Paladin Sacred Oath: Oath of Conquest 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

When I envision an evil paladin, my mind turns to a dark knight clad in black and red armor. They’re terrors of the land, crushing enemies underfoot and ruling through terror and brutality. Oathbreakers can embody this fantasy, but I think Oath of Conquest fits this theme perfectly. It takes the goody-two-shoes lawfulness of the paladin and runs it to its extreme at law at all costs, where the law is determined by whoever has the biggest stick. And as a paladin, you’ve got a really freaking big stick.

3rd Level: Oath Spells and Channel Divinities

Armor of Agathys stands out as an Oath Spell namely as it is typically a Warlock exclusive. On warlock, when you’ve only got a pair of spells to work with at a time, Armor of Agathys can be a bit tricky to get consistent use out of when you have so many other options you’d probably rather commit your pact slots to. On Paladin, you’re not working with Pact Magic, meaning you’ve got 1st and 2nd level slots readily available. 10 bonus hit points and 10-20 bonus damage in the mid-tiers is great on characters whose identity is tied to being in the front and tanking damage. Paired with Heavy Armor Master and with some up-casting, you can reasonably mix in Armor of Agathys for some defense and offense at the same time. It still isn’t the most effective spell in the world, but does play decently well when up-cast. 1st level casts are usually not going to be worth it when 2d8 smite damage is going to usually do more damage, and the 5 temp HP isn’t soaking more than one hit.
Command, the other 1st level Oath Spell, ties into the lawful conqueror theme meaningfully. It, too, isn’t the easiest spell in the world to use, as it requires a lot of creativity and quick thinking, but its cost is quite low and does meaningfully enhance Conquest paladins in and out of combat. If you’re working with a DM who loves to say yes to crazy ideas, it is even better.

Conquest’s two Channel Divinities are Conquering Presence and Guided Strike.

Guided Strike is literally pulled straight off the War Domain cleric, but put on a class that cares even more about making attack rolls. Having a way to basically turn any miss into a hit is a massive boon in close fights. Being able to stack a smite on top of that makes me giddy.
Conquering Presence acts as an area of effect fear for an action. Its pretty reasonable for a short rest recharge, and will play better in different encounters than Guided Strike often will as it functions best against masses of enemies instead of single threatening foes.

5th Level: 2nd Level Oath Spells

Hold Person and Spiritual Weapon are two of Cleric’s best 2nd level spells, and Conquest gets both as Oath Spells.

Hold Person paralyzes a creature, often acting as a death sentence to the subsequent barrage of crits they’ll face. Alternatively, it can temporarily remove a humanoid from a fight and give your team a major action advantage up until it breaks free or dies.
Spiritual Weapon somehow is even better. It defines how low to mid-tier clerics play. Giving this to Conquest paladins makes them feel like they get a third attack each turn, but that attack can be from a variety of places at once. The one element where it's worse on paladin is it attacks with your Charisma, but as a paladin you’re still going to want a reasonable Charisma score. Want three attacks a turn a 5th level? This will do it for you.

7th Level: Aura of Conquest

Aura of Conquest does something I wish more features within subclasses did: it empowers lower-tier options given while also encouraging specific build directions you can choose yourself. Creatures close to you that are frightened of you have their speed reduced to 0 and passively take damage equal to half your level at the start of each of their turns, which is a huge payoff. Using your Coquering Presence, you can freeze in place any creature within 10 feet of you and psychically punish them, all while imposing disadvantage on their attacks. This doesn’t just stop here, though; any fear effects will work with Aura of Conquest so long as you are the source of the fear. Getting access to cheap effects like Cause Fear can empower an entire fear-based build. That's entirely optional, though, as you definitely get enough fear support in the core option that you don’t need to seek out other fear effects if you don’t want to.

The ten foot aura can even set you up to neutralize melee enemy combatants with a clean 5 foot step away from them. Now, they’re non-reach melee range while you can poke at them with a polearm without any repercussions.

9th Level: 3rd Level Oath Spells

Speaking of fear effects, you get Bestow Curse and Fear as your 3rd-level Oath Spells.

Bestow Curse could conceivably frighten something, but usually, its effects are too niche to justify the cast, and the duration, range, and concentration component hamstring this to be near uncastable.
Fear, however, is one of if not the best fear condition source in the game. It hits a massive area, and forces creatures far from you to run in terror and drop their stuff. Creatures close to you that fail the save are paralyzed by fear, separating enemy combatants massively and making it even easier to break encounters in half.

13th Level: 4th Level Oath Spells

Dominate Beast isn’t exactly a banger by 13th level, as most major beast encounters happened six or more levels ago. In the niche case you come up against war mammoths it's great, but beyond that is usually near uncastable.

Stoneskin honestly doesn’t do much better. Resistance to non-magical weapons is something other characters have had access to for ten or more levels in some cases, and it requiring concentration majorly limits how much actual damage it can reduce. As you get higher and higher tier, instances of non-magical damage tend to shrink as well, leaving this feeling like a lackluster defensive option not worth the cast.

15th Level: Scornful Rebuke

Scornful Rebuke gives you a passive damage reflector. Forever. All you need to do is be conscious and anything and everything that hits you with an attack takes 3-5 damage for daring to strike you. Stack this up with a 4th or 5th-level Armor of Agayths with some damage resistances and you’re going to see creatures deal more damage to themselves than you when they connect with a weapon.

17th Level: 5th Level Oath Spells

Cloudkill and Dominate Person close out the Oath Spells.

Typically I find both of these spells have a decent amount of potential, but the difference between getting them at 9th level as a full caster and 17th level as a half-caster really can’t be understated. Villains at this point worth dominating probably aren’t humanoids anymore, making Dominate Person have similar issues to Dominate Beast does. Cloudkill’s damage is fine for a 9th-level persistent damage area spell, but when you compare it to 7th, 8th, and 9th-level casts it's a joke. It's difficult to make use of easily because of the floaty nature of it as well. I’d much rather get the consistent 6d8 radiant damage to one thing, or better yet, 12d8 with a crit.

20th Level: Invincible Conqueror

Invincible Conquerer gives Oath of Conquest everything I’d want it to have as a capstone. Resistance to all damage is a superb starting point when the rest of the option supports damage reflection. On top of that, not only do you get a third attack each turn, your crit range improves to 19s and 20s. Critting on paladins is a major element of maximizing their effectiveness, and doubling the chances of critting on a single die and more than doubling it with advantage sets you up to crit every third or fourth turn, almost guaranteeing you’ll see one or two per fight. It isn’t the splashiest looking capstone, as you’re not growing angel wings or getting wrapped in hellish flames, but it turns you into a resilient killing machine.

All Together

Beyond its lackluster upper-level Oath Spells, Oath of Conquest offers a robust suite of tools to build a variety of awesome paladin archetypes. You can go all in on damage reflecting with Armor of Agaythys paired with Scornful Rebuke and Invincible Conquerer, or dip out for more fear empowerment to pair with your Aura of Conquest, Fear, and Conquering Presence. These two builds aren’t mutually exclusive either; your ability to keep enemies close to you with fears to force them to attack you (meagerly) sets up your damage reflection while somewhat protecting your allies in ways paladins are expected to.

I adore the Oath of Conquest. It has a rich well of opportunity for people to build all kinds of interesting characters with and is packed to the brim with juicy, powerful effects I’m excited to get. I highly recommend it.

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