2024 D&D Build Guide - Oath of Devotion Paladin

September 26, 2024

dnd dnd-5e build-guide

In this guide we’ll build a straightforward, but formidable, Paladin with the Oath of Devotion Taken at level 3. We’ll be using the 2024 Player’s Handbook, AFAIK the class is not included in the Free Rules. The Paladin is a martial class with lots of weapons and armor at their disposal, as well a mount, and is also considered a half caster.

Strengths: Melee combat, front line protection and healing. Weaknesses: Ranged combat, initiative, utility.

Assumptions: Currently this guide is built for the 2024 Player’s Handbook, using Standard Array for Ability Scores.

Note: Paladin‘s have historically been considered Multiple Attribute Dependent, or MAD. That means the “perfect” paladin has a lot of Strength and Constitution for martial combat, and also a high Charisma for powering their spells and other abilities. In practice a Paladin can probably be successful with either high Strength or Charisma, and some additional Constitution. However, your style of play may dictate which stat you want to buff more.

For example, a Paladin with 20 Charisma provides a +5 bonus to all Saving Throws to themselves, and to anyone else within their aura! This can be a game changer, but remember that means your Strength will most likely not be 20.

This guide contains downloadable PDF’s for the character at levels 1 ,2, 5, 8, and 11. That should be a good framework for building out your Paladin, and then you can take it from there. We will provide some insight into later levels though.

Remember, this is just a guide, you don’t have to follow everything to the letter!

“Remember your ABC’s. Always Be Charismatic!”

Character Background

In my head I imagine the Paladin to be the gallant knight whose sworn an oath to a higher cause. They’re bring their worldly strength and heavenly abilities to combat the forces of evil and uphold their oath. The oath should conjure up idealistic versions of crusaders, spreading order and enforcing justice. They pick up their stumbling comrades, and smite their enemies with their gifts bestowed by their deity.

Build Philosophy

The main philosophy behind this build is using a Two-Handed, possibly Heavy, melee weapon, dealing consistent damage. We also buff and heal our party members, and use our smites to dish out extra damage and debuff or finish off enemies, or help burst down the big bad.

Your goal as a heavy armor-wearing melee fighter is to get up close and personal with your targets, but stay near your allies so they can benefit from your auras and heals. If no party member is in immediate danger, and you have the spell slots, help burst down enemies with your smites.

Ranged combat is your main weak spot. While you’ll have javelins, they’ll (probably) be limited in number. If you’re in ranged combat, consider focusing on buffing your party with spells like Aid, Bless, or protection spells. Magic Weapon could be useful, and no concentration is needed. Command can also be used to debuff enemies, at least temporarily.

Building the Paladin at Level 1

At level 1 the Paladin gets proficiency in Wisdom and Charisma Saving Throws, can use all armor and most weapons. Our Paladin will rely on Strength, so we’ll focus on traits and abilities that compliment that.

For a Fighter’s Core Traits we want the Athletics and Persuasion skills. Athletics is always good to have as a martial class, and Persuasion will complement our small statute and decent Charisma stat. We may not beat the bard when it comes to having a silver tongue, but maybe we can help them out. So before you get out your swords (or bows/crossbows), try using your words!

For our Fighting Style we’ll take Archery which is going to help us land more hits with all our ranged weapons. Once we hit level 4 we’ll exclusively to using ranged attacks.

We also get Second Wind which is a great bonus action ability to regain some hit points in or out of combat. If you’re in combat and don’t have anything to do with your bonus action, try topping our your HP.

Finally we need to select 2 Weapon Masteries. For the first Mastery I chose the Greatsword which fits the theme. The Maul is another solid choice that lets you knock enemies prone. Both have 2d6 damage dice, which means your damage rolls will do a minimum of 3, so 3 + 3 = 6 damage, in addition to modifiers and extra damage rolls. All of the other two-handers have their slight tradeoffs. We don’t have “room” for the Polearm Master Feat, but not everything has to be “optimal”. If you want to be the royal guard turned adventuring Paladin smiting enemies with a Halberd, go for it!

The second Weapon Mastery is Javelin with the Slow Mastery Property. This is one of our starting weapons, and it gives us a little bonus for our basic ranged attacks. You could swap this for a Maul/Topple, and forego ranged altogether, but that makes your weakness potentially deadly.

Background Selection

The background can be an integral part of your back story and how you would like to roleplay your character. Feel free to select something more suitable to your ideas for this character, just keep an eye on what ability score increases you’ll get. The feat is generally less important as all of them are useful, but sometimes you really want a certain Feat!

Our best options are: Charlatan, Hermit, Merchant, Entertainer, and Noble, all of which can boost Charisma. Anyone can take any background they choose, and making your background fit a character can be half of the fun. With any of these you should be able to get your primary stat to 16, your secondary to 15, and your Constitution to 14, or any combination you want.

For this build we’ll go with the knight who is also the Entertainer. Entertainer actually meshes really well with our build. Not only are you the hero to save the day, but you can swoon the ladies, and entertain and calm the orphans you just saved. The strength of the Musician Feat’s Encouraging Song ability can’t be understated. It gives your party Heroic Inspiration every short or long rest, which is the old style inspiration where you can essentially reroll any failed attack roll or save. This really embodies our Paladin build that lifts everyone up around us.

As for flavor, not only are you the knight who save the day, but your somewhat of a leader too (Maybe maybe you grew up on a farm and watched as merchant guild exploited your family and other farmers in the area through illegal price fixing. The injustices you and others have suffered inspired you to train with an old soldier living in the area, and seek guidance from a local monastery.

Other Background Origin options for this build are:

Charlatan, Hermit, or Merchant which can boost Constitution and Charisma
Entertainer or Noble which can boost Strength and Charisma
Farmer or Soldier which can boost Strength and Constitution

Details:

Hermit/Healer - The flavor or Hermit fits perfectly with an Oath of Devotion Paladin. Battle Medic sounds useful, but you will already have Lay on Hands and the 2024 improved Cure Wounds, so it’s really a last resort kind of thing. Also, Healing Rerolls technically doesn’t guarantee an improved heal, you could reroll to more 1’s. It also doesn’t do anything to help our primary heling ability, Lay on Hands.
Charlatan - Is pretty good on most characters, but it doesn’t feel like it meshes well with the archetypal Paladin we’re building. Skilled is always a solid choice, and opens up more roleplay options.
Noble - Noble can fit thematically with our knight, and comes with the ever-useful Persuasion. Skilled is always a solid choice, and opens up more roleplay options.
Farmer or Soldier don’t boost Charisma, so they’re not for this specific build, but they are really good Background Origins and I’m sure many builds will take advantage of them in the future.

Species

Species is one that you can change freely. All species are powerful in their own way.

For species I chose Orc. The first image for the Paladin in the 2024 Player’s Handbook looks like an Orc! So I thought it would be cool to go with what one of the artists was thinking. It might be unconventional to have a big brutish monster looking creature as a Paladin, but that could provide for some nice roleplaying and allow you to shift people’s perspectives about the Race/Species.

The Orc Species are Medium size and give us 3 nice abilities that complement our Paladin build. Adrenaline Rush will help us close gaps and get to allies who need help, Darkvision is always good in a dungeon/cave (and to 120 ft.!), and Relentless Endurance will make sure that we are still standing to be able to help our allies.

For languages I chose Orc and Halfling. I imagine that when I grew up on the farm, it was in a region heavily populated by Halfling and therefore I learned the language early on.

Abilities

For abilities I went with Standard Array, since that seems the most common from what I’ve seen from others online. That gives us these values to apply how we want to our stats: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8.

I chose:

Strength 13 + 2 from Entertainer Background Origin
Dexterity 8
Constitution 14
Intelligence 10
Wisdom 12
Charisma 15 + 1 from Entertainer Background Origin

I definitely recommend keeping your Strength, Constitution and Charisma values roughly what they are, since those are the core stats. If you vary the play style from this build, feel free to swap Strength and Charisma. With this build we’ll shoot for 20 Charisma, so we’ll suffer a bit in direct damage bonuses, but check out the comparison:

Effects of Charisma on Build	Effects of Strength on Build
To hit bonus via Sacred Weapon: Imbue Weapon	To hit bonus
Skill - Deception	Damage bonus
Skill - Insight	Raw Strength ability checks
Skill - Intimidation	Skill - Athletics
Skill - Persuasion	Strength saving throws (grappled)
Charisma saving throws (charmed)
Paladin Feature - Aura of Protection
Paladin Feature - Abjure Foes
Smite - Banishing Smite
Smite - Blinding Smite
Smite - Searing Smite
Smite - Staggering Smite
Smite - Thunderous Smite
Smite - Wrathful Smite
Spells (non-exhaustive)
- Banishment
- Command
- Dispel Magic
- Geas
- Guardian of Faith
- Magic Circle
- Zone of Truth

So while we won’t be the strongest ~~Avenger~~ knight, Charisma will enhance a lot of our Paladin features, not to mention that we can be the “face of the party”.

Dexterity is our dump stat unfortunately, which means we’ll be late in initiative order typically, but that will just give us a better chance to assess the battlefield. I generally don’t like the idea of playing a low Intelligence character so we’ll go with 10 for Intelligence. Wisdom at 12 is a little more our speed, rather than bookish knowledge, and will give a tiny bump when resisting lots of spell affects.

Equipment

For our Paladin’s Starting Equipment I chose option A, with some modifications (Or you could call it an easier way to purchase items with Option B). After selecting Option A, remove the Longsword, Shield, and Holy Water, and then add a Greatsword.

For our Entertainer Background Starting Equipment, I chose option A for the Musical Instrument (Flute), some other performance-related gear, and 11 GP.

The above options set us up nicely until we’re able to save enough money for Plate Armor. You may want to buy some Holy Water when you get a chance since we “sold it” at the start.

And that’s it for level 1. Go spread peace and order throughout the land!

ASI Progression (Ability Score Increases)

Beyond selecting our Oath, we’ll need to take ASI’s at levels 4, 8, 12 and 16. Here’s what we’ll do for this build:

Level 4 - Mage Slayer to round out Strength.
Level 8 - Charisma x2 to bring it to 18.
Level 12 - Charisma x2 to bring it to 20.
Level 16 - Whatever you want!

Spell Progression

The other selections we’ll need to make along the way is for our spells. Here is a decent plan. Again, feel free to modify to fit your playstyle and party composition:

Level 1 - 2 Prepared

1 - Cure Wounds - Keep yourself alive.
1 - Divine Favor - Dish out some extra damage.

Level 2 - 3 Prepared, 1 from class

1 - Bless - Buff your party
From base class:
- Divine Smite

Level 3 - 4 Prepared, 2 from subclass, 1 from class

1 - Command -
From Oath of Devotion subclass:
- 1 - Protection from Evil and Good
- 1 - Shield of Faith

Level 4 - 5 Prepared, 2 from subclass, 1 from class

1 - Thunderous Smite