Dex Paladin questions

[Meta]

Hi all, first time 5e player.

A dexterity based paladin entices me, but I'm not sure how viable it is. What sort of combat advantages (pun not intended) does dex bring to the table and what different builds highlight that?

[Rysto]

The advantages are that you get a better Dex save out of it and a decent ranged option in a pinch. You still want to be in melee as most of your class features only work at that range but at least you won't be standing around like an idiot against something that flies.

The disadvantages are that you're unlikely to be able to multiclass unless you get a lucky set of rolls, because you're super MAD (you need STR and CHA 13, plus you're pumping DEX, plus you always want a good CON), and that two-handed weapons aren't an option. You'll have to go sword and board with a rapier, which isn't any worse than a STR-based sword and board paladin.

Theoretically a two-weapon fighting DEX paladin can work, but you need a dip into fighter to pick up the fighting style, which has that MAD problem. I've done it on one build and I was enjoying it before the game ground to a halt.

[Belac93]

Hi all, first time 5e player.

A dexterity based paladin entices me, but I'm not sure how viable it is. What sort of combat advantages (pun not intended) does dex bring to the table and what different builds highlight that?

The ability to stealth and use two weapon fighting from level 1. Two weapon fighting means 2d6+4d8+3 damage on a nova round at level 2. If you go vengeance paladin, you can also cast hunter's mark, upping it to 4d6+4d8+3. In addition, with vengeance, you could roll those attacks with advantage if you had vow of enmity.

With dual wielder (not necessarily needed), defense fighting style (no other paladin ones will be useful to you), 20 dex, and studded leather, your AC is 19, or 21 with Shield of faith.

Dex paladins are actually quite fun.

Also, you should know that there are no 'bad' characters in 5e. Even a wizard with 3s in all their mental stats and at least 15 in strength and constitution can be helpful in combat.


The advantages are that you get a better Dex save out of it and a decent ranged option in a pinch. You still want to be in melee as most of your class features only work at that range but at least you won't be standing around like an idiot against something that flies.

The disadvantages are that you're unlikely to be able to multiclass unless you get a lucky set of rolls, because you're super MAD (you need STR and CHA 13, plus you're pumping DEX, plus you always want a good CON), and that two-handed weapons aren't an option. You'll have to go sword and board with a rapier, which isn't any worse than a STR-based sword and board paladin.

Theoretically a two-weapon fighting DEX paladin can work, but you need a dip into fighter to pick up the fighting style, which has that MAD problem. I've done it on one build and I was enjoying it before the game ground to a halt.

Actually, you do not need the Strength. It is not a requirement for being a paladin.

Dipping into fighter has no MAD problem if you already have DEX 13.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

Actually, you do not need the Strength. It is not a requirement for being a paladin.

Dipping into fighter has no MAD problem if you already have DEX 13.

You need it to multiclass, which is a problem.

If you don't want to multiclass (or have some good rolls, or have a DM who'll waive the 13 Str requirement because it's stupid anyway, or just want to have high strength as well for some reason), however, dex paladins are entirely viable, if a bit lacking in variety, since you've got less combat options available (no GWF for you). I highly recommend going for sword-and-board over TWF, in which case you'll basically play exactly the same as a strength based sword-and-boarder, just with better initiative, ranged options, saves, and stealth, though maybe a little less AC. Works well, and 'tis fun.

[Belac93]

You need it to multiclass, which is a problem.

No actually, I am looking at my PHB right now, and it says 13 strength or 13 dexterity. If you have 13 dex, dumping strength is fine.

[DivisibleByZero]

No actually, I am looking at my PHB right now, and it says 13 strength or 13 dexterity. If you have 13 dex, dumping strength is fine.

You need to meet the requirements for both classes. Paladin multiclass requires 13 Str and 13 Cha.
Look at your PHB closer.

[Zman]

No actually, I am looking at my PHB right now, and it says 13 strength or 13 dexterity. If you have 13 dex, dumping strength is fine.

You have to meet He Multiclass restrictions to enter or leave a class, meaning you need to meet the Pally Reqs before you can leave it for another class.


Dex Paladin is very viable.

[Corran]

You have to meet the ability preriquisities of both classes, meaning the one you are multiclassing into, and the one you are multiclassing out of.

@OP
Because of MAD, it is better to decide on a singleclass paladin character, which is not bad at all, as paladins do get very interesting stuff along the way and they do have some very cool and powerful capstones. Secondly, because TWF is reall bad in this edition, unless perhaps you are a rogue, the only efficient way of playing a dex based paly, is to be a S&B paladin. That means that great weapons and polearms are out of the picture for you, and that is a blow, especially losing the polearms which work so nice on paladins. But sword and board has its advantages, mind you. You have to pick your oath carefuly, so that the oath features will merge nicely with your S&B technique. So the best choice would be oath of the ancients (vengeance works better with heavy weapons or polearms, so does devotion, and oathbreaker was made to wield nothing but a polearm - I have not paid any mind to what crown does). Tip: Avoid twf vengeance, it runs into some very serious problems. So S&B ancients is the way, imo.

Additional tips: Play a halfelf variant for a scag cantrip (either BB or GFB), or play a human and grab magic initiate (for a selection chosen among the following: BB/GFB/EB/utility cantrip, and hex/shield/utility spell). Take warcaster at some point. Despite resilient con is better for more paladins, warcaster is a better fit for ancients paladins for several reasons that deserve their own post. It would be a shame not to invest in stealth since you went with dex over strength. So if that is the case, pick a breastplate and you can even change to studded leather once your dex reaches 18. If for some reason AC is very important, you could spend a feat on medium armor master, but I would strongly advise against it if you intend to bump your dex to 18 or higher.

I am not sure if someone mentioned it already, but another advantage of having a good dex, is that you will have a good initiative. Initiative is important.

If you happen to roll very good stats, and you end up with a decent/good str score, you can even take the shield master feat and train your athletics. Do so only if the majority f the damage your party deals, comes from melee-centric characters.

[BigONotation]

I'm currently playing a level six Lightfoot Halfling Oath of Vengeance Paladin 5/ Rogue 1 who uses the bow as his primary weapon however goes sword and board when he has to. Hunter's Mark and Sneak Attack make me a painful for to ignore and I still get to do all the paladin things except Smite.

[Biggstick]

You could actually play a primarily ranged Paladin to great effect with any of the 3 PHB Oaths imo. Here are some of the things that each oath individually does to help out ranged Dex Paladins.

Devotion: The Channel Divinity allows you to turn your bow into a magic weapon, as well as boost your attack roll. This will serve to help negate your lack of an Archery Fighting style, as well as really open up your ability to take Sharpshooter. Your primary use of first level spells is going to be Bless.

Ancients: You're a fantastic boon for your ranged allies as well as your melee ones. Adding Ensnaring Strike to your ranged strikes + resistance to spell damage for the already squishy back liners will definitely be appreciated. Misty Step also allows for you to kite pretty effectively.

Vengeance: Hunter's Mark and Haste are solid DPR boosts for ranged builds. Another strength for ranged Paladins is the channel divinity. You're only required to be within 10' of an enemy before you can use the ability, meaning if you can get within range and then get back out of range, you'll have advantage on all of your ranged attack rolls against the enemy.

All Paladins can potentially have access to a mount that they won't have to make animal handling checks to control. This gives you a pretty massive MS buff to keep enemies at range while you're just plinking away at them from range. Most of your level 1 spells are going to be spent on Bless rather then Smites, but who's to say that's a bad thing?

[Alejandro]

I currently play a 9 Fighter/3 Paladin, with a 20 Dex, and he kicks plenty of ass. :) Finesse sword and buckler (shield.)

[Meta]

Thanks for the input so far everyone, learning a bunch.

so TWF Vengeance is bad. Why's that?

The two front runners (at least from the little I know) were DPS centric with TWF and Vengeance and S+B with one of the others.

I do need to be a solid front liner as the group is missing one. I dunno how important that is in 5e, but an all ranged character is probably not ideal.

How about stat distribution? Is maxing attack stat the way to go or should I spread out a bit. Halfling or Half Elf caught my eye, but I'm pretty flexible.

[Alejandro]

Thanks for the input so far everyone, learning a bunch.

so TWF Vengeance is bad. Why's that?

The two front runners (at least from the little I know) were DPS centric with TWF and Vengeance and S+B with one of the others.

I do need to be a solid front liner as the group is missing one. I dunno how important that is in 5e, but an all ranged character is probably not ideal.

How about stat distribution? Is maxing attack stat the way to go or should I spread out a bit. Halfling or Half Elf caught my eye, but I'm pretty flexible.

Don't worry too much about the fine details, you'll be fine. If your group needs a solid front line tank, use a shield, maybe even take the Defense fighting style, cast Shield of Faith sometimes, you'll do fine :)

[Rysto]

The issues with a TWF Paladin are:

1. You have to multiclass into fighter to pick up the fighting style or else you're way behind on DPR. Sword and board actually out-damages it from levels 5 through 10.

2. Multiclassing into fighter delays your paladin progression by 1 level. So you get extra attack at level 6 instead of 5, and so on. That's not a trivial cost.

3. TWF competes for you bonus action. If you want to make an off-hand attack then you can't cast/move Hunter's Mark, invoke you Vow of Enmity channel divinity or casting a smite spell.


It's not completely terrible: it gets you an extra fighting style and you can take more fighter levels eventually for action surge and the Champion's Improved Critical. If you start at Fighter 1 you get the all-important Con save proficiency. The bonus action attack means one more chance for a smite and at higher levels, another chance at Improved Divine Smite(but on a Str build, PAM gets you that without the multiclass, and it has further benefits).

[bid]

The issues with a TWF Paladin are:
OTOH, since you don't have a TWF style, you can return to dueling once you reach level 5 or later.
- 2h = 2*(2d6+4) = 22 (25 with gwf)
- duel = 2*(1d8+6) = 21 (17 with def)
- twf = 2*(1d6+4) + 1d6 = 18.5

As you can see, once you get extra attack TWF loses its advantage.

[Belac93]

You have to meet He Multiclass restrictions to enter or leave a class, meaning you need to meet the Pally Reqs before you can leave it for another class.

Ah, enter or leave. I thought it was only for entering another class.

[Mr.Moron]

The base Chassis kind of fights the idea. However dex build + medium armor has the same AC as STR build with heavy until chain mail enters the picture. You could probably do Rapier + Shield, ask your DM to let you trade in the Chain Mail for Scale Mail and see pretty much the exact same performance as any STR based Sword & Board paladin.

[djreynolds]

A S&B paladin with a rapier and leather armor is very effective. Also there are other benefits from shield master, like pseudo-evasion and adding your shield to your AC coupled with your charisma bonus to saves makes a dex based paladin very durable.

Also improved divine smite is very nice for two-weapon fighters.

I would think its a tad MAD but swashbuckler/paladin could be very cool.

[Meta]

I think I settled on Paladin 6->Rogue 3->Paladin 11. Half Elf gets me to 20/18/14 in Dex/Cha/Con with Resilience eventually and a whole bunch of skill proficiencies.

Thanks for all of your help everyone!

[Corran]

I think I settled on Paladin 6->Rogue 3->Paladin 11. Half Elf gets me to 20/18/14 in Dex/Cha/Con with Resilience eventually and a whole bunch of skill proficiencies.

Thanks for all of your help everyone!
I played a paladin 6/ rogue 3 with the progression you suggested, starting from level 1. And though it was a build that really intrigued me and I had high hopes for, I have to admit that it gave me a hard time, so I ended up rebuilding the whole character, doing some very drastic changes. But let me tell you what I didnt like about the initial build, since it is relevant.

First of all, the multiclass requirements (particularly the 13 needed in str) stretched my ability scores too thin. I was a vhuman, so my starting stats were 13 str, 16 dex, 13 con, 9 int, 11 wis, 14 cha. The odd value in con was no accident, as resilient con was one of my intended feats. Anyway, the str requirement and given you will be playing a halfeld (solid choice), puts you at something like this: 13 str, 16 dex (+1), 13 con (+1), 8 int, 10 wis, 16 cha (+2), racial bonuses included, with resilient as yur first feat at level 4, putting your con score at 14. Given that ASIs will come slowly in the game for you (multiclass does not help in that regard), you will be stuck with 16 in dex, 14 in con and 16 in cha for a very long time or for your whole career. Not great.

Secondly, dual wielding is unfortunately a bad style, powerwise. Even with hunter's mark and improve divine smite in play, between moving hunter's mark from one enemy to another or between using your bonus action to attack or for cunning action, you will have a lot of trouble when action economy is concerned. And seeing as you are fragile in the AC and HP front, you will indeed have to use cunning action a lot. And moving hunter's mark around, which again is something that comes up very often, will hurt your dpr quite significantly. And oath of enmity takes up a bonus action too. Not to mention that keeping concentration up will be quite a struggle before you can manage to have both resilient con and aura of warding protection protecting you. And once you get improved divine smite, you are better off using haste instead of hunter's mark, as when IDS comes online, haste outperforms hunter's mark in every possible way. Which is a shame, since haste would be used much better if you were wielding a two hander or a polearm. Or even if you were S&B. Basically, haste pairs better with every single fighting style, other than dual wielding. And as I said above, I just want to really emphasize this, keeping your concentration will be a huge problem up until level 6.

And a side note. If you are planning to go assassin rogue, then you will need a couple more feats for sure, thus keeping your stats on the mediocre side for more that you should do so, not to mention that there are far better ways to go about the whole concept with pretty much the same flavour, but I am not sure of this is relevant so I will stop here.

Back to the build and its action economy, when up against a boss fight, I usually followed the following routine. Use oath of enmity on the enemy boss and attack with a longbow at round 1, use hunter's mark and attack again with a longbow in round 2, then drop the longbow as a free action and draw on shortsword as an object interaction, then in round 3 draw the other shortsword as object interaction and move adjacent to the target taking the attack action and use my bonus action to attack. That gave me 2 rounds on the clear, which helped a lot as this character is not that great as far as AC and HP are concerned, and it slightly improved my damage during these two rounds (using d8 instead of d6). Fights against multiple enemies were quite trickier though.

Overall it is not an awful build, far from it. And it is certainly playable. And between the many skill and tool proficiencies, good dex and cha scores, and features like thieves' cant and expertise, it brings a lot of out of combat utility. Not to mention the heavy rp potential (paladin who went rogue, or reformed criminal, or however else you want to rp it). It is just that, imo, in terms of combat effectiveness, you are not really good at anything. You are no tank, you are o reliable dpr, and you are not a great support either. You are mediocre in all these things, and you have no clear role on the battlefiled. This build certainly leaves a lot to be desired.

ps: If you go with this build, I would advise against taking the dual wielder feat. I dont think this feat is a good investment. I would stick with two shortswords/scimitars.

[Meta]

I played a paladin 6/ rogue 3 with the progression you suggested, starting from level 1. And though it was a build that really intrigued me and I had high hopes for, I have to admit that it gave me a hard time, so I ended up rebuilding the whole character, doing some very drastic changes. But let me tell you what I didnt like about the initial build, since it is relevant.

First of all, the multiclass requirements (particularly the 13 needed in str) stretched my ability scores too thin. I was a vhuman, so my starting stats were 13 str, 16 dex, 13 con, 9 int, 11 wis, 14 cha. The odd value in con was no accident, as resilient con was one of my intended feats. Anyway, the str requirement and given you will be playing a halfeld (solid choice), puts you at something like this: 13 str, 16 dex (+1), 13 con (+1), 8 int, 10 wis, 16 cha (+2), racial bonuses included, with resilient as yur first feat at level 4, putting your con score at 14. Given that ASIs will come slowly in the game for you (multiclass does not help in that regard), you will be stuck with 16 in dex, 14 in con and 16 in cha for a very long time or for your whole career. Not great.

Secondly, dual wielding is unfortunately a bad style, powerwise. Even with hunter's mark and improve divine smite in play, between moving hunter's mark from one enemy to another or between using your bonus action to attack or for cunning action, you will have a lot of trouble when action economy is concerned. And seeing as you are fragile in the AC and HP front, you will indeed have to use cunning action a lot. And moving hunter's mark around, which again is something that comes up very often, will hurt your dpr quite significantly. And oath of enmity takes up a bonus action too. Not to mention that keeping concentration up will be quite a struggle before you can manage to have both resilient con and aura of warding protecting you. And once you get improved divine smite, you are better off using haste instead of hunter's mark, as when IDS comes online, haste outperforms hunter's mark in every possible way. Which is a shame, since haste would be used much better if you were wielding a two hander or a polearm. Or even if you were S&B. Basically, haste pairs better with every single fighting style, other than dual wielding. And as I said above, I just want to really emphasize this, keeping your concentration will be a huge problem up until level 6.

And a side note. If you are planning to go assassin rogue, then you will need a couple more feats for sure, thus keeping your stats on the mediocre side for more that you should do so, not to mention that there are far better ways to go about the whole concept with pretty much the same flavour, but I am not sure of this is relevant so I will stop here.

Back to the build and its action economy, when up against a boss fight, I usually followed the following routine. Use oath of enmity on the enemy boss and attack with a longbow at round 1, use hunter's mark and attack again with a longbow in round 2, then drop the longbow as a free action and draw on shortsword as an object interaction, then in round 3 draw the other shortsword as object interaction and move adjacent to the target taking the attack action and use my bonus action to attack. That gave me 2 rounds on the clear, which helped a lot as this character is not that great as far as AC and HP are concerned, and it slightly improved my damage during these two rounds (using d8 instead of d6). Fights against multiple enemies were quite trickier though.

Overall it is not an awful build, far from it. And it is certainly playable. And between the many skill and tool proficiencies, good dex and cha scores, and features like thieves' cant and expertise, it brings a lot of out of combat utility. Not to mention the heavy rp potential (paladin who went rogue, or reformed criminal, or however else you want to rp it). It is just that, imo, in terms of combat effectiveness, you are not really good at anything. You are no tank, you are o reliable dpr, and you are not a great support either. You are mediocre in all these things, and you have no clear role on the battlefiled. This build certainly leaves a lot to be desired.

ps: If you go with this build, I would advise against taking the dual wielder feat. I dont think this feat is a good investment. I would stick with two shortswords/scimitars.

Thanks for sharing your experience! I was thinking about bumping my 16 to an 18 at level 4 and just living without resilience until the prof bonus was more important. Definitely won't be picking up other feats besides resilient. I do plan on going with Mariner to get my AC back to plate level, and giving me a lot of the ways to maneuver across the field. It turns out our Sorcerer is looking to play a dog fighter (idk...) so sole tanking isn't needed and I can be a bit more of the scout.

I am surprised that you found the support aspect to be lacking. I would have guessed the aura, heals, and Bless right out of the gate would prove to be pretty great. I'm still a noob though, perhaps my estimation is off.