Paladin (Oath of Vengeance)

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Overview & Creation

Clad in plate armour that gleams in the sunlight despite the dust and grime of long travel, a human lays down her sword and shield and places her hands on a mortally wounded man. Divine radiance shines from her hands, the man’s wounds knit closed, and his eyes open wide with amazement.   A dwarf crouches behind an outcrop, his black cloak making him nearly invisible in the night, and watches an orc war band celebrating its recent victory. Silently, he stalks into their midst and whispers an oath, and two orcs are dead before they even realise he is there. Silver hair shining in a shaft of light that seems to illuminate only him, an elf laughs with exultation. His spear flashes like his eyes as he jabs again and again at a twisted giant, until at last his light overcomes its hideous darkness.   Whatever their origin and their mission, paladins are united by their oaths to stand against the forces of evil. Whether sworn before a god’s altar and the witness of a priest, in a sacred glade before nature spirits and fey beings, or in a moment of desperation and grief with the dead as the only witness, a paladin’s oath is a powerful bond. It is a source of power that turns a devout warrior into a blessed champion.  

The Cause of Righteousness

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A paladin swears to uphold justice and righteousness, to stand with the good things of the world against the encroaching darkness, and to hunt the forces of evil wherever they lurk. Different paladins focus on various aspects of the cause of righteousness, but all are bound by the oaths that grant them power to do their sacred work. Although many paladins are devoted to gods of good, a paladin’s power comes as much from a commitment to justice itself as it does from a god.   Paladins train for years to learn the skills of combat, mastering a variety of weapons and armour. Even so, their martial skills are secondary to the magical power they wield: power to heal the sick and injured, to smite the wicked and the undead, and to protect the innocent and those who join them in the fight for justice.  

Beyond the Mundane Life

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Almost by definition, the life of a paladin is an adventuring life. Unless a lasting injury has taken him or her away from adventuring for a time, every paladin lives on the front lines of the cosmic struggle against evil. Fighters are rare enough among the ranks of the militias and armies of the world, but even fewer people can claim the true calling of a paladin. When they do receive the call, these warriors turn from their former occupations and take up arms to fight evil. Sometimes their oaths lead them into the service of the crown as leaders of elite groups of knights, but even then their loyalty is first to the cause of righteousness, not to crown and country.   Adventuring paladins take their work seriously. A delve into an ancient ruin or dusty crypt can be a quest driven by a higher purpose than the acquisition of treasure. Evil lurks in dungeons and primeval forests, and even the smallest victory against it can tilt the cosmic balance away from oblivion.  

Creating a Paladin

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The most important aspect of a paladin character is the nature of his or her holy quest. Although the class features related to your oath don’t appear until you reach 3rd level, plan ahead for that choice by reading the oath descriptions at the end of the class. Are you a devoted servant of good, loyal to the gods of justice and honour, a holy knight in shining armour venturing forth to smite evil? Are you a glorious champion of the light, cherishing everything beautiful that stands against the shadow, a knight whose oath descends from traditions older than many of the gods? Or are you an embittered loner sworn to take vengeance on those who have done great evil, sent as an angel of death by the gods or driven by your need for revenge? The Gods of the Multiverse section lists many deities worshiped by paladins throughout the multiverse, such as Torm, Tyr, Heironeous, Paladine, Kiri-Jolith, Dol Arrah, the Silver Flame, Bahamut, Athena, Re-Horakhty, and Heimdall.   How did you experience your call to serve as a paladin? Did you hear a whisper from an unseen god or angel while you were at prayer? Did another paladin sense the potential within you and decide to train you as a squire? Or did some terrible event—the destruction of your home, perhaps—drive you to your quests? Perhaps you stumbled into a sacred grove or a hidden elven enclave and found yourself called to protect all such refuges of goodness and beauty. Or you might have known from your earliest memories that the paladin’s life was your calling, almost as if you had been sent into the world with that purpose stamped on your soul.   As guardians against the forces of wickedness, paladins are rarely of any evil alignment. Most of them walk the paths of charity and justice. Consider how your alignment colours the way you pursue your holy quest and the manner in which you conduct yourself before gods and mortals. Your oath and alignment might be in harmony, or your oath might represent standards of behaviour that you have not yet attained.  

QUICK BUILD

You can make a paladin quickly by following these suggestions. First, Strength should be your highest ability score, followed by Charisma. Second, choose the noble background.  

The Paladin Table

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Level	Proficiency Bonus	Features	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th
1st	+2	Divine Sense, Lay on Hands	-	-	-	-	-
2nd	+2	Fighting Style, Spellcasting, Divine Smite	2	-	-	-	-
3rd	+2	Divine Health, Sacred Oath	3	-	-	-	-
4th	4	Ability Score Improvement	3	-	-	-	-
5th	+3	Extra Attack	4	2	-	-	-
6th	+3	Aura of Protection	4	2	-	-	-
7th	+3	Sacred Oath Feature	4	3	-	-	-
8th	+3	Ability Score Improvement	4	3	-	-	-
9th	+4	-	4	3	2	-	-
10th	+4	Aura of Courage	4	3	2	-	-
11th	+4	Improved Divine Smite	4	3	3	-	-
12th	+4	Ability Score Improvement	4	3	3	-	-
13th	+5	-	4	3	3	1	-
14th	+5	Cleansing Touch	4	3	3	1	-
15th	+5	Sacred Oath Feature	4	3	3	2	-
16th	+5	Ability Score Improvement	4	3	3	2	-
17th	+6	-	4	3	3	2	1
18th	+6	Aura Improvements	4	3	3	2	1
19th	+6	Ability Score Improvement	4	3	3	2	2
20th	+6	Sacred Oath Feature	4	3	3	2	2

 

BREAKING YOUR OATH

A paladin tries to hold to the highest standards of conduct, but even the most virtuous paladin is fallible. Sometimes the right path proves too demanding, sometimes a situation calls for the lesser of two evils, and sometimes the heat of emotion causes a paladin to transgress his or her oath.   A paladin who has broken a vow typically seeks absolution from a cleric who shares his or her faith or from another paladin of the same order. The paladin might spend an all-night vigil in prayer as a sign of penitence, or undertake a fast or similar act of self-denial. After a rite of confession and forgiveness, the paladin starts fresh.   If a paladin willfully violates his or her oath and shows no sign of repentance, the consequences can be more serious. At the DM’s discretion, an impenitent paladin might be forced to abandon this class and adopt another, or perhaps to take the Oathbreaker paladin option that appears in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

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Class Features

Divine Sense

The presence of strong evil registers on your senses like a noxious odor, and powerful good rings like heavenly music in your ears. As an action, you can open your awareness to detect such forces. Until the end of your next turn, you know the location of any celestial, fiend, or undead within 60 feet of you that is not behind total cover. You know the type (celestial, fiend, or undead) of any being whose presence you sense, but not its identity (the vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich, for instance). Within the same radius, you also detect the presence of any place or object that has been consecrated or desecrated, as with the hallow spell.   You can use this feature a number of times equal to 1 + your Charisma modifier. When you finish a long rest, you regain all expended uses.  

Lay on Hands

Your blessed touch can heal wounds. You have a pool of healing power that replenishes when you take a long rest. With that pool, you can restore a total number of hit points equal to your paladin level × 5.   As an action, you can touch a creature and draw power from the pool to restore a number of hit points to that creature, up to the maximum amount remaining in your pool.   Alternatively, you can expend 5 hit points from your pool of healing to cure the target of one disease or neutralize one poison affecting it. You can cure multiple diseases and neutralize multiple poisons with a single use of Lay on Hands, expending hit points separately for each one.   This feature has no effect on undead and constructs.  

Fighting Style

At 2nd level, you adopt a style of fighting as your specialty. Choose one of the following options. You can’t take a Fighting Style option more than once, even if you later get to choose again.  

Defense

While you are wearing armor, you gain a +1 bonus to AC.  

Dueling

When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon.  

Great Weapon Fighting

When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die for an attack you make with a melee weapon that you are wielding with two hands, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll. The weapon must have the two-handed or versatile property for you to gain this benefit.  

Protection

When a creature you can see attacks a target other than you that is within 5 feet of you, you can use your reaction to impose disadvantage on the attack roll. You must be wielding a shield.  

Divine Smite

Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon’s damage. The extra damage is 2d8 for a 1st-level spell slot, plus 1d8 for each spell level higher than 1st, to a maximum of 5d8. The damage increases by 1d8 if the target is an undead or a fiend, to a maximum of 6d8.  

Divine Health

By 3rd level, the divine magic flowing through you makes you immune to disease.  

Sacred Oath

When you reach 3rd level, you swear the oath that binds you as a paladin forever. Up to this time you have been in a preparatory stage, committed to the path but not yet sworn to it. Now you choose the Oath of Devotion detailed at the end of the class description or one from another source.   Your choice grants you features at 3rd level and again at 7th, 15th, and 20th level. Those features include oath spells and the Channel Divinity feature.  

Oath Spells

Each oath has a list of associated spells. You gain access to these spells at the levels specified in the oath description. Once you gain access to an oath spell, you always have it prepared. Oath spells don’t count against the number of spells you can prepare each day.   If you gain an oath spell that doesn’t appear on the paladin spell list, the spell is nonetheless a paladin spell for you.  

Channel Divinity

Your oath allows you to channel divine energy to fuel magical effects. Each Channel Divinity option provided by your oath explains how to use it.   When you use your Channel Divinity, you choose which option to use. You must then finish a short or long rest to use your Channel Divinity again.   Some Channel Divinity effects require saving throws. When you use such an effect from this class, the DC equals your paladin spell save DC.  

Ability Score Improvement

When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.   Using the optional feats rule, you can forgo taking this feature to take a feat of your choice instead.  

Extra Attack

Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.  

Aura of Protection

Starting at 6th level, whenever you or a friendly creature within 10 feet of you must make a saving throw, the creature gains a bonus to the saving throw equal to your Charisma modifier (with a minimum bonus of +1). You must be conscious to grant this bonus.   At 18th level, the range of this aura increases to 30 feet.  

Aura of Courage

Starting at 10th level, you and friendly creatures within 10 feet of you can’t be frightened while you are conscious.   At 18th level, the range of this aura increases to 30 feet.  

Improved Divine Smite

By 11th level, you are so suffused with righteous might that all your melee weapon strikes carry divine power with them. Whenever you hit a creature with a melee weapon, the creature takes an extra 1d8 radiant damage.  

Cleansing Touch

Beginning at 14th level, you can use your action to end one spell on yourself or on one willing creature that you touch.   You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier (a minimum of once). You regain expended uses when you finish a long rest.  

Aura Improvements

At 18th level, the range of your auras increase to 30 feet.

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Starting Equipment

You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:

• (a) a martial weapon and a shield or (b) two martial weapons
• (a) five javelins or (b) any simple melee weapon
• (a) a priest’s pack or (b) an explorer’s pack
• Chain mail and a holy symbol

 

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Spellcasting

By 2nd level, you have learned to draw on divine magic through meditation and prayer to cast spells as a cleric does. See Spells Rules for the general rules of spellcasting and the Spells Listing for the paladin spell list.  

Preparing and Casting Spells

The Paladin table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your paladin spells. To cast one of your paladin spells of 1st level or higher, you must expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a long rest.   You prepare the list of paladin spells that are available for you to cast, choosing from the paladin spell list. When you do so, choose a number of paladin spells equal to your Charisma modifier + half your paladin level, rounded down (minimum of one spell). The spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots.   For example, if you are a 5th-level paladin, you have four 1st-level and two 2nd-level spell slots. With a Charisma of 14, your list of prepared spells can include four spells of 1st or 2nd level, in any combination. If you prepare the 1st-level spell cure wounds, you can cast it using a 1st-level or a 2nd-level slot. Casting the spell doesn’t remove it from your list of prepared spells.   You can change your list of prepared spells when you finish a long rest. Preparing a new list of paladin spells requires time spent in prayer and meditation: at least 1 minute per spell level for each spell on your list.  

Spellcasting Ability

Charisma is your spellcasting ability for your paladin spells, since their power derives from the strength of your convictions. You use your Charisma whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your Charisma modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a paladin spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.   Spell save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier   Spell attack modifier = your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier  

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a holy symbol (see the Adventuring Gear section) as a spellcasting focus for your paladin spells.

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Subclass Options

Sacred Oaths

Becoming a paladin involves taking vows that commit the paladin to the cause of righteousness, an active path of fighting wickedness. The final oath, taken when he or she reaches 3rd level, is the culmination of all the paladin’s training. Some characters with this class don’t consider themselves true paladins until they have reached 3rd level and made this oath. For others, the actual swearing of the oath is a formality, an official stamp on what has always been true in the paladin’s heart.  

Oath of Vengeance

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The Oath of Vengeance is a solemn commitment to punish those who have committed a grievous sin. When evil forces slaughter helpless villagers, when an entire people turns against the will of the gods, when a thieves’ guild grows too violent and powerful, when a dragon rampages through the countryside — at times like these, paladins arise and swear an Oath of Vengeance to set right that which has gone wrong. To these paladins — sometimes called avengers or dark knights — their own purity is not as important as delivering justice.  

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TENETS OF VENGEANCE

The tenets of the Oath of Vengeance vary by paladin, but all the tenets revolve around punishing wrongdoers by any means necessary. Paladins who uphold these tenets are willing to sacrifice even their own righteousness to mete out justice upon those who do evil, so the paladins are often neutral or lawful neutral in alignment. The core principles of the tenets are brutally simple.   Fight the Greater Evil Faced with a choice of fighting my sworn foes or combating a lesser evil, I choose the greater evil.   No Mercy for the Wicked Ordinary foes might win my mercy, but my sworn enemies do not.   By Any Means Necessary My qualms can’t get in the way of exterminating my foes.   Restitution If my foes wreak ruin on the world, it is because I failed to stop them. I must help those harmed by their misdeeds.

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Channel Divinity

When you take this oath at 3rd level, you gain the following two Channel Divinity options.   Abjure Enemy As an action, you present your holy symbol and speak a prayer of denunciation, using your Channel Divinity. Choose one creature within 60 feet of you that you can see. That creature must make a Wisdom saving throw, unless it is immune to being frightened. Fiends and undead have disadvantage on this saving throw.   On a failed save, the creature is frightened for 1 minute or until it takes any damage. While frightened, the creature’s speed is 0, and it can’t benefit from any bonus to its speed.   On a successful save, the creature’s speed is halved for 1 minute or until the creature takes any damage.   Vow of Enmity As a bonus action, you can utter a vow of enmity against a creature you can see within 10 feet of you, using your Channel Divinity. You gain advantage on attack rolls against the creature for 1 minute or until it drops to 0 hit points or falls unconscious.  

Oath Spells

You gain oath spells at the paladin levels listed.  

Oath of Vengeance Spells

Paladin Level	Spells
3rd	Bane, Hunter’s Mark
5th	Hold Person, Misty Step
9th	Haste, Protection from Energy
13th	Banishment, Dimension Door
17th	Hold Monster, Scrying

Relentless Avenger

By 7th level, your supernatural focus helps you close off a foe’s retreat. When you hit a creature with an opportunity attack, you can move up to half your speed immediately after the attack and as part of the same reaction. This movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks.  

Soul of Vengeance

Starting at 15th level, the authority with which you speak your Vow of Enmity gives you greater power over your foe. When a creature under the effect of your Vow of Enmity makes an attack, you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack against that creature if it is within range.  

Avenging Angel

At 20th level, you can assume the form of an angelic avenger. Using your action, you undergo a transformation. For 1 hour, you gain the following benefits:  

• Wings sprout from your back and grant you a flying speed of 60 feet.
• You emanate an aura of menace in a 30-foot radius. The first time any enemy creature enters the aura or starts its turn there during a battle, the creature must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or become frightened of you for 1 minute or until it takes any damage. Attack rolls against the frightened creature have advantage.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.