Paladin 5e - DnD Class Guide

Exact holy vengeance upon your foes with this defensive-minded martial class for D&D 5e

Paladins are powerful warriors that have made a sacred oath. A paladin follows a strict code of discipline and devotion. While the archetypal paladin is lawful good, protecting the innocent and the weak, paladins in 5e can be much more varied than this (though certainly do steer towards being protectors). They are usually tough, well-armoured, damage dealers that can enhance their abilities with a solid number of spells.

Characters like Captain America fit the mould of a highly moral warrior with a strict view of right and wrong. Wonder Woman fits a very similar mould. Kaladin Stormblessed from the Stormlight Archive is a warrior that takes on oaths to protect others. Prince Arthas from Warcraft fits the mould of an oathbreaker paladin.

Paladins have quite a lot of roles which can make them tricky to play, but they also gently ease you into these roles so make a great gateway spellcaster while you learn the ropes of casting spells for instance. If you think a paladin is the character you want to play, read on for our guide on how to best create and use a paladin in D&D 5e.

At a glance

Choose a paladin if you want…

Melee fighting
A really durable character
To be able to heal
Want to play a half-caster
Want to play as the party face
To smite enemies with righteous fury

A paladin might not be for you if…

You’re looking for a full spellcaster
Want to engage in ranged combat
You are not the zealous type
Don’t want to do all the talking
Don’t want to take a beating on everyone else’s behalf

For a more detailed look at a paladin’s capabilities, I’ve put together the scoring matrix below. This rates paladins on different features and abilities to give you a clear idea of where their strengths and weaknesses lie. For a full comparison of all classes and their capabilities, check out our class guide:

Class ratings (out of 5)

Combat

Armor class: 5

Weapon damage: 4

Durability: 5

Mobility: 3

Combat abilities: 5

Spellcasting

Spells known: 3

Spell slots: 2

Spell damage: 3

Spell buffs: 3

Spell debuffs: 2

Spell healing: 3

Battlefield control spells: 2

Out of combat spells: 2

Out of combat

Face abilities: 4

Skills: 2

Out of combat abilities: 3

How have we worked out these scores?

We’ve reviewed and played all the officially released D&D 5e classes and looked at a typical build for these class types. Because subclasses offer a lot of variety, we’ve had to exclude these from our considerations.

There is an exception here as the artificer is shaped hugely by their subclass. When it comes to something like weapon damage, we’ve had to take into consideration the fact that most artificers are decent with weapons, but an alchemist would probably only score a 2, even if the other artificer subclasses would score a 3.

We’ve scored each attribute out of 5 with a score of 5 reserved for classes that are the very best at that attribute. There’s some judgement required here. For example, a druid is typically a 3 in mobility (average mobility), but with wildshape, they can fly and swim quicker (and just travel faster). This elevates their score in our minds, even if they don’t consistently have these levels of mobility.

It’s important to understand though, that these scores are not hard and fast. Obtaining feats and pumping more into certain ability scores can turn any class into a decent face, for example. Different subclasses will also make a class better at different things (like an eldritch knight gaining spellcasting) but we feel that these scores represent most typical versions of their class.

The above tackles a typical paladin build, but with subclasses and multi-classing, there are some different ways you can build your paladin to make them stronger or weaker in certain areas.

If you think a paladin isn’t for you, not to worry, there are 12 other classes for you to pick from, just check out our class guide to find out about all of them. Some great alternatives to the defensive paladin include; clerics, druids, fighters, rangers and monks.

Paladin class features

Below I’ve outlined a paladin’s class features. The main things to note are their huge flexibility with armor and weapons with all options available to them. They also have fairly high hit dice (only a barbarian has a higher hit dice). They have some of the best saving throws available in wisdom and charisma so will get a lot of mileage out of them. They also use charisma as their spellcasting ability so it’s important to make sure this ability is well optimised. As melee combatants, strength and constitution are also really important to paladins.

Party Role	Tank, Melee Damage Dealer, Support Caster, Healer
Main Ability	Strength and Charisma
Saving Throws	Wisdom, Charisma
Hit Dice	1d10 + Consitution modifier per level
HP at 1st Level	10 + Constitution Modifier
Spell Casting Ability	Charisma
Armour Proficiency	All Armour, shields
Weapon Proficiency	Simple weapons, martial weapons

Paladin Abilities

Level	Proficiency Bonus	Features	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th
1st	+2	Divine Sense, Lay on Hands	–	–	–	–	–
2nd	+2	Fighting Style, Spellcasting, Divine Smite	2	–	–	–	–
3rd	+2	Divine Health, Sacred Oath	3	–	–	–	–
4th	+2	Ability Score Improvement	3	–	–	–	–
5th	+3	Extra Attack	4	2	–	–	–
6th	+3	Aura of Protection	4	2	–	–	–
7th	+3	Sacred Oath Feature	4	3	–	–	–
8th	+3	Ability Score Improvement	4	3	–	–	–
9th	+4		4	3	2	–	–
10th	+4	Aura of Courage	4	3	2	–	–
11th	+4	Improved Divine Smite	4	3	3	–	–
12th	+4	Ability Score Improvement	4	3	3	–	–
13th	+5		4	3	3	1	–
14th	+5	Cleansing Touch	4	3	3	1	–
15th	+5	Sacred Oath Feature	4	3	3	2	–
16th	+5	Ability Score Improvement	4	3	3	2	–
17th	+6		4	3	3	3	1
18th	+6	Aura Improvements	4	3	3	3	1
19th	+6	Ability Score Improvement	4	3	3	3	2
20th	+6	Sacred Oath Feature	4	3	3	3	2

Strengths

Paladins have a range of strengths making them work well in a variety of situations:

Tanks: Have high hit dice and it’s easy to boost their AC with armor making them able to soak up a lot of attacks. Add in things like shield of faith for one of your spells and your great saving throw proficiencies and you’ve got a very durable character.
Damage dealers: Paladins get access to smites early on making them capable of some pretty high damage at low levels. Even without smites, they keep pace fairly well with a fighter until level 10 as both get the same number of attacks. At higher levels, you don’t get the same number of extra attacks, but your smites do get more powerful and they occur automatically at a lower damage rate. On top of this, you also get a fighting style to enhance your combat.
Protectors: Not only are paladins great at throwing into combat and soaking up loads of attacks, they’re also great at protecting others. At mid tier levels, they get access to auras that increase the saving throws of allies and make them immune to frightened. You can also take fighting styles that help you protect allies too like interception and protection.
Backup healers: Paladins are not proper healers like druids and clerics, but being able to rely on lay on hands for even a single hp when an ally is down is hugely valuable, rather than potentially wasting your efforts with a medicine check.
Face skills: Paladins rely a lot on charisma which inadvertently makes them a great face for the party. Keep in mind though, that they can only pick intimidation and persuasion from the list of face skills so if you do want deception too, you’ll just need to carefully pick your background and/or race.

Weaknesses

Paladins are good at quite a lot of things and while they’re combat focused, have face skills, spellcasting and healing all in their repertoire. Despite their versatility, they do in fact have weaknesses:

Stealth: Paladins generally need to invest in strength, constitution and charisma leaving little else for other abilities like dexterity. You armor proficiency will sort this out. You can swap out strength for dexterity and go for finesse weapons, but this is a little harder to balance, especially with so many ability scores to optimise and when armor is so easy to up your AC instead. This makes you poor at sneaking about in your clunky armor unless you take it off and go in unprotected.
Ranged combat: Similarly, without a high dexterity, paladins tend to be poor at ranged combat. There are some weapons with the thrown property which are your best options here. However, your party is likely going to be reliant on you to protect them and soak up hits and your auras and smites are most effective on the frontlines (in fact smite is a melee only ability) so ranged attacks are really only there for when you can’t reach the enemy.
Half-casters: It’s not really a weakness as such, but as half-casters, paladins don’t have the same range of spells or power of spells as full spellcasters so don’t rely on them to entirely replace a cleric or wizard. Paladin spells generally enhance rather than form a full attack like a fireball.

How to play as a paladin

Paladins are widely considered one of the stronger classes. They are tough with lots of HP, access to all armour types for high AC (and spells that can enhance this too), deal lots of damage (especially when paired with smites) and can heal.

Because of this, paladins tend to work best in the thick of melee combat. Despite this, there are a few ways to approach combat with a paladin that you can use depending on the style of play you want to use:

Tank

Good for: Soaking up damage, dealing melee damage, protecting less durable party members.

Creating a tank: High strength (for melee weapons), high constitution, heavy armor to increase AC (full plate if you can afford it), take a shield too. Focus on spells and fighting styles that will help you last longer in combat like shield of faith and defense.

How it works: As you’d expect, tanks are great for wading into combat and soaking up attacks while dishing out some decent themselves. You’ll sacrifice some damage output by having a shield, but generally, this adds up by letting you last longer in a battle. Shield of faith is an excellent option by granting +2AC for as long as you can concentrate. You don’t have a lot of.spell slots so you may need to place less emphasis on smites and more on protective spells. The defense fighting style will give you +1AC too.

At low levels, this will make you extremely difficult to hit with 21-23AC (if you can get full plate) but tends to mean you do less damage during combat.

Holy Warrior

Good for: Dealing high damage, still reasonably durable and very much a frontline combatant

Creating a warrior: High strength (for melee weapons), high constitution, heavy armor to increase AC (full plate if you can afford it). Two-handed weapons are best with the great weapon fighting style but if you opt for a sword and shield (which is statistically a better build) then the dueling fighting style can help compensate for some of the lost damage output. Use your spell slots on smites to maximise your damage output.

How it works: holy warrior builds are also great at wading into combat, and while they can definitely soak up a fair bit of damage, will lack the AC of a tank build to absorb as many attacks. Instead, you can focus on thinning the herd in an attack is the best form of defence kind of method.

Paladins like to make use of their bonus action for things like smite and other spells so there’s little point going with two weapon fighting (though vanilla divine smite doesn’t require a bonus action if you want to focus your spell slots this way). Your best options for damage dealing are a two handed weapon with the great weapon fighting style or a one handed weapon, shield and the dueling fighting style (which works while holding a shield) and allows you to take a hybrid approach to damage and defense.

Protector

Good for: A variation of the tank so great for soaking up attacks, but works closely with allies to protect them from danger.

Creating a protector: High strength (for melee weapons), high constitution, heavy armor to increase AC (full plate if you can afford it). You’ll want to go for a sword and shield approach with the interception or protection fighting styles. Interception is more reliable and works really well at low levels, protection is better if you expect to protect a high AC ally that’s unlikely to be hit by the 2nd dice roll.

You can take spells like heroism and bless to enhance your allies (bless is usually the better option, but heroism is good if you expect to face a frightening enemy) and compelled duel to prevent others being attacked.

How it works: Tactically, the protector build is the hardest to make work. You have to fight consistently with an ally nearby to make it work which can be a tad situational but isn’t overly hard to make work, but you’ll want to talk tactics with your party. Interception will be used a little less than the other fighting styles making them technically inferior (though not bad). Use your auras to protect allies from conditions, again, staying close to allies. You can use lay on hands and healing spells to revive fallen allies but the healing power of these spells probably isn’t enough to miss out attacking an enemy except maybe at lower levels.

use bless and heroism before combat to enhance your allies while compelled duel will help you take the focus away from allies and back to yourself.

Which subclass should I choose?

There are lots of great paladin subclasses to choose from (known as sacred oaths) so much of this decision comes down to the kind of character you’re trying to build. Oaths tend to form a large part of the ideals for your paladin, so a paladin seeking to make restitution for past crimes might take the oath of redemption while paladins seeking to exact righteous judgement on their foes might take the oath of vengeance.

I’ve popped some guidance below on which subclasses are useful for different types of paladin builds and playstyles.

Oath of Devotion

Source Book: Player’s Handbook

Description: Holy warriors, devoted to their cause.

Good for: Archetypal paladins with a broad mix of abilities.

Oath of the Ancients

Source Book: Player’s Handbook

Description: Paladins that seek to wage war against darkness for a love of light and life.

Good for: Paladins that want to be a bit more like a ranger.

Oath of Vengeance

Source Book: Player’s Handbook

Description: A paladin that has dedicated themself to punishing the crimes of others.

Good for: Paladins that want to exact as much damage as possible, as quickly as possible.

Oathbreaker

Source Book: Dungeon Master’s Guide

Description: A paladin that broke an oath long ago and that is cursed for this choice.

Good for: Paladins that have broken their oaths.

Oath of the Crown

Source Book: Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide

Description: A paladin sworn to protect the crown and its lands.

Good for: Paladins that want to go big on protecting their allies.

Oath of Conquest

Source Book: Xanathar’s Guide to Everything

Description: A paladin sworn to conquer and bring about victory.

Good for: Paladins that want to deal more damage and handle crowds better.

Oath of Redemption

Source Book: Xanathar’s Guide to Everything

Description: Paladins that believe anyone can be redeemed and will inflict death only as a last resort.

Good for: Paladins that prefer to talk first and punch later.

Oath of Glory

Source Book: Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything

Description: A paladin that has made an oath to win at all costs and have their name etched into legends.

Good for: Paladins that like to throw themselves into combat.

Oath of the Watchers

Source Book: Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything

Description: A paladin that watches for and protects from the unnatural and alien forces of the universe.

Good for: Paladins that want to deal with extra-planar threats.

How to optimise a paladin

Optimising a character properly can be tricky. Below I’ve picked out some key attributes for you to use with a fighter to turn them into a formidable warrior:

Ability score

Recommended options: Strength, Charisma and Constitution. Dexterity instead of strength if you’re going for a finesse build.

Options to avoid: Intelligence and wisdom. Only invest in one of strength and dexterity (usually strength).

Considerations: Paladins are MAD so you’ll need to invest everything you have into strength (or dexterity), charisma and constitution to be truly effective. Armor proficiency will compensate for your lack of dexterity and you’re proficient in wisdom saving throws which will help as these can be common.

Races

Recommended options: Aasimar, Astral Elf, Autognome, Changeling, Gem Dragonborn, Metallic Dragonborn, Duergar, Earth Genasi, Eladrin, Githyanki, Goliath, Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Kobold, Leonin, Minotaur, Satyr, Shadar-Kai, Shifter, Simic Hybrid, Warforged, Yuan-Ti Pureblood

Options to avoid: Air Genasi, Forest Gnome, Ghostwise Halfling, High Elf, Loxodon, Kalashtar, Rock Gnome, Wood Elf

Considerations: Primarily, you’re looking for ability score increases across your core abilities (strength, constitution and charisma) and some additional face skills to beef you out as the face of the party.

Innate spellcasting options can work nicely as you can make repeat uses. Most recently released races will let you choose your casting ability, but older races don’t so just be aware of this.

Races that grant you resistances, increased damage and mobility are also great Think Warforged with their resistances and extra AC or Shadar-Kai with their misty step plus damage ability.

I’d avoid races with abilities that focus on things like stealth, or flight where you can only wear light armor (unless you’re going for a finesse build).

Backgrounds

Recommended options: City watch, courtier, faceless, faction agent, gambler, smuggler, soldier

Options to avoid: Archaeologist, fisher, folk hero, inheritor, ruined

Considerations: Primarily, you want your background to beef out your skills (you only get 2 skill proficiencies with your class). As the likely face of the party, face skills are going to be most important, especially if you can get deception (as paladins don’t have access to this as standard). Generally useful skills like perception and insight are great too, especially perception as paladins don’t get this as standard.

Skills

Recommended options: Athletics, insight, intimidation, persuasion

Options to avoid: Medicine, religion

Considerations: Persuasion is going to be your most important face skill but intimidation can be great too. Insight is useful if you’re engaged in conversation a lot, but your low wisdom means you may get less out of this. Avoid medicine, you might as well just use lay on hands and dish out 1hp, it’s much more reliable and effective.

Feats

Recommended options: Gift of the Chromatic dragon, great weapon master, heavy armor master, inspiring leader, lucky, polearm master, resilient, sentinel, slasher

Options to avoid: Grappler, healer, keen mind, martial adept, observant, ritual caster, sharpshooter, skulker

Considerations: Any feats that make you tougher (like heavy armor master), better in combat (like great weapon master), use your charisma (like inspiring leader) or that keep your enemies engaged in combat with you (like sentinel).

Weapons

Recommended options: Polearms for reach, greatswords for two-handed weapon damage, longsword, warhammer or morningstar if you’re using a shield. Rapier if you’ve gone big on dexterity, this also opens up a longbow for ranged damage but if you’ve gone heavy on strength, javelins are a better option when you need to go ranged.

Options to avoid: Anything relying on dexterity or that’s going to limit your damage so things like shortswords and crossbows are poor options. Generally, ranged weapons aren’t great options for paladins unless absolutely necessary.

Considerations: Polearms can be really effective for paladins giving them a greater presence on the battlefield. Combine them with sentinel and polearm master to make it really tough for enemies to bypass you for softer party members. Much will depend on your fighting approach though. Two-handed weapons for damage dealers, one handed for tanks with a shield and if you have gone for a finesse build, consider a rapier. Avoid ranged weapons unless you have to, paladins don’t do ranged combat that well and miss out on some of their best abilities (like smites and auras) when fighting at range. Javelins use strength though and are one handed so tend to be the best option.

Armor

Recommended options: Heavy armor for low dexterity builds (full plate when you can afford it), light armor (studded leather is best) for high dexterity builds. Shields are an excellent option for paladins but there is a trade-off on damage, but generally, it’s one of your best options.

Options to avoid: Make sure your armor matches with your dexterity score. Medium armor should not be a good option as you should either be dumping dexterity or going all in on it.

Considerations: Paladins are proficient in all armor types so use the armor that fits your build best but as a rule of thumb, light armor for high dexterity builds, heavy armor for low dexterity builds and medium if you’re somewhere in the middle (though paladins should never be in the middle). Add a shield for extra durability at the sacrifice of some damage output. Generally though, a shield is an excellent option for a paladin.

Fighting style

Recommended options: Defense, dueling and great weapon fighting are statistically your best options as they’ll contribute to combat almost every turn.

Options to avoid: All options are viable depending on your build and no options are bad.

Considerations: Defense is your best option for enhancing your durability. Dueling is great if you’re going sword and shield to compensate for your lower damage output while great weapon fighting is great for two-handed weapons.

Protector builds will get a decent amount out of interception and protection, but they do rely on more situational circumstances and fighting alongside allies. Blind fighting is even more situational, but great if you can consistently work with your warlock to use darkness against your enemies. Blessed warrior will rarely give you something superior to do with your action unless you intend to take a ranged or out of combat cantrip but tends to be the weaker option.

Multiclassing

Recommended options: Bard, Sorceror, Warlock

Options to avoid: Barbarian, Rogue

Considerations: Bards, sorcerors and warlocks are a great option for getting extra spell slots for casting smites and other paladin spells. Warlock won’t grant you a lot of extra spells slots, but those slots can be used on any level of spell so can be use to increase your higher level smite spells. All 3 classes all use charisma as their spellcasting ability which works nicely for a paladin.

Meta magic isn’t that useful for a paladin so you’re really there for the sorcerous origins, cantrips, constitution proficiency and extra spells and slots so it’s not worth taking more than 1 level in sorceror.

Warlock is probably your best option, especially a hexblade. Interestingly, using your pact blade will negate some of the your need for strength as you can use your charisma modifier for attacks instead (though if you’re using heavy armor, you’ll need at least 15 strength to not get bogged down by the weight of it).

Bards will give you bardic inspiration, spells and extra skills. Great if you want to give your paladin a bit more utility outside of combat. 3 levels will get you a subclass and college of swords is a good option here for the extra fighting style (dueling is great for paladins) and blade flourish which can be another source of extra damage on top of smites for your paladin (plus the extra spell slots for smites).

When it comes to rogues, paladins are rubbish at stealth and you’re unlikely to be using a weapon that works with sneak attack. This could be viable with a finesse build, but again, as a tank class, you’re unlikely to be using the hit and run tactics made viable by cunning action.

Barbarians feel like they could be a good fit, but tend not to work well in heavy armor. Plus, you can’t cast spells while raging so not smite/rage combos.

Roleplaying a paladin

While all paladins are oath-making warriors, they vary hugely in the execution of that archetype, from compassionate protectors to vengeful zealots. If you’re looking for inspiration for your paladin’s character, I’ve popped some ideas below you could use:

The zealot: Some paladins hold to their oaths and ideals unwaveringly. You struggle to accept alternative world views and though your intentions may be well meaning, your rigid adherence to your ideals can cause you to misstep at times. A word of caution, in party dynamics that require some give and take, a zealot can be a frustrating character to play. Try not to block other party members too much and consider a journey of discovery as you learn from your mistakes and adapt your world view.

The penitent soul: You’ve made mistakes; big ones. You seek redemption through your paladin order, leading a rigid and moral life to counteract your failures and ensure you remain on the path of redemption.

The protector: You see suffering all around and seek to aid the helpless in whatever way possible. You can barely pass a beggar without tossing a few copper coins. You will never allow evil to operate in your midst, with your own life being an acceptable cost for the protection of others.

The oathbreaker: These types of paladins can vary a lot. Some may completely denounce their oaths and order and choose a path of evil or extremism. This can be a more conscious and antagonistic path. Others may simply find their oaths too difficult to keep and the allure of gold, a comfortable life or their passion may get the better of them. In this case, you may live with regret or even seek to restitution with your order.