Paladin Sacred Oath: Oath of Vengeance 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

Where Oathbreakers are the ultimate evil, a paladin broken of oath seeking to raise undead minions and claim ultimate power, Oath of Vengeance presents a path for an avenger character, somebody driven by hatred of another to an end. That end being murder. It’s a lot more focused thematically with its tenets and goals; of the total selection, I think Oath of Vengeance does the best job showcasing paladins leaving the realm of divine warriors with holy magic and pushes them more toward warriors driven by a purpose that fuels their abilities in supernatural ways.

Vengeance mechanically brings a duelist kind of mentality to the otherwise defender class. Its Oath Spells line you up to be highly mobile for tracking and hunting enemies, and your features push you further in this direction, helping you get the feeling of a righteous pursuer whose marks will not escape them.

3rd Level: Oath Spells and Channel Divinities

Bane and Hunter’s Mark out the gate set up Vengeance paladins with tools aimed at affecting enemies over allies.

Bane won’t ever live up to Bless in its actual utility, though, often ending up being a spell that feels like a wasted slot and concentration.
Hunter's Mark, on the other hand, opens up some neat play pattern options paladins normally don’t lean towards, namely in finding ways to make more than two attacks each round. It can enable ranged weapon attacks to still get bolstered by your spell slots and stack on top of a smite for a giant blast of damage at once while still staying up post the death of the marked creature to pass around and enhance future damage.
Abjure Enemy acts similarly to a Cause Fear you get back on short rest with the bonus upside of dropping a creature's speed to 0. This isn’t as strong as a Hold Person kind of effect, but can be a great tool in and out of combat for getting a creature locked in place, with no subsequent saves until it takes damage, which is huge. Abjuring a threatening approaching melee creature can functionally remove it from the fight until you deal with all of its other allies, which is a big deal.
Vow of Enmity gives you a bonus action command to get advantage on every attack you then make against a single creature, which is yucky good. Paladins already love advantage as a tool to give them more crits to make their smites explode targets; having a bonus action short rest recharging method of turning that on for yourself can easily lend to explosive fights where a single enemy is going to have a very bad day.

5th Level: 2nd Level Oath Spells

Up to this point, this oath has been predominantly focused around combat, and while Hold Person continues that trend, Misty Step gives you a cheap method of teleportation in combat to get up in creature’s business as you need to.

What’s particularly exciting about Misty Step is it only takes a bonus action, leaving your action free to strike twice. Crucially, it's also a major way to engage with exploration and get around environments. It can be an integral part of infiltration and escape missions. It's a perfect fit here.
Hold Person is a tried and true humanoid save or die that often results in a death sentence for the affected creature, as it becomes paralyzed, turning all hits into crits. Absolutely a powerful addition, although somewhat undercut by it leaning on your spell save DC which you aren’t particularly inclined to max out that quickly with Ability Score Improvements when Strength is so much more appealing.

7th Level: Relentless Avenger

Relentless Avenger empowers attacks of opportunity in a way that leads to you being a bit better at chasing enemies that don’t disengage from you, which is clunky. A lot of enemies aren’t fleeing frantically, and when they are, normally one attack of opportunity hit is going to take them down, as can a myriad of ranged options. Vengeance is packed with ways to stay on top of enemies or lock them down; Relentless Avenger doesn't work great unless you can pair it with alternate ways to get attacks of opportunity.

Features like Sentinel help, but with Sentinel you’re also reducing a hit creature's speed to zero, making the move unhelpful. This is the first big miss the option has.

9th Level: 3rd Level Oath Spells

Haste and Protection from Energy are super interesting Oath Spells for completely different reasons.

Haste requires you to concentrate on it, and debilitates the hasted creature should that concentration drop, making it a massive risk with a huge reward. Hasting yourself gives you an extra attack each turn, +2 AC, and makes you faster than most other things on the battle map. That +2 AC might push your AC close to 30 with a shield and other defensive boons, making it do a decent job in protecting your concentration. Should you ever lose it, though, you lose an entire turn. It can be worth the cast, but definitely brings a lot of risk with it.
Protection from Energy doesn’t have the same raw power but does make for a decent Oath Spell in that when you stumble into something dealing massive amounts of damage of a given type, having a way to halve that incoming damage is great. I wouldn’t recommend regularly preparing this unless you knew you were going into a red dragon fight or against creatures spitting lightning, making it so when you’re surprised by said creatures you likely won’t have access to this defensive measure. As an Oath Spell, you always do. Even if you’re not casting it every session, you will cast it a few times a campaign and be happy with that, and I tend to find that’s where I like my auto-prepared spells to be.

13th Level: 4th Level Oath Spells

Banishment and Dimension Door keep the power of Vegenance’s Oath Spells incredibly high.

Banishment, like Hold Person, is only let down by relying on your Charisma modifier, but as a tool in the upper tiers to remove a single threat, Banishment can be crucial. It helps that it has such a high impact when it is going to be competing with 6th, 7th, and 8th-level spells for a while, giving you a potent way to contribute even in that echelon of spellcasting.
Dimension Door similarly acts as an upgraded version of a lower-tier effect, this time being a less combative, higher utility Misty Step. At this tier it isn’t the most exciting tool but still gives you a massive range to play within and a way to move allies around with you.

15th Level: Soul of Vengeance

Soul of Vengeance empowers your Vow of Enmity further by giving you a free reaction attack any time the marked target attacks. Because it's affected by your Vow of Enmity, that attack is at advantage. If you’re concentrating on Haste, you’re looking at four attacks a turn with advantage against a marked target should it dare try to fight you. Want to start getting crit smites? Because this is how you start getting crit smites.

17th Level: 5th Level Oath Spells

Hold Monster and Scrying close out the Oath Spells at 17th level.

Like Banishment, Hold Monster at least offers a powerful tool you’re happy to use in upper-tier fights regularly to massively affect a fight.
Scrying, on the other hand, is mainly here for flavor, and won’t in any way shape or form justify getting cast, especially in groups with full casters. Still, 8/10 Oath Spells being bangers is a pretty stellar record.

20th Level: Avenging Angel

Avenging Angel closes out the Oath of Vengeance with an action-costed minute of a 60 ft. fly speed and fear aura that grants advantage on attacks against it until it takes damage. I like conceptually this design, as in order to get the most out of it you’ll want to hit multiple creatures each turn to take advantage of the fear resetting when damaged, but that is kind of at odds with the design principles this archetype showed earlier. I love that the 60 ft. fly speed stacks with Haste, letting you zoom about reigning divine justice on three enemies at a time. It's a pretty sick fantasy, even if it isn’t the most revolutionary capstone of all time.

All Together

Oath of Vengeance really only has one dud feature and two dud Oath Spells with the rest of the options giving you excellent in-combat tools for debilitating single threats and a few toys for out-of-combat teleportation to aid exploration in some interesting ways. In play, the option feels great. You’ve got tons of movement options, are regularly bringing useful features into every fight, yet have a clear niche that shines brightest in encounters against fewer threats. Scaling into Avenging Angel will feel organic and powerful.

If playing a scorned widow hellbent on the destruction of the murderer who took their betrothed appeals to you, or you just want to play a paladin whose entire thing is being good at murder, you won’t be disappointed by Oath of Vengeance.

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