Swordmage as a Paladin Archetype (5e)

[miburo]

A long long time ago, in a thread on the WotC forums now far far away (i.e. gone), a couple of people were complaining about how hard it was to recreate the swordmage arcane gish type in 5th edition. The paladin was a great class, but it wasn't really "arcane" enough. So a couple of plucky forum-goers (mellored, aelioran, and miburo) created a paladin archteype based on the swordmage. General agreement was that was pretty straightforward to slide into a campaign, even if it didn't fully capture the nitty gritty details of the arcane original.

Some things never change, and now many of us are still looking for that arcane gish. While I created a Spellsword base class since then, I wanted to bring this "Swordmage as a Paladin archetype" back because I think in many ways it is a lot simpler to introduce a new archetype then a full base class. From a fluff perspective if you want to keep this Paladin-ish, you could modify this to be an "Oath of the Arcane" or something similar, like a Paladin of Mystra devoted to defending the fabric of the weave.

Since the WotC forum days I've modified the class a bit for balance and offered a separate optional "base class rework" to make the paladin base class feel more like an arcane half-caster and less like a holy warrior. Check it out below and let me know your feedback:

Swordmage as a Paladin Archetype (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fBoC8bVRb_0syWHZORwWeagijKOX5bljMza8rbziBQI/)

[clash]

I think this works perfectly for a swordmage. For simplicity I would have arcane aegis just use channel divinity but I can see where others wouldnt like that as much.

[miburo]

It basically is the Channel Divinity. I can just call it that I guess in the doc instead of "replaces Channel Divinity"

[Talyn]

I might suggest letting the Swordmage choose a different damage type for their Smite, if they so choose, to enhance the Arcane feel of the class.

[miburo]

I might suggest letting the Swordmage choose a different damage type for their Smite, if they so choose, to enhance the Arcane feel of the class.

Agreed--So at 3rd level (when you choose the swordmage "oath") you gain the elemental smite ability which allows you to switch out radiant damage for acid, fire, cold, lightning, or thunder.

If you use the optional base class rework you can even swap out the 2nd level radiant damage for a force damage based ability instead (trading the holy-oriented +1d8 against undeads and fiends for a slightly higher damage cap of 6d8 when using 5th level slots).

That should cover the bases, right?

[Balyano]

You have it so that Destructive Wave is added to the paladins spell list, but paladins already get destructive wave, in the list of paladin spells it is written as destructive smite, i cant remember which is the typo.

[miburo]

You have it so that Destructive Wave is added to the paladins spell list, but paladins already get destructive wave, in the list of paladin spells it is written as destructive smite, i cant remember which is the typo.

Yup, that's intentional. While it is on the paladin list, I added it to the swordmage list so that it doesn't have to be counted towards your list of prepared spells (just like how Oath of Devotion gets a bunch of base paladin spells on its archetype list). The spell seems to fit the swordmage's flavor even though it is not explicitly an arcane spell.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Looks pretty solid. Nicely done.

[Ugganaut]

Not a fan of mixing swordmage into a divine class, even with the reworked chassis, they are still a divine class with divine spells, which swordmage was not. The rework chassis gives two-weapon fighting and removes protection? The Swordmage's were usually either weapon+ward(shield) or two-handed from memory, and had a protection focus(mitigation or punishment). I never remember what Ensnarement was about, maybe it was two-weapon.

While it doesn't feel very "swordmage" to me except for the Aegis, it's balanced really well, and as a paladin of an arcane domain god, I think this would be really fun to play. It seems well balanced, and the use of the paladin's existing abilities like channel divinity and aura's is really nice.