paladin oath of homecoming what do you think

[Amdy_vill]

Oath of homecoming
Tenets of homecoming
The tenets of the oath of Homecoming are simple Return home no matter what you have to sacrifice. Having been sent on a quest you swear to return.

Return: You must try to return to your friends and family once your quest is done.
Protect: Be willing to lay down you life for all those you call friends.
By any means: you must be willing to do whatever it takes to return to your friends and family.

Oath spells

3rd Bane, Hex, Hunters Mark
5th misty step,Spiritual Weapon
9th Beacon of Hope, Counter Spell
13th Banishment, Dimension Door
17th Hold Monster, Planar Binding

Channel Divinity

When you take this oath at 3rd level, you gain the following two Channel Divinity options.

Rise up: as a bonus action one unconscious creature of your choosing within 30 ft of you is no longer unconscious and gain 1 hit point and 20 temporary hit points.

Throwing on the sword: as a bonus action when you make an attack you can choose to crit. If you do thing the target may take an action either to cast a spell or make an attack. This happens even if your attacks damage would kill the creature.

Never going to give up
At 7th level, when you sussed on an attack roll you can convert your hit points into damage. You gain the ability to deal damage to yourself equal to spell attack mod + ½ you max hit points. Your weapon then deals extra damage equal to the damage your dealt to yourself.

Get up
At 15th level, when you are making death saving throws it takes one less successes to stabilize. At 17th level this ability extends to any ally within 30ft.

If you are stabilized you can use your reaction to use hit dice. When you finish a long rest you can use all your hit dice to gain temporary hit points equal to half your max hit points. These hit points disappear when you finish a short or long rest.

Not today
At 20th level, you can use your action to gain the following abilities for 1 hour.

All allies within 60 ft need to make one less successful saving throw to stabilize.

As a bonus action you can transfer you hitpoints to any creature within 30 ft.

You gain immunity to all non magic damage and resistance magic to bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing damage

You never going to give up ability deals two points of damage for every point of damage you deal to yourself when using
the ability.

[Lacuna Caster]

Not sure I'm qualified to comment on the balancing aspects, but theme wise... if you're sent on a quest, isn't making sure the quest is completed generally considered more crucial/heroic than ensuring you get back in one piece? Or perhaps 'defending one's homeland' is more the intention? Some of the wording is also a little tricky to understand.

[jiriku]

It's a bit messy, but as an early draft it's a good starting point. Here are a few places where you have an opportunity to clean it up.

Choice of oath
"Return home no matter what you have to sacrifice" is... well, it's not very heroic. For example, this oath could justify running away from battle, abandoning your comrades while they are in danger, surrendering to an enemy commander in order to spare your men, or betraying your side in order to escape. It's not very heroic. Maybe something similar would make a heroic ideal, like "Leave no soldier behind" or "Preserve even the lives of your foes when possible." Also, many of the spells and class features you put on this oath involve binding things and sacrificing yourself to deal a killing blow. These abilities are a very poor for for "return home." Give the oath a little more thought.

Spell List
Some of these spells are thematic. Banishment and beacon of hope, for example, fit the oath well. Other spells don't fit well. Planar binding actually prevents a creature from going home, for example. Overall, this feels like you took the Paladin of Vengeance spell list and then added in a few spells that you wanted, rather than a list that's intended to fit the oath. Additionally, you have three first level spells on your list, while every other paladin oath grants only two. If you're going to break with the usual tradition for paladin oath spells, you should have a good reason for it -- such as an oath that relates to arcane magic, for example. But I don't see any justification here. I'd recommend removing one of the 1st-level spells to conform to the standard set by other oaths. You might also look into other spells that involve escape or getting home somehow. For example, I might expect to see spells like expeditious retreat, rope trick, leomund's tiny hut, or freedom of movement on this list.

Class features
Rise up: This grants A LOT of temporary hit points, especially for when it's first gained at 3rd level. Also, it's not clear why the hit points are temporary. Since the creature is at 0 hp, it makes sense to heal it; temp hp are more valuable for creatures that aren't wounded. You might consider making the temp hp scale -- say twice your paladin level instead of a flat +20. Alternately, the feature could allow you to Lay On Hands as a bonus action at range, which would tie it in to existing class mechanics.

Throwing on the sword: Creatures can't take actions off-turn. You probably want to require the creature to take a reaction instead. I'm not clear what eating a spell or weapon attack to the face as you score a crit has to do with coming home. In general, because of the abusability of putting free crits on a paladin chassis (for a free doubled smite) and because this feature doesn't fit the theme of your oath, I'd recommend scrubbing it and going back to the drawing board.

Never going to give up: The name of this feature sounds like a Rick Astley meme. Also, you wrote "sussed" when I think you meant something else. Maybe "succeed?" Again, this ability doesn't fit the theme of going home -- dealing damage to yourself is likely to kill you, not get you home safely. I am concerned that the abilities thus far would short-circuit a lot of boss fights -- buff with aid to increase max hp, walk up to the boss, channel divinity to throw on sword, never give up to sacrifice max possible hp, crit-smite for double weapon damage + double smite, with a long sword that's roughly 2d8+6d8+5+35 = roughly 80 hp damage. And then you get your second attack, for which you can deal another 1d8+3d8+3+35 = 55 ish damage with another smite and sacrifice. You drop yourself, but you've just dealt about 135 damage to your target, most of which was guaranteed, and the boss got one action before the fight was over -- then the party cleric throws you a healing word and you're back on your feet. And this is at 7th level, with minimal optimization. At higher levels you just Get Up, spend all your hit dice, and continue adventuring as though nothing happened. It's too much.

To make this ability more balanced it needs a much stricter limit on how much you can sacrifice. I'd recommend no more than your spellcasting modifier as a flat bonus, or perhaps an amount equal to your paladin level if you want it to be REALLY powerful. You should not be able to daisy-chain your class features together to one-shot boss fights and walk away. And definitely clarify that you cannot sacrifice more hp than you have remaining.

Get Up: This needs a more heroic name. How about "Vigorous Circle" or "Undying Flame of Life?" Make it cool-sounding. The trigger for the reaction is unclear -- "if you are stabilized" doesn't work. Maybe use "when you stabilize" instead -- that's a clear point in time that can serve as a reaction trigger. Also, the option to convert hit dice to temporary hp after a long rest feels tacked-on and unrelated to the rest of the ability, which is about recovering from dying, not buffing yourself in the morning. Maybe replace it with something more thematic -- for example, maybe whenever you stabilize and have no hit dice remaining, you gain one hit die. This would ensure that you could always use Get Up even if you had used up your hit dice.

Not Today: This is flashy and impressive, as capstone abilities should be. It steps on the toes of your Rise Up ability a little, since you now have two different ways to grant hp to someone at range. But ok, sure. Immunity to nonmagical weapons seems like it could lead to some epic scenes where you wade into battle against overwhelming odds and emerge unscathed, which is exactly the kind of badass stuff 20th level characters should be doing. I'm not keen on the doubling of sacrifice damage, though. Dealing unblockable triple-digit damage is not a thing you should be doing.

Overall
There's an uneasy marriage here between the flavor and the crunch of the class. The theme is about returning home, but most of the mechanics seem to be about dropping yourself and a powerful enemy in a single unblockable strike, but you get to recover afterwards. If that's all you want to do, you really don't need a custom oath. Just homebrew a feat that allows you to sacrifice hp for extra damage, play a vengeance pally, and use your healing spells and Lay on Hands to keep yourself alive. If you are deeply committed to the idea of an oath of homecoming, I'd recommend refining the tenets of the oath and then selecting mechanics that more closely illustrate those tenets.

[Amdy_vill]

It's a bit messy, but as an early draft it's a good starting point. Here are a few places where you have an opportunity to clean it up.

Choice of oath
"Return home no matter what you have to sacrifice" is... well, it's not very heroic. For example, this oath could justify running away from battle, abandoning your comrades while they are in danger, surrendering to an enemy commander in order to spare your men, or betraying your side in order to escape. It's not very heroic. Maybe something similar would make a heroic ideal, like "Leave no soldier behind" or "Preserve even the lives of your foes when possible." Also, many of the spells and class features you put on this oath involve binding things and sacrificing yourself to deal a killing blow. These abilities are a very poor for for "return home." Give the oath a little more thought.



the idea behind this oath is a combination of the reluctant hero and the black knight tropes. I should work on getting these ideas across more. thanks for the help

The naming thing is just something i like to do for fun. just a little quirk of how i write homebrew