Paladin 5e Oath of Vengeance vs Oath of Devotion

[Master Soren]

Hello, I’m very new to D&d and also to these forums. I was just wondering what some opinions were for a paladin trying to pick their oath. My paladin is a variant human with Great Weapons Master feat and Great Weapons fighting style. My party companions are a bard, ranger, rogue, monk, and warlock, so I am ordinarily the main one in melee combat. Our bard handles most of the healing, and I use lay on hands and cure wounds when possible. I recognize that oath of vengeance looks generally geared towards nuking bosses and other major enemies. It has a lot of advantages like hunters mark and bane that seem like they would be handy. But the sacred weapon channel divinity of devotion looks very useful as well, in that it would allow me to spam the power attacks of Great Weapons master with little to no reduction of hit chance (my cha modifier is +3). Any advice would be helpful and welcome! :)

[nanoboy]

You've got a diverse party, so I wouldn't worry about the exact combat role you fulfill. Instead, you should look at the tenets of each oath and determine which fits your character or which would create interesting conflicts for you. A paladin's moral code often drives the narrative of what a party chooses to do or sets up interesting character interactions.

The Oath of Devotion is the classical D&D paladin archetype. In previous editions, you had to be Lawful Good to play one, and that alignment really fits the Oath of Devotion. Neutral (or maybe Chaotic) Good also work for it. Having it, you should be protective and noble, striving for to reach the moral high ground no matter the personal cost to you.

The Oath of Vengeance is all about a righteous anger at the evils of the world. If you want to play the character who does whatever it takes to destroy threats, it's a good oath for you. It lines up well with Lawful Neutral, but you could be easily combine it with another alignment, especially a Lawful one.

[Davrix]

The devotion CD and GWM are very powerful together and if you just want to smash things by all means this is great. Devotion comes with a great lv 7 aura to protect against charm and your lv 6 aura against saves is the lifesaver of every party member.

A different approach would be to ask yourself what kind of paladin you want to be and pick your oath around that or even write up your own oaths. (which can be very fun)

It really just depends on what you would like to do, the PH has 3 good options and Xanthum's Guide gives us the oath of conquest and Redemption. I do realize you are knew to the game so take all this advice with a grain of salt. It can get overwhelming so if you have something you like about devotion just stick with that. If you want to shoot for more do some reading and looking into multi-classing into sorcery at a later point. Meta-magic and Paladin go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

[Jerrykhor]

Devotion wins it. When you realise how many high level Charm spells it auto-wins against (and yes, their effects are devastating), you realise how overpowered that aura is.

[Davrix]

To be honest its why I sort of resent devotion it gets ALLL the good toyss

[Feuerphoenix]

To be honest its why I sort of resent devotion it gets ALLL the good toyss

Well except the spell list. This onereally needs improvement...

[Davrix]

Well except the spell list. This one really needs improvement...

if there spell list didn't kind of suck they would just be the all around best choice in the matter.

[Feuerphoenix]

if there spell list didn't kind of suck they would just be the all around best choice in the matter.

It doesn‘t „kinda“ suck. It sucks pretty obvious. A lot of the spells are from the pally list and they are not even the better ones. This is my criticism.

[strangebloke]

if there spell list didn't kind of suck they would just be the all around best choice in the matter.

vPally gets ahead on the action economy. Their channel divinity is worse, but can be used as a bonus action during a fight. They also get hunter's mark, for those fights where they can't get bless off ahead of time. (pretty frequently, in my experience)

Humorously, if you multiclass with Hexblade 1, you can Vow of Emnity a target on the first turn, Hexblade Curse them on the second, and Hunter's mark them on the third. I find this suboptimal, but very fun, since I get to RP pronouncing a curse on the enemy three turns in a row. By the end you have a doubled crit range against him, advantage on attacks against him, and you deal extra damage. Your turn-by-turn crit-smite chance is also like 36%.

Overall they're a much more 'selfish' class, and I like them more from a design perspective. I'm not a huge fan of straight immunities, especially one like the devotion aura that extends to so many people.

[Bayonet300]

If you're planning on using a great weapon build, Vengeance is the way to go. Sacred Weapon may sound great on paper, but the fact that you'll have to burn a full action to use it REALLY stings compared to Vow of Enmity only taking a bonus action when up against a powerful single enemy. Also keep in mind that paladins aren't really designed to take on hoards unless they run sword and board or have access to destruction wave at level 17, so your focus should typically be ending a big boss fight as soon as possible.

Another thing that's easy to overlook is that Vengeance Paladins have arguably better spells. You get hunter's mark at level 3 and it lasts an hour compared to divine favor only lasting a minute, misty step at level 5 is fantastic at helping chase down enemies and it only costs a bonus action, and haste is easily one of the best buffing spells in the game since a Paladin's damage output is greatly increased by Improved Divine Smite and scoring as many attacks as possible. Honestly, the extra spells Devotion Paladins get seem to be more situational in comparison to the raw force behind the Vengeance Paladin's list.

Finally, lets look at the other passive features. Few can argue that at level 7 Aura of Devotion >>> Relentless Avenger unless your specifically using a polearm and took the PAM feat, but your Aura of Protection should already be mitigating wisdom saves against you and your allies. On the other hand, Purity of Spirit <<< Soul of Vengeance; not to say protection from good and evil isn't nice, but it pales in comparison to to scoring an additional hit most rounds against one particularly bad baddie. I'm not really going to get into Holy Nimbus vs Avenging Angel at level 20 since most players don't make it that far anyway, but I will mention that Avenging Angel lasts an hour compared to Holy Nimbus' 1 minute.

[Chugger]

With devo you can turn undead. It's soooo handy, when you meet undead. If you never fight undead, oh well. Once we encountered - I forgot how many it was - an insane number of wraiths. They rolled very poorly on our party member's turn undead, and we only had to fight 3 or 4. You gotta have a sense of when to use it, but it can really be nice.