List of Paladin spells eligible for War Caster

[Arkhios]

I thought I'd make a list of paladin spells eligible for War Caster's third benefit (casting a spell in place of an opportunity attack, when target moves), since I couldn't find one already. I hope you like it!

Command: Surprisingly(?) this can be quite decent with Opportunity Attack, even though it doesn't deal damage (directly).

Approach. This can turn out to be very hilarous. Imagine your target trying to leave from your reach, and you command it to get back immediately.
Drop. Again, quite nasty little trick. A foe intending to move past you to strike an ally can be very pissed off when they must drop their weapons and end their turn there.
Flee. Perhaps not the most useful, but I suppose it can have its uses sometimes. Maybe if you and your allies are positioned in a way that you can force the target to flee right past your allies and provoke multiple opportunity attacks (instead of just one from you).
Grovel. Nice, put your target prone as a reaction. Who wouldn't like that. Especially if multiple allies are nearby.
Halt. Along with Approach this can be very useful, especially if you're the dedicated tank of your group you want to keep your enemies close to you.
Inflict Wounds (Oathbreaker only): The damage is quite ok, but the spell is quite situational.

Hold Person (Oath of Vengeance only): Ever wanted to paralyze someone boring in the mid-speech? Now you can, sort of. However, that someone can resume to the speech on his or her next turn. Regardless, it's nice, if a bit situational.

Bestow Curse (Oathbreaker only): Along with Command, this one is probably one of the most tempting spells for War Caster reaction, as it can confer serious penalties to your target.
Dispel Magic: This one is rather tricky to use, but it can be effective. Maybe as a counter against a blurred or mirror imaged target moving past you, believing it's safe from your retaliation.

Banishment: Now this is just gravy. A creature gets sent away from this plane of existence to another as a reaction to leaving from your reach. Nice!
Blight (Oathbreaker only): Whoa! Huge damage even with your limited spell slot levels, and pretty decent damage even if it saves against it.

Contagion (Oathbreaker only): this one is outright nasty to be bestowed upon reaction.

Blinding Sickness. Disadvantage on wisdom checks and wisdom saving throws is never good, and on top of it all, it's blinded!
Filth Fever. Disadvantage on strength related checks, saves, and attacks. Nasty contagion indeed!
Flesh Rot. (Un)Holy Crap! While charisma checks (note, not saves!) are rather rare, vulnerability to ALL damage is insane! By far, the best Contagion, in my opinion at least.
Mindfire. Intelligence checks and saves in combat are somewhat rare, but being effectively confused is really nasty.
Seizure. Every blaster's best friend. Disadvantage on Dexterity related checks, saves, and attack rolls can cripple a target badly.
Slimy Doom. Yikes! disadvantage on constitution related checks and saves, and stunned when taking damage!
Dominate Person (Oathbreaker only): A target tried to flee or ignore you, but instead got dominated by you. What a nice turn of events, indeed!
Hold Monster (Oath of Vengeance only): As with Hold Person, but works against any creature, not just humanoids. Really nice, if a bit situational.

As a wrap-up: All in all, paladin spell list doesn't have too many spells that are eligible with War Caster, but that isn't really a big problem. Paladins don't have too many spell slots to spare anyway, so when they can use War Caster's reaction, it's better to make it count, and luckily every paladin gets decent options, best of which is perhaps the first level spell: Command.
Depending on your Oath, you get more decent spells, or outright insanely good spells (as seen with Oathbreaker)!

PS. I'd like to rate each spell, but honestly I don't have the slightest clue, only the hunch I had with each, so I left them unrated for now. If you have an opinion, let's hear it.

[Daishain]

Hmm, it might be beneficial to expand this list to cover all WC compatible spells, with notations on who can cast them by default. Not only could a paladin get other spells added to their list, they're not the only ones who can benefit from this kind of action.

[Arkhios]

Hmm, it might be beneficial to expand this list to cover all WC compatible spells, with notations on who can cast them by default. Not only could a paladin get other spells added to their list, they're not the only ones who can benefit from this kind of action.

Maybe, it'll take a while though. Better to start slowly, as only 5 levels alone took it's time :smalltongue:

[Rysto]

Why would a Paladin want to blow a spell slot on an Inflict Wounds AoO when they could just use a weapon attack and smite for more damage on a hit, and save the spell slot on a miss?

[Arkhios]

Why would a Paladin want to blow a spell slot on an Inflict Wounds AoO when they could just use a weapon attack and smite for more damage on a hit, and save the spell slot on a miss?

A valid point. I wasn't thinking straight :P

[eastmabl]

Why would a Paladin want to blow a spell slot on an Inflict Wounds AoO when they could just use a weapon attack and smite for more damage on a hit, and save the spell slot on a miss?

Target has resistance/immunity to normal weapon damage. Necrotic damage caused by Inflict Wounds does normal damage.

It's situational, but these types of lists are for these kind of things.

[Corran]

A quick word about hold person. If you cast hold person as an OA via warcaster, that happens during the enemy's turn, which means that even if the enemy fails his initial save and is paralysed, thus his turn ended, he immediately rolls another save to break free of the spell, as it is specified in the spell description that a held enemy always rolls a save at the end of his turn. That means that the enemy will have to fail two saves in a row against your DC, before anyone can take advantage of free crits. Which imo means that it is a bad use of resources. Ofc there can be those very situational cases where it can be critical that the enemy loses the rest of his turn, where hold person and warcaster would be solid gold (eg enemy tries to flee and press the ''end the world'' button, or ya know, the alarm).

A few more thoughts. Warcaster obviously makes a lot of sense for paladins that multiclass with arcane casters, especially the benefit in qurstion plays very well with BB. But this is well known. Personally, I like warcaster on singleclass paladins of the oath of the ancients. It plays really well with the lvl 20 feature of that oath (ie elder champion).
Optimizing elder champion
Halfelf, choose the variant that gives you a cantrip, pick BB. (can work with high elf too, but halfelf is a better choice for palys)
Take the feat warcaster.

First round of combat: Use your action to activate elder champion, move up to your enemy, use your bonus action to cast command on the enemy, the enemy rolls the save with disadvantage. Command the enemy to flee. If the enemy fails his save, we use BB as an opportunity attack, dealing [weapon die]+ str mod + d8 (IDS) + 7d8 (BB) + whatever other adds to our damage (from spells to magic items). So we inflict all that damage with just our reaction, and the enemy even loses his turn. All at the cost of a 1st level spell slot, and a bonus action. Meaning that we can continue doing that in the following rounds (as long as we have spell slots to use for command), and on top we can use whatever we want with our action (save for casting spells, as we use ourr bonus action to cast a spell). And the enemy rolls with disadvnatage his save. How awesome is that?!!! Even against enemies with legendary resistances, that means that we can very quickly burn through those resistances (due to disadvnatage on saves, meaning that they should fail more often that succeeding), and we can burn through the legendary resistances at the cost of 1st level slots and a bonus action, meaning that we are still attacking with our action.

But you can still make use of that feat in levels prior to 20 too. For example, consider a variant human str OoA single class paladin build, with spell sniper (BB), PM (using a polearm is essential), and warcaster (and perhaps even mobile to ensure constant movement so that you get to attack with your reaction every round). Add on top of that the extra d8 from IDS once you hit 11 level. And ofc at 20 level you can do what I described in the spoiler text.



Very nice thread btw!

[Arkhios]

Very nice thread btw!

Thank you for the kind words. Generally I aim to please, but sometimes my short temper gets in the way (an apologetic notion for past and future outbursts :P)

Good points about Hold Person, apparently I didn't take everything to account when reviewing the spells.

In regards to my list, I would rather just not include optimization shenanigans, that was never my purpose for making this list. I'll let the readers come up with the dirty work! :P

While I might expand the list to including all spells eligible for War Caster, I won't do it to encourage cheesy builds or anything. If anything, I'd do it just for quick reference material for those who might want a quick answer to a small question: which spells I can use? :)