[PF] How to deal with Smite Evil

[Keneth]

This is not a specific case, it's more like a thought experiment, in fact it might be one of a series of questions as I try and determine how to deal with each individual class. Smite Evil in Pathfinder has received a huge buff since 3.5 and it's become rather pesky to deal with for any villainous figure, mostly because there's no way to end the effect once it's been activated (aside from the paladin sleeping it off).

So, how do you deal with it when a character smites your favorite villain?

Here's what I've got so far:

Don't be evil in the first place: Plausible if you're The Dragon (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDragon), but unlikely.
Pretend you're not evil in hopes you won't get smote: Undetectable Alignment (if the players are gullible).
Antimagic Field: not really an option unless you're a really good fighter and it's an enclosed space with no escape.
Don't be hit: Arbitrarily high AC, Mirror Image, Displacement, etc. All easily bypassable if the the party is prepared.
Don't fight the paladin: Not really gonna happen until at least a cursory skirmish.

[Mystify]

Minions. Even if all your minions are evil, he's not going to waste his smites on them. You can then physically keep them between you.
You can also knock the paladin down.

The real problem is when they start giving the entire party smites. Now not only is the paladin smiting you, but so is everyone else. At that point your only recourse is an amazing CR that can take the power boost and dish it out in return.

[W3bDragon]

Here's some commentary from personal experience of playing a pathfinder paladin in a pretty long campaign.




Don't be evil in the first place: Plausible if you're The Dragon (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDragon), but unlikely.


This works. Depending on the campaign however, the fact that a paladin is in the party usually gravitates that party towards finding evil adversaries.



Pretend you're not evil in hopes you won't get smote: Undetectable Alignment (if the players are gullible).


Not gonna happen. Paladins get three rounds worth of detect evil information in a single move action. That means that pretending isn't going to matter. It costs so little time to scan a target, that the paladin WILL do it if he's not sure. Besides, once the paladin hits mid levels, he'll have plenty of Smite Evils to spare. He'll blow one on any villain of note to be safe.



Antimagic Field: not really an option unless you're a really good fighter and it's an enclosed space with no escape.


Like you said, that'll usually be a bigger benefit to the paladin than his enemies.




Don't be hit: Arbitrarily high AC, Mirror Image, Displacement, etc. All easily bypassable if the the party is prepared.


Not realistic. If the PCs have any hope of touching the villain, then the paladin with smite will be able to hit the villain pretty easily, since the paladin adds his full bab to his two highest stats to determine his attack. If he can't hit with smite, then no one can hit with anything.



Don't fight the paladin: Not really gonna happen until at least a cursory skirmish.


This also isn't really that feasible. The danger of smite evil isn't the bonus to AC, though its a nice side benefit. The danger of smite evil is the high bonus to attack and damage. That means that ignoring the paladin will simply give him more time to go to town on the villain. The rest of the party might as well just keep running away from the villain while the paladin feathers him with arrows and smite evil.

In actuality, the way to beat a paladin, besides magic obviously, is to have multiple opponents. That immediately reduces the value of smite evil by a large margin. Now let's say that BBEG + 5 minions are available as targets. The paladin smites the BBEG. The BBEG focuses on the paladin and orders all his minions to attack the paladin as well. All of a sudden, that smite evil is going to look very underwhelming.

[Keneth]

Knocking the paladin down or trying to otherwise incapacitate him is hard, although a physical tripper henchman that's properly optimized could have some fun. And cannon fodder is always a nice idea although they're generally used to stall for time; Of course that might be all you need to take down such nuisances, a few well placed no-save spells can go a long way towards softening the party before engaging.

[Engine]

Here's what I've got so far:

Don't be evil in the first place: Plausible if you're The Dragon (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDragon), but unlikely.

Sure, but if every villain isn't evil the Paladin's player could feel a bit cheated by the DM.




Pretend you're not evil in hopes you won't get smote: Undetectable Alignment (if the players are gullible).

Well, as a long time player of Paladins, if I know that my character is fighting a major villain I'll just use Smite Evil, Detect Evil or not. It's unlikely the party will find another major villain before my character could sleep.




Antimagic Field: not really an option unless you're a really good fighter and it's an enclosed space with no escape.

Worst option, it will undermine the casters more than the Paladin.




Don't be hit: Arbitrarily high AC, Mirror Image, Displacement, etc. All easily bypassable if the the party is prepared.

High AC doesn't matter at all, the Paladin has good BAB. Miss chance is way better, but a caster worth her name should cast Dispel Magic.




Don't fight the paladin: Not really gonna happen until at least a cursory skirmish.


Well, let's see. At low levels even a Grease or Entagle could be really dangerous for a Paladin. Sure, Paladins have good saves, but a melee Paladin probably dumped Dexterity and Reflex is her worst save, if she fails the villain is safe, albeit temporarily (but at least the villain could deal with the rest of the party). Against an archer Paladin the sunder maneveur could be really nasty, the Paladin probably doesn't have any good feat for melee, remember that a Paladin is feat starved and need to heavily specialize in a combat style.

[Keneth]

Looks like it is as I thought, the best way to fight the paladin is not to fight the paladin.

Sunder is a nifty thought but it would bring on a lot of hate from the players if that's not the final fight of the campaign (and even then probably). :smallbiggrin:

[Engine]

Looks like it is as I thought, the best way to fight the paladin is not to fight the paladin.

Well, it's the best way to fight any character that does a lot of damage. Smite Evil is damage, nothing more. You disable them so they could not fight anymore, or at least they fight not so good. Trying to outdamage them or resist their impressive damage is pointless and most of the times means that the villain will die in a couple of rounds.

During a session a PC Inquisitor tried to go toe-to-toe with a raging Barbarian. He was chopped in the first round of combat. Beware, the Inquisitor was buffed and did a lot of damage, but he tried to do something that the Barbarian does best: dish out big numbers. The same could be true for Paladins: an evil villain should try to avoid fighting directly the Paladin because she knows the Paladin could hurt her way more than others (if she knows she's facing a Paladin, of course).

[Mystify]

You can also make it so that only the paladin is really bothering to attack you. Have minions for the rest of the party to deal with, and have enough AC and DR that the parties efforts are wasted attacking you instead of the minions. This doesn't mean that the rest of the party is useless against you, but that it is sub-optimal to attack you.

[Drothmal]

An interesting option for the BBEG is to have one of the minions/lieutenant do something even more evil in front of the paladin (threaten an innocent/kick a puppy/take your pick). It will not work in all cases, but that would sometimes prompt the paladin to use the Smite on the minion instead of the BBEG

Don't do this often though, it's kind of taking advantage of a player being faithful to their roleplaying


Another option is the usage of illusions. Technically, if you make a powerful illusion of the BBEG and make the boss stand behind the illusion while invisible, the paladin could not bother to detect evil and just use its smite on the illusion. I had this done on a paladin I'm playing, but the DM was kind enough to let me keep the usage of the Smite, but I think you lose it by RAW

[Mystify]

An interesting option for the BBEG is to have one of the minions/lieutenant do something even more evil in front of the paladin (threaten an innocent/kick a puppy/take your pick). It will not work in all cases, but that would sometimes prompt the paladin to use the Smite on the minion instead of the BBEG

Don't do this often though, it's kind of taking advantage of a player being faithful to their roleplaying

it would only work at really low levels, otherwise they have enough smites to go around.

[Drothmal]

it would only work at really low levels, otherwise they have enough smites to go around.

I guess I was assuming that by the time you reach the end boss, the paladin might have only 1 smite left. If nothing else, it buys the BBEG time of not being the target of the smite(1-2 turns until the minion is down)

But yeah, you are right. At level 10-13 (or earlier if you are dealing with Oath of Vengeance), this is harder to pull off

[DrDeth]

Why would you want to nerf such a fun feature of a tier 4 class?

Revel in the fact that the Pally can kick one evil butt per combat. Celebrate it.

I mean let him have his tiny moment of glory while the full spellcasters walk the world like gawds the other 99% of the time.

[Seerow]

Why would you want to nerf such a fun feature of a tier 4 class?

Revel in the fact that the Pally can kick one evil butt per combat. Celebrate it.

I mean let him have his tiny moment of glory while the full spellcasters walk the world like gawds the other 99% of the time.

This.


iirc smite evil is just like it was in 3.5, except it lasts for the whole day or until the target dies, whichever comes first.

The bonus to attack rolls is nice, but given the nerf of power attack, can't really be leveraged for a huge buff. It mostly means later iterative attacks are going to hit more, and afaik Paladins didn't really get a method of full attacking on the move minus the mount. So your best defense is probably to keep the BBEG moving, restricting the paladin to a single attack per round so he can't bring that extra hit bonus to a strong effect.

[Keneth]

Why would you want to nerf such a fun feature of a tier 4 class? Not really looking to nerf anyting but it caught my eye as a pesky little ability that you can't really do much about. A wizard can rack up way better buffs than that, but those can be dispelled or otherwise countered. If a paladin smites you, then that's it, you need to stay out of sight and keep him busy while you pick off his buddies one by one, or blast him to hell with everything you've got.


iirc smite evil is just like it was in 3.5
It is nothing like it was in 3.5, actually. It lasts through the whole fight (or the whole day if there's several), gives a large damage boost that is doubled against evil outsiders, dragons, and undead on the first hit (it's a nasty spike), it bypasses any and all damage reduction, gives a bonus to attack, a deflection bonus to armor class, AND he can share it with all his buddies at 11th level. In fact the boost was so strong that it buffed pally up a full tier (among other nice things).


and afaik Paladins didn't really get a method of full attacking on the move
Unless they use a bow and they don't have to move in the first place. :smalltongue:

[Seerow]

It is nothing like it was in 3.5, actually. It lasts through the whole fight (or the whole day if there's several), gives a large damage boost that is doubled against evil outsiders, dragons, and undead on the first hit (it's a nasty spike), it bypasses any and all damage reduction, gives a bonus to attack, a deflection bonus to armor class, AND he can share it with all his buddies at 11th level. In fact the boost was so strong that it buffed pally up a full tier (among other nice things).

I did mention that it lasts the entire day instead of just one hit, which is the big boost they got. When I said pretty much the same I was referring to the +cha to hit +level to damage. I just double checked and wasn't wrong about that. I wasn't aware of the dealing double the damage against certain evil creatures, which is a nice boost but it is worth pointing out that even at +2 damage per level it's only slightly over a rogue's sneak attack.

The deflection bonus to AC is meh. It either means the Paladin is going to not carry around a deflection item, in which case it's easier for everyone else to hit him, or he's going to have a deflection item in which case he's only getting a few extra points of AC out of the deal against one specific target.


Unless they use a bow and they don't have to move in the first place. :smalltongue:

In that case have a BBEG that can stay on top of the Paladin, forcing the Paladin to be on the move getting fewer attacks, or taking lots of AoOs. Point is that the majority of the smite damage is going to come from large numbers of attacks taking advantage of +20 damage per hit, and a high to hit bonus making later itteratives hit as well as primaries normally do. Your goal to reduce the effectiveness of that is to reduce the number of attacks that can be made, tailoring the methods of doing so to how the Paladin is acting.

[Keneth]

which is a nice boost but it is worth pointing out that even at +2 damage per level it's only slightly over a rogue's sneak attack.Quite, but the damage is also unconditional and not subject to DR. There's a dozen ways to deal with SA, whereas nothing stops smite.


In that case have a BBEG that can stay on top of the Paladin, forcing the Paladin to be on the move getting fewer attacks, or taking lots of AoOs.Yes, a heavy hitter with Step Up or natural reach was also my first thought. But I believe there's also ways around provoking AoOs with bows (or maybe it was some other ranged weapon) so it may or may not work. I agree though, reducing their attacks per round is likely the best idea

[Seerow]

Quite, but the damage is also unconditional and not subject to DR. There's a dozen ways to deal with SA, whereas nothing stops smite.

Well you mentioned several in your first post. Sending an neutral or good enemy at a paladin is like sending a Undead at a rogue. It makes the trick useless, which then makes a class that is already relatively weak (even with the PF boosts, it makes it up to t4, not even 3). I've always disliked class features that are shut down against a large swath of opponents, unless it is a minor feature out of a large grab bag of tricks, as opposed to your primary defining feature.

As for other things that stop it: Against a BBEG you're right. The smite will always work on the BBEG, and he'll have to work to avoid getting thrashed by it. But against groups of weaker enemies, smite will only work on one target. Unless you're doing a 1 encounter work day, the Paladin probably doesn't want to spend more than one smite an encounter, maybe 2 for a tough one. So if a lot of fights feature 4-5 enemies, the Paladin can use his smite and feel awesome, while not dominating the encounter because he's only really dominating a fraction of the opponents, rather than the whole encounter.



Yes, a heavy hitter with Step Up or natural reach was also my first thought. But I believe there's also ways around provoking AoOs with bows (or maybe it was some other ranged weapon) so it may or may not work. I agree though, reducing their attacks per round is likely the best idea

Did those make the transition into pathfinder? There's no way to avoid AoOs from ranged attacks in 3.5 core that I remember. The only ways even out of core I can think of are a Ranger spell and a couple prestige class features. I wouldn't be surprised to find out PF adapted something like that, but if it did I haven't seen it myself.

[mikau013]

Well you could just be a mounted archer in pf, grab saddle surge and a fast moving mount. The mount takes one moveaction, giving the paladin a dmg boost of 1 * every 5 ft the mount moves, and then the paladin can still make a ranged full attack with no penalties.

[Keneth]

Well you mentioned several in your first post. Sending an neutral or good enemy at a paladin is like sending a Undead at a rogue. Most undead aren't immune to sneak attack in Pathfinder. Now swarms on the other hand... :smallwink:

But yes, sending a neutral enemy at a paladin removes the entire problem. But like mentioned above, just the fact that there is a paladin around generally means the party is gonna seek out evil stuff. The player is gonna feel cheated if the only evil he can find is morally gray. :smallbiggrin:

[deuxhero]

Sadly, PF removed Horizon Walker's Aligned mastery (now it does something entirely differnt) alongside Shifting because they dislike melee with nice things. In 3.5 you had immunity to anything that targeted you based on your alignment with it (and DD every 1d4 rounds)

[Seerow]

Most undead aren't immune to sneak attack in Pathfinder. Now swarms on the other hand... :smallwink:

But yes, sending a neutral enemy at a paladin removes the entire problem. But like mentioned above, just the fact that there is a paladin around generally means the party is gonna seek out evil stuff. The player is gonna feel cheated if the only evil he can find is morally gray. :smallbiggrin:

My point was that a rogue will feel similarly cheated if he runs into stuff that is immune to sneak attack. In both cases the classes have a bonus to damage that can be shut down by fighting the wrong enemy. The rogue's adds more damage per hit, and is at will, but doesn't grant the bonus to attack, and isn't multiplied on a crit.

I only brought it up because when I initially compared the rogue to the Paladin, the OP mentioned the ways rogue sneak attack can be shut down. In my eyes, the two are very similar mechanics.

[Zerter]

remember that a Paladin is feat starved and need to heavily specialize in a combat style.

Paladin is probably the worst melee class to specialize with and any guide that recommends it should be thrown in the trash. With Paladin you want to carry a wide range of weapons (reach, close combat, lance, ranged, back-ups) and use smite evil to make the most of all of them while using feats for generally useful abilities (extra lay on hands comes to mind, power attack should be beneficial most of the time as well).

Lance and ranged in particular are so effective that investing feats is overkill. You need three feats to make lance x3 instead of x2 on a charge, those are three feats you could have used for something useful instead of making an already great ability a little bit more so.

[Engine]

Paladin is probably the worst melee class to specialize with and any guide that recommends it should be thrown in the trash. With Paladin you want to carry a wide range of weapons (reach, close combat, lance, ranged, back-ups) and use smite evil to make the most of all of them while using feats for generally useful abilities (extra lay on hands comes to mind, power attack should be beneficial most of the time as well).

Lance and ranged in particular are so effective that investing feats is overkill. You need three feats to make lance x3 instead of x2 on a charge, those are three feats you could have used for something useful instead of making an already great ability a little bit more so.

Debatable.
Paladins, even in Pathfinder, do not have many feats and have MAD.
A ranged Paladin needs a lot of Dexterity, which is most of the times a dump stat for Paladins. But if you don't dump Dexterity, you need to lower other stats: Wisdom and Intelligence were already dump stats so you don't probably have them too high, Charisma is your secondary stat so you couldn't lower it; Constitution and Strength are the ones most useful in close combat, and if you want to be a decent archer with your Paladin, you have to lower them. So in the end you're not so good in melee, because you had to lower the most important stats for a melee build and you don't have that many feats, and you invested in archery feats.

Of course you could always use a backup weapon when the situation arises, but if you try to be a generalist you'll find that the Paladin, with is mildly MAD and the few feats couldn't be a great generalist. If you invest in archery feats and go melee, you are just wasting those feats, the opposite is true as well. If you go the TWF route and drop your two weapons to use a reach weapon, you're wasting your high Dexterity and your feats.

Of course not every build for the Paladin is so intensive: a lancer isn't feat starved at all, so you could probably pull something else with your feats. But if you think you could be a good archer, a good meleer, a good lancer, a good tripper and so on all at once you will be disappointed: Smite Evil is poweful, is useful, but you could use it against one enemy, and you need a reliable source of damage when you do not use it.

[Zerter]

But if you think you could be a good archer, a good meleer, a good lancer, a good tripper and so on all at once you will be disappointed: Smite Evil is poweful, is useful, but you could use it against one enemy, and you need a reliable source of damage when you do not use it.

I disagree. You'll be fine with 14 str/dex/con and pumping the rest in charisma, which is doable since you don't need int or wis. You can still charge for x2 damage using power attack without smite evil or any feats invested and do plenty of damage. A generalist build with a small race and you're good to go, Halfling gives +3 AC (dex, size and underfoot), two good stats in the plus and one good stat in the down and helps all your modes of attacks hit. You'll end up with a guy that has tons of AC, is good with a variaty of attack modes, has great all around saving throws and is mobile because of the mount.

Focussing on a single way of doing combat makes no sense as a Paladin because you're suddenly adding a major weakness to a physical combat class that finds most of its strength in having such nice all-round defensive and combative options.

[Engine]

I disagree. You'll be fine with 14 str/dex/con and pumping the rest in charisma, which is doable since you don't need int or wis. You can still charge for x2 damage using power attack without smite evil or any feats invested and do plenty of damage. A generalist build with a small race and you're good to go, Halfling gives +3 AC (dex, size and underfoot), two good stats in the plus and one good stat in the down and helps all your modes of attacks hit. You'll end up with a guy that has tons of AC, is good with a variaty of attack modes, has great all around saving throws and is mobile because of the mount.

Focussing on a single way of doing combat makes no sense as a Paladin because you're suddenly adding a major weakness to a physical combat class that finds most of its strength in having such nice all-round defensive and combative options.

Again, debatable.
You need 15 points to have 14 in all three physical abilities, if you use a small race you need 17 points to make up for the malus in Strength (counting the bonus in Dexterity for the halfling). Unless you have a lot of points during character creation, having all three physical stat and Charisma enough to make it worth you'll find that it's difficult to have those abilities' score.

And again, you didn't count the number of feats a Paladin has: a halfling at 9th level has five feats.
To be a competent archer you need Deadly Aim, Point Blank Shot (prerequisite) and Rapid Shot, and probably Manyshot (but to take this feat you need Dex 17) as well. Four feats over five. You could add Power Attack, and you have five feats. Great, but your generalist Paladin could start well before the 9th level.
Not counting that if your party has melee characters, you want Precise Shot so you could shoot in melee without a penalty. You talked about Extra Lay on Hands, which is a good feat, but how you could take it if you need to be an all rounder? Improved Critical is another great feat, because you took the mount as your Divine Bond so you could not give your weapon the keen property on the fly and of course you could not spend a lot of money so every weapon you have is enchanted as you wish. Quick Draw could be a must if you want to change weapons on the fly because you're trying to be a generalist. But then again, you have at 9th level only five feats, six if you're human. And there are a lot of good feats out there.

I'm not convinced at all that in a mildly optimized campaign a Paladin so unfocused could be a real asset for the party.

[Drothmal]

I agree with Engine: if you look at the numbers, a specialized paladin (with a backup weapon he is not specialized in for special cases) comes ahead with respect to an all rounder

I'll try to show the numbers with a two-handed weapon human vs an all rounder human. In neither case I'll drop INT below 10 since you have very few skills as it is

2-Hander. 15pt buy: 16, 12, 14, 10, 8, 14
Feats: Power attack, weapon focus

Main weapon
To hit: +5 (+3 STR, +1BAB, +1 Feat), +4 with PA
Damage: 2d6+4, 2d6+6 with PA

Secondary weapon (composite longbow +3)
To hit: +2, Damage: 1d8+3


All rounder, 15 pt buy: 14, 14, 14, 10, 8, 14
Feats: Power attack, Point blank shot

2handed weapon
To hit: +3 (+2 STR, +1BAB), +2 with PA
Damage: 2d6+3, 2d6+5 with PA

Secondary weapon (composite longbow +2)
To hit: +4, Damage: 1d8+2


Assuming AC of 14 (rather standard for a CR1)
Avg damages (melee/melee with PA/ranged)
2-Hander: 6.6/7.15/3.375
All rounder: 5/5.4/3.575

Let's do that again, but with Smite Evil activated

2-Hander. 15pt buy: 16, 12, 14, 10, 8, 14
Feats: Power attack, weapon focus

Main weapon
To hit: +7 (+3 STR, +1BAB, +1 Feat, +2 Smite), +6 with PA
Damage: 2d6+5, 2d6+7 with PA

Secondary weapon (composite longbow +3)
To hit: +4, Damage: 1d8+4


All rounder, 15 pt buy: 14, 14, 14, 10, 8, 14
Feats: Power attack, Point blank shot

2handed weapon
To hit: +5 (+2 STR, +1BAB, +2 Smite), +4 with PA
Damage: 2d6+4, 2d6+6 with PA

Secondary weapon (composite longbow +2)
To hit: +6, Damage: 1d8+3

Assuming AC of 14 (rather standard for a CR1)
Avg damages (melee/melee with PA/ranged)
2-Hander: 8.4/9.1/4.675
All rounder: 6.6/7.15/4.875

To me, the increase in the ranged to-hit does not seem to offset the clear increase in the melee capabilities. This is probably further exacerbated against a ranged archer, who would have 2 attacks with rapid shot

Larger point buys only favor the specialized paladin

20PB, 2hander: 18, 12,14,10,8,14
20PB, all rounder: 14, 14, 14, 10, 12, 17

You can do the math, but the 2H paladin will far outdamage the all rounder in melee, while he will still be close in ranged damage. The increase in CHA for the all rounder will put him closer in numbers when they are both smiting, but it will still fall behind

[Engine]

I agree with Engine: if you look at the numbers, a specialized paladin (with a backup weapon he is not specialized in for special cases) comes ahead with respect to an all rounder

Thanks for the math, this should prove the point quite well. At higher levels the all-rounder would probably be far behind the specialist. Unfortunately the Paladin could not be a reliable Switch Hitter like the Ranger.