Paladin Sacred Oath: Oath of Devotion 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

Do you want to be the capital P Paladin? The righteous, heavily armored defender with a mace for smiting and a shield for shielding? While imperfect, Oath of Devotion does a perfectly fine job delivering on that fantasy. You’ll get to bash some undead, have a fancy holy weapon, and eventually become a beacon of light that burns away evil.

3rd Level: Oath Spells and Channel Divinities

Protection from Evil and Good and Sanctuary start the option’s Oath Spells out clearly highlighting what this option wants to do: beat the crap out of some undead, fiends, and fey.

Protection from Evil and Good I find to be a great effect when facing those specific kinds of creatures, making it as an Oath Spell nice as should you unexpectedly stumble into some, you’re ready. Beyond those encounters, it is a bit niche, but given this option tells you you’re going to primarily be good at killing fiends and undead, it comes with the territory.
Sanctuary is a spell I’m less excited to see. I find its tactical use suspect; as a defensive option to pull out to try to get an ally way in over their head to safety it can be fine, but in every other case it ends up being too challenging to get meaningful use out of. It rarely is lasting longer than a single turn, namely because characters in combat want to be taking combative actions because 5th edition rewards those kinds of actions more than supportive ones. You probably don’t want to be using this unless you absolutely need to prevent some hits from the rogue who has found themself buried in orcs.
Sacred Weapon might be my favorite bog standard fantasy ability in the PHB. You have to commit your action to doing it, but in return, you add your Charisma mod to hit for a minute and light it up like a lighthouse. In today’s day and age, I’d guess this would be usable as a bonus action, but with a round of prep before a fight, Sacred Weapon will shine in almost every fight, especially post-5th level.
Turn the Unholy is the other Channel Divinity you’re given as a Devotion paladin, and it does what it says on the tin. It's basically Turn Undead, but also affects fiends! This kind of effect is debilitating when it works against masses of enemies, often halving the total you actually need to deal with at a given time. Alongside Sacred Weapon, you’re armed with a regularly usable combat enhancer and a fiend/undead silver bullet for those encounters where you want to be the undead slayer. Good stuff so far!

5th Level: 2nd Level Oath Spells

Lesser Restoration and Zone of Truth both lack a decent amount of utility for their costs.

But of the two, at least Zone of Truth offers some special utility that highlights what Oath of Devotion paladins are all about. Having access to a truth-detecting area isn’t particularly impactful for social navigation, as there are ample ways to navigate dishonestly within the zone. It still offers you some amount of benefit, though, and certainly can lead to memorable moments.
Lesser Restoration, on the other hand, rarely is worth the cast unless you’re curing paralysis. Paralysis specifically will quickly lead to death, as every hit becomes a crit when paralyzed, meaning having a tool to disable it swiftly can save lives. There are next to no creatures who do this. Every other condition typically isn’t so bad you’d want to end the effect with an action and a 2nd level spell, especially in a system where most effects can end on one successful save made at the end of each creature’s turns.

7th Level: Aura of Devotion

Immunity to charms is niche. Aura of Devotion is immunity to charms for you and creatures within 10 feet of you. That’s not enough. If it ever matters it’ll feel pretty great, but the reality of D&D is there just aren’t a ton of charm effects beyond the Feywild. There will be games where a devotion paladin prevents zero charms from landing between 7th and 10th level, which often will be the entire remainder of the game.

9th Level: 3rd Level Oath Spells

Beacon of Hope and Dispel Magic make up the 3rd-level Devotion Oath Spells.

Beacon of Hope is horrendous. It takes an action to cast, requires concentration, doesn’t restore any hit points on cast, and only defends against a single save type. If it lasted longer at least it’d be easy to set up prior to some fights where you knew Wis saves would be featured, but in the majority of encounters, even those including Wis saves, Beacon of Hope is giving you next to nothing for a steep cost you’re definitely not going to want to pay.
Dispel Magic does bring a ton to the table, though. Where Beacon of Hope has next to no encounters to shine in, Dispel Magic can shine in any encounter where spells are involved. Its a tool to disable powerful, debilitating effects like a Hold or Dominate Person while also acting as a means of aiding out-of-combat exploration in magical spaces. Some tables will need it more than others, but I find most tables I play and DM for have ample opportunity to use Dispel Magic effectively. Having it on paladin opens those opportunities up to a class that does want some more means of doing this.

13th Level: 4th Level Oath Spells

Freedom of Movement has been and always will be terrible. It's a 4th level solution to a problem that can be solved mundanely and is dwarfed by 1st and 2nd-level effects. Ignoring difficult terrain and restraints isn’t close to good enough.

Guardian of Faith also has issues, namely that by this tier the damage it deals will feel quite a bit worse than it felt back at 7th level when clerics got access to it. 60 damage in a fixed space that is relatively easy to play around can have a decent impact on a fight. When set up, it will improve your damage more than a single 5d8 damage smite will assuming all the damage is dealt. Getting it set up to consistently get the damage out is harder than it looks, and as you’re getting into the upper tiers, it’ll just get harder and harder to get all the value you want out of this.

15th Level: Purity of Spirit

Purity of Spirit has a clean, simple design: you are passively enhanced by a 1st level spell. Neat!

Practically, this sets you up, once again, to excel in environments overrun with undead and fiends. Here’s my problem with this, though: the cost of this effect is one 1st level spell. It's incredibly cheap. Yes, it no longer takes your concentration, opening up other concentration options for you, but given it has a 10-minute duration normally and is easy to pop down prior to a fight or two, I find this passive effect to be a bit too much overlap for my liking.

That being said, it doesn’t feel bad to play with when you’re facing down spontaneous demon hordes. Not having to worry about dropping concentration and passively imposing disadvantage on all of their attack rolls feels great. It does nothing outside of those encounters, but again, you’re going into this option knowing you’re going to get options that line you up best against the forces of evil. In campaigns highlighting demons, devils, undead, and fairies, this is an entirely reasonable 15th-level boon.

17th Level: 5th Level Oath Spells

Commune and Flame Strike finish up the Oath Spells list with a whimper.

Commune in particular is egregious here. A 5th-level slot at 17th level can’t just now start communicating with the gods. Other characters have been communing with deities since 3rd level, some warlocks even earlier.
Flame Strike is fine, but fine doesn’t really cut it for 17th-level features. 5th-level Fireball damage in a sculpted area just isn’t that exciting by this stage and doesn’t have nearly large enough an impact on upper-tier fights. It just doesn’t scale as well as it needs to. Effects like Hold Monster or Counterspell work great as half-caster spells because they have a massive impact on even the highest-tier monsters. Monsters with more hit points care less about this kind of effect, making higher tier monsters not feel this nearly as hard as monsters you’d face at 9th level do.

20th Level: Holy Nimbus

Holy Nimbus makes you radioactive, and that’s about it. For a minute, you burn bright light around you dealing a passive 10 radiant damage to every enemy within 30 feet of you each turn, which can be good. Against swarms and swarms of little creatures, you just existing will passively disintegrate them as they fail to connect to your 25 or higher AC. Beyond the swarms of evil, against two or three big things, this still is a decent feature as a bonus 30 damage a round is nothing to sneeze at.

The save advantage is bizarre to me, namely because you have a passive Protection from Evil and Good on you that largely covers the kinds of saves those creatures make, but hey, now you aren’t as likely to get paralyzed by ghasts.

All Together

Oath of Devotion has some lackluster features carried heavily by its simplicity and intended goal. Knowing going into this you’re going to be playing a character who excels in a small set of encounters is necessary. Turn the Unholy, Aura of Devotion, and Purity of Spirit all do nothing in every encounter lacking specific creatures. In encounters against undead throngs or demon hordes, though, you get the cheat codes to the game.

If you’re going into the game wanting to specifically be a legendary paladin devoted to slaying undead, this gives you exactly that. If you want a character who will be better in a wider variety of situations, I’d go with nearly any other oath, as so many of these features literally don’t function outside of facing extraplanar villains.

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