Smite spell ponderings

[Spacehamster]

Do you good folk of the playground think that it were a mistake to make the smite spells concentration spells?

I for one think they should be no concentration since it’s only one shot use anyways.

[Callin]

Yea they are finiky with Concentration attached to em.

[Galithar]

I believe it was to prevent them from being stacked. Without concentration you could preload 3-5 smite spells onto a single attack. Even in combat since they only go off on a hit if you miss then next round you could add a second smite, miss again and round 3 gets 3 smites etc.

I think it would have been better to simply give them a 'smite' tag and say that only 1 'smite' may be in effect at a time. If you cast another 'smite' before triggering the first, then the new 'smite' overwrites the first. (Or something that says that same thing but more clear/less wordy)

[Guy Lombard-O]

I honestly think it's a pretty close call.

I used to believe that the smite spells just weren't very good and not worth the spell slot. But I've come to realize that a couple of them are downright good (wrathful, banishing), and the others are generally not the waste of space I originally thought.

Thunderous and Staggering Smites in particular stand out as examples where concentration seems wrong. But Searing, Wrathful, Branding and Banishing seem like they absolutely should take concentration, due to their significant ongoing effects after they land. Blinding could go either way, seeing as how Blindness/Deafness doesn't use concentration.

So while I can see where lots of people don't think they're worthy of your concentration, I can see why the devs did it this way. It would maybe have been better if they'd done like Galithar said and made them not take concentration until they land on the target, but then require concentration for the Smites with ongoing effects. But that would have made the mechanics even more fiddly. Probably too much so.

[Galithar]

I honestly think it's a pretty close call.

I used to believe that the smite spells just weren't very good and not worth the spell slot. But I've come to realize that a couple of them are downright good (wrathful, banishing), and the others are generally not the waste of space I originally thought.

Thunderous and Staggering Smites in particular stand out as examples where concentration seems wrong. But Searing, Wrathful, Branding and Banishing seem like they absolutely should take concentration, due to their significant ongoing effects after they land. Blinding could go either way, seeing as how Blindness/Deafness doesn't use concentration.

So while I can see where lots of people don't think they're worthy of your concentration, I can see why the devs did it this way. It would maybe have been better if they'd done like Galithar said and made them not take concentration until they land on the target, but then require concentration for the Smites with ongoing effects. But that would have made the mechanics even more fiddly. Probably too much so.

I actually completely forgot about their lingering effects. That is a pretty good case for them rewiring concentration. I actually think they should have been an 'add on hit' effect like a normal smite, but still requiring concentration for lingering effects.

That would just be a simple clause that says it casts off a bonus action with a timing of 'immediately following a hit with a melee weapon attack'

Though I suppose that still leaves things like if the damage die are multiplied in a crit up in the air, instead of the current definitive doubling for a crit...

[ambartanen]

I think the smite spells are an unsalvageable mess. I have one idea for how they might be addressed but its too complex and specific to easily home rule.

The first level smites (searing, thunderous and wrathful) are just worse than smiting. Searing would take extraordinary luck to match the damage of a simple smite, thunderous pushes away people while you are melee attacking them (but not far enough away to prevent anyone from reaching you again with their free move) and wrathful... well, that one has specific uses for controlling brute enemies but it would be quite hard to maintain as a paladin would both have to maintain concentration in melee and the enemy would have to fail their probably unimpressive save DC. Wrathful is probably the best idea but its the kind of mechanic that works too rarely and just frustrates players with the fact that even when used under optimal conditions, it probably only has a 50% chance of working for a useful amount of time.

Branding is one of only two of these that doesn't require melee attacks. Now this makes it an interesting choice for putting the spotlight on an invisible opponent from a distance but between needing to identify the opponent's location in the first place, disadvantage on attacks, having to maintain concentration and the very limited number of spells a paladin can prepare... well, let's just say I can't imagine there are many groups that wouldn't just choose to use faerie fire or a sack of flour instead.

Blinding is mostly fine. In theory it has a slightly lower damage for the chance to blind your opponent which is pretty neat for a melee fighter. In practice anything with a poor Con save will fold from a regular smite so blindness is irrelevant and anything that has a lot of hp will have a solid Con save and 70%+ chance of never being blinded in the first place. Not to mention things like blinding smite being counterspellable when a regular smite is not or the fact that using a 3rd level slot to smite on a critical is an extra 27 damage on average.

Staggering smite is honestly baffling. Unless something has the ability to instakill a party member as a reaction, its much weaker than the level 1 wrathful smite which is already very situational.

Banishing smite is really cool except I have two major issues with it. It takes the effect of banishment and turns it from a "natural" charisma save into this super metagamey 50 hp limit. Players don't know how much hp an enemy has while the character doesn't even know what hp is so its a spell that forces metagaming. Also does the 50hp limit apply before or after the hit deals damage? If before, then its stupid because the hit would deal almost 50 damage anyway. If after, then the gamble of whether the spell will even take effect becomes even bigger due to the "swinginess" of all the dice. In either case its a very poorly designed mechanic that encourages metagaming and negates the proper use of banishment to divide and conquer- banish one or more strong enemies at the start of the fight, deal with their buddies then deal with the banished after they come back.

The other issue is that this is also a hexblade spell. While a paladin has to wait for level 17 and can only do this once per day, the hexblade can do it twice per short rest at level 9. Now don't get me wrong, I still think the hexblade is better off using normal banishment but at least with several uses a day at level 9 when 50 hp is still a big chunk of an enemy's health this smite might see some use. Banishing smite is also ranged so while I can't imagine a ranged build paladin ever made it to level 17, you can totally be a ranged hexblade of the bow who uses banishing smite to beat up + clear out enemies. This is all a problem for me because the only really good smite spell is only good on the hexblade.

In short, I think only Wrathful and Banishing smite really have effects worth keeping but their implementation still suffers. I would replace them with two concentration spells (level 1 and 5, obviously) that last up to an hour/a day respectively to be used in a similar way to hex/hunter's mark. They'll add 1d6 radiant damage when you hit the marked enemy, smites will do all radiant damage with a 1d8 per spell level boost (so lose the extra 1d8) and if you smite a marked enemy, the corresponding extra effect happens. That way "wrathful mark" is a pretty cool flavoured tanking mechanic (you literally put the fear of god in them by smiting them) that only the paladin can use and it is worth concentrating on (because after they save you can just full damage smite them again). A little worried banishing with first level smites can turn overpowered but at level 17th you'll mostly be doing it to minions and things near death instead of novaing the main bad guy so I am not sure how it will play out.

[Spacehamster]

To clarify I don’t think they are bad per say but as is they are only good for pretty much sword and board fighting where you have no better use of your bonus action.

[stoutstien]

Way back when I tried integrating the smite spells into the Divine smite feature.
Instead of taking concentration they were just limited to once per round and lasted for a number of rounds equal to Cha modifier.
Each oath received some unique ones and it made for a pretty fun mechanic.