Introduction
We’re taking a look at building single-class parties. Building a party around a single class presents unique challenges often due individual classes’ limited capabilities. DnD is fundamentally a game about a party of diverse characters pooling their abilities to become more than the sum of their parts. The single-class party flips that on its head, introducing fun new challenges.
Exceptionally durable, frustratingly hard to kill, and capable of smiting enemies into nonexistence in the space of a single turn, Paladins are a great class. That said, making an all-Paladin party is surprisingly difficult. While paladins are diverse in tone and style, their skill set is extremely rigid. Paladins also have the frustrating moral restriction of their oaths, which means that any all-Paladin party will need to pick subclasses which won’t cause their oaths to conflict.
The Rules
- No multiclassing
- 4 party members
- Must attempt to cover all party roles
Strengths and Weaknesses of the All-Paladin Party
With d10 hit dice, heavy armor, and all of the Paladin’s magic and auras and other stuff, the Paladin is extremely durable. Divine Smite gives us a lot of burst damage, Lay on Hands gives us a lot of healing, and the Paladin’s spellcasting can provide a lot of buffs. We have the Defender, Healer, Striker, and Support rolls covered with no further effort. With high Charisma, we can cover the Face role, too.
That said, paladins often struggle to go beyond those roles. Ranged combat is very difficult for paladins, and their spellcasting is very limited in quantity and has few spell options.
The Party
Member 1: Oath of Devotion Paladin
Our party’s primary front line. Oath of Conquest or Oath of Vengeance would work here mechanically, but their oaths are much more confrontational, making them difficult to integrate into an all-paladin party. While our entire party can smite and such, getting into melee and waving a sword around is our primary function within the party. We’ll need other party members to sacrifice some of the Paladin’s conventional martial focus to pick up other roles.
Member 2: Oath of Redemption
Emissary of Peace gives us a bonus to Charisma skills which other paladins can’t match, so we’ll make this our Face. Otherwise, our job is to keep everyone else alive.
Member 3: Oath of the Ancients Paladin
We’ll mostly duplicate our Dexterity-based example build from our Oath of the Ancients Paladin Handbook. Building around Ensnaring Strike lets us fight effectively at range with a smite-like option, filling one of the party’s biggest tactical gaps.
With high Dexterity, we’ll also make this our Scout. We might change the example build’s race from Giff to something that offers extra skill proficiencies like the Kenku or the Tabaxi.
Member 4: Oath of the Watchers Paladin
Oath of the Watchers brings a few exciting offensive spells, and the subclass as a whole makes it well suited to the Blessed Warrior Fighting Style. We’ll build our Watchers Paladin around Charisma, allowing us to focus on spellcasting. This won’t compete with classes like the Cleric, but it’s enough that we could call this our Blaster and our Controller.
With little need for physical ability scores to support weapons, we can afford to invest in Intelligence and also claim the Scholar role. That’s a lot of responsibility on one character, but it is the best fit. We’re also not taxing our resources with Divine Smite.
The Report Card
| Role | Member(s) |
|---|---|
| Blaster | 4 |
| Controller | 4 |
| Defender | 1, 2 |
| Face | 2 |
| Healer | Everyone |
| Scholar | 4 |
| Scout | 3 |
| Striker | Everyone |
| Support | Everyone |
| Utility Caster | – |
Biggest Strength
Durability. Everyone in the party has Aura of Protection, Lay on Hands, d10 hit dice, and good AC. Hurting us is difficult.
Biggest Weakness
Our lack of utility casting means that a lot of frustrating challenges will need to be solved manually. Walls climbed with rope instead of flight, barriers smash down with tools rather than blasted apart, etc. It’s mostly inconvenient, but I don’t think it will kill us.
Conclusion
Be especially aware of the tenets of your oath, because everyone in the party has different tenets. While the specific party that we’ve assembled here will rarely conflict as long as we’re sticking to the most idealistic version of lawful good, there may still be conflicts that need to be cautiously negotiated to avoid everyone becoming oathbreakers.
If you enjoyed this article, I encourage you to check out the other articles in the series:
