Ultimate Guide to Paladins in D&D 5e

Guide by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

Have you ever worried that maybe the mercenary life isn't moral? Do you have the intense desire to be the burning center of morality reining in a band of loose misfits throwing themselves into danger over and over again? Do you want that while ALSO being a machine of death and destruction, capable of leveling behemoths with a single enhanced strike from a greatsword? Of so, Paladin is the class for you.

Paladin takes the martial character weapon and armor proficiencies and spices them up with some magical class features alongside some spell slots that fuel Divine Smites (or actual spells should the mood strike you). It excels at walking the line between caster and martial, offering a best-of-both-worlds kind of feeling in the low to mid tiers while scaling into a melee support that is still capable of pulling out a 10d8+2d6+5 damage attack now and then when they need to smack villains around.

5th Edition tried to break paladin away from clerics a bit by removing a decent chunk of their reliance on alignment and religion. Their core features still betray the ways of old, though, making them this awkward hybrid between the zealous divine warriors blessed by god and constantly judged from 3rd edition and the more modern take of warriors dedicated to a code 4th and 5th edition brought. I personally love these kinds of awkward overlapping ideas, as an undead-raising dark knight that still has a pool of life to cure diseases and save lives offers rich roleplay opportunities and moments to build into a character backstory. It can be a bit jarring in some cases, though, and does leave paladin stuck in a spot where you often won't get the exact look for a character you want.

Using This Guide

Paladin, to me, excels at providing both new and experienced players a rewarding option with plenty to build towards and around while still having clean, easy-to-use features that don't require a massive investment.

Newer Players. If you're a newer player or approaching paladin for the first time, I'd focus primarily on the first three levels to establish your expectations and get a sense of what paladin is all about.

Experienced Players. If you're in the market to empower an existing paladin you're playing, checking through spell and feat recommendations can be an easy way to find recommendations to up the power of your character. Keeping in mind what resources you have available at all times can be tricky, as paladins have a massive swath of varying resources at their disposal at all times.

The Baseline of Paladin

Paladins are half-casters like rangers and artificers. A large portion of your power comes from your heavy armor and martial weapon proficiencies.

Ability Score Assignment

This tends to mean you'll want your highest stat to scale with your attack rolls first, as they're what you’re spending most of your actions in combat doing, with your secondary or third highest stat falling to your spellcasting ability score, which in paladin's case is Charisma. Strength typically is your primary ability score you'll want to get as high as possible, as your weapon selection normally works with Strength. Constitution also is quite important as it both will help give you a larger hit point pool to leverage in combat to stay up while defending the concentration of spells you'll be casting as the game progresses.

Weapon Options

Your weapon selection sets you up with all the martial options you could ask for, but your features unlocked at 2nd and 3rd level to somewhat steer you towards strength-based weapons that work with Divine Smite and your Fighting Style options.

The fighting style options available to you want you to use a one-handed d8 melee weapon and shield or a two-handed melee weapon like a greatsword or polearm. Spears are versatile options to pair with a shield when you want AC, or on their own for a dice size upgrade, and glaives are their bigger brother that always has to be held in two hands but comes with an even bigger die size.

Ranged weapons like bows don't work with Divine Smite, nor do they get empowered by any Fighting Style options you're working with, heavily motivating you to build elsewhere. Knowing this rewards carrying thrown weapons on you as tools to help engage fights that double up with your Strength modifier being your primary attack stat. Handaxes and light hammers are my go to light thrown weapons, with javelins being heavier, higher damage options that are a bit trickier to lug around.

Paladin AC

As mentioned prior, paladins have shield proficiency. Taking advantage of that +2 AC is an easy way to empower your character naturally, with heavy armor giving yo an opportunity to start with an AC of 18 with chainmail while your shield is up.

In the mid to upper tiers, when you're a bit more flush with gold, plate will bump that AC even higher. Paladins are somewhat infamous for having ludicrously high AC, and heavy armor is a major contributing factor to that.

1st Level: Lay on Hands and Divine Sense

The bulk of Paladin's 1st level power is coming from their weapon and armor proficiency. Still, Lay on Hands and Divine Sense both are fine enough to give you just a bit more to do and feel unique from the fighters and rangers of the group.

Lay on Hands

Lay on Hands is a scaling pool of hit points you can divide out as you like. It takes an action, and requires touch, making it not the most efficient in combat heal in the game, but as fights come to a close, it does act as a great way to get downed allies up while the last couple of monsters flee or are cleaned up by the rogue or wizard.
As the game goes on, having five times your levels worth of hit points to slap onto somebody who has taken a beating in between fights is great. I'd try to reserve three or four in case allies need to be brought up during particularly lethal moments, though.

Divine Sense

Divine Sense is the other 1st level feature you start with. Its being an instantaneous detector with no duration limits its usability, but in a pinch, it can identify suspicious creatures as angelic or undead, which is fine. It being blocked by total cover also hampers the utility of this further, leaving it as a tool many, myself included, find challenging to meaningfully get practical use out of on an average adventuring day.

2nd Level: Fighting Style, Spellcasting, Divine Smite

While Paladin's 1st level is a bit lackluster, at 2nd level you get a massive bump in every facet of play.

Fighting Styles

First up, you pick a Fighting Style from a list of seven.

Blessed Warrior is difficult to justify, as two cantrips replacing a passive feature that will empower you every round in combat is challenging. Clerics also having a lot of weapon and armor access makes it so if you want to be a divine warrior with more magical at your fingertips, you should just play it instead. If you do go with Blessed Warrior, Guidance tends to stand and shoulders above the other cleric cantrips. Thaumaturgy is my second recommendation, as it assists in helping you feel magical while also providing some decent utility.
Blind Fighting, while niche, is a fighting style I love to mess around with as a build enabler to empower Darkness and other heavy obscuring effects. For a new player that isn't checking ahead at what new spells and feature's they're getting, I don't think it quite provides enough, but for more experienced players or people who just love building around a mechanic, Blind Fighting does offers a really solid payoff if you can use it round to round.
Defense I see as the most taken Fighting Style on paladin which deeply disheartens me. +1 AC is just so boring. It contributes to stacking up AC to attempt to be as hard to hit as possible which leads to frustrations at some tables. Normally, you'll be just fine with an AC of 18+, and you can easily get that without needing to take Defense. I can't deny It contributes to the incredibly difficult to hit paladin builds, though, so if that's the direction you want to go, it is the default option for you.
Dueling works on any character with a weapon and shield. It empowers spears and other one-handed polearms, longswords, warhammers, maces, you name it. I don't find the name “Dueling” really sells the fantasy of the archetype that tends to use this most, as I don't relate sword and board tactics to the fantasy of the nimble duelist engaging with a rapier, but hey, mechanically +2 damage is a boring, fine payoff if you want to hit harder.
Great Weapon Fighting I'm a bit of a sucker for. Rerolling bad dice makes me feel good, and that's exactly what Great Weapon Fighting offers. Over the course of the game, it isn't adding a ton of average damage to you round to round, but it does majorly reduce rounds where you'll feel like your hit didn't land well. It works best with two-handed weapons that are rolling 2d6 to get a higher likelihood of rerolls an empowerment. If I'm playing a Great Weapon Master paladin looking to hit like a bus, I'm taking this over Defense every time.
Interception goes hand in hand with Protection to fulfill the protector fantasy where Interception feels better in the lower tiers when it is reducing all incoming damage to zero, whereas Protection thrives in the upper tiers when it can turn higher damage hits into complete misses. Interception also notably doesn't require the use of a shield, as any melee weapon can turn it on, while Protection does require you're wielding a shield. Truthfully, both play worse than they read, as many parties will struggle to have nearby allies that can receive the benefits of either, but in groups with a monk, melee rogue, or one or two other melee allies, these can have a solid impact and help sell the protector tank fantasy.

Spellcasting and 1st Level Spells

Paladins, like clerics, are prepared casters who get to prepare a number of spells equal to half their level (rounded down) + their Charisma modifier, minimum 1. This encourages you to know the entire paladin spell list, or at least consult with it each long rest to prepare some of the more niche effects for different upcoming encounters. Without Blessed Warrior, you aren't getting any cantrips, leaving just 1st level options to consider here.

One other big note here is the Paladin spell list kind of sucks. Most of the time, you're just getting spells later than clerics normally do. Fortunately, you always can stick spare slots into Divine Smite (which we'll cover shortly), and Oath Spells tend to offer non-paladin spells that empower you in ways that work better on characters with Extra Attack than those without, making their comparative spell level and character level feel a bit better to play with.

Another quick thing to mention here is the paladin smite spells. These are typically bonus actions you take prior to an attack that you have to concentrate on up until you hit something, after which the effect is applied. This is substantially worse in most cases than a default Divine Smite as it doesn't simultaneously work with longer duration, higher impact concentration effects you want to keep up, doesn't typically outperform Divine Smite in damage, and asks a lot to go right for their conditional effects to work out. If you want a way to shake up your attack rolls, needing to forgo so many other things is just to get that is a bit too much of a cost to me. They can still be reasonable in the right circumstances, though.

1st Level Spell Recommendations

Bless definitely makes my list of regularly prepared spells on Paladin. Even with the concentration component, +1d4 over two to three rounds on attacks and saves is excellent. It won't always be worth the cast but does give your concentration something meaningful to do in the early game.
Shield of Faith fits a similar bill, this time with an even cheaper action cost and offering +2 AC to further protect its own concentration. If your goal is to be unhittable in the low tiers, Shield of Faith is an easy way to stack up that AC.
Protection from Evil and Good is the kind of effect you'll likely aim to prepare when you know you're going to need it. Against the creatures it protects against it is a house of a spell, as disadvantage makes it so your high AC is next near impossible for low-tier baddies to connect with. The conditional protections on top of that just add a bit of extra value in a handful of fights, and while I won't always prepare Protection from Evil and Good, I would recommend keeping it in mind when you're preparing your daily list.

And that's kind of it. There are some fine effects like Command and Compelled Duel you can play with if they speak to you, but the rest of the options here aren't great, to say the least.

1st Level Spells to Avoid

Cure Wounds often makes my spells to avoid lists, and paladin is no exception. While you don't have access to Healing Word, you do have at least ten hit points worth of Lay on Hands that will cover all of the healing needs you have. Wasting a prepared slot on this will usually be overkill in the life regeneration department.
Detect Poison and Disease and its cousin Purify Food and Drink have so few applicable uses that even keeping them in mind isn't worth the brain space. These spells are affecting next to no encounters per campaign, let alone adventure, and have no business wasting your spell slots or prepared spells.
Divine Favor is let down not because it doesn't empower what you want to be doing as a paladin but because you've got Divine Smite. A d4 damage on hit needs to connect four times to match the average damage of a single use of your smite against most creatures, with fiends and undead needing at least six hits to match.
Searing, Thunderous, and Wrathful Smite all fall into this tier for the same reasons as Divine Favor. Divine Smite is just... better. Usually. When you've only got three or four total spells to prepare, and these are at best side-grades to the 2d8 damage you get all the time, preparing them just never feels good.

Divine Smite

The reason so many damage spells are difficult to justify preparing is Divine Smite which reads worse than it is. What truly makes Divine Smite so good is how efficient it is; you only use it when you know you've already connected, meaning its rarely a wasted resource, doubles its damage from critical hits (turning your crits into SUPER crits), can be unloaded multiple times per turn with Extra Attack, and gives you a place to put as many spells slots as you've got to burn. At tables running fewer long rests with higher encounter quantities, they could run out quickly and feel too low an impact. At most tables, though, which are running one to two encounters per long rest, you'll easily find ample room to slam smite after smite down round after round. In the mid to upper tiers, there will be plenty of fights where you're smiting literally every round, sometimes multiple times every round.

It's the core of what paladins do- they convert spell slots into raw damage when they hit, once per attack. It's yucky good.

3rd Level: Divine Health, Sacred Oath, Harness Divine Power

Like 2nd level, 3rd level brings out some massive upgrades with your Sacred Oath and Harness Divine Power. Additionally, you get Divine Health to make you immune to disease. Neat!

Divine Health

Immunity to disease could be meaningful, but the vast majority of tables are playing with campaigns that will include one or fewer actual abilities that inflict diseases. Diseases aren't particularly well supported in the current 5th Edition structure, making features good at combating them somewhat moot. Fortunately, paladins get another big boost to make up for it with their...

Sacred Oath

Oaths provide two critical empowerment tools at 3rd level: your Channel Divinity options, and Oath Spells. These fundamentally determine a major pillar of your paladin: what they care about, what drives them. They're fighting for a cause so valiantly it literally gives them divine power.

You get one Channel Divinity usage per short rest. These range from single target fears and roots to area of effect turns similar to cleric's Turn Undead. At their best, they highlight a new play pattern or core direction for you to explore. At their worst, though, they'll feel like 1st-ish level spells, which is still fine.

Additionally, each Oath automatically prepares two Oath Spells for each spell level they have. At 3rd level, this automatically prepares two new 1st-level spells, which often can nearly double your available spells. These spells, much like the Channel Divinity options, can present entirely new directions to delve into as a paladin with oddballs like Armor of Agathys on Oath of Conquest or Sleep on Oath of Redemption. Getting additional free spells as you level is great when those spells are great.

There are nine total Oaths as of Fizban's Treasury of Dragons: Oath of Ancients, Oath of Conquest, Oath of the Crown, Oath of Devotion, Oath of Glory, Oath of Redemption, Oath of Vengeance, Oath of the Watchers, and Oathbreaker.

Oath of Ancients are committed to the protection of nature and receive a lot of druid magic. Their built as wardens against fey, with utility that shines brightest against extraplanar threats like fey without forgoing all of their utility beyond it. They eventually get an aura that resists magic damage, making them excellent at tables combating evil wizards or spell-slinging fairies.
Oath of Conquest offers you a bit of an evil route to explore. Your Oath is to defeat foes and claim what is yours; mechanically, this poses you as an insurmountable force that punishes creatures for daring to be near you with fear and control. The archetype has tons of room to explore various unique build directions while also delivering on a traditional villainous paladin archetype with plenty of history to reference for inspiration.
Oath of the Crown struggles to differentiate itself from Oath of Devotion and Redemption as a knightly hero dedicated to defending the monarchy. It has a bit more grey area to explore thematically but isn't backed by a lot of powerful or interesting features. It also doesn't help that the most interesting option it does get is done better on Oath of Redemption, leaving this as an awkward option you'd need to want flavor reasons to pick before any other, and you can probably make most themes that fit crown fit Conquest, Devotion, or Redemption just as well.
Oath of Devotion is the archetype for being a big old righteous paladin who is good against undead and not much else. It by far is the most specialized of the group with Turn Undead and a passive Protection from Evil and Good being completely worthless in the majority of fights and utterly backbreaking against legions of doom. Sacred Weapon provides enough that at casual tables it can still feel pretty reasonable in the low to mid tiers, but if you aren't out killing banshees and skeletons regularly, its going to feel like it completely lacks features in the upper tiers.
Oath of Glory sells itself as the Greek or Roman demigod hero athlete archetype and largely doesn't present enough to actually deliver on that fantasy. Its Peerless Athlete feature is a huge step down from even low-tier magic like Jump. Its Oath Spells aren't meaningfully empowering you to successfully perform demigod-like feats of strength. It has a few redeeming elements but isn't something I'm quick to point somebody to if they want to build somebody inspired by Theseus or Heracles, and it absolutely should be.
Oath of Redemption does what Oath of Devotion probably should do as far as acting as a base-level defensive, good-spirited paladin. You get a robust suite of tools to prevent fights before they begin alongside excellent defensive features that reward you for playing the protector. It comes together beautifully. I wouldn't go full pacifist with it, but if you want some great options for getting around conflict while still being able to pack a punch and keep your team alive, Oath of Redemption delivers.
Oath of Vengeance offers hunter hellbent on revenge fantasy superbly in all forms outside its 7th level feature. You get to mark your prey for more damage, blink around the map chasing down enemies, and become a flying avatar of vengeance to smite those who have wronged you at 20th level. If you're okay with forgoing a decent aura in the name of vengeance, Oath of Vengeance will give you what you're looking for.
Oath of the Watchers is a bit too similar to Oath of Ancients for me, and beyond the flavor overlap has some glaring problems. Its features are really polarizing, either doing little to nothing or being a life-saving tool you desperately want access to which lands this in a spot where you need to know going into a campaign if Oath of the Watchers is going to be a good fit for most of it. It basically requires short, bursty fights against magic users to work, and outside of that, is a lackluster, inflexible option I'd steer clear of.
Oathbreaker closes out the Sacred Oaths with an option to build your own evil undead paladin overlord. It can mind control an undead indefinitely with adequate rests and gets Animate Dead to create a bastion of minions. Paired with its damage enhancers to yourself and your minions, Oathbreaker sets you up to succeed as playing a distinct and unique necromancer warlord hybrid that I am just in love with thematically.

Harness Divine Power

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything added in an extra use of Channel Divinity where you can expend it to get back a spell slot, but you can only use this specific Channel Divinity once per long rest. You get extra uses between long rests as you scale, but you still consume the short rest Channel Divinity feature, which is super clunky. Still, it's a fine addition you might pull out from time to time, especially on options like Oath of Glory where your Channel Divinities aren't anything to write home about.

4th Level: Feat Options and Martial Versatility

In Tasha's Paladins get Martial Versatility, which just lets you swap to a new fighting style if you don't like your current one. Neat!

The real 4th level feature you get is an Ability Score Improvement that optionally can be replaced with a Feat, and let me tell you, there are some exceptional feat options to bring a paladin build together. You've got feats that make you kill better, feats that empower concentration effects if you really care about one or two spells, feats that give you even MORE protection, feats that add high-impact magic to your sheet that pairs stupidly well with what else you're working with, and more.

Weapon Feats to Consider

Great Weapon Master has a massive impact at the table. Turns out -5 to hit for +10 to damage isn't remotely a fair trade-off. It basically doubles the weapon damage you’re dealing, and hits a fourth less (ish). If you're wanting to be a murder machine as a paladin, Great Weapon Master will certainly kill a lot of things.

I love the polearm builds on paladins, namely with Polearm Master for a bonus action attack to smite with, and Sentinel for its potential lockdown and defensive capabilities. Together they're part of a build whose identity is controlling space around them which doubles up with paladin's auras and allied protection benefits to create a defender who makes their team feel safe around them and enemies in constant peril when in threat range.

Defensive Feats to Consider

Heavy Armor Master has some neat applications in the lower tier for mitigating incoming damage en-mass, and when you're lacking damage resistances and intend to take a lot of hits, Heavy Armor Master can reduce a good chunk of it. It doesn't scale great, as it only mitigates non-magical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, but if you want to feel like a bulwark capable of taking blow after blow, you can get that with Heavy Armor Master early on.
Strixhaven Initiate doesn't initially seem like it belongs in this category, as it's a big spell addition, but does one critical thing: lets you spend spell slots on Shield. Shield is an utterly broken 1st level spell that gives you a reaction way to get +5 AC. This on top of your massive AC already can make you nigh untouchable. This is one of the easiest ways to get Shield functionally as a paladin spell, which is a major boon who want to be attacked, but don't ever want to get hit.
War Caster is the last feat I'd mention, namely for the options that get Haste as an Oath Spell (Glory and Vengeance) who definitely want a third attack, bonus speed, and +2 AC, but want a bit of insurance against dropping concentration and losing a turn as punishment. Outside of this specific case, you're unlikely to have a powerful enough concentration effect to really want this, but if a specific spell speaks to you and you want to keep it up all the time, Warcaster helps you do that.

Magical Feats to Consider

Magic Initiate definitely is the cleanest way to get a one-time cast of any 1st level spell you want with two cantrips as bonus add-ins.
Ritual Caster has similar applications, as it gives you the power to ritual cast and access tothe 1st level all-star Find Familiar.
Fey Touched and Shadow Touched also are similar effects that massively improve your out-of-combat utility. Fey Touched has Misty Step which on paladins gives you a quick, cheap, bonus action teleport to get on top of enemies just out of range or otherwise blink around where you need to be when you want to be there. Shadow Touched provides Invisibility which is a new way to engage with the world paladins are normally lacking options for. Alongside a 1st level spell, you'll feel like you're getting a bunch of extra slots compared to the fewer half-caster 1st level slots you're provided with.

Feats to Avoid

Tough seems great as a big bump in HP now and for the rest of the game, but paladins don't really need it. With a high AC, d10 hit dice, and five times your level's worth of Lay on Hands hit points to play with, you're not lacking in the defense department. Spending a feat on just more hit points can be fine, but usually is going to give you way more HP than you'll need.
Durable mechanically doesn't do much at many tables. In order for it to have value, you need to be wanting more hit dice healing than you currently have, and seeing as most tables aren't taking enough short rests to have opportunities to spend all your hit dice, taking a feat to make them better isn't going to work out.

5th Level: Extra Attack, 2nd Level Spells

The hits just keep coming as a paladin, with 5th level providing Extra Attack to majorly improve your round-to-round combat capabilities and 2nd level spells to expand out your utility and damage simultaneously.

Extra Attack

Extra Attack isn't a particularly complicated feature but does leave a major impact on the game. Going from making one weapon attack that can smite a round to two massively improves your chances of delivering staggering blows that take enemy lives and actions away. Base paladin doesn't get extra ways to attack beyond this, though, so once you get here, if your Oath isn't exciting you, now can be a great time to start shopping for other classes to dip into.

2nd Level Spell Recommendations

The Paladin 2nd-level spell list is short. Like, really short. You have eleven total options to prepare from. Fortunately, Oath Spells are here to save the day, offering usually great expansions to your utility. Outside of those, there are a couple of options worth mentioning, and the rest... well. They're certainly technically spells.

Find Steed plays more like a paladin feature than 2nd level spell, and you absolutely are going to want to get it if able. It's a summonable allied steed you don't have to spend slots on once it's here, and acts as a buddy to ride around on and fight with. You don't need to take Find Steed, and I know many paladins who go through life having the best time without a horse (or mule, or donkey, or giant lizard) to call their friend. If you want more out of your paladin, though, Find Steed gives you a ton.
Disappointingly, Aid is the only other one of paladin's 2nd-level spells I'm readily preparing, and that's normally well past 5th level when I've got some 2nd and 3rd-level slots to spare. Spending a 2nd level slot at 5th level for fifteen bonus hit points over three creatures doesn't feel great when it could be dealing thirteen-ish damage to a single creature with a Divine Smite. If you're finding you aren't able to burn through all your slots, it is a free passive party buff, but paladins have no shortage of places to put their spell slots.

2nd Level Spells to Avoid

Can I just say the rest of them? My god there are some terrible 2nd level spells here, most of which aren't remotely useful on an average adventuring day.

Lesser Restoration happens to be particularly terrible because paladins can cure diseases with their Lay on Hands, and get Cleansing Touch at higher levels for free Dispel Magics on allies. Lesser Restoration has a hard enough time justifying its cast against anything short of paralysis, and paralysis is so rare I can't fathom actually finding a time to use this when I could instead attack twice and smash with a 2nd level smite.
Magic Weapon is +1 to hit and +1 to damage for a 2nd-level slot that requires concentration. The +1 to hit has to do so much heavy lifting to justify the cast it's back will break from trying to carry +1 damage per hit as dinky little Divine Favor out damages it. A 2nd level spell slot and concentration ultimately aren't worth a +1 to hit, especially in lieu of, you know, 13 radiant damage from a 2nd level smite.

6th Level and Beyond

Past this point, you get Aura of Protection, Aura of Courage, Improved Divine Smite (which isn't at all improving Divine Smite), and Cleansing Touch with a handful of Oath features and 3rd, 4th, and 5th level spells. It definitely is enough to stay in paladin, especially on some of the better Sacred Oaths, but thanks to Divine Smite being able to be fueled by extra spell slots, taking levels in a full-caster here can be a blast and a major empowering direction to go if you want more magic and less aura stuff. You'll probably want to stick around at least one more level, though, cause as I'll get into, Aura of Protection is NUTS.

Aura of Protection

Do you wish you and your teammates failed way fewer saving throws? Look no further than Aura of Protection, the number one reason to max out your Charisma score as a paladin. Turns out +3-+5 on all saving throws while you're conscious is nuts. It affects all allies within 10 feet of you, which has a bit of pool as it sets you and the squad up to get Fireballed, but when the squad is getting +5 to their save against the Fireball and have watched multiple Dominate Person and other debilitating effects fail thanks to said +5, they'll largely find its worth the risk.

3rd Level Spell Recommendations

9th level opens up 3rd-level spells to paladins. Paladins only get ten spells to pick from as 3rd level options, but at least there are some great additions here.

Crusader's Mantle is a team-wide Divine Favor that is just loaded with potential damage. Where Divine Favor is challenging to justify casting because it takes a ton of attacks for its damage to reach a smite, doubling or tripling the number of attacks benefiting from the bonus damage radically reduces the number of rounds you need this up to deal more damage than a smite deals. In a world full of Summon Beasts, Fey, Shadowspawn, and other melee combatants to benefit from this with multiple weapon attacks being made each turn it can be really easy to get value out of this if you have a prep round to cast it prior to a fight. It is team dependent, though; if you're the only extra attacking character in the party, Crusader's Mantle is definitely worse than a 3rd level smite.
Dispel Magic stands out as a half-caster spell because it is a 3rd level spell that can interact with spells of any level. It is a tool to engage in and out of combat when you need something to manage magic. Paladins aren't loaded with options to interact in this space, and Dispel Magic is a great addition to their sheet.
Spirit Shroud comes closest to being a meaningful tool to empower your attack rolls. As a paladin the slow around at least occasionally will help protect a backline ally. The bonus action cast time means you can immediately cash in on two attacks for 2d8 damage with it, meaning you only need two rounds up of Spirit Shroud to match the 3rd-level smite damage, which is quite doable. I still will tend to lean towards smites as my primary method of dealing damage, but Spirit Shroud is a reasonable alternative.

3rd Level Spells to Avoid

Elemental Weapon looks like the worst-case scenario for Crusader's Mantle all the time with a measly +1 to hit consolation prize. +1 to hit with +1d4 damage isn't so much better than Divine Favor I'd be willing to spend a spell slot two levels higher on it.
Paladins aren't working with a shortage of healing options. Lay on Hands is an enormous pool of Goodberry-like hit points you can give out as people need them. Aura of Vitality gives you more healing at the cost of a 3rd level slot, an action, and a subsequent bonus action each turn. It is majorly undercut by far better 3rd level options like Mass Healing Word available to the other healing classes. Your table doesn't need you to pick up Aura of Vitality.

Aura of Courage

10th level definitely is an easy point to bail on paladin for other classes as Aura of Courage is a small aura giving you and your allies immunity to the frightened condition. It's fine, but niche. Most encounters don't involve fears. Those that do normally don't have it lasting that long, and with your Aura of Protection providing a massive bump to the saves that impose these fears in the first place, immunity just isn't that exciting when most people around you aren't getting frightened anyway.

Improved Divine Smite

11th level introduces Improved Divine Smite, which is a misnomer as it doesn't actually improve the Divine Smite feature. It passively adds 1d8 to your melee weapon attack hits. As a character with Extra Attack, paladins are set up to take meaningful advantage of this compared to cleric's similar Divine Strike feature. It fits particularly well on characters getting even more attacks through Haste or similar features and spells. It isn't a great replacement for a third attack like Fighters are getting, namely because it doesn't scale at all with your feat selections, but is a reasonable upgrade nonetheless.

4th Level Spell Recommendations

13th level opens up 4th-level spells to paladins six levels after their wizard, druid, sorcerer, warlock, and other full-caster friends have had them. Like all levels prior, Oath Spells are often going to be where you're looking to for raw power. Beyond your two 4th level Oath spells, as have Fizban's Treasurey of Dragons, there are a grand total of seven 4th level paladin spells to pick from. Fortunately, there is a major asset offered no from Xanathar's Guide to Everything: Find Greater Steed.

Like Find Steed before it, Find Greater Steed feels more like a feature more than a spell. You get a tool to summon your very own mythical mount that engages in combat with you. All five forms offer a ton of power and flavor, and while most 4th level spells can't excite me by this stage, Find Greater Steed is a notch above most of the rest, being on the same axis as Find Familiar in its utility and “free” nature.
Banishment, too, is such a powerful 4th-level spell effect that I'm pretty content getting it at 13th level. It's something you can weaponize meaningfully in fights from here on out with the bigger, scarier threats being equally affected by being shunted off to another world while you deal with the rest of their team.

4th Level Spells to Avoid

The Aura spells continue to disappoint with Aura of Life being a particularly egregious effect. Getting near-dead creatures off of zero isn't worth a 4th level slot. The resistance to necrotic damage will rarely come up, and the hit point max reduction will be even less relevant.
Locate Creature has such a miserably tiny range for what it's supposed to be doing. You basically need to know in advance if the creature you're trying to locate is near you, as it only searches up to a few blocks away for them. Rivers and small streams mitigate the effect entirely, too, so if you're ever worried about somebody trying to locate you, just make sure you've got a waterskin to gently trickle out behind you to get some moving water to make a barrier. That's all it takes.

Cleansing Touch

While Dispel Magic I tend to advocate for, Cleasing Touch, paladin's 14th level option, gives you a worse tool than it, but in a larger quantity of uses. If this ever dispels a Dominate Person, Crown of Madness, or other debilitating single target save or die, it's a lifesaver. A lot of tables aren't running into those consistently enough to make me excited to have it there. Just removing a poison or charm doesn't really justify an action to me, leaving this feature feeling clunky and awkward to try to weave into your smite-driven play pattern.

5th Level Spell Recommendations

It is next to impossible to compare 5th-level spells to 9th-level spells. As a half-caster, you're getting your 5th-level slots eight levels later than your full-caster friends all while they're getting 9th-level world-ending effects that stop time and blow up cities. You can try to get as much juice out of even the most potent of these and still fall leagues short of a single well-timed Meteor Swarm or Wish. That's just how 5th Edition is.

Summon Celestial still gives you a multi-attacking angel to support your combat endeavors. It can either take the form of a ranged light-slinging flying murder machine or a defensive boon to temporary hit points. 17th level is a bit late to be getting summoning magic, but paladins are geared great to defend their concentration, and Summon Celestial for three to four rounds is absolutely worth the cast. It leaves a massive impact on every fight it's a part of.
Holy Weapon definitely is worse than Summon Celestial, as two extra entire attacks put tons more work in compared to the 2d8 radiant damage on hit. That being said, if you can make three or more attacks a round, which isn't a given, Holy Weapon can output enough damage in a single round to want it over a Divine Smite, and it only costs your bonus action to use. The concentration component and its competition are the only major reasons I'm not the biggest fan (alongside Clerics getting it eight levels sooner), but 2d8 damage on hit with a potential 4d8 blinding burst in for a bonus action down the road is pretty solid if you prefer this over an angel ally.
Circle of Power can have a major impact on save-based fights where a single failure results in utter devastation for the group. Advantage on saves stacked on top of +5 to them from your Aura of Protection will help get party members consistently working with 15s or higher on most of their saves. I'm not a huge fan of defensive capstone spells like this, but when you know you're going against debilitating mass area saves, Circle of Power will have moments to shine.

5th Level Spells to Avoid

Banishing Smite illustrates all of the problems the smite spells have (concentration, cast time versus a regular smite, etc.) and while it does offer you a potential Banishment-like effect, it only banishes things that are within death's range. At 17th level, burning through fifty hit points isn't a particularly tall order, and that's the base requirement for Banishing Smite to do anything more than what a regular Divine Smite would.
Dispel Evil and Good is atrocious. It takes an action, eats your concentration, does two things you can do cheaper with other features, and has strict restrictions in range and action costs that leave it feeling worse than any other action you could be using in a given moment. A 1st level Protection from Evil and Good will outshine Break Enchantment as far less of a cost, and Dismissal needs to banish multiple things (which is unlikely in most encounters) for it to be worth the cast over Banishment.

Multiclass Considerations for Paladin

Once you've unlocked Extra Attack and Aura of Protection, your Oath basically dictates if you want to stick around in paladin for longer or not, and for how long. You get a lot of features from each oath, and getting to the ones you like best can be a compelling reason to stick around. If you do run out of excitement for your 7th, 15th, and 20th level Oath features, paladin multiclasses well with the majority of classes in the game.

Martial Options

Rogues are a neat option you want to think about out the gate, as they ask you build with Finesse weapons in place of strength-based ones. A paladin with a rapier built to take advantage of Sneak Attack each round can do some nasty things. What's more important, though, is rogue offers you the Assassin archetype which has the Assassinate feature. Assassinate can ensure critical hits, and because Smites scale with critical hits, you can create ludicrously bursty builds that nuke something for hundreds of damage in the blink of an eye.
Similarly, Champion Fighter increases your odds of critting by increasing your crit range to 19s and 20s. It also provides you with Action Surge and another Fighting Style. This bonus fighting style can give you a tool to drop creatures prone with Martial Superiority and Tripping Attack which further sets you up with advantage to make crits all the more likely to occur. Action Surge gives you an extra action per short rest, pushing you towards these moments where you drop four spell slots over four attacks in a massive burst of damage.
Ranger doesn't typically gell too much with what paladin is doing, but Gloom Stalker is a busted archetype that helps you build towards an all-in nova character who gets the drop on an enemy and nukes them from orbit. Beyond that, at minimum, you're getting the same spell slot progression, some attack on-hit boons with some of the cheaper summoning options can be a fun direction to go, especially when paired with the thematics of Oath of Ancients.
Barbarian surprisingly also multiclasses decently well with paladin. Smiting doesn't count as casting spells, nor concentrating on them, so if you really want to just fully ignore spellcasting and commit to smiting constantly (but now with extra anger) three levels of barbarian can work well enough.

Spellcasting Supplements

While martial expansions can help you attack and crit better, the caster classes make me a lot more excited to dip levels into. Any expanded spell slots convert directly into more smites all while letting you use the leftover slots for other interesting and exciting stuff that makes your character better in a wider variety of environments.

Cleric is the first and easiest caster class to jump into. It does require you to have at least a 13 Wis, but should you reach that bar, you're getting more of the stuff you're used to just in a higher density. Just three levels are packed full with two extra Channel Divinities options, 2nd level spells, upper-level spell slots, the ability to prepare spells of those higher levels from both classes thanks to a loophole in the prepared casting and multiclassing rules, and your 1st level domain features which tend to be NUTS. Some obvious options aren't as good as they seem, specifically when their resources are based on Wisdom modifier, but any subclass not reliant on Wisdom for resources can majorly enhance paladin.
Bards and sorcerers both sit in a similar camp where they don't get a ton of new spells but do get a reasonable feature list and expand out your total spell slots meaningfully. The more recent subclasses of each definitely push me more towards them now than in the past. Any that supply additional spells tend to be great. Sorcerers, crucially, also get access to the Shield spell which is utterly busted on paladin alongside the War Caster feat. Either of these gives you a big bump in utility alongside bigger, flashier smites more frequently without needing to worry about ability scores you typically don't think about.
Wizard multiclass is the largest reason to consider starting with a 13 or higher Int, as it will feel like multiclassing Sorcerer, but with even more juice. Ritual casting alongside a massive swath of learned spells sets you up with all the classics that don't even care about casting modifier like Find Familiar, Shield, Absorb Elements, and Detect Magic. Subclass wise, Bladesingers don't work as Bladesong requires you not being wearing medium or heavy armor or using a shield. Beyond that, you kind of can go with whatever sounds fun. Abjuration is excellent when paired with Shield spam for giving you added durability. Divination's Portent feature is bonkers broken and works on all forms of play patterns. If you want even more instances of the Shield spell, War Magic gives you a reaction to add +2 to your AC or +4 to a save any number of times.The normal downside of being unable to cast spells is entirely moot, as you can just keep making attack rolls and smiting freely. It's real good.
Warlock also stands out to me as a top-tier multiclass option. Everything it offers can flesh out a paladin in a dozen different ways. Pact Magic acts as a short rest restorative well of smites in a pinch. Fiendish Vigor once again adds an extra layer of meat to you, and other utility invocations like Misty Visions and Mask of Many Faces give paladins some much needed utility. Pact of the Tome, Talisman, and Chain all have excellent invocation options, too, and Pact of the Chain and Tome are forces to be reckoned with on their own.
Artificers predominately offer you their subclass as far as empowerment goes with Armorer enabling further boosts to your AC, Battle Smiths providing a metal pet to go into battle with, and Artillerists supplying you with a bonus action gun of mass destruction. A high intelligence isn't even particularly necessary on all of these options, with the bulk of your power tied to the magic items you're making and buffs you're spreading out.

Munchkin Nonsense You Can Try

You may have noticed that basically every class outside Monk is something you can have a good time multiclassing with paladin which makes them ripe for munchkin nonsense.

Divine Smite having no “Once per turn” gate makes it the easiest way to convert spell slots into raw damage in one big burst. The damage also getting doubled on crit takes the feature to a whole new level of abuse.

Additionally, paladin's robust armor proficiency tends to line them up as unhittable tanks. They aren't as good as Armorer Artificers are at this, but you can still reliably stack up a fairly high AC without straying too deep out of Paladin.

Ways in Which Divine Smite is Fundamentally Broken

As opposed to providing just a single build that showcases the raw power of paladin, I'm going to highlight a series of features that work with Divine Smite from across the classes you can easily dip into to leave smoldering craters where enemies used to be.

The crucial text on Divine Smite is “when you hit with a melee weapon attack” and “to a maximum of 5d8”. This means 5th-level smites deal as much damage as 4th-level smites, highly encouraging you to use up all your lowest level slots. The melee weapon attack clause also rules out thrown weapons attacks made at a range beyond 5 feet, as while the attack is made with a thrown melee weapon, the weapon attack type is considered ranged in the moment. Wacky!

Spellcasting. Bards, clerics, druids, sorcerers, and wizards are all full-casters. Paladins can use their spell slots (including any obtained from other classes via multiclassing) to fuel their smites, but do have a soft damage cap at 4d8 damage.

Going from half-caster spell slots to full-caster spell slots radically speeds up your bonus damage options not just in single instances, but in the number of turns you can keep the smites going. What's more, there isn't a limit on the number of smites you can drop in a turn, meaning if you can get a large enough spell slot pool and enough attacks, you can unleash them all at once in bursts for massive single target damage moments.

Pact Magic, as mentioned prior, gives you cheap short rest recharging spell slots you can smite with. These become your easiest to use spell slots that are spent first, as they're most likely to be recharged faster.

Extra Attacks. Getting more attacks each turn isn't an easy feat, as paladins naturally are capped with Extra Attack at 5th level. Getting five levels in fighter, monk, or other martial classes doesn't give you any additional attacks, either. To then get more attacks at once to use smites more often, you're typically going to need to look at niche features hidden in subclasses or in spells.

Action Surge is the easiest place to start, as past 5th level in paladin it'll give you two additional attacks (which translates to two extra smites). Gloom Stalker rangers get a bonus attack the first round of combat which only requires a three level investment. Bonus action attacks can be obtained in the Berserker Barbarian's Frenzy feature (at a major cost), but also by simply using two-weapon fighting on at least one Attack action in a given turn.

Haste tends to be how you get your third attack easiest, especially seeing as some Oaths get it at a 3rd level Oath Spell. +2 AC with, doubled speed, and a Hasted action is more than worth the risk, especially considering things need to be alive to break your concentration, and smites with Haste are a great way to make things not alive anymore.

Reaction-based attacks are another way to get more smites, as Divine Smite for some reason isn't gated to attacks on your turn, either. Feats like Polearm Master paired with Sentinel can help enable more hits per round as you kite enemies backward and stab them to stop them in place so long as you're working with reach weapons. Polearm Master stands out as well because it provides you with a bonus action melee weapon attack that, you guessed it, you can smite with!

Critical Hits. The last major boon you can look for to break the game with sudden bursts of massive damage are ways to make critting easier. Assassin Rogue's Assassinate feature is notorious for ensuring every hit you connect with crits when you get the drop on enemies, leading to moments where you unleash five or more attacks at once, each coming with a smite, some sneak attack damage, and more on hit damage bonuses, all of which is doubled. You can consume a massive amount of resources at once this way and transform all of that into raw damage.

A more consistent route to go with is Champion Fighter with Improved Critical. Hexblade Warlocks get it a similar increased crit range with their short rest mark against a single target. Beyond that, paralysis (obtained through Hold spells) enables auto-crits, all of which let you ensure double damage is dealt for your expended slot.

Additional Smite-Like Effects. Beyond ways that specifically empower Divine Smite, you can also look to stack things that also scale like Divine Smite does. This tends to look like any on-hit weapon damage improvements that can crit. Hunter's Mark is an easy example; your weapon deals 1d6 bonus damage. It uses a spell slot, which you can get more of, wants you to make more attacks to get more uses out of it, and also benefit from it critting. Improved Divine Smite offers you a similar passive boon at 11, giving you a passive d8 on all of your melee weapon hits. Holy Weapon is one of the biggest versions of this effect, adding 2d8 on per hit.

Low Level Build Example. Where most of my munchkin builds use closer to all twenty levels, you really don't need that many to do some busted stuff. This is a fantasy you can get to come together with just ten levels.

First, you need two levels in paladin at least for Divine Smite. We also are going to want Action Surge, which costs us two levels in fighter. Instead of doing the typical rogue Assassinate single round of death, we're going to build towards spreading out our smites. A third level in fighter gives us Champion for Improved Critical, leaving us with five levels past that. We're going to need Extra Attack for sure, and have two ways to get this with two more levels of fighter or three of paladin. For this build, we're going to go with two in paladin, as we've got plans to get full-caster slots coming up.

The last three levels need to provide the fuel for our extra attacks. To fuel these, we're going to seek out Bard for a few reasons we'll touch on in a second.

So we've worked out we're Fighter 5, Bard 3, Paladin 2. This gives us one ability score improvement to work with for a feat, and we're going to go with Polearm Master, which does two things; gives us an easier opportunity attack option, and gives us a bonus action weapon attack.

In total, we've got seven spell slots to play with, 4 1st level and 3 2nd level which we're going to typically reserve for critical smites.

We're going to need as high Charisma and Strength as possible for this build to come together. Thanks to Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, we can forgo regular racial Ability Score Improvements to ensure we're getting +2 Strength and +1 Charisma, which paired with a 27 point buy can easily give us a 16 in each to make sure we're hitting often, have plenty of Charisma for Bardic Inspiration.

We care about bardic inspiration as it enables the College of Whispers’ Psychic Blades, which can turn our Bardic Inspiration into 2d6 additional damage. From my understanding, this damage can crit as it's added whenever you hit with a weapon attacking, implying its added to the weapon damage because their no separate save or anything. This feels like an extra three smites laying around you can leverage into further big bursts of damage. The best part is you can stack one of these each turn on top of a smite, meaning when you land a crit, you're dealing 4d8+4d6 bonus damage on top of the critical weapon damage.

For our race, we're going to go with the custom lineage half-orc for Savage Attacks feature to get a bonus die when we crit with our polearm.

Our first three crit smites per adventure are dealing 3d10 (Savage Attacker glaive) + 4d6 (Psychic Blades) + 6d8 (2nd level smite) + 3 (Strength modifier) for a clean 60.5 damage average on a crit. We've got a crit range of 19-20, have Action Surge to make two extra attacks once a short rest, have a third attack each turn that can crit with Polearm Master's bonus action, and can make reaction-based attacks when things engage us. You'll be making a lot of attacks, and when you crit 10% of the time (or more with advantage), you're set up to see a crit every couple of rounds.

You can definitely dive deeper with Assassinate (check out the Rogue guide for an example), but you really don't need to dig that deep to get truly busted damage flowing from your attacks.

How to Stack AC As a Paladin

The other major way to empower a paladin is by getting as high an AC as possible. Out the gate, where gold is no concern, you can work with a 20, 18 from plate and 2 from a shield. The Defense fighting style bumps this up to 21. Start as a Warforged and you can be playing a 1st level paladin with an AC of 22.

To empower this further, there are a bunch of routes outside paladin to explore. One level in Forge Domain can enhance the armor with +1 AC and Shield of Faith for an AC of 25. One level in wizard or sorcerer unlocks shield, for a reaction 1st level spell that makes your AC 30 when you need it. This is a 3rd level character with an AC of 30 when you'd get hit. Gross!

Paladin is a Class for Everyone

Everything Paladin does it does pretty well. It gives you enough utility options in its spell list and Oath Spells you can typically find ways to help the team out of combat while being thick forces of nature that are hard to kill and dish out tons of damage in fights. Divine Smite is a busted feature that seems to work with literally every element of the game, and can be abused to absurd levels if you're into building characters whose objective is to get the biggest damage number possible. Lay on Hands and is usually the only healing option you need, and they've got a robust list of Oaths that cover a wide list of knight-like fantasy's that can fulfill players of all skill levels needs.

If you want to explore all of what D&D has to offer, paladin is a meaningful amount of all of it presented in a way that enables you to opt in or out of exactly as much as you want to. Want to dive deep into the spell list and squeak as much value as possible from your Oath? You can do that! Want to play a glorified radiant beat-stick who doesn't cast spells at all, instead opting to just smite endlessly? You can do that to. I really can't recommend it enough, done fairly or when going for degenerate nova builds.

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Paladin 5e