Oath Of Vengeance Paladin: D&D 2024 (5.5e) Subclass Optimisation Guide

Exact justice on those that do evil with this vengeful paladin subclass for D&D 2024.

Evil permeates the very planes of existence. Obvious and cataclysmic terrors like abyssal demons and eldritch horrors from the far realm exist alongside mortal evils like rampaging warlords, corrupt politicians and slave traders. Vengeance paladins look upon such evil with disgust and a vow to eradicate such things wherever they find them.

Often, there is a catalyst that drives a paladin towards making an oath of vengeance. Surviving the pillaging of their village or being made a slave might drive them towards the vows of a paladin, swearing to enact vengeance on those that have done such wrongs. Alternatively, their hearts might weep for the bitter sorrow seen in those that suffer. Either way, vengeance paladins are oathbound to exact swift justice on such offenders.

Like other paladins, those sworn to the oath of vengeance adhere to a simple set of tenets that guide their actions. These are:

Show the wicked no mercy
Fight injustice and it’s causes
Aid those harmed by injustice

While the vengeance paladin hasn’t changed a lot in its revised 2024 form, it has received some quality of life improvements to help with it’s action economy in particular. My guide below will take you through tactics and optimisations when playing an oath of vengeance paladin for D&D 2024.

At a glance

Half caster, half martial class
Tank class capable of taking a beating
Highly aggressive subclass that has enhanced attacks against a single enemy

What’s changed in D&D 2024?

A few things have changed for this subclass including:

Vow of enmity no longer requires a bonus action to apply, can be transferred to other targets and can be used at range.
Relentless avenger now reduces the target’s speed to 0.
Avenging angel can be recast with a 5th level spell slot.

Related articles

Oath of vengeance features

Oath of devotion paladin DnD 2024 — Paladin: Wizards of the Coast

Oath of vengeance spells – Lv3

How it works

Get the following as prepared spells at the relevant levels:

Paladin level	Spells
3	Bane, Hunter’s mark
5	Hold person, misty step
9	Haste, protection from energy
13	Banishment, dimension door
17	Hold monster, scrying

Tactics

Hunter’s mark is excellent and should be a staple of your spellcasting for all its extra damage. It now works alongside vow of enmity more easily which also makes this better. By getting advantage on attacks against this target, you’ll hit more doing more damage with hunter’s mark. Just make sure you apply both to the same target.
While the spells here are generally great, there are a lot of concentration spells to choose from so just be aware of the demands there. Vow of enmity doesn’t require concentration though so can be used alongside any of these spells. It could be worth taking a feat like war caster to help maintain your concentration.
Spells like hold person and banishment will be best when you badly need to nullify an enemy. Hunter’s mark will be better when you want to kill enemies more quickly (it’s also more reliable). Haste can do this too while also granting you or an ally better protection.

Vow of enmity – Lv3

How it works

Use your channel divinity to gain advantage on attacks rolls against an enemy. You can move this to another enemy once the target reaches 0hp.

Tactics

Between this and Hunter’s mark, you become terrifying against single enemies who you can target for plenty of consistent damage.
The more you attack, the more potent you become so consider dual wielding for up to 4 attacks per turn. These will be much more accurate and with hunter’s mark, accumulatively become more powerful too.
If you are using hunter’s mark as well, just apply them to the same target otherwise you’re wasting one or the other.

Relentless avenger – Lv7

How it works

Hitting a creature with an opportunity attacks reduces their speed to 0. You can then move up to half your speed without provoking opportunity attacks.

Tactics

The idea of this is to stop your quarry from escaping your clutches. If you’ve got vow of enmity applied to that creature, it’ll be even harder for them to escape.
Unfortunately, certain feats that could combine with this, no longer do. For instance, polearm master triggers an attack, but not an opportunity attacks when enemies enter your reach. This means you can’t combine both effects. Be aware of sentinel too which is largely wasted as it gives the same kind of effect as this and soul of vengeance.

Soul of vengeance – Lv15

How it works

If the target of your vow of enmity makes an attack, you can use your reaction to attack them back if they’re in range.

Tactics

Note that this only occurs on an attack so you’re slightly better off applying your vow of enmity against non-spellcasters (but only slightly).
This also isn’t an opportunity attacks unfortunately, so you can’t slow the target with relentless avenger as well.
But it can be used with a ranged weapon attack.

Avenging angel – Lv20

How it works

Use a bonus action to get the following benefits for 10 minutes:

Gain a fly speed of 60ft.
When an enemy enters your aura of protection, they must take a wisdom saving throw or be frightened with attack rolls against them having advantage.

Tactics

Flight is always useful and means you can take to the skies to harry your foes.
Be aware that a creature frightened in this way will lose the condition once they take damage so while advantage on attacks against them seems strong, it will only last for a single attack at most.
With that in mind, you might be better off focusing your attacks on un-frightened enemies that are likely to be more problematic.

Building a vengeance paladin

Path of glory paladin DnD 2024 — Paladin: Wizards of the Coast

The oath of vengeance subclass sort of turns your paladin into something of a ranger, leaning into some of the hunter aspects of that class. Between your vow of enmity, hunter’s mark and even things like your smites, you’re extremely adept at taking on a single, powerful enemy at a time.

You’ll want to focus these spells on nasty enemies and move on to something else gnarly once they’re dead. Spreading your attacks too much or targeting weaker enemies means too much missing out on extra damage, advantage on attacks rolls and using your bonus action to switch targets too much.

Ability scores

Recommended options

Strength: Strength weapons will hit harder so tend to be your best option, especially when it’s so easy to whack some heavy armor on and ignore dexterity.
Constitution: As with all paladin’s, you’re a tank and best at melee attacks so you’ll need to toughen up with constitution to stay standing.
Charisma: Important for your spellcasting and your face skills.
Dexterity (optional): You can go for a dexterity build, but it’s likely less effective as you’ll do less damage and heavy armor can compensate for your lack of dexterity. You can do better with ranged weapons with dexterity but you rarely want to be using those and can use thrown weapons or even cantrips (with the right feats) if you want to instead (though vow of enmity only works when taking the attack action).

Options to avoid

Intelligence: Almost pointless.
Wisdom: Also rarely needed by a paladin.

Ability score	Point Buy	Standard Array
Strength	15	15
Dexterity	8	12
Constitution	15	14
Intelligence	8	8
Wisdom	8	10
Charisma	15	13

Skills

Recommended options

Athletics: You’re better off with this than acrobatics as a strength-leaning class.
Insight: Strong face skill.
Intimidation: Decent face skill if you intend to role play in a more imposing manner.
Persuasion: Your best face skill and should be top of your list as a potential party face.

Options to avoid

Medicine: You’ve got things like lay on hands for quick healing, you’re far better off using that.
Religion: Not a bad skill as such, but as a probable party face, there’s just more important skills to take. I’d only take this if the party is already proficient in the other skill options.

Species/race

There are a few things to consider when choosing a species for an oath of vengeance paladin:

Resilience: Anything that can toughen you up as you throw yourself into the midst of your enemies will be beneficial.
Innate spellcasting: As a spellcaster, you can repeat cast spells and your charisma should be strong enough to do this well. It may be tempting to grab a damage dealing cantrip for ranged attacks, which is alright, but be aware that vow of enmity won’t work with spells.
Damage dealing: You’ll likely be making a lot of attacks so anything that can enhance this will be useful.

Recommended options

Aasimar (2024): Resistance to necrotic and radiant damage increases your durability. For celestial revelation, inner radiance is a little tricky as you’re such a big team player and it will hurt allies so necrotic shroud is probably your best bet. Temporary flight can be useful, especially out of combat or for hard to reach enemies. You don’t really need the healing, but it’s an OK emergency option if you run out of lay on hands.
Dragonborn (2024): You don’t get much in the way of AoE damage as a paladin, but you will like getting close to your enemies. This makes a Dragonborn’s breath weapon a really useful tool. It doesn’t work with vow of enmity (or hunter’s mark for that matter) as you don’t make an attack roll, but it’s still a strong option. You can use it in place of just one of your attacks too. Temporary flight again lets you get to hard to reach enemies. Plus there’s a resistance for better durability.
Dwarf (2024): Be the tankiest tank around with extra hit points, poison resistance and advantage on saving throws against the poisoned condition.
Goliath (2024): Faster movement is handy for getting into battle quickly. Your giant ancestry grants some very useful options too. For a paladin, the durability of the stone giants and extra damage from fire giants are both great options. With misty step available, cloud ancestry is less useful though and knocking enemies prone is more useful for your allies as advantage is easier for you to come by with vow of enmity. It can be useful when you don’t have this available though.
Human (2024): A great option if you want to be the party face and need the extra skill proficiency. You’ll also get an extra origin feat and a regular supply of heroic inspiration is always useful
Orc (2024): Not only can you survive a bit longer as an Orc, you can also charge even further with a bonus action dash. Handy for a character that will often want to charge into combat quickly.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are much more important now with D&D 2024 as the ability score increases previously tied to your race/species are now linked to your background. You also get an origin feat linked to your background too.

Primarily, you want to focus on increasing key ability scores (mainly strength, constitution and charisma) with the associated origin feat being your next priority. As such, I’d suggest the below are your best backgrounds for a vengeance paladin:

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Charlatan	Dexterity, constitution, charisma	Skilled	Deception, sleight of hand	Forgery kit
Entertainer	Strength, dexterity, charisma	Musician	Acrobatics, performance	One type of musical instrument
Farmer	Strength, constitution, wisdom	Tough	Animal handling, nature	Carpenter’s tools
Merchant	Constitution, intelligence, charisma	Lucky	Animal handling, persuasion	Navigator’s tools
Noble	Strength, intelligence, charisma	Skilled	History, persuasion	One type of gaming set
Soldier	Strength, dexterity, constitution	Savage attacker	Athletics, intimidation	One kind of gaming set

Farmer and soldier are probably your best options with strength and constitution increases. Tough will make you more durable while savage attacker will make you hit a little harder.

Feats

At 1st level, you can grab an origin feat through your background and from level 4, you can pick up a general feat (or another origin feat if you want) instead of an ability score increase.

General feats are all half feats now as they give an ability score increase and the traits of a feat. But you’ll need to give up the +2 from a standard ability score increase to get them.

Below are some feats I’d recommend for an oath of vengeance paladin:

Origin feats

Lucky – More ways to be reliable at important rolls is universally beneficial.
Musician – A universally great feat for dishing out heroic inspiration. Great for altruistic paladins (which is most of them). Plus you can ensure you have some heroic inspiration available too.
Savage attacker – Decent enough damage dealing feat to make your attacks a little more powerful.
Skilled – You aren’t able to be proficient in all face skills, but party faces typically need a bunch of these so skilled can help fill your skill gaps.
Tough – Lean into your strengths and become even more durable.

General feats

Defensive duelist – Good for some reactionary defence. You will likely sacrifice some damage output, but if you’re going for sword and shield anyway, you can just grab a rapier for damage equal to a longsword.
Dual wielder – Two weapon fighting is a strong option for a vengeance paladin. Between vow of enmity and hunter’s mark, giving yourself a potential 4 attacks from level 5 onwards will give you plenty of extra damage that will usually hit.
Grappler – Paladins can make great grapplers. This will let you attack and grapple as part of the same unarmed strike, which also means you can grapple, use hunter’s mark, vow of enmity and smite.
Great weapon master – More damage from your attacks is great if you intend to wield heavy weapons.
Heavy armor master – Basically reduce damage from all bludgeoning, piercing and slashing attacks is great for a tank if you’re going to be wearing heavy armor.
Inspiring leader – Great for granting temporary hit points to the party. Go for the charisma increase to make this work best.
Mage slayer – Best against mages, but having what is practically legendary resistance is also great.
Mounted combatant – You can easily summon your own mount from level 5 onwards and this can give you a serious edge in combat. Advantage against basically anything medium or smaller is pretty nice for when vow of enmity isn’t giving you advantage.
Shield master – Better protection from some nasty AoE damage spells and a free push or prone with your shield can free up your weapon mastery uses for something like cleave.
Skill expert – If you want to get really good at a face skill, then this works great.
War caster – You’ve got a lot of concentration while likely drawing a lot of attacks. This will help you maintain your concentration.

Fighting style feats

Your options here are mainly going to depend on how you want to approach fighting. While most fighting styles can be viable for you, I’d really consider two weapon fighting for all out aggression. If you combine this with the nick weapon mastery, you’ll have 3-4 attacks. Vow of enmity will give each of these advantage and Hunter’s mark will grant each hit and extra d6 damage which is strong!

You can check out my full guide to fighting style feats for more advice.

Weapons

This largely depends on how you want to lean into combat. Below is some broad advice you can apply when choosing what kind of weapon approach you want:

Dual wielding: Go with dual wielding if you want more attacks. Grab a weapon with the nick property and make sure you take the dual wielder feat and two weapon fighting style to maximise your effectiveness here. The interactions between feats and abilities for dual wielding can get complicated so check out my dual wielding guide for some help here. As explained above, this works great with Hunter’s mark and vow of enmity.
Two-handed weapons: Go with these for the highest damage with a single weapon.
Sword and shield: Go for a sword and shield if you want greater protection. As a general rule, this will keep you in the battle longer and is often worth it in the long run, even if it does diminish your damage output.
Unarmed fighting: You’ll need to grab some feats to make this work, namely, tavern brawler, grappler and unarmed fighting. With these though, you can be a really effective grappler and can even use smites with your unarmed attacks now.
Thrown weapons: Paladins tend to be a bit poor in the ranged department, but you will undoubtedly need to make ranged attacks at some point. Your dexterity will likely be low so thrown weapons are the way to go here (unless you can grab some cantrips from a feat or species trait).

When it comes to which weapon to choose, this will primarily come down to the amount of damage the weapon causes and the weapon mastery associated with it. Check out my weapon mastery guide for more advice on this.

Armor

Paladins have a lot of ability scores to focus on so building into dexterity is tricky. With that in mind, I’d generally go for heavy armor. Plate armor is best, but you can grab splint armor until you have the money for plate.

You could go for medium armor or light armor if you have the dexterity for it but this should be rarer with a paladin. Grab a shield if you want some extra durability at the expense of some damage output.