2024 DnD 5e Paladin Subclasses Guide

Introduction

The Paladin’s subclass doesn’t do a lot to change the mechanics of the class, but it does a lot to define your theme. Your oaths, your spells, and your Channel Divinity options all have a significant effect on how your character presents themselves to the world.

For legacy subclasses, see our 2014 Paladin Subclasses Guide.

Table of Contents

Disclaimer

RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.

  • Red: Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
  • Orange: OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
  • Green: Good options. Useful often.
  • Blue: Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.

The advice offered below is based on the current State of the Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows.

Paladin Subclasses

Oath of Devotion (PHB)

The iconic Paladin, Oath of Devotion is easy to play and brings great options for facing “greater evil” enemies like fiends and undead. However, the subclass’s spell list is poor, and some of the other features are only useful against those foes, so big parts of the subclass may go unused in most situations.

  1. Oath of Devotion Spells: A few gems, but much of the list is only situationally useful.
    1. Level 1: Two excellent defensive buffs which will be useful throughout your career.
    2. Level 2: Aid is a nice buff, but Zone of Truth is only situationally useful.
    3. Level 3: I would almost almost never use Beacon of Hope in combat (especially since you have Lay on Hands, which Beacon of Hope doesn’t affect) unless you need the Advantage portion of the spell. Paladins don’t have enough spell slots to spend them on Dispel Magic unless your party is truly desperate.
    4. Level 4: Freedom of Movement is situational but very powerful. Guardian of Faith is passable area control, but it’s a spell that you cast for the 8-hour duration, not for the pitiful amount of damage.
    5. Level 5: Commune is a very powerful divination if you’re clever enough to ask useful questions. Flame Strike gives Paladins a much-needed option for handling crowds of weak enemies, especially those which aren’t affected by Turn Whatever. However, at this level Flame Strike’s damage will be underwhelming and unless you’re built around Blessed Warrior your spell save DC will probably be too low to make Flame Strike Reliable.
  2. Sacred Weapon: Adding your Charisma as an additional attack bonus on top of Strength or Dexterity means that your attacks are exceptionally accurate. Changing your weapon damage to Radiant allows you to easily bypass damage resistances.

    With two uses of Channel Divinity per Short or Long Rest and a 10-minute duration for Sacred Weapon, you can afford to use Sacred Weapon in nearly every encounter. If your party typically follows the Adventuring Day advice in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (6-8 encounters, 2 Short Rests), you may need to fit multiple encounters into the 10-minute duration until you get 3 uses of Channel Divinity at level 11.

    The additional attack bonus offsets leaving your Strength/Dexterity low in order to focus on your Charisma, allowing you to focus on Charisma first without relying on Blessed Warrior. This may be worthwhile to support Aura of Protection and to make your spellcasting more effective, but it does come at the cost of effectiveness offensively.

  3. Aura of Devotion: Situational by design, but Charm effects are common and frequently dangerous. Many effects will charm a target and apply other nasty effects while the targets is charmed. Aura of Devotion blocks those effects.
  4. Smite of Protection: +2 AC and +2 to Dexterity saves for your whole party for one round. A nice buff, but it encourages you to smite every turn and burn through all of your spell slots in a hurry.
  5. Holy Nymbus: Activated as a Bonus Action and lasts 10 minutes. This is only usable once per day, but you can recharge it at the cost of 1 of your 2 level 5 spell slots.
    • Holy Ward: Only Situationally useful since it affects so few creature types.
    • Radiant Damage: At this level your Proficiency Bonus is +6, and you might have 20 Charisma. 11 automatic damage is good, especially in a crowded fight.
    • Sunlight: Very rarely matters. Some creatures like drow and vampires are affected by sunlight, but they’re a vanishingly small portion of the creatures in the game.

Oath of Glory (PHB)

Oath of Glory gives you several useful options both in and out of combat. In combat, you’re unusually durable thanks to Inspiring Smite and Glorious Defense. Outside of combat, you’re the only Paladin that can cast Enhance ability, giving you great options to support your skills. Unfortunately, the subclass features and spell options vary wildly in effectiveness.

  1. Inspiring Smite: A decent number of Temporary Hit Points. While you’ll usually hoard them for yourself, the ability to share them with allies offers a fantastic tactical option. Keep in mind that you need to use Divine Smite before you can activate this, so be sure to keep a spell slot ready so that you can smite something and trigger Inspiring Smite.

    The Temporary Hit Points don’t have a specified expiration, so they last until creatures take a Long Rest. If you’re able to maintain your own pad of THP, you can gradually build up THP on each of your allies throughout an adventuring day.

  2. Oath of Glory Spells: A good mix of combat buffs and non-combat utilities, as well as a handful of damage options.
    1. Level 1: Guiding Bolt is hard because paladins generally can’t invest enough in Charisma to be good at spell attacks. You likely won’t cast it often, but it is still a decent ranged attack spell if you’re out of melee range. Heroism is a great defensive option. At the early levels where the fear immunity is helpful, your Charisma will be too low for good temp HP, and the high levels where the temp HP isn’t relevant, you’re immune to fear.
    2. Level 2: Enhance Ability is just an all-around great spell outside of combat, though your most likely use case in combat is for Strength, and you can use Peerless Athlete for that, so save Enhance Ability for outside of combat when you need things like Advantage on Charisma checks in social situations. Magic Weapon is great if you don’t have a permanent magic weapon, but it requires Concentration so generally you’ll want to cast something else unless you absolutely need this.
    3. Level 3: Two fantastic buffs, but both require Concentration. That said, self-casting Haste and freely sharing it with your steed allows your mount to both Dash and Disengage every round, which quadruples its total movement and ignores Opportunity Attacks while still giving you an extra attack. Protection From Energy is a staple defensive buff at every level.
    4. Level 4: We’re unlikely to have the Charisma to make Compulsion reliable, and the effect is not that useful. Compelling targets to run away in a direction and using our Concentration just makes fights take longer than they need to. Freedom of Movement is great, but only situationally useful. Fortunately, it doesn’t require Concentration, and you can share it with your steed.
    5. Level 5: Legend Lore is a great way to get plot information, but you won’t use it consistently. Yolande’s Regal Presence is very similar to Spirit Guardians, but trades much of the damage to knock creatures prone. Use it to attack prone enemies.
  3. Peerless Athlete: Extremely situational. Athletics and Acrobatics are borderline useless. You might get some use out of longer jump distances if you’re able to jump over difficult terrain.
  4. Aura of Alacrity: A nice improvement to your party’s mobility.
  5. Glorious Defense: This is a fantastic defensive ability, combining the AC bonus of the spell Shield with a free counterattack. Be sure to grab a throwable weapon or a weapon with Reach to enjoy the effect to its fullest.
  6. Living Legend: Two fantastic combat buffs, plus Advantage on Charisma checks for some reason. Activated as a Bonus Action and lasts 10 minutes. This is only usable once per day, but you can recharge it at the cost of 1 of your 2 level 5 spell slots.
    • Charismatic: Don’t be tempted to use this for Charisma checks in social situations. You can cast Enhance Ability for that.
    • Saving Throw Reroll: With Aura of Protection you have a decent chance to pass any save. Adding a reroll every round is fantastic.
    • Unerring Strike: Paladins only get two attacks (unless you’re using two-weapon fighting), so this makes it very likely that all of your attacks will hit.

Oath of the Ancients (PHB)

The Ranger of Paladins, Oath of the Ancients shares a lot of style and options with Rangers and Druids. It includes magical options for crowd control and area control which most paladins can’t match, as well as access to Misty Step so that you can move about unhindered. The options are definitely interesting, but there are big weak points in the subclass’s spell list and many of the features may go long periods without having an impact.

  1. Nature’s Wrath: An AOE restrain effect that you can use multiple times per Short or Long Rest. This is absolutely fantastic at any level. Unfortunately, many creatures have high Strength save, but that’s not universal.
  2. Oath of the Ancients Spells: About half of the options on the list are bad, but you generally get one viable option from each pair of spells.
    1. Level 1: Speak With Animals is only useful as your DM decides it will be. Ensnaring Strike is a great option for a bunch of reasons, and works very similarly to a smite. Use it to ensnare a target, then let them bleed out a bit while you’re off dealing with more pressing issues. Note that after the initial save it’s a Strength Check (not a Save), so even creatures proficient in Strength Saves will have trouble escaping. Even better, the damage scales linearly with spell level, so it remains an excellent go-to use for a spell slot for your whole career.
    2. Level 2: Moonbeam is difficult to use unless you can restrain a creature inside its effect long enough to justify the spell slot (Grapple them, for instance), and, even then, it’s better left to full spellcasters. Misty Step is a fantastic option and solves a lot of mobility issues, including pits, chasms, difficult terrain, walls of fire, and other nasty materials, enemies, etc. Misty Step to the BBEG and wave your sword in their face.
    3. Level 3: Plant Growth is weirdly effective area control, and Protection From Energy is a fantastic and very important defensive option.
    4. Level 4: Ice Storm is a frustrating combination of not enough damage and too little area control. Stone Skin is an extremely good buff, but the 100gp component cost can add up quickly so you don’t want to cast it constantly.
    5. Level 5: Commune With Nature is a useful divination, especially in unfamiliar areas, but Tree Stride is extremely situational and totally useless if you’re not in a forest or jungle.
  3. Aura of Warding: These damage types are rare, but they’re also frequently used to bypass damage resistances to common damage types, and resistance to them is rare. Sharing resistance with your whole party can be great protection against enemies like Aberrations, Celestials, and Undead.
  4. Undying Sentinel: Good insurance in case things go badly. If you hit this, use Lay on Hands to heal yourself as much as you can manage.
  5. Elder Champion: Activated as a Bonus Action and lasts just 1 minute. This is only usable once per day, but you can recharge it at the cost of 1 of your 2 level 5 spell slots.
    • Diminish Defiance: Paladins don’t have a ton of offensive spellcasting, but you might bring some to capitalize on this. This also works with Channel Divinity, so Abjure Enemies and Wrath of Nature will both benefit.
    • Regeneration: You already have a ton of durability. Healing 10 hp isn’t much, but it does feel good. In a typical 3-round combat, you can expect most of this healing to apply after the fight ends.
    • Swift Spells: Fantastically powerful even with the Paladin’s limited spellcasting. Combined with the Diminish Defiance feature, your spells are very effective.

Oath of Vengeance (PHB)

Oath of Vengeance emphasizes the Paladin’s abilities as a Striker, seeking to kill enemies quickly rather than relying on defensive tactics. Between the Paladin’s natural durability and Oath of Vengeance’s capacity for killing stuff, they’re a great standalone character. However, they also have no features beyond the Paladin’s core features to assist your allies, so your party may need a secondary Defender to fill in when you’re off smiting things.

  1. Oath of Vengeance Spells: Most of the spells are good on their own, but depend on a high Spell Save DC that you almost certainly don’t have. But there are a few good buffs and Misty Step, so there are some gems here.
    1. Level 1: Bane is unreliable and rarely worth the spell slot, especially with your Charisma lagging behind full spellcasters. Hunter’s Mark is a nice damage boost against a single high-priority target, but its usefulness is limited by the Paladin’s low number of attacks per round. It can still yield considerably more damage than spending the same spell slot on Divine Smite, but only if you can maintain Concentration.
    2. Level 2: Paralysis is an off-switch for an enemy, but since your spell DC is low compared to a full spellcaster, Hold Person is unreliable. Misty Step is a great way to get around the battlefield, especially since it’s a Bonus Action to cast.
    3. Level 3: Haste and Protection From Energy are two of the most important buffs in the game.
    4. Level 4: Both situational options, and the appeal of Dimension Door is reduced because you already have Misty Step, and you don’t have the Spell Save DC to make Banishment reliable offensively.
    5. Level 5: Hold Monster makes Hold Person redundant, but your Spell Save DC may still be behind full spellcasters even at this high level. Scrying is very situational, and your full caster allies have had it for a very long time by this level.
  2. Vow of Enmity: Easy Advantage, provided that you don’t need to switch targets. You’ll want to focus on eliminating one target at a time and quickly move through your enemies.

    With two uses of Channel Divinity per Short or Long Rest and a 1-minute duration for Vow of Enmity, you can afford to use Sacred Weapon in most encounters, but, depending on how your party paces an adventuring day, you may need to save it for more difficult encounters.

    Advantage is fairly easy to get in the 2024 DnD 5e rules, but options like Shove and Topple weapons typically require setup before you get Advantage. Vow of Enmity lets you get right to work, and you don’t need to worry about your target standing or anything else.

  3. Relentless Avenger: The best part of the Sentinel feat.
  4. Soul of Vengeance: A fantastic way to get an extra attack each round. You probably don’t even need a reach weapon to keep your target in reach because you’re hitting with Opportunity Attacks reliably thanks to Advantage, and then you’re holding them in place with Relentless Avenger. It’s basically an even better version of the Sentinel feat.
  5. Avenging Angel: Activated as a Bonus Action and lasts 10 minutes. This is only usable once per day, but you can recharge it at the cost of 1 of your 2 level 5 spell slots.
    • Flight: For most Paladins, this will double your speed. With a 10-minute duration, you have enough time and mobility to chase enemies.
    • Frightful Aura: Frightened is already a major debuff. Granting Advantage on attacks to hit the targets is just mean. The Frightened effects and early if the target takes damage, but Grapple and Shove notably don’t deal damage, so you have some great options to make enemies’ lives even worse before you resort to actually damaging them.