Banishing Smite: Go Die Somewhere Else

Usable By: Paladin

Spell Level: 5

School: Abjuration

Casting Time: 1 bonus action

Range: Self

Duration: Concentration up to 1 minute

Components: V

The next time you hit a creature with a weapon attack before this spell ends, your weapon crackles with force, and the attack deals an extra 5d10 force damage to the target. Additionally, if this attack reduces the target to 50 hit points of fewer, you banish it. If the target is native to a different plane of existence than the on you’re on, the target disappears, returning to its home plane. If the target is native to the plane you’re on, the creature vanishes into a harmless demiplane. While there, the target is incapacitated. It remains there until the spell ends, at which point the target reappears in the space it left or in the nearest unoccupied space if that space is occupied.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

Divine smite, as a paladin feature, is pretty freaking sweet. You can freely spend spell slots, no action required, when you smash things in the face to deal loads of bonus damage. A fifth level slot gets to deal 6d8 radiant damage on its own (7d8 if it's hitting a fiend or undead); that's guaranteed damage to a target you’ve already hit, no chance of less damage, no chance of failure. You basically can only waste a divine smite if the damage your weapon deals alone would kill the hit creature without the smite. All other cases, you get SOMETHING. Spells that then aim to deal damage have to compete with this baseline. Banishing Smite has one thing going for it: you can banish a low health target elsewhere in addition to the force damage. This CAN be worth it, but it's trickier to evaluate than it looks.

The average damage 5d10 is doing versus 6d8 is 27.5 to 27; near identical. To then make Banishing Smite worth it, you have to want to banish a creature you hit. My problem is this; if you’re hitting a creature, and that creature is taking 27ish damage plus your weapon damage, is it worth it to shunt them to another plane of existence IF they drop below 50 HP? I think in most scenarios the answer is no; if the attack would kill the creature anyway, banishing it is pointless. If not, if the fight is reaching a point where you’re dropping creatures to sub 50 HP, it's likely nearly over, and the banish effect matters a lot less.

We end up basically in a situation where IF you can be sure you’re putting a creature within 50 HP and the fight has a long way to go, the Banishment is solid, and can majorly improve your chances. Otherwise, it's just about as good as divine smite, but you have to prepare it. Sure, if most of your spell slots are going to smiting anyway, the prepared slot can feel fine to use here. These niche moments might happen enough to make it worth trying, and if you’d be smiting anyway and are unsure of how thick something is, it doesn’t cost you that much more to try Banishing Smite.

It annoys me that a 5th level paladin spell delivers worse utility than a 4th level spell, Banishment. It also annoys me that a spell you have to prepare barely squeaks out an advantage of being “worth it” to prepare over the default class feature. If you are looking to bring a bit more utility to the party, and aren’t that committed to a specific spell list, Banishing Smite costs you little to use, and can be a great tool to have in some very specific fights.

5e Spells

Banishing Smite: Go Die Somewhere Else