Introduction
Oath of Devotion is, as described on the subclass breakdown page, the “vanilla” Paladin. It’s so iconic, in fact, that it’s the option chosen for the guide on the base Paladin Handbook. That guide is perfectly serviceable for being a generic Paladin that protects their party, serves good, wears plate, and has never had an interesting thought in their life.
On the other hand, there’s very little to hold your attention with such a build. If you said “Paladin,” you would have an image of this archetype in your head before the word finished. The subclass has a vague flavor of fighting fiends and the undead (typical Paladin fare), but the features all work on all enemies, just some differently or less effectively. All of the features of this subclass are passive except for the Channel Divinity and the capstone, which means that the only thing really worth talking about is the Channel Divinity. To that point, then, let’s show you how to capitalize on it.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Disclaimer
- Oath of Devotion Features
- Oath of Devotion Ability Scores
- Oath of Devotion Races
- Oath of Devotion Feats
- Oath of Devotion Weapons
- Oath of Devotion Armor
- Oath of Devotion Multiclassing
- Example Oath of Devotion Build – Curseedge
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.
- : Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
- : OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
- : Good options. Useful often.
- : 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.
Oath of Devotion Features
- :
- :
- :
Oath of Devotion Ability Scores
Oath of Devotion’s best spells and features rely on a high Charisma to function, so Blessed Warrior is a strong choice, meaning you’re going to have a rough level one, but then you’ll scale very well.
: Start it at 15 for the plate you’re going to eventually wear and keep it there.
: Dump
: We like hitpoints and don’t really need to scale Strength.
: Dump
: Dump
: The Paladin’s spells and many class features are powered by Charisma.
| Point Buy | Standard Array | |
|---|---|---|
| Str | 15 | 14 |
| Dex | 8 | 10 |
| Con | 15 | 13 |
| Int | 8 | 8 |
| Wis | 8 | 12 |
| Cha | 15 | 15 |
Oath of Devotion Races
No different than any other Paladin.
Oath of Devotion Feats
No different than any other Paladin unless you plan on doing shenanigans.
Oath of Devotion Weapons
No different than any other Paladin.
Oath of Devotion Armor
No different than any other Paladin.
Oath of Devotion Multiclassing
This section briefly details some obvious and enticing multiclass options, but doesn’t fully explore the broad range of multiclassing combinations. For more on multiclassing, see our Practical Guide to Multiclassing.
If you plan on leaning into Charisma as an attack stat, taking a level or two of Hexblade would be fantastic for removing your dependence on Strength so that you can just double down on Charisma. I would go Paladin 1, Hexblade 1, Paladin X, putting in the second level of Hexblade after Paladin 8 to pick up invocations.
Example Oath of Devotion Build – Curseedge
If only I got Charisma to damage, too.
Because, as mentioned and linked to above, the example build on our Paladin handbook is already a generic Devotion Paladin, this is going to be a little bit of a weird one. I wanted to solve several problems: how do I lean into the Channel that is really the only active ability this subclass gets in combat, how do I deal with the fact that it’s an Action to activate, and how do I get Tyler to still let me publish this when I’m done?
The answer is that I make something that looks a little like my guide to Smiting every turn, but for a different goal.
Note: It has been brought to our attention that lying is agains the Oath of Devotion’s tenets. This makes the below suggestions to use Deception incompatible with the subclass. If that’s an issue in your game, replace Deception with another skill and lead every conversation with “Hello, my name is X, and I’m haunted, but I’m here to help.”
Ability Scores
We will assume the point buy abilities suggested above, then put our +2 into Charisma and our +1 into Constitution.
| Base | Increased | |
|---|---|---|
| Str | 15 | 15 |
| Dex | 8 | 8 |
| Con | 15 | 16 |
| Int | 8 | 8 |
| Wis | 8 | 8 |
| Cha | 15 | 17 |
Race
There are several good options, but none really get us anything specific the build wants, so Astral Elf it is. This would also be a fine time to try being a snake if you’ve never played a Yuan-ti, and it wouldn’t change the tactics very much, just require better positioning at level 1.
Background
We’re locked into Haunted One because we’re starting as a Dark Ur- wait, wrong game. Seriously though, as a discount Hexblade there’s not much reason to not pick it. Trade the skills for Deception to pretend you’re not cursed and Intimidation because it’s literally written into the description that people are unnerved into helping you despite the skill not being one of the options. Languages can be whatever fits the campaign.
Skills and Tools
Athletics and Persuasion from the class join Perception from our elf eyes and the Deception and Intimidation, listed above.
Feats
Because we get to add together our Strength and Charisma for attack bonus, we never have to do anything to keep up with the fundamental math. We’ll still get there eventually, but not through Strength.
Level 6 (paladin 4) gets us Metamagic Adept
Level 10 (paladin 8) gets us Great Weapon Master
Level 14 (paladin 12) gets us Elven Accuracy
Levels 18 (paladin 16) caps Charisma
Levels
| Levels | Feats and Features | Notes and Tactics |
|---|---|---|
| 1 – Paladin 1 | Divine Sense Lay on Hands Sacred Flame | For starting equipment, take the chainmail, two greatswords, and Javelins. Sell the spare greatsword and the javelins because we have a free ranged damage cantrip thanks to being an Astral Elf. Use Sacred Flame for one level against things with low Dex saves and your sword against things with low AC. |
| 2 – Paladin 2 | Fighting Stye: – Blessed Warrior Cantrips: – Guidance – Word of Radiance New Spells Prepared: – Compelled Duel – Cure Wounds – Shield of Faith | Word of Radiance will be our go-to damage option for a level before Sacred Weapon comes online. Sacred Flame isn’t better DPR than just hitting something with your sword until level 17, even with our Strength never increasing, so we’ll pick up Guidance until then. Don’t forget the +d4. For leveled spells, we continue doing standard Paladin things. |
| 3 – Paladin 3 | Divine Health Channel Divinity: – Sacred Weapon – Turn the Unholy New Spells always prepared: – Protection from Evil and Good – Sanctuary | It’s a good thing we have proficiency in Persuasion, because we need to convince the rest of the party to stop for an hour after every fight due to our tactics relying on our one charge of Channel Divinity for our entire career. Right now, the only thing we have to do with our Bonus Action after we Channel is teleport and cast some spells. We’ll try and fix that soon though. |
| 4 – Sorcerer 1 | Wild Magic Surge Tides of Chaos New Cantrips: – Booming Blade – Firebolt – Prestidigitation – Shape Water Spells Known: – Silvery Barbs – Shield | Advantage on demand is a truly mediocre thing for a Sorcerer, but, for a Paladin swinging a greatsword (and who will soon be doing it with power attack), it’s as good as gold. Later on (when we can more reliably survive things like a Fireball appearing in our face), we’ll try to cast more spells to trigger Tides of Chaos recharging so we can do this more. This plays into being cursed, as occasionally we do bad things to ourselves. Of course, we also picked up the problematic spell that grants advantage, even though we’re not going to be as good at using it as our race might suggest (because we didn’t pick up a level of Hexblade). Standard Booming Blade becomes our primary attack for several levels. |
| 5 – Sorcerer 2 | Font of Magic Spell Known: – Absorb Elements | We now have a natural pool of two Sorcery Points that we can use to Qui… make spell slots. Hang tight. Because we’re now level 5, Booming Blade gets an extra damage die on the initial hit and is still an excellent Defender tool for being sticky. Delaying Extra Attack is always a questionable choice, but you’re already doing decent damage output while being a very effective Defender by making things explode if they move away from you to squishier teammates. |
| 6 – Paladin 4 | Feat: Metamagic Adept: – Quicken Spell – Extend Spell | We now have four Sorcery Points that we can use to Quicken. What do we quicken? Booming Blade on the first round after using our Action to turn on Sacred Weapon. We’ll need to burn a second-level spell slot for two more points to do that same trick for the expected third fight in a day, but it’ll be worth it. |
| 7 – Paladin 5 | Extra Attack New Spells Prepared: – Find Steed – Heroism – Lesser Restoration – Zone of Truth | With Extra Attack online, we now have choices. If you’re scared about something walking away from you, Booming Blade it. If you’re not, attack it twice. I now have to get into a boatload of math: should we Smite or Quicken Booming Blade with these spell slots? If we assume we only cast Find Steed on non-adventuring days and don’t need to spend any spell slots doing anything except damage, we currently have two 2nd-level slots and 4 1st-level slots available to burn (remembering that we’re already down one slot for the points to Quicken once in the third fight of the day). This is either 3 Quickened Booming Blades or 14d8 Smite damage. At first blush this is an obvious choice: average 63 or average 40.5 average damage… if no secondary effect triggers. If you get even one secondary proc, that Booming Blade damage rockets up to 49.5, bringing the difference down quite a bit. If all of them trigger, it’s actually 67.5, and looks like the clear winner… for a moment. But that’s just average damage. If we start figuring accuracy, things get complicated. If we’re waiting for crits to smite, that’s both a smarter use of resources and generates bigger numbers because the dice get doubled, whereas the cantrip’s secondary damage doesn’t. Advantage further increases the likelihood of crits, and we get easy advantage from Tides of Chaos and from casting Silvery Barbs to recharge it… but that also eats spell slots, which leaves us fewer to do either thing with. I have thus succeeded in taking the most vanilla possible Paladin and bringing analysis-paralysis-inducing levels of decision complexity and resource management. You’re welcome. With all of that said, Find Steed is a complicated spell to handle. You may want to read the Practical Guide to Mounted Combat and listen to our podcast episode about mounted combat. I don’t recommend this spell because I think you should be mounted, I recommend it because having a celestial warhorse is neat and could very well be useful in a lot of ways. While we don’t need to cast the spell all that often (and so should spend most days with cure Wounds prepared in that slot instead), we do need to cast it when the horse dies. Given its AC of 11 and no save proficiencies, that will be somewhat often. But better your horse than your less-replaceable allies. |
| 8 – Paladin 6 | Aura of Protection New Spell Prepared: – Any | Did you want a free +3 to all your saves? Hey, so did your party. It is worth noting that it doesn’t specify what saves it applies to, meaning it applies to all of them, including Death Saves. Stay near dying friends, even if you can’t spare the Action to Lay on Hands them. |
| 9 – Paladin 7 | Aura of Devotion | Nothing interesting happened here. |
| 10 – Paladin 8 | Feat: Great Weapon Master New Spell Prepared:- Any | Say, you know what’s really good with a functionally-permanent +2 (that 15 strength we never increased) to hit? Power attack. Taking the penalty on every turn except the first is going to be a great move because you have plenty of chances to hit (especially with all the advantage you’re giving yourself). This also does really good things for resource management: if you crit on one of your two Attacks, you don’t need to Quicken a Booming Blade to utilize your bonus action for damage. This lightens our computational load. Momentarily. |
| 11 – Paladin 9 | New Spells Prepared: – Revivify – Beacon of Hope – Dispel Magic | Let’s check back in on damage. Booming Blade scales at this level, meaning each one is now 18 or 31.5 damage. For available slots, we’re now at 4, 2, and 3 respectively. That’s 26d8 of Smiting (average 117) or 7 Quickened Booming Blades. Great news: that many extra Quickens means we can choose to do one every expected round of combat because this math was already accounting for the round one gimmick in each combat. If you want to no longer make a decision, that means we’re just doing an Attack and a Quickened Booming Blade every round and have a 1st-level spell slot left over to Silvery Barbs somewhere. DPR on that, including “power attack” from GWM : 41.25 including trigger damage. If you throw Advantage onto your Booming Blade, that shoots up to 52.4. Those numbers mean we’re over High DPR always and halfway between there and Dude Stop when we can get advantage on our big cantrip. Is this better than putting half your spell slots into Silvery Barbs and the other half into Smiting on crits? No, but it is much simpler, and we’ve earned that with what the last four levels have been like. |
| 12 – Paladin 10 | Aura of Courage | I interpret the wording of “can’t be frightened” to mean that, if someone is frightened, simply walking to within 10 feet of them means that your aura will remove whatever fear effect is on them instead of just suppressing it. This doesn’t jive with Jeremy Crawford’s depiction of RAI, but even he admits that RAW is unclear. We also go up another level on the multiclassing spellcaster table, getting us 4th-level slots and no spells for them. Save it for a crit and Smite something for +12d6. |
| 13 – Paladin 11 | Improved Divine Smite | This is excellent and also doesn’t affect our tactics in the slightest. It is a very nice DPR bump, though. |
| 14 – Paladin 12 | Elven Accuracy (Cha) | I know what you’re thinking, but no. Even though we’re adding our Charisma bonus to the attack roll, it is not actually an attack roll made with Charisma (because, again, we’re just a worse Hexblade). We literally only have one thing this is useful for: Firebolt. We could probably trade items for a rapier and shield at this point and start crit fishing with all that advantage we generate, but it’s not actually better damage because we’re getting such good use out of Great Weapon Master. So, why did I take this feat? Why not Skill Expert? The flavor of being a curseedge. Skill Expert is better; do that if you’re seriously optimizing every aspect of the character. |
| 15 – Paladin 13 | New Spells Prepared: – Find Greater Steed – Death Ward – Freedom of Movement – Guardian of Faith | Drop whatever you started preparing at level 8 for Death Ward and start using Find Greater Steed to get a celestial pegasus instead of a warhorse. Death Ward yourself and have it apply to the horse too. |
| 16 – Paladin 14 | Cleansing Touch | Boop. |
| 17 – Paladin 15 | Purity of Spirit | The good news: this protects against many of the things that are significant threats to us at this level. The bad news: we already can’t be charmed by anything or frightened by anything and I’ve literally never had to deal with possession in this edition of D&D, so the budget just goes straight into those things attacking us with disadvantage. That said, it is definitely a great help since we’re not using a shield, but we’ve had to survive this long without it. |
| 18 – Paladin 16 | Ability Score Increase (Cha) New Spell Prepared: – Any | We cap Charisma, getting +1 to all saves and +1 to hit (but not damage, because we’re not a Hexblade). |
| 19 – Paladin 17 | New Spells Prepared: – Holy Weapon – Destructive Wave – Commune – Flame Strike | Our tactics don’t really change from here on out. Not that there is much “on out” left, but here we are. Flame Strike is passable AoE damage, but we’re still usually better off just attacking things. That said, you could very much Attack action and then Quicken a Flame Strike for huge damage once a day, especially against a large group. |
| 20 – Paladin 18 | Aura Improvements | Our capstone doesn’t really matter for the way this build plays, but it’s nice to have all the same. |
