Oath of Castigation Paladin: Crooked Moon D&D 5e Optimisation Guide

Interrogate and punish the guilty with this inquisitor-type subclass.

At a glance

Oath of castigation features

Castigate (Lv 3) – 4/5

Make your charisma nice and high, get near a bunch of enemies and immobilise them. The 2024 rules have more creatures with ranged attacks, but there are still plenty of creatures that are much stronger in close combat. These should be your focus, allowing the party to move around them and force them into ranged combat.

The bonus action damage will conflict with your other bonus action demands, but this won’t cost extra resources whereas things like divine smite or lay on hands will. It’s definitely worth using while you have enemies shackled, especially while you have multiple enemies shackled.

Incite (Lv3) – 2/5

I think the primary use case here is as an interrogation technique. Frighten the target, prevent them telling lies and be more insightful towards what they say. Your charismatic leaning makes you a naturally good interrogator anyway.

Technically, you can use this in combat too. If it’s a choice of using channel divinity on this or castigate in combat though, I’d almost certainly use castigate. It affects more creatures and does damage. This has its place, but you don’t get a lot of channel divinity uses and it tends to be a bit niche. It also suffers from the zone of truth issue in that NPCs can just not talk or be clever in how they phrase things. Still, knowing a statement isn’t a lie is useful from time to time.

Oath of castigation spells (Lv3) – 3/5

There are a solid bunch of spells here from damage enhancers like divine favor, investigation spells like speak with dead, defensive spells like counterspell and even AoE damage dealers like flame strike (an area paladins tend to be weak in.

The oath of castigation grants 2 unique spells from Crooked Moon. Chain of conviction is another control spell that can damage, immobilise and pull an enemy towards you. It also grants advantage on attack rolls against them. All of this for a 2nd level spell that doesn’t require concentration.

Consuming pyre is a little bit of a slow burn, achieving fireball level damage after 2 turns, but only to a single target. It can eventually deal more damage, but that’s only if it lasts. It does require an action to put out, but even that requires a saving throw which is more costly to the target than most spell saving throws.

Kindling aura (Lv7) – 4/5

The big thing here is turning weapon attacks for nearby allies (and yourself) into fire damage. Combined with ignoring resistances to fire and radiant damage, this means you can ensure party weapon attacks are rarely resisted.

Improves insight and investigation checks for the group is an added bonus and it stacks with incite.

Fervent inquisitor (Lv15) – 3/5

This is sort of a vengeful feature. You can only do this to one creature per round so pick your target wisely. You’ll want to make sure you target creatures you can reach and that you want to focus attacks against. Fortunately, the should be pretty easy as nearby creatures likely will target you or a close ally.

Dealing fire or radiant damage to creatures is really easy with kindling aura and divine smite. Knowing the lies of a creature is kind of an unwieldy mechanic though. First it’s pretty situational. Many creatures you fight probably haven’t been lying to you. Second, it’s problematic for DMs who must now rack their brains for the last day of conversations and check what lies an NPC might have said. With this occurring quite often, they’ll need to keep track of potentially a lot of conversations. Perhaps this leans more into the idea of torture (sear an enemy with a dagger and know their lies). Of course torture is a problematic approach to questioning in a D&D game…

Fire and brimstone (Lv20) – 4/5

Greater reach is the big thing here. It allows you to more easily hit the targets you want but also grants more range to knock enemies prone. It’s just once per long rest, but it more easily keeps enemies within your range, knocking them down and then attacking with advantage. It can be a bit problematic for melee creatures that want to stick near you. But if they try to escape your reach, they’ll trigger an opportunity attack which may trigger knocking them prone. This can initiate an endless cycle of advantages from prone.

How good is the oath of castigation subclass?

The oath of castigation is a solid paladin subclass that specialises in keeping enemies in place so they can be punished or interrogated. They excel on both counts. Castigate is a great use of your channel divinity for chaining enemies in place and damaging them while kindling aura is a great way to ensure party attacks aren’t stifled by resistances.

Some of the interrogation features are a little more situational or challenging mechanically, but despite this, it still makes a pretty good inquisitor style paladin.

4/5

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Building an oath of castigation paladin

Largely, a castigation paladin can be optimised in the same ways as other paladins. If you want a full breakdown on how to do this using D&D 2024 character options, you can check out my paladin optimisation guide.

As this is a Crooked Moon subclass, I’ve just looked at character options in the Crooked Moon book and given advice on which work well for this paladin subclass.

Species/race

I’d consider the following species from Crooked Moon for the oath of castigation:

• Bogborn: A kind of weaker hunter’s mark is great on a multi-attack class. You also get self healing though be aware that these are activated by your bonus action which is already under heavy demand. You’ll likely be a frontline warrior so that extra resilience will be useful.
• Curseborn: I’d probably only use the unarmed strike for cursing enemies, but this is quite good against high damage enemies that you need to nullify a bit. Plus paladins can smite with unarmed strikes now. Otherwise, attacks with weapons are going to be more potent (though an unarmed build could work with the right feats). Survive nasty saving throws (like fireball or banishment) with grey balance. You’ll have disadvantage on attacks rolls for a turn, but passing a saving throw against something nasty will be more important than worse attacks and this can be partially countered with fervent inquisitor, the vex weapon mastery or knocking prone. Perception is always a great skill and I’d probably pick that for a paladin, though investigation can be good for the oath of castigation specifically.
• Gnarlborn: You’re mainly here for the bonus action restraining. This will largely nullify an enemy and give you advantage on attack rolls against them. With a high constitution, you should be pretty good at this too. A free skill, being better at resisting being moved or knocked prone, tremorsense and advantage at ending the grappled condition are all pretty decent too.
• Harvestborn: A decent option for this with your d10 hit dice. Means you can easily revive allies on 0HP. Extra damage on some attacks is handy too.
• Stoneborn: Bless as a bonus action is excellent, as is a dash bonus action to close down your enemies, and you get some extra damage too. You’ll also get a round of resistance against bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage for more resilience and an extra skill proficiency is nice. The traits here won’t get used often, but can be very useful in big fights for a tank.

Backgrounds

Unlike the Player’s Handbook, Crooked Moon backgrounds give you a choice of any ability scores to increase. Based primarily on the origin feats and proficiencies, I’d recommend the following backgrounds for a castigation paladin:

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Crossroads gambler	Any	Fate gambler	Deception, insight	One kind of gambling set
Cultist	Any	Cult initiate	Arcana and one other	Calligrapher’s supplies
Druskenvald dweller	Any	Any	Survival and one other	Choose one
Night stalker	Any	Hunter of hunters	Stealth and one of arcana, history, religion or nature	Leather worker’s tool

Not many of these combine great origin feats and skills for a paladin, but I’d probably lean towards fate gambler as regular heroic inspiration is really useful and deception and insight are both useful face skills for a paladin.

Feats

I’d consider the following feats for a castigation paladin:

• Cult initiate: Spells from the warlock spell list is decent. Hex is always a good option on a martial class and you can repeat cast it too. You can also pick up eldritch blast if you need a good ranged option too.
• Fate gambler: You should be reducing enemies to 0HP often enough to give a steady supply of heroic inspiration. Temporary hit points will also benefit you nicely as the defacto frontline warrior.
• Hunter of hunters: Bypassing resistances is the main appeal for a paladin here. It’s possibly a bit of a trade off between this and other bonus action uses, but this has unlimited uses so if you expect something to have a resistance, you’re likely better boosting your damage with this than divine smite for instance.
• Death defier: You’re the tank of the party, so more resilience is only going to be beneficial, especially when you’re harder to keep down or kill.

More from Crooked Moon

Interested in what else is available from The Crooked Moon? Why not check out some of our other guides?