream.
Well with all the fighter changes - the best paladin build seems to be an eldritch knight with a reskined/ reflavored booming blade extra cantrip attack as a smite (that takes no spell slot). 19 eldritch knight 1 wizard something along those lines
Bonus action to use Smite is probably the worst change I’ve seen in these new rules. I understand the desire to get away from nuking things in one turn, but the limitation should have been needing a Reaction to trigger the spell. This way Pole Arm Master and Great Weapon Master feats won’t suffer. And it just makes sense, you REACT to hitting something and cast the spell.
I think that making GWM and PAM less attractive for Paladins is part of the goal. It’s an indirect buff to Fighters, making them the experts on Weapon Feats and Weapon Mastery while encouraging Paladins to be the sword and shield knight in shining armor
@@archersfriend5900 preventing you from smiting on each attack is enough debuffing, they do not need to eliminate the bonus action attack of PAM and the possible extra attack of GWM.
The comments regarding how people feel about the new paladin is very much present underneath the D&D channel's video. The vast majority are not pleased and are already making notes to house rule the 2024 PHB back to the 2014 version of the paladin. I'm curious to see how Taron/Indestrucoboy feels about this considering a lot of the stuff that's on this paladin were things he didn't want to see on the base paladin. Namely, the mount. I'm extremely curious how the ranger reads because right now the paladin is the pet class, and that's not sitting too well with people. Also, find steed is very circumstantial. If you're doing a dungeon crawl, where space is barely 10 feet, you're never summoning your mount. That's just a wasted class feature you're never going to use. Instead, a mount that evolves SHOULD have been a subclass. As for divine smite, unless it reads differently than other spells, divine smite can now be counterspelled AND creatures that are immune to certain spell levels and lower (ie. rakshasha) are now IMMUNE to your divine smite. I, personally, do not see why divine smite is designed the way it is. Do I get why WotC wanted to limit it to just once per turn? Absolutely. Did it need to be a spell? No. Just write it the same way the rogue's sneak attack is written and have it cost a spell slot without actually casting a spell. Easy. Done. Also, I believe that particular hairstyle is called the beehive.
In the playtest beast master ranger had stat blocks that improved with Ranger level and the Find Familiar spell had a stat block that improved with spell level much like the Find Steed spell did.
Paladin is my favorite class and it made sense to reign them in a bit. I just don't know how it will feel when you have used up your only Bonus Action and then crit on your attack. A quick glance on the current Paladin spell list, I see there are 13 spells out of 50 that require a Bonus Action and none use it up more than once you have set up or cast the spell (like Spiritual Weapon would). So I think it should be okay still, assuming all Paladin's spells have been improved and you actually use your spells instead of hoarding them for Divine Smite solely. With these changes, I feel the Paladin will play more as a divine warrior with more tools at its disposal and not just a smite burst machine. Interesting that the halfcasters' features are very varied, but they are weighed down by action economy. My biggest critique of Ranger is it has way too many Bonus Action concentration spells so they end up using the same few (best) spells and not the others. Contrary to the Eldritch Knight, I assume the halfcasters will have to choose more wisely between spellcasting or attacking in a turn. Well they can do both but will have to sacrifice their full action economy in return.
Yeah I definitely feel like that's a rough change. One of the cool things about divine smite was you could make use of spell slots without spellcasting. Especially since lots of good paladin spells are usable out of combat.
I think multiclassed Barbarians should be allowed to cast non-concentration spells while they're Raging. Not just Smites but Hellish Rebukes, Fireballs, etc. Currently Barbarian + Caster just doesn't work outside of very specific builds.
I am of the opinion that Paladin is one of the best designed classes in 5e, period. They don't have any dead levels, they have an effective niche (fast nova at a cost) and have fantastic party utility with their Aura, Lay on Hands and Bless. I really like the direction they took with quality of life features that mainly result in buffs, but making Smite cost a bonus action is a bad idea in my opinion and will make the class more clunky to play. I feel like they wanted to stop Extra Attack and Opportunity Attack Smite which I can understand why they did that, but half the problem is fixed by making Smite a spell now that it looks like we will have a concrete rule that limits spells to once per turn.
That's only part of the issue. Even if you wanted to stop paladins from having multiple smites or smiting off their turn, there are other ways to do that. By making Smite a spell, you put them in a no-win scenario. Without a smite, paladins will likely have the lowest damage per round out of any martial character, but if they use Smite, they are forgoing a lot of their best support and utility spells that require their bonus action. Making it a spell now also means that your primary class feature, the thing you pick a paladin to do, can be turned off by Silence or Counterspell, or be stolen by any spell-copying features with zero actual investment into being a paladin.
But that just basically makes it no different than the smite spells that no one bothered using before because people who just pump every spell slot they could into divine smite to nuke a target into oblivion before it could do much making the smite spells redundant.
I'm not sure it's as bad as it sounds. With weapon mastery and slightly more spell slots you can still do serious damage. Will two handed weapon wielders be able to make bonus action attacks?
Just making all smites a reaction spell would probably fix all the clunkiness while limiting it to once a turn since you only have 1 reaction. I'd just also add a tibit where you can use it on opportunity attacks as well and smite happy paladins will be happy.
It used to be the main reason people took the subclass, power-wise. The other features were just far too weak. So they kinda buffed the entanglement channel divinity, but that's not enough to make up for the huge loss of power with the aura. They massacred my boy.
Well, many monsters are not casting spells anymore, so a dead aura in many encounters. I hope they diversified a lot damage types, resistances, and immunities, which will make this aura more special. We have to wait for the MM.
I’m guessing the thing he didn’t mention about divine sense is that it isn’t hindered by cover. I think that would be a huge improvement and make the feature actually useable, although costing a channel is bad
@@ShadowDreamer100 yeah, kinda, but you also want channel for the other uses, especially when you get your subclass. It’ll be a resource you want to manage
@@lukesandadordoceu4835 It's also a situational usage, so I'm not too worried about it. Giving the choice rather than the extra option I think allows more party cohesion. Paladins aren't the only class who can detect those kinds of things, either.
@@ShadowDreamer100 Yeah but then you have to weight the opportunity cost of divine sense with every single other channel divinity options you have available and given the inconsistent nature of DS most of the time that trade is likely not gonna be worth it Plus despite having multiple charges of channel divinity now; new paladins only regain one charge on a short rest RAW
@@Boney_PaladinThat’s fine, I think. It’s very situational, and there are better uses further down the line anyway. A long rest fully recharges the channels; I don’t typically see a short rest when players talk about their Campaigns.
It was probably changed due to DnD Monster Stat Blocks changing. What I mean by this is that in the most recent books, monsters that would previously have spells instead got spell-like abilities that aren’t subjected to the same rules and restrictions as actual spells. This meant features like Ancients Paladin Aura or Magic Resistance got progressively worse as more books were released. So it seems like the new PHB is changing features that used to be useful against spells, to now be useful against the spell-like abilities that they keep giving to monsters.
I guess it depends. Sure you were protected from magic but in some ways this will be more protection against some rough creatures. Would have been nice to choose and maybe have 1 or 2 more but hey.
One thing that might be important with the change to Divine Smite, is that now a Thief Rogue can Smite. You can create a smite spell scroll and Thief Rogues can use it as a bonus action with the Fast Hands feature.
@@ilovethelegend Since Smite is a spell now, it can be copied to a spell scroll. The Thief subclass for Rogues, has a feature at level 3 called Fast Hands that allows the use of a magic item as a bonus action. So, Thief Rogues can bonus action smite now.
Funny but it seems that every other change to Paladin is to obscure how badly they got nerfed now that their bonus action is gone. Also, love how they somehow interpreted the update to “smiting more”. 😂
So I might’ve missed what dual wielding rules they finally settled on but it feels like a bit of a kick in the nethers to finally give paladins the ability to pick two weapon fighting style and then also screw their bonus actions/multi hit builds over with the smite change
I'm disappointed that they didn't steal your modifications to Smite (letting you swap damage dice for effects, like they did with Sneak Attack).... Guess it'll still just be a House Rule at my table 🤷
Oath of the Ancients art is not my style at all. Too many of the pictures are fun and friendly without any drama or conflict. I prefer Dungeons & Dragons to be high adventure full of danger.
It's what you get when your company decides that pandering to certain demographics is more important than keeping your current customer base happy. The crowd they're focusing on is the crowd that freaks out because the cashier at the grocery store said hello to them, the crowd that can't accept adversity or differing opinions in the slightest.
I was in a group a few years ago where everybody had their moment to shine. The paladin's moment was when he ran towards the boss who had killed his best friend, misty stepped past the guards and then dropped a natural 20 with a smite. Everybody went nuts. Now, apparently a misty step and smite on the same turn is overpowered I guess, somehow? Blah. Lame. Boo.
This is one of the classes that playing a 2014 version paladin might be better overall, at least in terms of burst damage capacity. That said I think the class is better designed and encourages you to take full advantage of your kit.
With Smite being so severely hamstrung in the final version, I foresee ranged Dexadins/Padlock AuraBot builds being much more popular. There's so much less incentive to be in melee range now.
Okay, time for why Paladin Smite doesn't work, and its not due to balance: 1) Bonus Action in reaction to an effect is inconsistent with the rules. There are very few cases where a bonus action is used in this way. Generally a bonus action is untied from the other effects of the game (and always is when its a spell), giving players more freedom with their action economy (which I would describe as a big action little action economy). The exceptions to this are monks unarmed strikes and twf bonus action attack, but point 2 covers this. 2) a bonus action should describe a discrete effect. Paladin Smite isn't a discrete effect, it's an extension of the original attack that doesn't provoke a new check or create a new condition: it's just damage. An action should change the narrative in some way, but a divine smite doesn't really do this, it's just enhancing the original action. Monks ua strikes and twf meanwhile ARE discrete effects, so while they are tied to the attack action players feel the impact of multiple effects/checks the BA creates. So putting aside the question of balance, Paladin Smite acts to make the player feel restricted. They are losing action economy and freedom to act in order to use a core part of their chassis. I 💯 expect to see this house ruled out, maybe with a 1/turn limiter. Because it won't *feel* balanced due to how uniquely it affects the action economy.
So when I take polearm master as a paladin I have to chose between my bonus action being another attack or a smite. The nice thing about smite being ready on all attacks was that I could use my spell slots while concentrating on a 10 min long spell.
With the UA version of Truestrike, it is going to be tempting to try to get access to that cantrip via Charisma as a Paladin, but I am wondering if there is going to be an anti-synergy there between that updated cantrip, and any Paladin features that can trigger as part of the "Attack" action...
It's cool to see a suburban housewife from 1930's America achieve her dream of being queen of the elves and not feel the need to change her hairstyle in the process.
To me, the only good thing about the new paladin reveal is that I allready know what my 1st house rule for OneDnd is. I seriously can not believe they kept Divine smite as a BA. As an addendum, if Eldrich Smite remains at it was in UA7 this change is even more laughable, since now warlock becomes an objectively better martial than the pally (SAD, lifedrinker, Smites, and better spells).
the paladin nerf to smite is brutal and i very much despise it!. i think this was THE CORE ability for paladins. My Disappointment Is Immeasurable And My Day Is Ruined
Divine Sense was a throwaway use in 5e you used it whenever you entered a room, but only lasting one turn was pretty worthless. The playtest lasting 10mins is a MASSIVE upgrade that I feel is worth a channel divinity when you want to use it in a social setting but also with Abjure Foes as a combo could be really good. I played a a Oath of Acients Paladin and I thought that Aura would be busted as Hell at level 7. But since every Mini-Boss/Dragon/Liar damage is Spell like effects or Supernatural, etc from level 7 to level 10 it applied *twice*, and one of those was b/c of a poor teleportion roll from our Artificer TP'ing the party... That aura felt so bad as on paper it looked God Tier and in play since it hardly ever applied felt just plain weak. Yes Nature's Grasp (Wraith?) was horrible imo as well. But funny story, I used it twice and one time it was to prevent a creature that had eaten one of our party members from escaping as a last grasp hail mary. It failed the Strength Check *with Advantage* THREE TIMES IN A ROW and we were able to rescue our party member. Six chances to roll (iirc) 6 or higher and didn't. Torm looked fondly on my Paladin that day. Overall I like the change to Paladin Smite from Divine Smite but needs just a minor tweak. There is plenty of minor fixes to Divine Smite and Paladin Smites would be overall good.
Paladin, everyone wanted the other martials to be buffed to be on par with it, we ended up getting it pushed down to them and full casters likely remain as powerful as ever.
That fact you think nova-smiting was the only thing Paladin had going for it shows a lack of information on your part. Aura of Protection is a *huge* part of the paladin's power, and that remains unchanged.
@@elekbuday81 No one said anything about nova being the only thing for Paladins. The issue is heavily nerfing a feature and playstyle that didn't pose any problems for the game and was widely considered extremely fun. It's a horrible decision and even if the Paladin remains just as strong (thanks to Masteries etc), Smite was just made far less entertaining and far more clunky.
One issue I have is that a lot of old features from Tasha's or other 5e materials are touted as "new features". I'd prefer they focus on actual new features instead of pandering things we've had for years
Glad to hear they did something with upcasting Find Steed. My initial thought would've been to basically roll Find Greater Steed into it, and make the level 3 iteration allow you to summon a mount with a CR of 1, but a scaling template, as I assume this is going to be, might do the job just as well.
so multiclass paladins & non-paladins will still get sooner and better access to the paladin's signature smite and special steed features. I was really hoping that was something they would fix.
They get them at the same times as before, I think. Though, from what it sounds like, you can technically prepare DS from the Paladin spell list at Level 1 before it is recorded as an actual feature at Level 2. Could be fun for Swords Bards and Bladelocks, or even Bladesingers. Find Steed is still 5th level, I think, and there's nothing to be done about that.
@@MOORE4U2by multiclassing into a full caster your spell slot progression boosts up, a paladin 5 sorcerer 15 will spell slots all the way to 9th level which could be used on those spells to super charge them while a pure paladin 20 only has up to 5th spell slots.
Why are they so insistent on making weapon damage boosting spells like divine smite so shit. The whole reason divine smite was good was because it was free- you could just turn up your damage when you needed to. Unless there’s going to be no ways to get bonus action attacks (Pam, duel wielding, or gwm bonus action attacks) just attacking with your bonus action is often very similar damage but with no cost. The other smite spells were doubly shit because they had to be used before and used a bonus action, but even now that they can (presumably) be used after hitting they’re still pretty bad because using up your whole bonus action means it’s often not even worth the damage if you can find a way to get a bonus action attack, and on top of that it has a cost. Realistically I think divine smite could’ve been completely free all the time as a bonus action and it would still only be decent, not overpower.
Not having PAM means if you miss once (twice at level 5), you do no damage at all. PAM still gives you some bad luck protection. PAM's 1d4+mod damage is less than 2d8 even with +5, and Smite continues to scale by 1d8 every 4 levels.
So to Divine Smite you now need to use your attack action, hit, burn a spell slot AND use your bonus action; is there any other damage add in D&D that requires all that? Also, it can now be countered, silenced, nonmagic auraed, stolen, copied, will not work at all against some creatures (level 20 paladin cannot now smite a rakshasa for example) and can't be used on an opportunity attack. This is going way overboard when all that was necessary to stop the nova burst was to limit paladins to one smite a turn (whichever smite they chose) similar to Rogue sneak attack.
Paladins are my favorite class in the game. I'm just really drawn to the heroic divine crusader. Seeing all the other classes from Monk to Wizard get buffed made me super excited to see what the holy warriors would get. The fact that nearly every other class got talks or confirmations for whole new exclusive systems while the only real thing to talk about for Paladins was nerfs was legitimately just upsetting. My players are fully aware that this is my favorite class, and it's going to be awful to inform them that most of the talking points are taking things away. I dunno, man, it just feels bad seeing the vast majority get cool reworks just to be left with nothing of real note.
Weapon masteries I think will still be a big change, and we don’t know what all the spell changes and additions will be, so it’s a little too soon to say. It does seem like there’s a bunch of big improvements here, the main nerf seems to be divine smite. I’m hoping the old smite spells get a buff and we get more cool options to replace them though, I always felt the basic divine smite was a little boring given a lot of combats I play in have side objectives that aren’t just deal a ton of damage.
I feel that way about Wizards. So many ideas for them were scrapped that I think they're going to end up barely changed from 2014, while every other class feels new and different. Worse, they lose four subclasses including the one I was most excited to see revised (Necromancer).
Adding the restriction “Once on your turn” for divine smite would have been fine, and perhaps a necessary nerf. But costing a bonus action just makes the ability feel like crap, as now there are so many other spells and abilities this conflicts with. It especially kills some really fun multiclass builds, such as barbarian or sorcerer.
My first reaction to the Oath of Ancients aura nerf was flip table and hurl explicatives. Upon hearing an extended description of those damage types I shall refrain from flipping and hurling until I see changes made to spells and monsters.
Tbh, there are a lot of magical damage sources that are *not* spells, so the previous Oath of Ancients aura had no effect on. It only really used to help you when you were fighting wizards. Now it doesn't help as much with that (but will still help against nasty things like finger of death ofc) but will now help against a lot of things it couldn't before, some of which are quite nasty (my first thought was mindflayers, but there's a solid number of nasty creatures that have necrotic, radiant or psychic damage abilities)
My guess about why they made the damage type change? Because that will make their proprietary VTT easier to program. Not a great reason to change a class feature, in my view. Why didn't they just add another damage category ("Spell damage").
You mentioned that making Smites a Bonus Action is a nerf. But what I'm curious about is whether you think it's a good or bad change. Appropriate or overkill? I've never played a Paladin yet myself, so I don't have any experience to draw on. But I see a few people commenting on these videos that "Paladin is ruined now," or some such, because of that one thing, and my reaction to such hyperbole lacking sufficient analysis / justification is to take it with a grain of salt. I've always heard of Paladins as being one of the stronger Classes in a variety of ways, and with all the improvements we heard about here, I'm curious whether the nerf to smites is actually that bad or if people are just overreacting. How do you feel the overall changes balance out?
So with it being a Bonus Action Spell there's a good few changes. BA means that if you want to use things like Polearm Master, a Racial Ability, or other Class Features like Barbarian Rage (or even many of your own features, including all the Capstones)....you just can't. It'd be like making Sneak Attack a BA. Really restrictive outside of the very specific scenario it's based around. Spell means that it's locked behind being able to cast one to begin with. Again, Barbarian Rage, Anti-Magic Zones, potentially Silence (that'd really hurt), and creatures immune to spells in general. Throw on top the amount of DMs absolutely giddy they're going to be able to just Counterspell and say no to a Class's defining feature.....it just feels really bad the hoops you need to go through now to do what your class was built around.
I’m not an expert on dnd balance but just from a fun perspective, I really hate that you can’t double smite with this 2024 version of the Paladin, I liked being able to pop off against one guy in a combat that was the fantasy I wanted
Looks at Vow of Enmity: a spell-less class feature that doesn't require a bonus action to activate or move and doesn't require concentration... Looks at Ranger's new Favored Enemy: ...
The change to divine smite is terrible. Aura of warding resistance types is a mixed bag as necrotic resistance is the only one that will see use in the average campaign as psychic is too rare and radiant is non existent. Asides from that all other changes shown seemed ok but not worth the loss of bonus action + bonus action casting penalty+ other limitations on smite. I will probably work with my DM to allow me to play 2014 paladin.
I just started playing 5e last month. The last time I played tabletop it was called AD&D. I've been having a ton of fun reading articles, watching videos, learning about classes and builds and rules. I'm currently playing a ranger and a campaign that will go from level 1 to 20. I was planning to take gloom stalker and stay pure, with a possible tip in life cleric. I've waited for years for rangers to be good. But now seeing how they followed through with the UA nerf to the paladin's divine smite, I'm sadly confident they've followed through with the ranger and gloom stalker nerfs as well. And it would guess planned nerfs to my other favorite classes. So I guess that's it for me. I had a really fun three sessions. But there is no way I'm going to continue to support this BS with my time and money. Thanks for having such a great show. I've learned a lot from it. Maybe they'll fix ranger again in another 35 years.
You could just not support them with money while still having fun with your gaming group. If you've already had three sessions, that means you already have everything you need, right? You shouldn't hurt yourself just to spite someone else that doesn't even know you exist.
@@Shalakor lol true points. I'll check with the group and DM to see if we're planning to use the 2024 PHB when it comes out. It's hard when you're feeling disappointed and frustrated and there isn't any way to express it to the people that would matter.
Yes. Granted, counterspell now requires a safe which means paladins get to add their Cha modifier, so that might help. What's worse is abilities or monsters who are immune to spells of a certain level or lower are now immune to divine smite.
"spells are an important part of the paladins kit" ...are they? Like, I've only seen two paladin players who have used spell slots for anything else besides smiting
what's often annoying about DnD is how hard it is to get buffs online in general. I've always advocated for making most buff spells bonus actions or some such. May even be nice to have a little round at the start of combat to activate stuff like that so if you have a low initiative it's on and others can use the buffs you give them on their first turn and such. I've often in TTRPGs had situations where we see the enemy coming but then the GM doesn't call initiative till he sets them up close to you and I'm like "nah, while I'm watching them move in I'm casting buffs and stuff" cause realistically that's what you'd do if you had prep time.
The GM is doing that because the action economy is so player favored. Giving a free round to pre-buff just tmakes the party more broken and trivializes most combats.
Why did they have to do this to the divine smite!??? You can't even multiclass into barbarian anymore now!! I wanted to do that mc..😢 i'm so sad and angry now!
So raging barbarians, wildshaped moon druids can no longer smite? Its now once per turn bonus action? This is a massive nerf to one of the best features of a paladin.... this is far from optimal now.
I’m straight up just gonna make smite once a turn in exchange for a spell slot on a hit. The bonus action seems like an unnecessary cost, and removes the ability to punish enemies via attack of opportunity.
So to clarify, the "what they got wrong" that you reference is the title is the details on Avenging Angel? And I totally agree with your point at the end about narrowing the power gap between classes.
First of all, the smite problem is a DM problem. If you don't need to expend your resources to get to the boss, you will see the wizard casting haste on the PAM paladin and the boss will be smited to ashes. If most people are playing one encounter a day, I do believe it needs to get adressed. The most elegant solution would be to look at sneak attack and limit smite to once per turn and voilà. But Looking Divine Smite now I realize we were galighted in the playtest. The first playtest It was restrict to once per turn and you couldn't cast a spell in the same turn. Obvious nerf so people didn't like it. The second playtest they turned it into a spell that cost a bonus action and gave you all the smites prepared and you could cast one of those spells for free which meant the free cast scaled, somewhat a nerf but you got so much to compensate, so all non paladin players liked it because it looked cool. Now we got just the worst divine smite possible. Bonus action spell, free casting of a 1st level spell once per day. Well, good thing we can homebrew.
One possible mechanical difference with changing the fighting styles to feats is that you can pick up additional fighting styles with your regular feats.
@@matthewharding584 I have to check, but I think you can only select fighting initiative once, and this new way looks like you can select multiple fighting styles. (Not that one would.) So you can pick a great weapon fighting and blind fighting and the battle master one and intercepter.
Making Divine Smites spells and a bonus action, Giving one more Channel Divinity but also adding Divine Sense to the same resource pool, Giving you a Find Steed use for free 1 per day when it's already a spell that last untill dispelled (so incredibly dumb). Like jesus christ dude what are these nerfs. Wasn't it possible to limit how many smites you can do in a round? Trying to focus target the Sorcerer multiclass? Nerfing Aura of protection? That's by far the worst rework so far. I'm guessing that their thinking is they needed to kill the lower levels of the paladin so you don't multiclass like 18 Sorcerer/2 Paladin type builds and make the subclasses more worth while. This sucks.
Paladin needed a nerf in my opinion, but I wouldnhave liked it more from the aura not smite. Only being able to smite once a turn is a fine nerf, the bonus action is overkill to me.
I dont even watch the original streams. I just wait for these videos! thanks for doing them
Ima have to do that. Literally feel asleep on jeremy crawford talking paladin. It could have been a 6 min video.
Same here! Chris is my go-to D&D RUclipsr :)
Me too
That's my usual approach for UA. I've been too excited for these. With the mixed bag that is Paladin 2024, my enthusiasm is more tame. I'll probably wait for Chris' video and commentary to avoid watching future videos twice.
My favorite classes, thematically speaking, have always been Paladin, Sorcerer, and Wizard. The first two have often sucked. Even knowing what lay in store, it's tough to see the 5e Paladin get kicked in the nuts. I need time with the books to form strong opinions, but my current feeling is that the desired nerfs could've been implemented in simpler, better ways.
Same, but not as a substitute for the original. I have effectively 0 interest in what a corporation has to say about their own products because they are economically incentivise to be deceptive .
It's the added value of an outside person with knowledge of the product that makes it worth watching.
When i watched the livestream I was like "holy shit this thing is so broken!" But that's because they sell every change as a buff, and since i've never played a Paladin i really couldn't find the differences or even how big the nerf on smite was.
So this video is quite useful to see a little bit more under the hood of the small details they purposefully let out of the announcements!
From their perspective, these are promotional videos, so that's understandable. That's why I do these.
@@TreantmonksTemple Yeah can't wait for the Monk video XD
They basically buffed everything except Divine Smite which was nerfed
@@alvinleonardo1263Don't you get at least one free smite a day? Obviously with the speed change that's not as cool but it does soften the nerf a little bit, if so
Because they don't speak like game developers, they speak like salesmen.
The point is to trick you into buying the product.
"We have fixed your awesome steed! Now it can be cast once for free, and it gets more powerful with upcasting."
20th lvl Paladin - "fear my awesome steed companion, demon scum!"
Free casts a donkey...
"Hmmm. That didn't turn out the way i hoped."
Free casts at the lowest level of spells where the whole point of the spell design is upcasting potency over base level functionality is such a dumb design conceit. The one free casting needs to scale or it's just a dead feature at higher levels.
Kinda makes sense with Smite, makes less sense for Hex and Hunter's Mark, but makes no sense at all with a companion creature.
@@Shalakor absolutely. Just make it cast at your highest spell slot. And if that really offends their balance concerns, make it simply increase the upcast by +1 for free. E.g. you could use a 2nd lvl slot but make it a 3rd lvl upcast with the free cast
@@Shalakor IMO smite needs to get a second free and max level (avalible) cast at maybe level 9 or 11
Disappointed that the alternate smite spells are not freely known, meaning we'll probably continue to see them almost never used.
Playtest Rogue gave us a great framework for trading damage dice for rider effects that would have worked great for smite, but oh well.
He has a smite spell video that at least compared playtest to OG
Been refreshing ever since the original stream dropped!
Hero move right there
same
Me too!
Damn, I really liked the free smite options being prepped.
I think it made sense.
Yeah, I'm a bit sad they backed off on that.
That was the whole reason I was hyped about the change. Like it felt fair . You get a whole bunch of free preparations unlike any other class and exchange for a Nerf on your defining feature. But I guess that's probably why it's gone, no other class gets a whole slew of pre-prepared spells like that.
@@SamanthaVimes177 Yeah. though it appears every caster and half- caster subclass is getting a set of prepared spells.
@@SamanthaVimes177From Tasha's, Ranger got several extra spells from the Primal Awareness variant for their Lv. 3 base class feature
Don't think they got it in the UA, but a feature like that did exist
I was waiting for this response in particular to soothe the pain of this reveal, lol.
Divine Smite being a spell means that a barbarian/paladin can't rage/smite anymore
Awesome!
Sad
@@chrisdin4109 nope.
Goodbye to one of my table's favorite multiclasses then. *Such* a shame.
@archersfriend5900 why would anyone think that's awesome
They could have balanced Divine Smite by making it a once-per-turn ability, like Eldritch Smite, instead of all this nonsense they did.
It's like they just just randomly kept bits and pieces from different phases of the playtrest without comparing them to each other.
Literally how I will run it. Remove the spell, make it a class feature once per turn.
That is true, though the current bonus action spell thing is more streamlined ... Paladin will still be a powerhouse, just not so far ahead of the non-casting martials. Honestly, I appreciate that move, giving other players more incentive to play a fighter or barbarian.
@martinschubert7031 any half casting class is pulling ahead of martial simply due to the versatility of spells.
there are so many abilities in DnD that operate like that already
why did they have to fuck it up with Divine smite?
Don't ask Jeremy about anything with wings apparently, he will misremember.
That's his kryponite
Not true. He remembers how kenkus work.
@@chrislieu6757 only cause they're flightless.
@@neileddy6159 yeah but they have wings.
so nervous for sorcerer section. Draconic is so bad compared to other subs.
I hope the "turning on a state have often now been changed from an action to a bonus action" applies to spells like the _Enlarge_ portion of _Enlarge/Reduce_ or _Tenser's Transformation._
I wouldn’t be surprised to see hunters mark to get this treatment.
@@roninhare9615what do you mean? Hunters mark already is a bonus action. I could be misunderstanding what either you or the main comment is saying but my interpretation is that they’re saying buff spells that transform you like enlarge will now be bonus actions, which makes them far more usable in combat without needing an ally to cast it onto you. As of now, most of these abilities you just waste a turn so you either have to have a turn to prepare or you just lose a turn. Hunters mark already is a bonus action so I don’t see why it would change.
@@bulldozer8950 sacred weapon is not a transformation, it’s a channel divinity option, and in the play test it was listed as a bonus action and they have since made it apart of your attack action. Hunters mark can get muddled with using bonus actions, if I were to take a stab at it, I would make it so on the first weapon attack on your turn, if your target is not your marked target, you may move your mark as apart of that same attack action. I’ve read many complaints about hunters mark being a bonus action as well as a spell that eats your concentration. In the play test they played with a few ideas for hunters mark and ultimately said they were going to make a “best of” the 2 play tests. I’m speculating, but I’m only going off the verbiage and feedback I’ve seen of the class over the years. Some may have varying options, and that’s okay, I’m just saying if they do this for hunters mark what they have done for scared weapon, I wouldn’t complain.
D smites are a spell. And a bonus action. That means that pole arm master Paladins just got nerfed , right? The bonus actions pole arm strike means no smites on any strike. Right ? That is - using Jeremy's words- an end to an iconic build
Yes. I suggest just ignoring thos change and using the old smite for paladins. This change is so bad.
Instead just limit base smite to once per turn.
Seriously yeah
I'm fine with capping it to one a turn but I swear they threw every possible bird at people who like smite
🥲13:29 when he said “wanting to smite more” as though the changes didn’t reduce the number of times you would actually be smiting
That one free use of Smite is the only one that will be practical to use, almost all other bonus action spells in the game are better use of your resources than the Smite spells. This has been a known mathematical quality for the better part of the decade 5E has been out. The versatility of Divine Smite is what made it worth using, the value of damage added has always been weaker than casting a spell with that same slot on a slot-by-slot basis.
@@Shalakoror even just using PAM unless you crit
@Shalakor a note on the damage side, smite on its own has actually always been much stronger than JUST it's own damage on a spellslot-to-spellslot basis for two reasons:
1. It automatically does full damage, no saving throws, only consuming the slot on a successful hit
2. It works alongside the attack action, rather than replaces it
Imagine if the spell description were instead, "casting time: bonus action. Description: when you take the attack action, add 2d8 to one attack, only expending the spellslot if you hit, decide which attack the smite will count for with regards to critical hits" - that is much stronger than just 2d8 for a spellslot
The closest comparison would be magic missile, which also doesn't miss per spellslot. Using a 1st level slot you deal 3d4+3 damage, average of 10.5 damage with no chance of criting
Now compare that to a 16 str paladin who, for the sake of generosity, is for some reason using a dagger just to make the damage die as low as possible. Before level 5 your action will deal 2d8+1d4+3 damage, average of 14.5 damage with a chance to crit. After level 5 you're dealing 20 damage per action, while magic missile is still only doing 10.5 damage. And again, this is with a dinky little dagger
The bonus action sucks, but on a spellslot-per-spellslot basis, for the sake of dealing damage smite is still on top because action economy beyond your BA is still a thing in the game
Really, the main thing I'm annoyed by is simply the fact that it's a spell, meaning it can be counterspelled and barbarian paladin multiclasses have negative synergy
@@vinlumansmiting bards
The DS changes are definitely a nerf. I would have preferred if JC had come right out and said that rather than pretending that WOTC had IMPROVED Divine Smite.
Stealing this from my comment yesterday
I highly recommend checking D&D Beyond after recording your reaction to these videos. It looks like they are making dedicated post about the classes and their changes. So if there is any confusion or mispeak in the video theres another place to verify the information
I came for the comments on the mechanics but I stayed for the comments on the Queen's hair 😂
As a DM I have mixed feelings about smite being nerfed to a spell. On one hand I will be able to balance fights a bit easier without crazy damage spikes but we lose the epic moment of getting a critical hit and turning it into a smite for epic crit moments at the table
We haven't seen the finalized version yet, but the playtest version did seem to still allow for crit smites.
"As you hit the target, your strike glows with divine power. The target takes an extra 2d8 Radiant damage from the attack. The damage increases by 1d8 if the target is a Fiend or an Undead."
@@seisner6655 they can be crits but not as a reaction to landing one.
@@SirEliteGrunt You actually CAN choose to smite in response to seeing a crit with the playtest feature. See, the casting time on the spell was phrased as "bonus action, which you take immediately after you hit with a melee weapon attack or an unarmed strike". So after seeing a critical hit, you can then choose to use the bonus action to immediately apply a smite.
@@seisner6655What about on an opportunity attack?
If that wording remains the same as the play test then I think it’s ok, unless you already used your bonus action for something else.
Weapon mastery might not seem like much to most. But it's a new basis seasoned Homebrewers can use to add easily integrated abilities into magic weapons. Like maybe a magic weapon Lance gets an additional mastery which can be used with it that allows you to dash, or make a dash attack that does extra dmg etc. i see many possibilities here. Unpopular opinion maybe but i like most of the paladin changes.
Definitely agree! Masteries as a system will likely be something we see tinkered with DMs and homebrewers throughout the community! Hell I could even see people releasing ‘enhanced masteries’ that try to bridge the gap between casters and martials even more. Also agree with the paladin changes - the paladin was a little too good before and needed to be brought more in line with other classes.
You could already add these types of effects on magic weapons. Weapon Masteries as revealed are bad design. Embarrassingly so
I can't believe they really went with the smite nerf, smite is now explicitly worse than sneak attack and for the last 10 years most people believed sneak attack was weak. Is it more damage than sneak attack, sometimes it is and some times it's not but sneak attack in completely free every turn forever. Very disappointed with this decision.
I remember that for like 1 play test they gave Rangers and/or Paladins (I forget the specifics) cantrips, then they took it away. Then when they added weapon mastery, I kinda wanted an option to have cantrips instead of mastery if you wanted. Using fighting styles instead is a much better choice, and I love that.
My fighting style is ranged Spare the Dying and Guidance.
Yeah definitely a much smoother and enjoyable tweak!
Blessed Warrior and Druidic Warrior for paladin and ranger respectively were already FS options in Tasha's, so no changes there.
That said, I'd much rather they became default, or were swappable with Weapon Mastery. As a ranger, I'm going to pick Archery/TWF over cantrips ten times out of ten, which means I'd have to invest a feat to get something that one third casters get for free.
I’ve been waiting for you take on this! Excited to hear what you have to say, I like a lot of the changes but definitely not all of them.
Yolan's Regal Beehive - the magic has to be stored somewhere. After casting the beehive disappears and you become hiveless for 1d4 in-game days.
They could also just add "once per turn you can cast one of these spells" to Paladins Smite and set Divine Smite's Casting Time to "immediately after hitting a creature with a melee weapon or an Unarmed Strike, no action required", and It would be a huge fix.
Paladins have low dayly uses for their features, low uses for spells...so they need their BA
This was my immediate thought. I need to see how this plays within the context of the full 2024 rules. If I end up displeased at that point, the above suggestion will essentially be the houserule I'd use.
Yeah the bonus action is literally the only issue I have with the new smite. That tiny change has huge ramifications on their action economy.
@@5-Volt The bonus action smite especially hurts paladin multiclasses that have other uses for BA's, like bardadin, sorcadin, hexadin. Also some super useful spells like misty step, shield of faith, sanctuary.
Exactly. They already do this with many extra damage on hit powers, only allowing them once per turn.
I remember LaserLlama, one of the most famous homebrewers, made a new term for when an effect happens labeled as "On Hit."
Amazing that they recognized how annoying it was to have to spend actions to activate some abilities, but then moved backwards by making people use a bonus action to activate smite.
Yeah, one of the biggest pain points on 2014 was it was never worth preparing the Smite spells because they were less practical than base Divine Smite and made it to where you couldn't take other spells. Now both of those are worse and you might be better off not Smiting at all, even more so only going Paladin for the Aura and subclasses. And then using bonus action spells that play a supportive role for the party. Like, choosing to do a support build can be cool, but being mechanically forced into it not so mcuh
@@ShalakorHonestly, if your goal is damage, I’m not even sure that smiting would do more damage than just using the bonus action PAM attack every turn.
Ruining smite takes away the entire unique identity of a Paladin, im just gonna keep playing it the 5E way
I feel that limiting the nova so you can't smite on every attack per turn is fair, but conflicting it with lay on hands and PAM hurts. Also, you can't smite on attacks of opportunity.
@@therandom58 it does more damage but it's like 2.5 damage at 1st level assuming +4 str, a spell slot doesn't worth this. It increases 4.5 damage per spell level after that but I would smite only on a crit.
my only problem with smites being spells is now I cant take a barbarian multiclass and they are some of the funnest builds to play
Or use it in wildform multiclassing a druid
I don’t like what they did to Divine smite. It feels like every other improvement they gave the class/subclass was them trying to make up for the nerf to Smite. If a DM doesn’t let me use the old smite with the new Paladin then I’m sticking with 5e paladin.
The only being able to smite once per turn (due to only having one bonus action and rules about casting multiple spells) kills my desire to play the 2024 paladin at 5th level and above, I like the idea of double smiting that one foe I have a grudge against into oblivion too much. 😞 such a shame. Luckily my dm doesn’t seem too keen on switching to the 2024 rules even though I think they are overall an improvement to the game as a whole.
I definitely see why it hurts to have nerfs like that especially when you have experienced unrestricted smites. I think the designers feel that it was making the paladin shine too brightly over other classes. And I think I agree
@@Lumpyrox1412paladin still looks bad compared to most full casters but I highly doubt WotC care about that
@@Lumpyrox1412The solution to that should be to make the other martials better, not nerf paladin. Unless there have been some massive nerfs to spells all over the board, casters are still gonna be a much better pick in basically every situation.
I can see it. I do not mind it being limited to once per turn tho. I am more annoyed at the extreme nerf of making it a bonus action.
Bonus action smite and it being a spell is horrible for so many reasons. Let me explain why this smite change is bad
1. Magic immunity. Some creatures, like rakshashas or Tiamat, are immune to spells that are 5th level or lower. Paladins can’t get spell slots above 5th level without Multiclassing, and smites likely won’t be able to be upcasted past 5th level like before. And even if they removed the limitation, that would just means Paladin/sorcerer multiclass wouldn’t just be powerful, but it would be required. How else is a Paladin devoted to Bahamut supposed to smite Tiamat like a badass should?
2. Counterspell. Smites being spells means it can be counterspelled, which is stupid, Ludicrous and nonsensical.
3. Paladins can no longer smite when underwater or under the effects of a silence spell, or if their mute.
4. Paladins can no longer be effective dual wielders or polearm masters. Dual wielding already requires a lot to invest in so that it can work, why punish this further? BA smite removes more versatility and customization from paladins
5. Punishes missing with an attack. Now you can waste spell slots rather then being able to smite when you hit
6. You can’t smite and cast a spell on the same turn. Say you wanted to use a spell that is an action and uses a melee weapon, and you wanted to smite with it. Well you can’t, cause smite is a spell and you can only cast a spell once per turn
7. You can’t smite on opportunity attacks. Say you really need to smite this one enemy to prevent them from healing and soon, but you miss all your attacks… but then later you get a successful opportunity attack. Well doesn’t matter, cause you aren’t able to smite as an opportunity attack now
Let's go through this in order:
1.) The fact that Divine Smite got around Magic Immunity like that was preposterous anyways, but Paladins shouldn't've had a feature that allowed them to circumvent the immunity while Rangers and Artificers still had to deal with it
2.) See #1. Also, having a caster waste their Counterspell on me as opposed to another caster is a win in my book
3.) Underwater combat is not common, nor is Silence; the former is a condition that they should be aware of in advance (Water Breathing also exists), the latter should be a consideration when fighting enemy casters.
As for mute characters, that is a consequence of your choice; I agree that it limits build ideas, but you can always hash a solution out with your DM (maybe, when casting, you speak with the voice of your god?)
4.) Nick Mastery exists for this reason. You have Weapon Masteries. Use one on a Nick weapon. There you go. TWF build.
5.) Even back in Playtest 6 (last version of Paladin), the BAct was taken immediately after landing a melee attack. I'd assume that clarification still applies here, so there is no "missing a Smite". This raises the other Smites, as they required Concentration, which can be broken before you land an attack to apply the Smite.
6.) This is a good thing in my eyes, as it makes the Magic action you choose to take on your turn matter; this means less mindless Smite spam, and also the various other Smites being used more.
7.) This is the only point I agree on, but not because your argument (that is covered in #5); even still, it's not a terribly huge loss in my eyes. This could be solved by giving Divine Smite a special trigger on landing a melee attack that uses your Reaction, thus giving a niche for Divine Smite (which is otherwise its damage, which ain't that much better, and later outclassed) and covering this edge case. I doubt WotC did something like that, but we'll have to wait and see.
1. Assumes magic immunity remains in the game.
2. Counterspell (in the playtest) requires a Con save to work (which Paladins get, plus have good Con scores, plus likely get + Cha to the save from 6th) and the Slot isnt expended if successful. If an enemy caster wants to save his reaction to blow a 3rd level slot on a Counterspell once he gets hit to stop a few d8 damage, instead of using a 1st level slot on a shield spell to stop the Smite and the hit entirely (or save the reaction and counterspell to nix a Save or suck from the Paladins caster buddy) be my guest.
3. Presumes Smite retains the V component.
4. Paladins gain weapon mastery. Most light weapons have the Nick property which no longer requires a bonus action for the of hand attack.
5. You spend the bonus action for the smite after hitting. You waste nothing.
6. Smite and spell on the same turn is pretty niche.
7. True.
So all of these sound great. I dont see an issue with any of these. Paladin was way overtuned compared to other martials and these shouldve always been the case.
@@TinyElePaladin is overturned compared to other martials, but that’s because the other martials suck so much. Paladin shouldn’t be brought down just because it managed to be an actually good class.
Pretty ballsy of them to take the already disliked Paladin Smite feature from the UA and make it weaker.
I was surprised.
It gives me hope that they also revamped a lot of the spells, despite there never being a UA for them. Perhaps they realized that spell nerfs are absolutely necessary, but just didn't want to sift through whiny, entitled, never-GMed-before "feedback" about them. One can dream.
@@ikaemoslol WIZARDS of the coast nerfing spells?
Well with all the fighter changes - the best paladin build seems to be an eldritch knight with a reskined/ reflavored booming blade extra cantrip attack as a smite (that takes no spell slot). 19 eldritch knight 1 wizard something along those lines
@@mpetrov2402 Fighter 11 wizard 9 is fantastic
Bonus action to use Smite is probably the worst change I’ve seen in these new rules. I understand the desire to get away from nuking things in one turn, but the limitation should have been needing a Reaction to trigger the spell. This way Pole Arm Master and Great Weapon Master feats won’t suffer. And it just makes sense, you REACT to hitting something and cast the spell.
I think that making GWM and PAM less attractive for Paladins is part of the goal. It’s an indirect buff to Fighters, making them the experts on Weapon Feats and Weapon Mastery while encouraging Paladins to be the sword and shield knight in shining armor
Thats what they are.@@michaeldejean3742
What drives me crazy is how these spells turn your bonus action into a reaction. Its so convoluted for no reason.
@@nm2358 no, it's to stop synergy with other feats.
@@archersfriend5900 preventing you from smiting on each attack is enough debuffing, they do not need to eliminate the bonus action attack of PAM and the possible extra attack of GWM.
The comments regarding how people feel about the new paladin is very much present underneath the D&D channel's video. The vast majority are not pleased and are already making notes to house rule the 2024 PHB back to the 2014 version of the paladin.
I'm curious to see how Taron/Indestrucoboy feels about this considering a lot of the stuff that's on this paladin were things he didn't want to see on the base paladin. Namely, the mount. I'm extremely curious how the ranger reads because right now the paladin is the pet class, and that's not sitting too well with people. Also, find steed is very circumstantial. If you're doing a dungeon crawl, where space is barely 10 feet, you're never summoning your mount. That's just a wasted class feature you're never going to use. Instead, a mount that evolves SHOULD have been a subclass.
As for divine smite, unless it reads differently than other spells, divine smite can now be counterspelled AND creatures that are immune to certain spell levels and lower (ie. rakshasha) are now IMMUNE to your divine smite.
I, personally, do not see why divine smite is designed the way it is. Do I get why WotC wanted to limit it to just once per turn? Absolutely. Did it need to be a spell? No. Just write it the same way the rogue's sneak attack is written and have it cost a spell slot without actually casting a spell. Easy. Done.
Also, I believe that particular hairstyle is called the beehive.
So instead of saying 80's hair I should have said 60's hair! That somehow makes it cooler.
In the playtest beast master ranger had stat blocks that improved with Ranger level and the Find Familiar spell had a stat block that improved with spell level much like the Find Steed spell did.
Paladin is my favorite class and it made sense to reign them in a bit. I just don't know how it will feel when you have used up your only Bonus Action and then crit on your attack. A quick glance on the current Paladin spell list, I see there are 13 spells out of 50 that require a Bonus Action and none use it up more than once you have set up or cast the spell (like Spiritual Weapon would). So I think it should be okay still, assuming all Paladin's spells have been improved and you actually use your spells instead of hoarding them for Divine Smite solely. With these changes, I feel the Paladin will play more as a divine warrior with more tools at its disposal and not just a smite burst machine.
Interesting that the halfcasters' features are very varied, but they are weighed down by action economy. My biggest critique of Ranger is it has way too many Bonus Action concentration spells so they end up using the same few (best) spells and not the others. Contrary to the Eldritch Knight, I assume the halfcasters will have to choose more wisely between spellcasting or attacking in a turn. Well they can do both but will have to sacrifice their full action economy in return.
Still salty that my zealot barbarian paladin multiclass character can’t smite anymore
Yeah I definitely feel like that's a rough change. One of the cool things about divine smite was you could make use of spell slots without spellcasting. Especially since lots of good paladin spells are usable out of combat.
Omg I hadn't considered that. They nerfed a prominent character from my favourite actual play!
I think multiclassed Barbarians should be allowed to cast non-concentration spells while they're Raging. Not just Smites but Hellish Rebukes, Fireballs, etc.
Currently Barbarian + Caster just doesn't work outside of very specific builds.
@@Lathaon 💯, I've been working this idea into my own system. Barbarians not casting spells is an outdated d&d-ism
I am of the opinion that Paladin is one of the best designed classes in 5e, period. They don't have any dead levels, they have an effective niche (fast nova at a cost) and have fantastic party utility with their Aura, Lay on Hands and Bless. I really like the direction they took with quality of life features that mainly result in buffs, but making Smite cost a bonus action is a bad idea in my opinion and will make the class more clunky to play. I feel like they wanted to stop Extra Attack and Opportunity Attack Smite which I can understand why they did that, but half the problem is fixed by making Smite a spell now that it looks like we will have a concrete rule that limits spells to once per turn.
To be fair, every other smite beyond divine is already a bonus action spell in 5e
That's only part of the issue. Even if you wanted to stop paladins from having multiple smites or smiting off their turn, there are other ways to do that. By making Smite a spell, you put them in a no-win scenario. Without a smite, paladins will likely have the lowest damage per round out of any martial character, but if they use Smite, they are forgoing a lot of their best support and utility spells that require their bonus action. Making it a spell now also means that your primary class feature, the thing you pick a paladin to do, can be turned off by Silence or Counterspell, or be stolen by any spell-copying features with zero actual investment into being a paladin.
But that just basically makes it no different than the smite spells that no one bothered using before because people who just pump every spell slot they could into divine smite to nuke a target into oblivion before it could do much making the smite spells redundant.
I'm not sure it's as bad as it sounds. With weapon mastery and slightly more spell slots you can still do serious damage. Will two handed weapon wielders be able to make bonus action attacks?
Just making all smites a reaction spell would probably fix all the clunkiness while limiting it to once a turn since you only have 1 reaction. I'd just also add a tibit where you can use it on opportunity attacks as well and smite happy paladins will be happy.
36:20 Sad to see the aura of ancients change. Made the subclass feel very unique
It's a popular feature.
It used to be the main reason people took the subclass, power-wise. The other features were just far too weak. So they kinda buffed the entanglement channel divinity, but that's not enough to make up for the huge loss of power with the aura. They massacred my boy.
Well, many monsters are not casting spells anymore, so a dead aura in many encounters. I hope they diversified a lot damage types, resistances, and immunities, which will make this aura more special. We have to wait for the MM.
Its a good change. The design philosophy seems to be to move away from monsters casting actual spells, which would leave this aura far too weak.
@@PedroHISilvaya they must’ve made those damage types more common, because if not that’s basically useless compared to their previous version
The base divine smite spell better have no components so it can’t be counterspelled.
I’m guessing the thing he didn’t mention about divine sense is that it isn’t hindered by cover. I think that would be a huge improvement and make the feature actually useable, although costing a channel is bad
But you get more channels, so I think it evens out.
@@ShadowDreamer100 yeah, kinda, but you also want channel for the other uses, especially when you get your subclass. It’ll be a resource you want to manage
@@lukesandadordoceu4835 It's also a situational usage, so I'm not too worried about it. Giving the choice rather than the extra option I think allows more party cohesion. Paladins aren't the only class who can detect those kinds of things, either.
@@ShadowDreamer100
Yeah but then you have to weight the opportunity cost of divine sense with every single other channel divinity options you have available and given the inconsistent nature of DS most of the time that trade is likely not gonna be worth it
Plus despite having multiple charges of channel divinity now; new paladins only regain one charge on a short rest RAW
@@Boney_PaladinThat’s fine, I think. It’s very situational, and there are better uses further down the line anyway. A long rest fully recharges the channels; I don’t typically see a short rest when players talk about their Campaigns.
So multiclassing w barbarian to take advantage of rage and smites is no longer possible. Shitty. It was a dope multiclass now it’s no good at all
Thank you for these quick overviews/recaps or whatever you wanna call them!
Damn, I thought the "spell resistance" of the Ancients was pretty cool, sad to see it go
It was probably changed due to DnD Monster Stat Blocks changing. What I mean by this is that in the most recent books, monsters that would previously have spells instead got spell-like abilities that aren’t subjected to the same rules and restrictions as actual spells. This meant features like Ancients Paladin Aura or Magic Resistance got progressively worse as more books were released. So it seems like the new PHB is changing features that used to be useful against spells, to now be useful against the spell-like abilities that they keep giving to monsters.
I predict a lot of people will be sad to see it go.
I guess it depends. Sure you were protected from magic but in some ways this will be more protection against some rough creatures.
Would have been nice to choose and maybe have 1 or 2 more but hey.
One thing that might be important with the change to Divine Smite, is that now a Thief Rogue can Smite.
You can create a smite spell scroll and Thief Rogues can use it as a bonus action with the Fast Hands feature.
Paladin really is just a cleric subclass now lol
...Huh.
@@ilovethelegend Since Smite is a spell now, it can be copied to a spell scroll. The Thief subclass for Rogues, has a feature at level 3 called Fast Hands that allows the use of a magic item as a bonus action. So, Thief Rogues can bonus action smite now.
Funny but it seems that every other change to Paladin is to obscure how badly they got nerfed now that their bonus action is gone. Also, love how they somehow interpreted the update to “smiting more”. 😂
I'm sad for the death of paladin/barbarian multiclass...
Super F.
I am dissapoint
I ban subclasses so no loss for my campaign lol...poor powergamers
So I might’ve missed what dual wielding rules they finally settled on but it feels like a bit of a kick in the nethers to finally give paladins the ability to pick two weapon fighting style and then also screw their bonus actions/multi hit builds over with the smite change
You have to use the Nick mastery to free up your bonus action while TWFing.
Wizards of the Coast and negative synergy, name a more iconic duo.
this really blurs the line between paladin being it's own class fantasy vs being a cleric subclass IMO
I'm disappointed that they didn't steal your modifications to Smite (letting you swap damage dice for effects, like they did with Sneak Attack)....
Guess it'll still just be a House Rule at my table 🤷
Oath of the Ancients art is not my style at all. Too many of the pictures are fun and friendly without any drama or conflict. I prefer Dungeons & Dragons to be high adventure full of danger.
It's what you get when your company decides that pandering to certain demographics is more important than keeping your current customer base happy. The crowd they're focusing on is the crowd that freaks out because the cashier at the grocery store said hello to them, the crowd that can't accept adversity or differing opinions in the slightest.
Exactly.
I miss all of the old-school 70's - 90's art. Looked exciting, gritty, and metal. 🤘🏼
It's called Dungeons & Dragons; not Fairies & Pronouns.
I was in a group a few years ago where everybody had their moment to shine. The paladin's moment was when he ran towards the boss who had killed his best friend, misty stepped past the guards and then dropped a natural 20 with a smite. Everybody went nuts. Now, apparently a misty step and smite on the same turn is overpowered I guess, somehow? Blah. Lame. Boo.
My DM kills my steed every combat. Hopefully this steed can survive a combat.
This is one of the classes that playing a 2014 version paladin might be better overall, at least in terms of burst damage capacity.
That said I think the class is better designed and encourages you to take full advantage of your kit.
With Smite being so severely hamstrung in the final version, I foresee ranged Dexadins/Padlock AuraBot builds being much more popular. There's so much less incentive to be in melee range now.
Okay, time for why Paladin Smite doesn't work, and its not due to balance:
1) Bonus Action in reaction to an effect is inconsistent with the rules. There are very few cases where a bonus action is used in this way. Generally a bonus action is untied from the other effects of the game (and always is when its a spell), giving players more freedom with their action economy (which I would describe as a big action little action economy). The exceptions to this are monks unarmed strikes and twf bonus action attack, but point 2 covers this.
2) a bonus action should describe a discrete effect. Paladin Smite isn't a discrete effect, it's an extension of the original attack that doesn't provoke a new check or create a new condition: it's just damage. An action should change the narrative in some way, but a divine smite doesn't really do this, it's just enhancing the original action. Monks ua strikes and twf meanwhile ARE discrete effects, so while they are tied to the attack action players feel the impact of multiple effects/checks the BA creates.
So putting aside the question of balance, Paladin Smite acts to make the player feel restricted. They are losing action economy and freedom to act in order to use a core part of their chassis.
I 💯 expect to see this house ruled out, maybe with a 1/turn limiter. Because it won't *feel* balanced due to how uniquely it affects the action economy.
Have they considered replacing Todd with a mannequin and a recording? "Perfect", "so good", "amazing", "I love you J Craw",
I think they should replace with a recording of Owen Wilson saying 'Wow!' everytime
So when I take polearm master as a paladin I have to chose between my bonus action being another attack or a smite.
The nice thing about smite being ready on all attacks was that I could use my spell slots while concentrating on a 10 min long spell.
With the UA version of Truestrike, it is going to be tempting to try to get access to that cantrip via Charisma as a Paladin, but I am wondering if there is going to be an anti-synergy there between that updated cantrip, and any Paladin features that can trigger as part of the "Attack" action...
At this point, i just wait and watch these with Chris.
I don’t know if you were planning to do this, but it would be cool to see you rank the 2024 phb subclasses and classes after the books release!
47 seconds ago! I'm late!
First comment though.
It's cool to see a suburban housewife from 1930's America achieve her dream of being queen of the elves and not feel the need to change her hairstyle in the process.
Disappointed about the BA tax on smite, surely a line saying once per turn would have had the desired effect without clogging up your bonus action 🙁
Once per turn would allow opportunity attack smites which BA doesn’t so that’s not strictly the same desired effect.
To me, the only good thing about the new paladin reveal is that I allready know what my 1st house rule for OneDnd is. I seriously can not believe they kept Divine smite as a BA.
As an addendum, if Eldrich Smite remains at it was in UA7 this change is even more laughable, since now warlock becomes an objectively better martial than the pally (SAD, lifedrinker, Smites, and better spells).
Guess I'm sticking with 2014 rules then
the paladin nerf to smite is brutal and i very much despise it!. i think this was THE CORE ability for paladins. My Disappointment Is Immeasurable And My Day Is Ruined
Insane how warlocks smite better than paladins now. Crazy times we live in
Divine Sense was a throwaway use in 5e you used it whenever you entered a room, but only lasting one turn was pretty worthless. The playtest lasting 10mins is a MASSIVE upgrade that I feel is worth a channel divinity when you want to use it in a social setting but also with Abjure Foes as a combo could be really good.
I played a a Oath of Acients Paladin and I thought that Aura would be busted as Hell at level 7. But since every Mini-Boss/Dragon/Liar damage is Spell like effects or Supernatural, etc from level 7 to level 10 it applied *twice*, and one of those was b/c of a poor teleportion roll from our Artificer TP'ing the party... That aura felt so bad as on paper it looked God Tier and in play since it hardly ever applied felt just plain weak.
Yes Nature's Grasp (Wraith?) was horrible imo as well. But funny story, I used it twice and one time it was to prevent a creature that had eaten one of our party members from escaping as a last grasp hail mary. It failed the Strength Check *with Advantage* THREE TIMES IN A ROW and we were able to rescue our party member. Six chances to roll (iirc) 6 or higher and didn't. Torm looked fondly on my Paladin that day.
Overall I like the change to Paladin Smite from Divine Smite but needs just a minor tweak. There is plenty of minor fixes to Divine Smite and Paladin Smites would be overall good.
started at 400 likes and now you're over 800 likes
28:20 - Holy Nimbus being a Bonus Action *does* mean that you can't smite on that same turn now, of course
Just what I was thinking
You couldn't before either though tbf. It used an action, which meant you couldn't attack, which meant you couldn't smite
Paladin, everyone wanted the other martials to be buffed to be on par with it, we ended up getting it pushed down to them and full casters likely remain as powerful as ever.
no caster will be even more powerful .....
since Paladins are now a bad joke
That fact you think nova-smiting was the only thing Paladin had going for it shows a lack of information on your part. Aura of Protection is a *huge* part of the paladin's power, and that remains unchanged.
It's also a passive ability and honestly less fun if that what you have going for you.
@@elekbuday81 No one said anything about nova being the only thing for Paladins. The issue is heavily nerfing a feature and playstyle that didn't pose any problems for the game and was widely considered extremely fun. It's a horrible decision and even if the Paladin remains just as strong (thanks to Masteries etc), Smite was just made far less entertaining and far more clunky.
@@elekbuday81nova smiting is fun, why take away fun
One issue I have is that a lot of old features from Tasha's or other 5e materials are touted as "new features". I'd prefer they focus on actual new features instead of pandering things we've had for years
It's _all_ footnotes to Gygax.
Glad to hear they did something with upcasting Find Steed. My initial thought would've been to basically roll Find Greater Steed into it, and make the level 3 iteration allow you to summon a mount with a CR of 1, but a scaling template, as I assume this is going to be, might do the job just as well.
so multiclass paladins & non-paladins will still get sooner and better access to the paladin's signature smite and special steed features. I was really hoping that was something they would fix.
They get them at the same times as before, I think. Though, from what it sounds like, you can technically prepare DS from the Paladin spell list at Level 1 before it is recorded as an actual feature at Level 2. Could be fun for Swords Bards and Bladelocks, or even Bladesingers. Find Steed is still 5th level, I think, and there's nothing to be done about that.
If its only on the paladin spell list, paladins still get first and pretty much only access. Maybe a few oddball feats and bards might get it too.
@@MOORE4U2by multiclassing into a full caster your spell slot progression boosts up, a paladin 5 sorcerer 15 will spell slots all the way to 9th level which could be used on those spells to super charge them while a pure paladin 20 only has up to 5th spell slots.
Bards can't get Paladin or Ranger spells with Magical Secrets anymore.
35:56 - Dungeon Delver has Resistance to damage dealt by Traps. However, it did not make an appearance in the Playtest Material.
Why are they so insistent on making weapon damage boosting spells like divine smite so shit. The whole reason divine smite was good was because it was free- you could just turn up your damage when you needed to. Unless there’s going to be no ways to get bonus action attacks (Pam, duel wielding, or gwm bonus action attacks) just attacking with your bonus action is often very similar damage but with no cost. The other smite spells were doubly shit because they had to be used before and used a bonus action, but even now that they can (presumably) be used after hitting they’re still pretty bad because using up your whole bonus action means it’s often not even worth the damage if you can find a way to get a bonus action attack, and on top of that it has a cost.
Realistically I think divine smite could’ve been completely free all the time as a bonus action and it would still only be decent, not overpower.
Not having PAM means if you miss once (twice at level 5), you do no damage at all. PAM still gives you some bad luck protection.
PAM's 1d4+mod damage is less than 2d8 even with +5, and Smite continues to scale by 1d8 every 4 levels.
...except that GWM boosted that to 1d4 + mods + 10, which is MUCH higher than 2d8, with zero resource cost.
So to Divine Smite you now need to use your attack action, hit, burn a spell slot AND use your bonus action; is there any other damage add in D&D that requires all that? Also, it can now be countered, silenced, nonmagic auraed, stolen, copied, will not work at all against some creatures (level 20 paladin cannot now smite a rakshasa for example) and can't be used on an opportunity attack. This is going way overboard when all that was necessary to stop the nova burst was to limit paladins to one smite a turn (whichever smite they chose) similar to Rogue sneak attack.
Paladins are my favorite class in the game. I'm just really drawn to the heroic divine crusader. Seeing all the other classes from Monk to Wizard get buffed made me super excited to see what the holy warriors would get.
The fact that nearly every other class got talks or confirmations for whole new exclusive systems while the only real thing to talk about for Paladins was nerfs was legitimately just upsetting. My players are fully aware that this is my favorite class, and it's going to be awful to inform them that most of the talking points are taking things away. I dunno, man, it just feels bad seeing the vast majority get cool reworks just to be left with nothing of real note.
Paladins are the new monks.
I'm wondering if the aura changes will add something more substantial that we didn't hear about.
I get what you’re saying. I think it just goes to show how overclocked the paladin was if the bulk of its changes are nerfs
Weapon masteries I think will still be a big change, and we don’t know what all the spell changes and additions will be, so it’s a little too soon to say. It does seem like there’s a bunch of big improvements here, the main nerf seems to be divine smite. I’m hoping the old smite spells get a buff and we get more cool options to replace them though, I always felt the basic divine smite was a little boring given a lot of combats I play in have side objectives that aren’t just deal a ton of damage.
I feel that way about Wizards. So many ideas for them were scrapped that I think they're going to end up barely changed from 2014, while every other class feels new and different.
Worse, they lose four subclasses including the one I was most excited to see revised (Necromancer).
And Smite is a Levelled spell, which prevent casting other levelled spells when using it, which is a huge hit for Sorcadins ;_;
Adding the restriction “Once on your turn” for divine smite would have been fine, and perhaps a necessary nerf. But costing a bonus action just makes the ability feel like crap, as now there are so many other spells and abilities this conflicts with.
It especially kills some really fun multiclass builds, such as barbarian or sorcerer.
For all of these videos, JC keeps saying "our goal was to take a class's key feature and make it better." Too bad they did the opposite fir Paladin.
Incredibly disappointed with the changes so far, I was hoping for far more customisation options😢
My first reaction to the Oath of Ancients aura nerf was flip table and hurl explicatives. Upon hearing an extended description of those damage types I shall refrain from flipping and hurling until I see changes made to spells and monsters.
Tbh, there are a lot of magical damage sources that are *not* spells, so the previous Oath of Ancients aura had no effect on. It only really used to help you when you were fighting wizards. Now it doesn't help as much with that (but will still help against nasty things like finger of death ofc) but will now help against a lot of things it couldn't before, some of which are quite nasty (my first thought was mindflayers, but there's a solid number of nasty creatures that have necrotic, radiant or psychic damage abilities)
My guess about why they made the damage type change? Because that will make their proprietary VTT easier to program.
Not a great reason to change a class feature, in my view. Why didn't they just add another damage category ("Spell damage").
43:56 love how the book hasn’t been released and Chris is already fact checking WotC lmao
You mentioned that making Smites a Bonus Action is a nerf. But what I'm curious about is whether you think it's a good or bad change. Appropriate or overkill?
I've never played a Paladin yet myself, so I don't have any experience to draw on. But I see a few people commenting on these videos that "Paladin is ruined now," or some such, because of that one thing, and my reaction to such hyperbole lacking sufficient analysis / justification is to take it with a grain of salt.
I've always heard of Paladins as being one of the stronger Classes in a variety of ways, and with all the improvements we heard about here, I'm curious whether the nerf to smites is actually that bad or if people are just overreacting. How do you feel the overall changes balance out?
Palidens needed nerfing. They were super op.
So with it being a Bonus Action Spell there's a good few changes.
BA means that if you want to use things like Polearm Master, a Racial Ability, or other Class Features like Barbarian Rage (or even many of your own features, including all the Capstones)....you just can't. It'd be like making Sneak Attack a BA. Really restrictive outside of the very specific scenario it's based around.
Spell means that it's locked behind being able to cast one to begin with. Again, Barbarian Rage, Anti-Magic Zones, potentially Silence (that'd really hurt), and creatures immune to spells in general. Throw on top the amount of DMs absolutely giddy they're going to be able to just Counterspell and say no to a Class's defining feature.....it just feels really bad the hoops you need to go through now to do what your class was built around.
I’m not an expert on dnd balance but just from a fun perspective, I really hate that you can’t double smite with this 2024 version of the Paladin, I liked being able to pop off against one guy in a combat that was the fantasy I wanted
@@ninjakirby777 yep, but that fantasy breaks the game.
@archersfriend5900 you do realize that DnD isn't a videogame right?
I do NOT like these changes lol, but my group also runs a fair amount of homebrew so my perspective it's skewed.
“Maybe it is Hair envy”
😂😂😂
I am there with you!!!
Who else wants to see that beehive photoshopped on Chris’ head? 😂😂😂😂😂
Looks at Vow of Enmity: a spell-less class feature that doesn't require a bonus action to activate or move and doesn't require concentration...
Looks at Ranger's new Favored Enemy: ...
There is no way I will spend a penny on 6e (whatever name they call it) BUT I love Chris and his thoughts on gaming.
The ancient aura got a little destroyed tho. NGL.
The change to divine smite is terrible. Aura of warding resistance types is a mixed bag as necrotic resistance is the only one that will see use in the average campaign as psychic is too rare and radiant is non existent. Asides from that all other changes shown seemed ok but not worth the loss of bonus action + bonus action casting penalty+ other limitations on smite. I will probably work with my DM to allow me to play 2014 paladin.
I just started playing 5e last month. The last time I played tabletop it was called AD&D. I've been having a ton of fun reading articles, watching videos, learning about classes and builds and rules. I'm currently playing a ranger and a campaign that will go from level 1 to 20. I was planning to take gloom stalker and stay pure, with a possible tip in life cleric. I've waited for years for rangers to be good.
But now seeing how they followed through with the UA nerf to the paladin's divine smite, I'm sadly confident they've followed through with the ranger and gloom stalker nerfs as well. And it would guess planned nerfs to my other favorite classes.
So I guess that's it for me. I had a really fun three sessions. But there is no way I'm going to continue to support this BS with my time and money.
Thanks for having such a great show. I've learned a lot from it.
Maybe they'll fix ranger again in another 35 years.
You could just not support them with money while still having fun with your gaming group. If you've already had three sessions, that means you already have everything you need, right? You shouldn't hurt yourself just to spite someone else that doesn't even know you exist.
@@Shalakor lol true points. I'll check with the group and DM to see if we're planning to use the 2024 PHB when it comes out. It's hard when you're feeling disappointed and frustrated and there isn't any way to express it to the people that would matter.
You can just play 5e still. I think a lot of people will for awhile.
Question: can casters now use Counterspell on Paladin's Smite?
Technically yes but the new counter spell targets your con save so Paladins should be able to save against it pretty consistently.
It's a spell so yes.
Yes. Granted, counterspell now requires a safe which means paladins get to add their Cha modifier, so that might help. What's worse is abilities or monsters who are immune to spells of a certain level or lower are now immune to divine smite.
If its got a vocal component like in the UA. Then just use silence.
Silence may also work if its like the UA...
"spells are an important part of the paladins kit" ...are they? Like, I've only seen two paladin players who have used spell slots for anything else besides smiting
I think this is a big part of why they changed smite. They want to encourage using spells, not hoarding all of your slots for smiting
I’m immediately assuming by “got wrong” you’re talking about the Vengeance Paladin wing feature and Jeremy thinking they originally lasted 10 minutes
Right feature, but he got more wrong than that.
what's often annoying about DnD is how hard it is to get buffs online in general. I've always advocated for making most buff spells bonus actions or some such. May even be nice to have a little round at the start of combat to activate stuff like that so if you have a low initiative it's on and others can use the buffs you give them on their first turn and such. I've often in TTRPGs had situations where we see the enemy coming but then the GM doesn't call initiative till he sets them up close to you and I'm like "nah, while I'm watching them move in I'm casting buffs and stuff" cause realistically that's what you'd do if you had prep time.
The GM is doing that because the action economy is so player favored. Giving a free round to pre-buff just tmakes the party more broken and trivializes most combats.
Why did they have to do this to the divine smite!??? You can't even multiclass into barbarian anymore now!! I wanted to do that mc..😢 i'm so sad and angry now!
So raging barbarians, wildshaped moon druids can no longer smite? Its now once per turn bonus action? This is a massive nerf to one of the best features of a paladin.... this is far from optimal now.
Conveniently placed spell lists sounds nice, but why would a paladin care what school of magic their spells are?
I’m straight up just gonna make smite once a turn in exchange for a spell slot on a hit. The bonus action seems like an unnecessary cost, and removes the ability to punish enemies via attack of opportunity.
I’m changing these to using Reaction instead of Bonus Action immediately upon release
Opportunity attack are reactions not bonus actions
@@Artist_ash-is5os They meant it in the sense of not being able to use divine smite on an attack of opportunity since it's a bonus action.
@@MaximanLP thank you🙏 that makes a lot more sense my bad
That's the point!
So to clarify, the "what they got wrong" that you reference is the title is the details on Avenging Angel?
And I totally agree with your point at the end about narrowing the power gap between classes.
Yes.
First of all, the smite problem is a DM problem. If you don't need to expend your resources to get to the boss, you will see the wizard casting haste on the PAM paladin and the boss will be smited to ashes. If most people are playing one encounter a day, I do believe it needs to get adressed. The most elegant solution would be to look at sneak attack and limit smite to once per turn and voilà.
But Looking Divine Smite now I realize we were galighted in the playtest.
The first playtest It was restrict to once per turn and you couldn't cast a spell in the same turn. Obvious nerf so people didn't like it.
The second playtest they turned it into a spell that cost a bonus action and gave you all the smites prepared and you could cast one of those spells for free which meant the free cast scaled, somewhat a nerf but you got so much to compensate, so all non paladin players liked it because it looked cool.
Now we got just the worst divine smite possible. Bonus action spell, free casting of a 1st level spell once per day.
Well, good thing we can homebrew.
One possible mechanical difference with changing the fighting styles to feats is that you can pick up additional fighting styles with your regular feats.
You technically already could in Tasha’s… Fighting Initiate
@@matthewharding584 I have to check, but I think you can only select fighting initiative once, and this new way looks like you can select multiple fighting styles. (Not that one would.)
So you can pick a great weapon fighting and blind fighting and the battle master one and intercepter.
Making Divine Smites spells and a bonus action, Giving one more Channel Divinity but also adding Divine Sense to the same resource pool, Giving you a Find Steed use for free 1 per day when it's already a spell that last untill dispelled (so incredibly dumb). Like jesus christ dude what are these nerfs. Wasn't it possible to limit how many smites you can do in a round? Trying to focus target the Sorcerer multiclass? Nerfing Aura of protection? That's by far the worst rework so far. I'm guessing that their thinking is they needed to kill the lower levels of the paladin so you don't multiclass like 18 Sorcerer/2 Paladin type builds and make the subclasses more worth while. This sucks.
The paladin smite fix you did was so good i forgot it wasn't official lol. Was confused when they said it was a spell
What was the fix?
@@Snags5050 ruclips.net/video/q8vPItg7I54/видео.htmlsi=s7QNEB8r0LmExMRF
33:40 "I think it's hair envy" Could be (I appreciate the self-awareness) 😂
Paladin needed a nerf in my opinion, but I wouldnhave liked it more from the aura not smite. Only being able to smite once a turn is a fine nerf, the bonus action is overkill to me.