Paladin Sacred Oath: Oath of the Watchers 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

Are you sick of mages ruining the world with their magical crap? Have you seen one too many fights trivialized by a well-timed Fireball or Polymorph? Take those mages on headfirst with Oath of the Watchers, the oath for people who really hate extraplanar BS and magic users.

Well, that's how it's sold, at least. In practice, Oath of the Watchers kind of feels like base paladin with access to Counterspell and a minute per short rest of advantage on Int, Wis, and Cha saves for the group. The rest of the features are at minimum niche, and at their worst non-features.

3rd Level: 1st Level Oath Spells, Channel Divinities

Alarm and Detect Magic make up the 1st level options available through Oath Spells.

Alarm conceptually is helpful, but in practice feels like a clunky, challenging to get value out of bell that doesn't really prevent ambushes but simply alerts you that they are happening. At its best, it'll deny you being surprised, but at its worst, it's wasting a spell slot for no value besides a false sense of peace of mind.
Detect Magic is a great means of investigating the world, but has the problem of being available to every full caster as a ritual. Paladins aren't ritual casters, and get access to it two full levels after Detect Magic has been available to everyone else, making it an incredibly underwhelming Oath Spell to get.

Watcher's Will and Abjure the Extraplanar are the two Channel Divinities you get to use. Both are harder to use than they may initially seem.

Watcher's Will only lasts a minute, takes an action, and is limited to creatures within 30 feet of you. It protecting against three save types is fine and all, but you need to see the save coming well ahead of time to get benefits out of this and need to want to use this instead of getting to and killing whatever is forcing the saves. Yes, these saves can be debilitating, but spending actions protecting the team instead of interfering with the cast in the first place is going to usually feel worse. It can have a major impact, but getting it to line up to meaningfully mitigate saves is majorly dependent on your knowledge of the creatures you're facing, and when everyone is acting in initiative. A lot of encounters will find this actually unusable, as they don't have any means of imposing the three saves.
Abjure the Extraplanar is a single target turn against a celestial, elemental, fey, or fiend. Even in encounters against creatures of the given types, with the limitation being turning a single enemy as an action, you're commonly going to find just hitting it with your weapons and smiting it to be a more efficient means to ending the encounter. Against specifically two or three giant threats, it can be great, but that's going to be a subset of an already small list of total encounters, leaving this feeling just a bit too niche to get me actually excited to use it.

Crucially, this subclass has no Channel Divinity that does something in every encounter, which is a HUGE problem.

5th Level: 2nd Level Oath Spells

Moonbeam and See Invisibility are 2nd level Oath Spells I'm lukewarm on.

Moonbeam has persistent round-to-round damage, but conditionally so. Anything that asks you to spend actions on it competes with your Extra Attack. Justifying the cast becomes a lot tougher when you've got 3d8 smite damage looking at you on top of two weapon attacks adding in all your feats and modifier bonuses, ultimately leaving Moonbeams 2d10 conditional damage as something I'm not regularly going to want to cast.
See Invisibility is at its best as an Oath Spell, as it's not something you're regularly going to know you need to prepare for the niche encounters you're facing invisible threats. Having access to a tool to engage invisible enemies is handy, even if See Invisibility is a bit too all or nothing for my liking.

7th Level: Aura of the Sentinel

Aura of the Sentinel takes this lackluster option and solidifies its place at the bottom of the Oath options. Everyone within 10 feet of you getting your proficiency bonus to Initiative isn't good enough. It just isn't. All of its competition have massive impacts on the game, from massive boosts to all saves to bonuses to weapon damage rolls. Upping the average Initiative matters most in short, explosive encounters. Those same encounters tend to reward prep and stealth, something this option has no means of assisting, making it a lackluster boon at tables where initiative plays a major role in encounter outcomes.

The initiative mechanic is one that has been troubling ever since the inception of 5th Edition with the DMG offering a variety of initiative options that are WAY better than d20+Dex ordering. This feature highlights all of the problems with the base system and doesn't meaningfully assist in most encounter success rates in a tangible, fun way.

9th Level: 3rd Level Oath Spells

Counterspell, as far as I'm concerned, is the only 3rd level Oath Spell given.

Nondetection isn't so much a spell as a weird, clunky tax DMs impose on players or a convenient plot device to prevent players from uncovering the secrets of an NPC. It's terrible.
Counterspell on the other hand is a massive player at a lot of high magic tables that defines a pillar of encounters. Having access to it on a character with Extra Attack lets you fight on that axis in a hugely meaningful way. At tables where the spell battles are intense, having a character be able to hit like a truck with mundane attacks and mitigate 7th-9th level spells with 3rd-level slots is a huge deal. Some tables don't come anywhere close to that kind of gameplay, though, making it a polarizing resource that can be crazy important, somewhat fine, or utterly worthless table to table.

13th Level: 4th Level Oath Spells

Aura of Purity and Banishment are the 4th-level Oath Spells, and like the 3rd-level options, include a solid effect with a complete trash option.

Aura of Purity requires an action to set it up, requires your concentration, and then takes subsequent bonus actions to get roughly Healing Word powered heals out with a lower range. Lay on Hands is usually the only healing magic you're going to need; you don't want to need to spend your 13th level 4th level slots on, at its best, two Healing Words in a trench coat that costs you an action to set up.
Banishment is an encounter polarizing save or die that can remove any single entity from a fight. As a half-caster, having a 4th level spell that has a high impact on higher CR encounters is a requirement when your full-caster allies are getting bigger and splashier effects. Banishment is a thematic and powerful tool to get as an Oath of the Watchers paladin that fits this description.

15th Level: Vigilant Rebuke

Vigilant Rebuke has a lot of the right words. It's a new reaction you get that always deals 2d8 damage + Charisma mod, no save. The issue is the triggering condition is when a creature succeeds on an Int, Wis, or Cha save. Again, these saves aren't unheard of, but aren't an every-encounter kind of effect. It isn’t the worst feature here but definitely doesn’t work in enough encounters to pull me toward this.

17th Level: 5th Level Oath Spells

Hold Monster and Scrying finish out the option’s Oath Spells.

Hold Monster is a banger at least, acting as a save or die that paralyzes monsters of any CR, which sets up you and the rest of your party to crit it to death or ignore it and deal with the rest of the fight for a couple of rounds.
Scrying, however, is terrible here. It's a 5th-level spell used to look around the world in the mid-tiers. Getting it at 17th level is way too late for it to have any real impact on the world anymore.

20th Level: Mortal Bulwark

Mortal Bulwark gives you a bonus action transformation that comes with 120 ft. truesight, advantage on attack rolls against extraplanar enemies, and an on-hit Banihsment. In encounters against those creature types, oh my god this thing is nuts. Multiple times per turn you can shunt elementals, fiends, fey, or aberrations to their home plane. This can auto-kill a ton of creatures. The only issue with it is outside of encounters using one of these five types of enemies, it’s completely worthless.

If you know you’re at a table that’s running a diabolic overlord as its end game, and you aren’t venturing to the plane they reside on to fight them on their home turf, this feature will make you near god-like in power. If the final boss is an ancient five-headed dragon or a leviathan looking to sink the world, this will be basically worthless.

All Together

Oath of the Watchers has really volatile features. If you're going into a game that specifically highlights what Oath of the Watchers excels at fighting (extraplanar entities in short, bursty fights), it can do a great job giving you insane tools. If you’re at an average table with a wide variety of monster types and encounters that aren’t entirely revolving around initiative that lasts five or six rounds, this option is abysmal. It has a home, but that home is niche, so go into it with caution if the fantasy appeals to you. It can be a struggle to make any of these features beyond some of the better Oath Spells feel impactful regularly.

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