Paladin Sacred Oath: Oath of Redemption 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

For those who want to have been an edgy character in the past, now moving forward and hoping to repent and help others become better people, seek the Oath of Redemption. Flavorfully this goes full circle with Oathbreaker; you start as a Devotion Paladin, get fed up with helping people and turn evil, then later find evil isn’t working out and seek redemption with this new, shiny, kind-hearted Oath.

Mechanically this is an option aimed at avoiding conflict instead of driving it, acting as a mediator for conflict with defensive tools to help prevent death and destruction. While you probably don’t want to go completely pacifist, as D&D fundamentally involves fighting, you can get the mechanical fantasy of reducing death and violence with these features in interesting and meaningful ways.

3rd Level: Oath Spells and Channel Divinities

Sanctuary and Sleep are the first two Oath Spells offered.

Sanctuary is an enigma of a spell to me I’m convinced is close to unusable, as the protection it offers is contingent on a creature taking no hostile actions. In kill-or-be-killed combat, which is most D&D combat, asking a character to only spend actions trying to survive and not actually win the fight isn’t a winning strategy. In some niche scenarios involving retreat, it might be useful, but typically I’d look to push down enemy hit points or mitigate fighting altogether before reaching for Sanctuary.
Sleep is one such method for mitigating fighting, as it acts as a non-violent mass incapacitation. It can be used out of combat early on to sneak past some guards. In combat, it's a reward for bringing multiple enemies closer to death and handling them all simultaneously, which is an interesting route to explore. It won’t always be great, but when the moment is right, Sleep can feel like 5d8 damage for a 1st level slot, and that’s a great rate.
Emissary of Peace is the first of Redemption’s Channel Divinities, giving you a bonus action +5 to Charisma (Persuasion) checks for 10 minutes. If any feature will define you as the face of the party, it’ll be this. +5 is a huge bump at 3rd level, often over doubling your current Persuasion bonus. Even experts like Bards aren’t getting the +8 to +10 you’re working with, as Expertise sets them up at most with around a +7.
Rebuke the Violent interfaces with combat for your Channel Divinity, giving you a reaction to a damaging creature to make them take the same (or half) the damage they’re dealing out. This scales decently well as attacks get more and bigger dice but doesn’t work great against multiple attacks made at once. Notably, this does require the attacker hit somebody other than you to work, though.

I tend to prefer Channel Divinities on a character sheet with clear and distinctly different areas of play they affect. Emissary of Peace you’ll want to use out of combat in social environments where Rebuke the Violent comes out in combat. Each has moments to shine brightly, and often won’t run into issues overlapping in resources when you get a rest after social encounters or fights.

5th Level: 2nd Level Oath Spells

Calm Emotions perfectly encapsulates what this archetype is about. You take everyone in an area and politely ask them to chill out. It is an amazing tool for dissolving conflict before it starts and secondarily acts as a reasonable tool to suppress problematic conditions at a relatively cheap cost.

Hold Person takes this further while also acting as an exceptional save or die in combats to set allies up to crit a thing to death. Sure, you can use it to temporarily restrain an enemy to get time to talk them out of a fight. Alternatively, you can give your rogue a window to double their Sneak Attack damage. Take your pick!

7th Level: Aura of the Guardian

Aura of the Guardian has to be one of my favorite designed auras paladins get access to. It’s like a Warding Bond that affects any creature within 10 feet of you. It gives you a guaranteed way to leverage your hit points. It asks you to take feats like Tough and a high Constitution score to not only pad your own life but protect everyone else from dropping.

As far as raw power goes, the 10 ft. versions of the auras always feel small. It basically requires the squad to stand in Fireball formation, which isn’t often ideal. It not actually reducing incoming damage also means in high damage fights where the party likely can drop, there isn’t really much benefit coming from this beyond you setting yourself up to drop first. If this could reduce the damage in some way I’d be way more about it from a power perspective. From an interesting mechanical toy to play with, I love it.

9th Level: 3rd Level Oath Spells

Counterspell and Hypnotic Pattern present two massive new tools for the Oath of Redemption. Counterspell lets you bring tools that actually interact with upper tier spellcasters in ways you really want to be. Having 3rd-level slots capable of preventing Wishes is a huge deal, and at its worst, it can handle a loose Fireball from time to time. This is a rare option with an abundance of reactions they can regularly consider using, though, so you do want to weigh when you want to use Aura of the Guardian or Rebuke the Violent, as it can open up windows of enemies to slip potent spells through in the top tiers of play. Some tables won’t cast many spells at all, though, so its power varies pretty wildly from table to table.
Hypnotic Pattern also gives you a new way to interface with combat, this time in the realm of mass crowd control. Concentration is a bit of a bummer, but if you can get two to three rounds incapacitating three or four creatures, it’ll wildly warp the encounter. Turning off enemy turns in bulk has a tremendous amount of potential, and while it can be ineffective against massive enemies with minions to shake them out of their stupor before their turn if large quantities of smaller enemies are your predominant problem, Hypnotic Pattern can be a great tool to have.

13th Level: 4th Level Oath Spells

Resilient Sphere and Stoneskin are Redemption’s two 4th-level Oath Spells.

Resilient Sphere gives paladins a save or die that locks an enemy in an indestructible sphere, which can feel like a Banishment kind of effect. It is limited to Large or smaller creatures or objects but does have the upside of always working on willing creatures in some niche encounters where you need to protect somebody.
Stoneskin would be a lot cooler if the damage transfer from Aura of the Guardian could be affected by the damage resistances. As is, by this tier, non-magical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage is getting to be less and less of a major factor in reducing your hit points, and it takes your concentration additionally leaving this feeling a bit lackluster. It can be fine in a handful of encounters still, especially given how high your AC and Con likely is, but still isn’t anything to get too excited over. At tables running non-magical upper-tier enemies, this does have a ton of potential, though, especially when leveraged with bonus hit-point effects.

15th Level: Protective Spirit

Protective Spirit- every turn you’re under half your max hit points, which you want to be as you soak more damage from allied attacks, you heal 1d6 + 8 or more. When you start stacking up hit points with a +5 Con, Tough, and other hit point boosting effects, 100 can easily be half your max HP, meaning you’re still going to be difficult to drop all at once and shrug off an extra attack each turn with your regained hit points. This can be useful, especially if it keeps you off of zero for a few extra rounds in fights. It definitely works best if you can also get resistance to damage in some way to maximize the value of each and every hit point.

17th Level: 5th Level Oath Spells

Hold Monster and Wall of Force each bring a unique tool to your toolbelt, even if they can’t quite compete with full-casters' 9th-level effects.

Hold Monster is the Hold Person upgrade, and like its predecessor, can wildly impact a fight by paralyzing anything that fails, usually resulting in a cascade of crits that decimate the target in the blink of an eye.
Wall of Force is a bit more interesting, as it gives you this indestructible wall you can mess around with. How you use this wall is largely up to you. Often it’ll be a barrier that aids in an escape or prevents one. Sometimes you can use it as a ramp in a pinch, or clog a hole to prevent leakage. It definitely is the kind of effect that does a lot, but it isn’t always clear when what it does is worth its cost. I’m happy to get these kinds of weird effects on classes like Paladin, as they don’t tend to get a ton of wacky spells like Wall of Force.

20th Level: Emissary of Redemption

Emissary of Redemption closes out the oath with a minute of resistance to all damage and a reflective damage shield that deals a quarter of the rolled damage to creatures damaging you. What’s more, this effect is passive. However, if you ever attack something, cast a spell at something, or damage it in some other way, it ignores the rest of the text here.

The design of this feature is a homerun. It’s powerful but complex. You want to carefully plan what you attack while drawing as much fire as possible. Paladins are already great at attacking agnostic of subclass thanks to Divine Smite; you have a major reason to consider other supportive actions in fights while still contributing damage for your team passively.

While I do love the minute long big splashy effects that make you an angelic or diabolic force of nature, Emissary of Redemption perfectly encapsulates what a near-godlike Oath of Redemption paladin fantasy wants to be.

All Together

If you want a supportive paladin that is great at defense and avoiding conflict, yet still has plenty of tools to contribute to fights, Oath of Redemption hits the mark at every turn. I’m only super down on one of their ten Oath Spells, all of which come together to give you a robust toolbox of options in fights or in social encounters. Their Channel Divinities have specific environments where they shine brightly, and regularly will find use throughout the game. Aura of the Guardian gives you a reward for building towards a massive hit point pool, as does Protective Spirit, and it all comes together around Emissary of Redemption which massively improves every feature they get up until that point with a simple to read, yet complex to play with capstone.

I can’t recommend Oath of Redemption enough. Not only does it succeed in giving you the redeemed warrior fantasy, but it also delivers a reasonable level of power at every stage of the game.

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