Perhaps the central mechanic to the 5th Edition Paladin is Divine Smite. For anyone who hasn't played one, here's how it works:
When you hit with a melee weapon, you can expend a spell slot to deal additional radiant damage. This doesn't require any action - you just make the choice after you've seen whether you hit or not, and you can do it each time you hit if you have the spell slot to spend. The damage you do starts at 2d8 if you spend a 1st level spell slot, and then goes up by 1d8 for each higher spell slot, though this caps out at 5d8 (which takes a 4th level slot). Additionally, if the target you're hitting is a Fiend or Undead, you add 1d8 to that damage (capping out at 6d8 if you spend a 4th level slot.)
Despite its name, the level 11 feature Improved Divine Smite doesn't actually interact with this feature in any way. Instead, that just adds 1d8 to every hit you make with a melee weapon (while both involve adding d8s of radiant damage to your attacks, there's no resource management to consider here, and this extra d8 doesn't affect the caps on the original Divine Smite feature).
But we're not actually done: Paladins also have a few spells that are themed around Smiting. These are, in spell level order and then alphabetical, Searing Smite, Thunderous Smite, Wrathful Smite, Branding Smite, Blinding Smite, Staggering Smite, and Banishing Smite.
These spells all work the following way: you cast the spell as a bonus action, and then, the next time you hit with a melee weapon attack, the spell adds its effects to the attack, and then ends. The spells require concentration, which means a couple things: You can only do one at a time, and you run the risk of wasting the spell slot if you don't hit and then lose concentration, for example from taking damage. You can also only do one of these per turn, as it'll cost you your bonus action.
The other thing that's funny about them is that they do less damage than a Divine Smite of the same level, at least on the initial impact.
Searing Smite does only 1d6 extra fire damage, though here there's actually a reason to maintain concentration on the spell, because it will do that extra d6 at the start of each of the target's turns unless it succeeds on a Constitution saving throw. Notably, succeeding doesn't end the effect, but merely prevents the damage on that turn - the target keeps burning until you drop concentration or they use an action to pat out the flames.
Still, I think it'll be rare for this spell to out-damage Divine Smite. As a 1st level spell, the Divine Smite equivalent is 2d8 (we're going to ignore the bonus against fiends and undead for the sake of more broadly comparing the options). That's an average of 9 extra damage. To get that much damage from Searing Smite, you need to hit the target and then have it survive at least two additional rounds and fail its Con saves on both of them, giving you 3d6 damage, which averages to 10.5. 3 rounds isn't insanely long, but it does also mean not being able to use other concentration spells, and on top of that, just one successful Con save could mean drawing this out to 4 rounds, at which point the foe is probably dead already. Upcasting this only increases the damage of the initial hit, which means I think that this is going to be very niche - useful against foes specially affected by fire damage like some plant-type monsters and Trolls, but generally not likely to be worth it.
Thunderous Smite does 2d6 additional thunder damage when it hits. The sound is audible out to a 300-foot range, and then the target must make a Strength save or be pushed back 10 feet and knocked prone. This spell doesn't benefit from upcasting. 2d6 is obviously less than 2d8, though for an initial burst, you're sacrificing only a little damage to get the pushback effect. Frankly, if you can knock an enemy prone, it could be worth it. Also, being able to push foes around the battlefield can potentially help a lot, like knocking a melee combatant away from your squishy sorcerer. I think this one is actually a pretty worthy option.
Wrathful Smite adds 1d6 psychic damage to the hit, and then the target has to make a Wisdom saving throw or become frightened. Notably, as long as you maintain concentration, the target only gets to end this effect by taking an action to make a new Wisdom save. Damage-wise, you're doing far less than a Divine Smite, but if you need the pseudo-crowd-control that is the frightened condition, this could be worth it - though if they succeed on their save, it'll feel like a waste, even with the extra damage.
Branding Smite, the sole 2nd-level smite spell (there's one of each level for all those that are higher than 1,) adds 2d6 radiant damage - though we should recall that, as a second-level spell, this is competing with a 3d8 divine smite. Unlike Thunderous or Wrathful smites, this one does get additional dice when upcast. When you hit a target with this, if it's invisible it becomes visible, and it sheds dim light in a 5-ft radius, and can't become invisible. This is, very clearly, only useful in specific circumstances. If your party doesn't have something like faerie fire, this could be helpful. I'd also rule, as a DM, that if you're shedding light you would at least have disadvantage on Stealth checks, so it could be useful for evasive creatures even if they can't go invisible. Still, it's niche.
Blinding Smite is 3rd level. Here, you add 3d8 radiant damage, which is still behind a Divine Smite's 4d8 for a 3rd level spell slot. The target has to make a Constitution save or become blinded. That's actually a very powerful condition to put on your foes, as, unless it has other senses like blindsight or tremorsense, you'll both be getting advantage on attacks against them and their attacks will have disadvantage against you. However, the target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns to end the effect. While a lot of monsters have pretty good Con saves, the reward of even getting one round of blindness out of this could make it fairly potent. So, I'd actually seriously consider this - just hope they fail their saves.
Staggering Smite is 4th level, and adds 4d6 psychic damage to the hit. The target makes a Wisdom save, and if they fail, they get disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls and can't take reactions until the end of their next turn. So, I want to like this one, but I think you get a lot of the same effects from Blinding Smite, but potentially over a longer period of time, with more damage, and at a lower spell slot level. Attack rolls will typically be made with disadvantage if the target is blind, and the most common reaction, namely opportunity attacks, require the attacker to see the retreating creature, so you can prevent them that way too. So, I don't love this one.
Finally, the 5th level Smite spell, and also the only one that's not Evocation (this one is Abjuration,) we have Banishing Smite. This one adds a whopping 5d10 force damage. Let's also consider that Divine Smite has already capped out at 5d8 at the previous spell level - I don't think Paladins should use Divine Smite with 5th level slots, and this is a very good reason not to. On damage alone, this is outpacing what Divine Smite would be if it scaled up to 5th level slots anyway, which means it's already worth it. On top of this, the target doesn't get a saving throw against the other effect: if it has 50 or fewer hit points after the damage is dealt, one of two things happen: if the creature is native to a different plane, it's sent back there. If it's not, it's put in a harmless demiplane where it remains incapacitated while the spell lasts (1 minute with concentration,) returning to the closest unoccupied space to where it left.
So, Banishing Smite is actually very different from the others, and feels like a good payoff for tier 4 paladins - recall that a 5th level spell to a Paladin is equivalent to a 9th level spell for a pure caster, so it ought to be big, and this one certainly is. This is powerful crowd control, and great for taking a minion out of the fight, incase the 5d10 (average damage being 27.5) in addition to your normal damage wasn't enough to just kill them.
So, honestly, some of these options really do have the potential to be worth your spell slots, though you're still at the mercy of foes potentially landing great saving throws (and as a paladin who is probably focusing more on Strength, your spell save DC might not be super high).
Still, one important thing to note is that these spells will stack up with Divine Smite. If you want to do a nova burst of damage, stacking this up with Divine Smite can lead to some absurd bursts of damage. Indeed, if you or a party member has access to Hold Person or Hold Monster, you can really abuse these - paralyzed targets (the condition Hold spells inflict) automatically take critical hits from any attack made from within 5 feet of them. If you can set up an auto-crit like that (or if your Divination Wizard foresaw big luck,) stacking up one of these smites and then divine smiting can give you something like the scenario I had in our Curse of Strahd game when we decided to take out the Wochters in Vallaki - I charged up a Thunderous Smite, got a critical hit, and then divine smote, dealing 4d6+7 (I have a +2 greatsword) plus 4d8 from the divine smite, plus 4d6 from the thunderous smite. I don't remember what the actual damage came out to, but on average (and ignoring my paladin's fighting style) that's 53 damage in a single hit. Given the element of thunder damage, what was described was that I reduced the Thief or Spy or whatever stat block of the person attacks us to a fine mist.
Indeed, I think Paladins maybe more than any other class have a lot of control over how quickly they can burn resources to deal lots of damage. You might burn three spell slots in a single turn if you use a Smite spell and two Divine Smites, but that turn will probably mean a really huge amount of damage.
As a note, Battle Smith Artificers get Branding Smite and Banishing Smite as specialist spells, and these spells I believe had their wording changed to allow you to use them with ranged weapons (while Battle Smiths are usually depicted as fighting in melee, the subclass works fine at range - indeed, they're the one artificer subclass that's really ideal for using the class' innate proficiency with firearms). Hexblade Warlocks also get access to these two as well as Wrathful Smite. I might avoid Wrathful given that it doesn't scale up (and Warlocks generally want spells that scale up given how their Pact Magic slots work). For Hexblades, the fact that they can get Banishing Smite as well is kind of exciting, as they'll be able to start running that at level 9, rather than waiting until 17 like Paladins and Battle Smiths, and will thus be far more likely to see foes reduced to 50 or fewer HP after they've been hit with the substantial damage a Banishing Smite does.
Notably, Pact of the Blade Warlocks also have access to their own non-spell smite, which is the invocation Eldritch Smite. Eldritch Smite is actually, in a lot of ways, superior to Divine Smite (except maybe for the Fiend/Undead bonus) given that it's the same amount of damage (albeit Force) but it A: scales up to 5th level and B: automatically knocks any target that is huge or smaller prone. That said, unlike Divine Smite, you can only use this once per turn (and a Bladelock can get the equivalent of Extra Attack if they take the Thirsting Blade evocation).
So, a Hexblade Bladelock could, potentially, hit their target with both a Banishing and Eldritch Smite, which would be a total of 6d8+5d10 plus whatever their weapon usually does (bonus damage being an average of 54.5).
Admittedly, I personally like summoned creatures as the best thing for Warlocks to concentrate on, but this works pretty well too.
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