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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Class Touch up the 3.5 Paladin's Smite



AnimeTheCat
2017-04-07, 03:37 PM
Ok everyone, I just got a wild hair brained idea. I've always felt like a paladin should be able to be way more smitey than they are. A measly 5/day if you go paladin 20 is super lame. What if, as long as you're aware that your target is evil, you get your Charisma modifier on attack rolls and your paladin level as bonus damage. Just like the regular smite ability, but always active. It is fairly low key damage bonus and it only applies to evil. I would 100% roll with this in my games but I want to get some input from the general public. This would not affect any special ability or feat that grants any other class a smite, only to the paladin (and paladin variants) smite evil/good ability.

ShiningStarling
2017-04-08, 06:43 PM
Having it always active inclines DMs to present more neutral enemies, in general, or makes more encounters at a range at which Paladins are ineffective, etc.

My personal favorite hotfix for Smite evil is to give it at every even level, and make it apply to an entire full attack if used with a full attack (or even better, make it at will, but take away Detect Evil and impose a penalty if they hit anything non-evil). Of course, my hotfix for Paladins is "play a Cleric with level dips in marshal or Warblade".

Ziegander
2017-04-08, 08:18 PM
Progress Smite at the rate of a Scout's Skirmish. At levels where the Scout would gain +1 AC, instead evil creatures the Paladin threatens suffer a -1 penalty to AC and saving throws.

Further augment, if you desire, by giving them the ability to treat as evil for 1 round any creature that deals damage to one of their allies (Righteous Indignation).

Grod_The_Giant
2017-04-08, 08:31 PM
Upgrading it from X/day to X/encounter helps nicely, as does boosting the bonus damage to +1d6/level. Or both-- in my personal brew, I up the damage and put it on a 1d4 round recharge timer (which improves as you level up)

AnimeTheCat
2017-04-09, 04:08 AM
So in my thoughts Paladins can cast Detect Evil at will right? Whenever I've played paladins I've always spammed the crap out of that ability to the point that I was always detecting evil as a rule basically. If Paladins can always do this and they are always meant to be on the prowl for evil it stands to reason that they should be blessed or whatever to be better at fighting evil at all times. It gives them a necessary power boost in my honest opinion. Additionally, spells like undetectable alignment can be used to fool the paladin and deny them the extra attack/damage.

Ashtagon
2017-04-09, 07:02 AM
Part of the problem is that a smite attack is just bonuses to hit and to damage. That's kinda... boring. It doesn't help that favoured enemy: evil outsiders plus favoured enemy: undead is almost strictly better.

Increasing the number of uses per time period simply makes it more like a weird-mechanic version of favoured enemy, at which point, why not just go the whole hog and make it a specialised version of favoured enemy that has its enemies pre-chosen. (Also, favoured enemy is boring for pretty much the same reason, but that's a separate discussion.)

Something that might be more interesting is if you could cast your range: touch spells through a smite. Unfortunately, looking through the paladin spell list, there aren't many spells that would benefit from this.

Another option might be for a paladin smite to inflict status effects, such as stunning them or moving them (treat as a free bull rush attempt with no penalty for failure).

redwizard007
2017-04-09, 08:34 PM
...
Another option might be for a paladin smite to inflict status effects, such as stunning them or moving them (treat as a free bull rush attempt with no penalty for failure).


That.

Also switching the number of times per day to per encounter.

Amechra
2017-04-09, 11:17 PM
Yeah, the problem with at-will Smite is the same as the problem you get when you super-optimize Turn Undead or whatever - the DM is going to stop throwing evil creatures at you.

I like Ziegander's suggestion, though.

Ursus Spelaeus
2017-04-10, 07:51 AM
You could split the difference and make it per-encounter instead of per-day.

Morphic tide
2017-04-10, 10:12 AM
Some ideas I have for making Smite useful:

1: Make it per-encounter use, cooldown-and-charge-based or uses-per-minute. All three amount to having your allotment of Smites for every fight.

2: Make the bonus be more important, like additional damage dice or have the bonus scale similarly to the Lay on Hands pool.

3: Have Feats that trade Smite strength for different bonuses, like self-healing or partially restoring your Lay on Hands pool. Or being able to use the Lay on Hands pool for extra effect, as a different angle of Smite improvement.

Of course, Paladin has more problems than just Smite being far too limited in use. But they have abilities that are all useable, they just need to be adjusted to be useable more often.

Roderick_BR
2017-04-11, 09:36 AM
I second having by-encounter. It becomes more useable, and seriously, it's not that more powerful than others constant damage by-round like sneak attack, favored enemy, or charge builds.

As for it being "boring", I think it does what it's meant to do. A sporadic to-hit and damage bonus, as the description says, "to smite an evil enemy". It doesnt need to be like maneuvers in Tome of Battle, but if you feel it needs it, my suggestion:

At 3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th, 15th, and 18th levels, you learn one Smite Power and one daily use of it.
Whenever you use your Smite Evil, you can activate a Smite Power (not more than one/round).
*Defensive Smite: Add your Charisma positive modifier (if at all) as a Holy bonus to your AC until the beggining of your next action.
*Healing Smite: Allow you to use your Lay-On-Hands in the same action.
*Mobile Smite: Make a full attack as a standard action. Only one of the attacks receive the normal To-Hit and damage bonuses.
*Full-On Smite: All attacks until the beggining of your next turn receives the To-Hit and damage bonuses.
*Weakening Smite: Enemy gets a -1 to AC and Saving Throws until the beggining of your next action.
*Stunning Smite: Enemy gets stunned until the beggining of your next action (Fort save vs 10 + half your paladin level + your Charisma modifier to negate).
*Crippling Smite: Enemy's next turn is reduced to only one partial action (Fort save vs 10 + half your paladin level + your Charisma modifier to negate).
*Crushing Smite: Ignore target's damage reduction as if you had the proper weapon properties to bypass its damage reduction.

Demidos
2017-04-11, 10:07 AM
Having recently played a 3.5 campaign with it, the pathfinder version of the paladin's smite (and lay on hands, for that matter) are both significant improvements over the original, and offer the paladin a significant boost, probably up to tier 4.

Morphic tide
2017-04-11, 12:48 PM
I second having by-encounter. It becomes more useable, and seriously, it's not that more powerful than others constant damage by-round like sneak attack, favored enemy, or charge builds.

As for it being "boring", I think it does what it's meant to do. A sporadic to-hit and damage bonus, as the description says, "to smite an evil enemy". It doesnt need to be like maneuvers in Tome of Battle, but if you feel it needs it, my suggestion:

At 3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th, 15th, and 18th levels, you learn one Smite Power and one daily use of it.
Whenever you use your Smite Evil, you can activate a Smite Power (not more than one/round).
*Defensive Smite: Add your Charisma positive modifier (if at all) as a Holy bonus to your AC until the beggining of your next action.
*Healing Smite: Allow you to use your Lay-On-Hands in the same action.
*Mobile Smite: Make a full attack as a standard action. Only one of the attacks receive the normal To-Hit and damage bonuses.
*Full-On Smite: All attacks until the beggining of your next turn receives the To-Hit and damage bonuses.
*Weakening Smite: Enemy gets a -1 to AC and Saving Throws until the beggining of your next action.
*Stunning Smite: Enemy gets stunned until the beggining of your next action (Fort save vs 10 + half your paladin level + your Charisma modifier to negate).
*Crippling Smite: Enemy's next turn is reduced to only one partial action (Fort save vs 10 + half your paladin level + your Charisma modifier to negate).
*Crushing Smite: Ignore target's damage reduction as if you had the proper weapon properties to bypass its damage reduction.

I feel that's more appropriate for a 4e Smite class, or a Pathfinder class. Stuff like that tends to be Feats in 3.X, and Bonus Feats with type restriction are a thing. Giving Paladins 5-8 Bonus Feats that are chosen from the Fighter list and Divine feats, with new Divine feats that interact with Smite, Lay on Hands and Cure Disease rather than just Turn/Rebuke Undead, seems a better way to go about it. It lets you grab the staple combat feats which aren't Fighter exclusive, as well as stuff that lets you do useful things with your otherwise-limited abilities. Such as expending Smite charges for Strength/Dexterity bonuses, letting you get some use of the feature against non-Evil/Good enemies, or expending uses of Cure Disease to heal yourself/remove non-disease conditions. Lay on Hands feats can be based heavily on the Mercies of Pathfinder Paladins.

Granted, if I were actually writing a Paladin overhaul, I'd bake in the alignment-based variant classes by making each feature have two or four versions based on alignment, so you can pick your Paladin's setup quite directly. Possibly using Smite Opposition from the Soulborn as a basis for the wording on the Smite of it. Essentially, I'd codify each Alignment with a theme, then have that theme be what that alignment does with each ability. One could be any Alignment except True Neutral, as each alignment would ideally have an entry for all the abilities.

Like, I might have Law and Chaos do Turn/Rebuke Constructs or Fey, probably Constructs as they have better interaction with the Turn/Rebuke rules, with the Remove/Cause Disease instead being Curses or Enchantments, with Lawful getting the Cause and Chaotic getting the Remove. After all, Mark of Justice is quite the Lawful spell, and it's literally Curse with a trigger, and Chaos gets a lot of Freedom effects. I also have an interest in making Law look more associated with Evil, because of the number of Evil things that are actually more Lawful than anything. Seriously, there's a sizeable index of Lawful actions in a book about Fiends to make it clear that these actions are about Law, not Evil. "Just following orders" is a Lawful Neutral action, unless you're getting into Nazi levels of cruelty. Even then, it's in-universe debatable among the celestial/infernal hierarchies.

Auras would be similarly set up, with Good and Evil being able to go mass destruction/healing at later levels by having one of their Auras be positive/negative energy in a radius. Law and Chaos would probably end up being about messing with saves, with Law being penalties and Chaos being bonuses. Yes, this means that the LG Paladin can't have Aura of Courage, but that ability is very narrow anyways and the intent would be to have the seemingly-totally-Good Paladin being the Chaotic Good one. Divine Grace could be reworked as well, because some people would prefer beating the crap out of people or being nearly impossible to hit via AC and to-hit bonuses. And boosting the DCs of your saves is a nice thing.

The end result would be that a NE Paladin could be an absolute murderhobo, slaughtering things by mere proximity and by hitting them with sharp sticks, a NG Paladin could be the best medic/tank ever, a LN Paladin could be Save or Suck incarnate and a CN Paladin could be the Anti-Suck insurance.

Roderick_BR
2017-04-12, 03:00 PM
True. Keeping it in feats works better, I guess. So as I said, just let the paladin get by encounters, and it'll be enough a boost for them, along any feats.

For other alignments, you can use the UA variants (available in the SRD online), so that job at least is done.

And now I'm wondering about a smiting PrC. I know there's Fist of Raziel, but something more tactical would be interesting.

Morphic tide
2017-04-12, 06:44 PM
For other alignments, you can use the UA variants (available in the SRD online), so that job at least is done.

I know about those. But I dislike the Wizards of the Coast conceptualizing of how Alignment defines Paladins. And making it all one clear, continuous class for all Alignment options opens up the option for a Fallen Paladin to rise up as a different alignment, with different abilities, without changing class or entering a PRC.