Your Role in the Party, When to React and Multiclassing

Your Role
Above all else, as a Redemption Paladin, you are a support class. Your best work shows when you allow the other party members to shine brightly. Your secondary role is as a tank. You have decent area control spells and you're effective at keeping your party alive by just standing around. Spells like Command, Bless and Hypnotic Pattern will see frequent use. You should also advocate for frequent Short Resting, as you will be spending many hit dice throughout your career.

Consider taking a leadership role so that you can effectively guide your party members into advantageous positions. The most important thing is that you always remain close to an ally, your potential is wasted if you ever wander off on your own. Identify which of your allies is most likely to shine in an encounter and position yourself accordingly.
  • In encounters with many enemies present you want to position yourself next to the party member with the most amount of area control. Sorcerers and Wizards are most likely to fit this category with spells like Fireball, Storm Sphere and Synaptic Static. As the encounter winds down you want to transition yourself to protecting the following groups:
  • In encounters with many minions and a singular (or duo) Big Bad, you have two priorities.
    • Stick with your DPR classes, such as the Fighter, Rogue or Paladin
    • Stick with your buffers, such as Cleric, Bard or Sorcerer
  • The lowest on the priority list are your mobile fighters and tanks, such as Monk, Barbarian or Paladin. They don't really need your protection and in the case of Monk, you'd only limit their flexibility. Stay within 40 or so feet from them so that you could move to help them if necessary.
  • Yourself. Don't put yourself into outrageously dangerous scenarios to defend someone. You're no good to the party dead.


When to React
The most important aspect of this subclass to utilize is Aura of the Guardian. For us to fully make use of this feature, we need to understand it's strengths and limitations.
Starting at 7th level, you can shield others from harm at the cost of your own health. When a creature within 10 feet of you takes damage, you can use your reaction to magically take that damage, instead of that creature taking it. This feature doesn’t transfer any other effects that might accompany the damage, and this damage can’t be reduced in any way.
Take note of the downsides, as they are the most likely reason that you might choose not to react.
  • This feature doesn’t transfer any other effects that might accompany the damage
  • This damage can’t be reduced in any way.

Strengths
  • You're the Wizards best friend. Using your reaction to take a blow for him serves the dual purpose of keeping his powerful magic available for the party to benefit from as well as preventing him from having to make constitution saving throw to maintain concentration on a spell.

    If there's a vitally important concentration spell being cast, your top priority should shift to maintaining it.
  • Your presence draws attention in combat. Whether you're taking the damage using your reaction or by being physically attacked on your own, you're doing your part.
  • If your party is caught in an Area of Effect spell you can take the risk of shouldering twice the burden. Keep note of which party members fail a saving throw and decide whether or not it's worth taking their share of the damage.


Weaknesses
  • The most likely problem you'll run into is poisoned weapons, or attacks with secondary effects. You can take the damage without issue, however, the poisoned condition that follows is something you can not. With some poisons being as benign (comparatively) as simply giving the Poisoned Condition, some can be as dangerous as Incapacitating or Paralyzing. In cases where you would be dealing with attacks like this your reaction may be better used for the Protection Fighting Style or Rebuke the Violent.
  • The damage you choose to take can't be reduced. Resistance, Flat Damage Reduction and even Immunity won't prevent you from taking the full brunt of the damage. Unfortunately, with a strict RAW reading your target having those features won't reduce the damage you take either since they never took the damage and had no opportunity to reduce it.


Solutions
Think of your hit points as a resource to be spent. If you're not consistently spending your hit points that only means you could be doing more. Even if you only have a single hit point remaining it can block an entire attack.

Buffer your hit points with spells such as Aid, Heroism and Death Ward. Inspiring Leader and Healer are also quite useful in giving you additional per rest resources and Tough gives you a scaling increase to your most useful resource. By level 15 your goal is to be hovering around half of your maximum hitpoints during extended encounters so that you can make the most use out of all of your sustainability.

Be conservative with your healing options. You should be quite hardy and unless you're at risk of being dealt a killing blow you should avoid healing yourself or allies. Lay on Hands is a great use of your action in combat if you're dealing with a singular hard hitting threat and Aura of Vitality is a good spell to maintain concentration on if you're dealing with a swarm of enemies.

The best way for you to deal with things is to react to them afterward. There are only so many preventative measures you can take and if you can't adapt to an encounter shifting in one way or another you run the risk of wasting resources or being too aggressive in your use of Aura of the Guardian.

Multiclassing
There are a few important details to keep in mind about Multiclassing
  • Str 13 is required unless your home game allows prerequisites to be ignored.
  • Do not under any circumstances* multiclass prior to level 7
  • Avoid further MADness. You're already focusing heavily on 3 different ability scores, if any class option that you choose involves the need for a 4th you should think carefully on whether the class features you gain in return are worth that much of a commitment.
  • Avoid taking more than 2 levels outside of Paladin. Increasing the range of Aura of the Guardian is an incredible power spike, increasing your presence on the battlefield.


Spoiler: Multiclassing
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  • Barbarian: You can't concentrate on spells, have a worse AC with unarmored defense and lose out on just about every benefit to raging.
  • Bard: If you're willing to give up the increased aura radius potential that Paladin 18 would give you, Lore or Glamour Bard 3 offers you fantastic support abilities in the form of Cutting Words and Mantle of Majesty. Couple that with Bard's solid early game class features and you've got yourself a Sky Blue.
  • Cleric: It's pretty mad but dipping Order Cleric gives an offensive bonus to your Bless spell. Order's Demand was nerfed since the UA but can still be a useful tool in some cases.
  • Druid: There's not a lot here for us. Shepherd Druid offers a pretty small amount of temp HP and healing spirit is on this spell list. That's about it.
  • Fighter: There's nothing wrong about Fighter but as a support Action Surge just doesn't seem as appealing.
  • Monk:Multiclass MAD into MAD is just all kinds of wrong.
  • Ranger:Unfortunately you miss out on a subclass if you want to maintain the increased aura radius dream. You don't gain a lot to compensate for it either.
  • Rogue:Cunning action is a great way to use your bonus action and expertise is always fun. Only consider this if you really need someone who can open up a locked loot chest. You probably have a Wizard who can do that for you though.
  • Sorcerer:: Normally this would be the single best Nova multiclass in the game. Since Nova damage isn't even on our Radar it becomes just a good choice. Draconic Ancestry can give us a small bonus to HP with the added spellcasting strength or Divine Soul/Shadow Magic can be used to up our survivability.
  • Warlock: dipping Warlock is famous for being too easy. Hexblade only compounds on that problem. Look below this for a summary written by Legimus on exactly what Hexblade is a Gold Tier multiclass.
  • Wizard: I let you take Keen Mind anyway and you still forgot that Intelligence is not for you.



Spoiler: The Big "*" - Hexblade Warlock (A summary of why Hexblade is so good for Paladin written by Legimus)
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Foreword: I urge you again to visit and read through The Wall of Fear: A Complete Guide to the Oath of Conquest if you haven't already done so. This summary below was written by Legimus. I could have written down my own summary of why Hexblade is so invaluable for this subclass build but every point would be an echo of what has already been outlined here.

The Hexblade is probably the strongest and most versatile subclass to come out of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Its multiclassing potential is borderline outrageous. Just one level into Hexblade gets you:
  • Hexblade’s Curse, for better criticals and scary bonus attack damage.
  • Hex Warrior, which basically means you don’t have to worry about STR anymore.

The warlock is already a solid pick to multiclass into, but Hexblade instantly turns you from a MAD character to a SAD one. Normally you would use three or four of your ASIs to max out CHA and round out STR. With Hexblade you can stop at 15 STR, just enough to wear plate. This means you can easily afford three feats with your remaining ASIs. If you take four levels, you still get all your ASIs, a Pact Boon, and two Eldritch Invocations.

If I’m being honest, I’m tempted to rate this gold instead of sky blue. So long as you don’t multiclass until after level 8, I think Conquest 19 / Hexblade 1 is almost universally superior to Conquest 20. The only thing level 20 gets you is Invincible Conqueror, and I’ll grant it’s one of the best capstones. But Hex Warrior makes everything before level 20 so much easier for you. You will do more a lot more damage, have more feats, get access to two great cantrips (Booming Blade and Eldritch Blast), and have a short rest spell slot to use for divine smites, Shield, or whatever you please. And losing Invincible Conqueror isn’t so terrible considering you have Hexblade’s Curse. To illustrate:
  • Assuming you have max STR and CHA at level 20 and are using a longsword, your standard attack is 1d8 (sword) + 1d8 (improved smite) + 5 (STR) ≈ 14. The standard 5% to crit adds 2d8 damage to one in every twenty attacks, which translates to an average of ~0.45 extra damage per hit. With two attacks, your average DPR is around 29.
  • If you pop Invincible Conqueror, you get a third attack and a 10% chance to crit. The bonus crit chance translates into ~0.9 extra damage per hit. 14.9 x 3 ≈ 45. This represents a 55% increase in damage output on a long rest.
  • If you use Hexblade’s Curse, you add your proficiency bonus (+6) to every hit, making your standard attack hit for ~20. The 10% chance to crit still only translates into ~0.9 extra damage per hit, so we’re looking at 20.9 x 2 ≈ 42. This is a 45% increase in damage output on a short rest.

There’s a noticeable difference, and there are ways to widen that gap (e.g. factoring in Dueling), but it’s not as stark as you may think. Of course, Invincible Conqueror gives you more chances to pop smites, and resistance to all damage should not be overlooked. It’s incredibly strong. When you’re fighting the BBEG, it will undoubtedly be better to have a level 20 capstone than a level 1 subclass feature. But that is the only time it will be worth it.

That one level into Hexblade also gives you access to Booming Blade. By level 20 it does an extra 3d8 damage to your target whether they move or not. With Hexblade’s Curse, using Booming Blade instead of attacking twice is 1d8 (sword) + 1d8 (improved smite) + 3d8 (BB) + 5 (CHA) + 6 (proficiency) ≈ 34. A 10% to crit translates into ~3 damage per hit, so one hit with BB gets you ~37 damage on average. But if your enemy is stupid enough to move, they take another 4d8 (~20), damage. At level 20 you’re going to run into a lot of enemies that are either resilient or outright immune to being frightened, so BB is a versatile tool for keeping them grounded.

If you don’t think you’ll be making it all the way to level 20, you should seriously consider putting a level into Hexblade. And even if you think you will make it to level 20, Hex Warrior will make the journey there significantly easier.


Thank you for taking the time to read through this Guide of mine, any and all feedback is appreciated.