Low Charisma Paladin

[Tenmujiin]

So what are people's thoughts on a paladin with low charisma, particularly for the first 5 levels? (from 6th you get your cha to all saves for you and allies within 10ft so obviously its going to be weak after that point. I'm working on a character concept that may end up as a barbarian/paladin but I'm running into MAD for obvious reasons. Cha would probably still be 10-12.

[Edge of Dreams]

I wouldn't ever play a Paladin with less than 12 Charisma, partially just for roleplay reasons. I'm currently running a 16 Str, 14 Cha dwarf paladin and having a good time, though. Planning to get the bump to 16 Charisma eventually, but not sure yet if I'm going to do that at 4 or 8.

[Tenmujiin]

Yea, I have a tendency to play medium-high charisma characters and I've always been loath to have less than 12 of ANY mental stat (although rollplaying a charcter that dumped wisdom was some of the most fun I've had with D&D (3.5e warlock, he died in the 2nd session from jumping into a pool of quicksilver thinking that it was the source of the BBEG's power since most of the dungeon was made of quicksilver as was the BBEG. Turns out it made up to 3 weapons into +1 so I just ended up with a +1 quicksilver warlock statue, the group's barbarian had fun with that.)

On topic, is there anything you can see mechanically that would stop a paladin 5 from having mediocre charisma?

[T.G. Oskar]

Spells, for one.

The Difficulty Class of spells and the amount of spells you can prepare are both based on Charisma, therefore their overall power and effectiveness will drop right from 2nd level. A 13 Cha Paladin will be able to prepare only TWO 1st level spells, meaning it has to make a careful choice. Any Smite-based spell will have its DC lowered, mostly gravitating to 11 (8 + proficiency modifier + Cha mod of 1). You can still spend your spell slots on Divine Smite, though, and you can choose a spell with no save DC, so the impact is minimal.

At 3rd level, it all depends on your choice of Sacred Oath. If you choose Oath of Devotion, Sacred Weapon loses a good deal of its effectiveness, their Turning ability will be horrible and their Sanctuary spell will be weak. Oath of the Ancients will also suffer, as their two Channel Divinity abilities depend on the Paladin's spell save DC. The Oath of Vengeance won't suffer that much, however, though its Bane spell will be somewhat weak.

There's also Divine Sense, which isn't at-will; its uses are based on Charisma.

That's mostly what you can face on the first few levels. By 5th level, a 13 Cha Paladin will be able to prepare only 3 spells (mostly from 1st and 2nd level); again, the Smite compensates for all those uses, but for the most part you'll have little access to your spellcasting capabilities.

At higher levels, the real cause of suffering is Aura of Protection, since you won't have good Constitution saves to matter. You're immune to Disease, but not against Poison or any other effect that forces a Con save, even if you have good Constitution almost by default. If you start as Barbarian, chances are your best save will be Constitution, but that means you have no Wisdom and no Wisdom save proficiency, which is the opposite effect (you're immune to Fear and potentially Charm if you choose Oath of Devotion, but not against other spells). Cleansing Touch (which is a pretty cool ability) has uses based on Charisma, so you'll suffer from few uses, but you're approaching 15th level by that time, in which case it's less a Barbarian/Paladin build and more a Paladin/Barbarian build (boldness indicates the main focus). Going by 10th level (where you can get equal levels of Barbarian and Paladin), you'll have 3rd level spells and about 6 spells to work with.

Note, of course, that you can't have a Charisma below 12 if you intend to get Paladin levels, because of multiclassing; therefore, you really can't dump Charisma. The sacrifice will have to be done with Dexterity, but you'll probably have Heavy Armor Proficiency so chances are that you'll get a high AC eventually. Most likely the build will have to be Str > Con > Cha > Dex > Wis > Int, which is only moderately different from a Paladin build anyways.

[Tenmujiin]

Thanks for the in-depth response, I also didn't realise you needed the requirements for BOTH classes to multiclass I was planning on starting paladin to ignore the cha requirement. :smalleek:

Another paladin question, when multi-classing into another spell-casting class can I smite with any slots or only slots based on my paladin level?

[T.G. Oskar]

According to Mearls, the "Paladin spell slots" requirement is redundant in the case of using them for Divine Smite. When you multiclass, you gain a "general" number of spell slots based on the multiclass spell slot table. You can smite using those spell slots, since you don't get different numbers of spell slots.

It's one reason why MC'ing into Warlock is such an interesting choice. Pact Magic scales differently, but you can use Pact Magic spell slots to power your smites, and since they're automatically scaled by level, they become quite effective. Get Warlock spell slots up to 4th level and you can deal maximum damage quite effectively.