Paladins make their debut in Baldurs Gate 3 as one of the starting classes. There are four approachable subclasses with varying skills and spells. Paladins feel more versatile than their Dungeons and Dragons counterparts, being more of a fighter with the traits of clerics rather than undead slayers. This incredibly powerful class combines smites with strength, charisma, and heavy armor. In Dungeons and Dragons Paladin and Baldurs Gate 3, oaths are the source of power instead of divine forces.
If you enjoy up close and personal combat, healing yourself, or buffing your attacks, Paladin is for you. It features some of the best combative magic spells and stat indexes. Strength and magic-wielding potential can make you the champion of your oath. A paladin of history and religion could also buy into your magic. With the ability to spend a feature on spell casting from another class, the Paladin class has something for everyone.
For players who enjoy freedom from their actions, the Oathbreaker will undoubtedly be the best choice among all Paladin subclasses. Despite being seen as the evil option, they can easily become neutral forces for good. Adding mobility or extra magic options is one of the best race options for this class. A Githyanki, or half-orc, allows players to maximize their combat potential with a paladin, making them more powerful.
Paladin Playstyle
Paladins are essentially a magical version of fighters and barbarians. They fit an impromptu battle mage with specialized buffs and physical magical attacks if they cannot fulfill this role. Paladins do not typically use ranged spells, but they have access to summons, heals, buffs, and powerful elemental smites. Give your paladin both heavy armor and alternate spell casting right away. Choose either a druid or wizard since they will give your character more ranged spells or buffs.
Paladins have plenty of heals, but they are also damage dealers. Never force them into a pure support role unless they are out of smites and combat power. You should use these heals and buffs on yourself and others in combat. Paladins are charismatic outside of fighting, making them excellent negotiators. However, they are great intimidators and often have a strong sense of religion and history, which makes them perfect for dungeon crawls.
A Paladin can be played in three major ways, mostly depending on the player’s approach to Dungeons and Dragons. You can either play an aggressive role where combat is key, a defensive one where you boost yourself and your allies, or a utility role where skills and saving throws are more important. The aggressive attacker, the tank, or the group’s spokesperson are the three main options.
Two handed weapons are a good damage dealer for Paladin Classes
Aggressive Attacker
As an aggressive attacker, your focus will be on damage output. You’ll want to pick a fighting style that will add base damage to your dice, like great weapons fighting or dueling. Physically more damaging and deadly accurate, your spells will be a mix of buffs and attacks. Dash can be boosted by transportation magic like misty step or jump. As often as you can, swing at your enemies and take up as much strength and charisma as you can.
Due to your strength and charisma, you’ll be perfect for intimidation, athletics, and persuasion rolls outside of combat. When playing this build, you will typically stick to medium or heavy armor and a two-handed weapon. As a result of these upgrades, you will be able to deal the most physical damage. To make the most of these smites, make sure your charisma stat is as high as possible. When done correctly, aggressive smiting can be a very effective sneak attack for a Paladin.
Ranged combat is an alternative play style for aggressive attacker Paladins. You can easily create a ranged paladin by taking on wizard spellcasters or even clerics. You can keep this class out of sight by using crossbow master and mobile as feats. Rather than strength, you should focus on dexterity for this build.
Paladin’s Holy Auras
Defensive Tanks
Paladins who prefer the tank role over the attacker role can do so relatively easily. You can become an unnaturally long-lived combatant by buffing and healing your spells. Combining this with heavy armor, a shield, and a single weapon combo will allow you to stay up as long as possible. Protective or defensive fighting styles will help you differentiate what kind of tank you want to play. When defending others, protection will halve their damage. If you want to be the immortal tank, you focus on defensive fighting.
Tanks should focus on constitution and charisma to maximize their HP and healing. Moreover, they should take a feature in fighters to gain the battle master perks of parrying, disarming, and flourishing. As a result, your character can easily counterattack incoming threats, reducing their damage. Being an effective tank requires spells like bane, bless, aid, and fear. Additionally, spells that target your paladin will reduce the pressure on your allies, making them more effective.
In order to cast better spells, defensive paladins rely on higher charisma. Due to this, they are perfect for diplomatic approaches and can run a trap gauntlet quickly. Keep your armor class high while remaining vulnerable to damage. In this defensive role, you want to prolong the fight as much as possible, not win it.
Paladins – Holy Knights
Utility Paladins
If you don’t want to fight, Paladins can also make excellent support units. They can easily gain divine favor and guidance in roles that help them succeed more often. Generally, Paladins are capable of handling most situations due to their high charisma stats. They cannot heal as well as clerics, but they can do more than bards or druids. Jump, expedient retreat, and misty step are powerful utility spells that can make traversal easier.
There isn’t much Paladins can do besides knowledge, history, insights, and persuasion. Due to the lack of crafting or performance, the Paladin serves better in a tight situation than in an open area. The Paladin can open many doors in society that other classes cannot, making them useful in towns and religious sects. Supporting your paladins is a disservice to their abilities, and should be avoided unless you’re aiming for pacifism.
Class Features – Paladins
Paladins will gain access to several class features which make them more useful during combat. Some of these abilities come from the initial undertaking of their oath, whereas some come from leveling up. The bread and butter of the Paladin class remain to be both their lay-on hands and smite abilities. Lay On Hands allows you to have a fair amount of healing potential while smites are one of the leading causes of death among monsters who meet paladins. Besides this, divine health and channel oath charges allow you to replenish yourself quickly while maintaining durability.
Power of the Holy Smite
Early Game
Early in the game, the paladin is a very effective fighter class that can make use of martial weapons and medium armor. They have access to healing spells and buffs which can make them exceptionally useful on the battlefield. Using their lay-on-hand ability, and holy smites, you’ll be able to deal enough damage to compensate for the lack of an extra attack. Importantly, these abilities make you a great front-line combatant no matter where you choose to put your skill points.
Trying different combinations of paladin spells under your specific oath can allow you to benefit from different things early on. For instance, the Oath of Ancients will allow you to speak with animals which makes quest-solving that much easier. Vice versa, the path of vengeance offers the player more attack combinations out of the gate. Finally, the path of devotion focuses on divination and healing, making the player a potent buff caster throughout the early experience.
Channel Oath Charges
One of the Paladin’s most potent abilities is to channel their divine oath into a form of charge for certain attacks and actions like intimidation. This allows the Paladin to have an upward advantage outside of simple guidance or inspiration rolls. When placed with races like the Githyanki and their astral knowledge, you can create a potent combo in any situation! These charges will expand with your level, and help with certain spells, attacks, and special actions available throughout your playthrough. It’s important to note that these special charges should be reserved for when you need them most as they can only be restored after a long rest!
Third level paladin Spells expand on previous editions, along with focusing on radiant damage
Divine Health
Divine Health is a specialized Paladin ability that grants the player unique resistance to diseases. This allows your character to maintain a level of protection from some of the blights that might be lurking around any corner in Baldurs Gate 3. To this degree, you have a fair amount of freedom to move around the land, free of any toxin spores or deadly sicknesses in the depths of the Underdark! This is a fundamental point of interest for a later section of the game but comes to the player early on around level 3.
Lay on Hands Charge
Lay On hands is one of the unique healing abilities of the Paladin Class, acting sort of like the healing prayer for the cleric. These charges can mean the difference between life and death early in the game and can be instrumental to victory. Every level of spell casting you achieve will amount to more potent healing options and more charges per day of this unique healing method. Lay on Hands requires physical touch, and can be restored with a short rest.
Laying on hands is a great way to keep your Paladin moving while also providing the best protection. With a single feat, you can wear heavy armor and use multiple weapons, making you more durable. With Lay on Hands, the Paladin can heal others as well as himself, which is crucial when the wizard or barbarian isn’t fighting!
Paladin Spells include the many smites, buffs, and heals common among their class.
Divine Smites
One of the many abilities you’ll acquire while playing the Paladin class is access to potent Divine Smites. These are monumentally damaging abilities that can easily shatter most opponents early on. They are a means of making up for the lack of extra attacks early on and can make melee more magic-oriented. Luckily, smites come in different varieties for damage ranging from fire and force to thunderous and radiant. Each divine smite available usually has an additional effect such as a marking smite, or sundering smite which can further leave the enemy vulnerable.
These smites can easily overwhelm high-level enemies and drain their life points before you need to use standard strikes. Smites are powered directly by your charisma score, so increase it for the best possible damage! Paladins with low charisma will have difficulty using smite, which is the class’s bread and butter!
Later Game
Once you’ve reached level six, you’ll be at the stage of being a Paladin where you are either the tank, or damage dealer of the party. By properly enhancing your charisma stat, or by creating as many spell slots as possible through enchanted equipment you can take advantage of the later levels with ease. Unlike in Dungeons and Dragons, there is not much in the way of a restriction in Baldurs Gate 3, leaving the player able to easily take out some of the higher bosses with the right equipment.
Oath of Vengence
Extra Attack
The Paladin class also offers extra attacks, sometimes making three attacks at level six compared to a fighter’s traditional two without an action surge. As a fighter, a paladin can potentially attack six times in one turn, provided none of them are spells. Baldurs Gate 3‘s boss-style enemies can be absolutely devastated by this amount of blatant damage. With their Flurry of Fist, the Paladin is more like a high-level monk without the acrobatics. An aggressive attacker’s best option is to use a Paladin Fighter with its high-volume attacks and action surge. These extra amounts of melee attacks will keep your Paladin striking more, and open up space for your nearby allies. This bonus action can make your attack rolls much more substantial, especially when using aid or bless. Spells like aid and bless will work like that of a cleric’s spell list, requiring wisdom bonuses to make the skills better.
Aura of Protection
One of the best potential abilities of the Paladin is their Aura of Protection, which grants the party an advantage on saving throws when it comes to resistance and taking damage. This makes your party slightly better off, though could be equated to something like being lucky. Should the player be knocked unconscious, Aura of Protection and Aura of Courage can be deactivated. Outside of this, it has a radius of 10 meters and acts passively.
Aura of Courage
Aura of Protection is a good ability for your party, but its bigger and more powerful brother is Aura of Courage. It makes your party immune to the frightened and fearful status effects, which larger creatures often use to their advantage. One of the most important aspects of the Paladin is that it allows aggressive conflicts with more powerful bosses. This ability can be stacked with Aura of Protection to produce passive protection from areas like the shadow curse where one Aura of Courage is powerful.
Oath of Devotion
Improved Divine Smite
The highest level ability a Paladin can acquire is their improved divine smite, making their already potent weapon even deadlier. If you maintain your oath throughout the playthrough, you’ll be able to add a 1D8 hit die to your smite attack. This affects every form of smite in your arsenal and can make even the weakest smites deadly. This extra hit die will always be radiant or necrotic damage based on your subclass, making your attacks abundant in elements!
This added radiant damage is perfect against undead and fiends alike; some of these smites offering disadvantage against your character being struck. Abilities like thunderous smite gives the player a thunder damage attack, while searing smite adds fire damage. Either way, these smites are meant to create similar damage potentials to your celestials tenets as a paladin. By doing so, you’ll gain advantage against evil creatures when using these smites that range from blinding your foes to even the ability to daze enemies.
Paladin Proficiencies (Weapons, Armour, Skills, and Saving Throws)
Paladins have an impressive lineup of skill proficiencies, armor grants, and weapons capability. They are able to wear all forms of armor and wield simple as well as martial weapons, making them typical of the fighter class. Their skill proficiencies on the other hand include religion, insight, intimidation, and persuasion. Because of this, Paladins are perfect for their strength and charisma saving throws, protecting them from social and combative instigations. Because of their holy smites, paladins focus better with either a one-handed weapon and a shield, or two-handed weapons like great swords or war hammers. Additionally, they gain a bonus to inspiration rolls, and can heal or gain guidance as an action! Besides this, paladins hold a vow of enmity against all who use evil against the common people. They have the will to cast abjure enemy, a powerful deterrent spell that makes them incredibly useful late game.
Heavily Armored is a decent perk for any paladin as it grants them plus one strength, and proficiency in heavy armor
Oaths
There are four different oaths that are available to the player under the Paladin class. Each serves as the different subclasses of this play style and makes it more versatile. Really when picking your subclass at level one, you should keep in mind that your spells will make your abilities more potent for you. If you want a character that is more aggressive than anything else, the oath of vengeance is for you. If you want to be a better healer, the oath of devotion is your perfect play style. Finally, if you enjoy interacting with the world, the Oath of Ancients grants neat abilities like speaking to animals!
Oath of Ancients is the second best paladin subclass due to its versatility and general explorative specialization
Whatever oath you choose, you’ll find a wealth of spells and cantrips to help you achieve your goals. Paladins have access to healing spells, making them versatile and more enduring than fighters or barbarians. Spell casters in the Paladin class are extremely personalized, yet incredibly powerful in both melee and the magic of their oath.
Oath of Vengence
The path of Vengence is an oath of defending those wronged by others. To this degree, you will find yourself rooting out the evil of the world in an attempt to wipe it off the face of the material plane. Using the inquisitor’s might ability, paladins can gain a potent boost to evil creatures, and humanoids. It’s incredibly important for your Paladins in this capacity to focus on either attack or defense and to walk the world learning the burdens of others. You are essentially playing the game as though you are a hero, like Batman or the Punisher.
Oath of Devotion
The Oath of Devotion focuses on martial combat and divination while causing crowd control damage. This is accomplished through the ability “Holy Rebuke,” which allows a Paladin of Devotion to passively damage anything that comes too close. This is great for early on but can be made even better with their use of healing and divination magic. Additionally, you’ll gain access to potent shielding magic and the ability to turn undead quickly! Perhaps because of its lack of one path or another, this is a great balanced build if you aren’t seeking to play an oath breaker.
The Oathbreaker Knight is the means of making your way through the game should you break your oath. Through him you can restore your oath, or take up his path
Oath of the Ancients
Finally, perhaps the best subclass to start off as with the Paladin class, the Oath of Ancients which acts as a means to interact with the world itself. Rather than just protecting the people themselves, you extend this protection to the world. Gaining a potent ability called healing radiance which allows the player to heal their team within a certain distance. As a result, you can extend the amount of time between your rests, keeping the party going longer. Oath of Ancients is a great way to explore the world through talking to animals and the dead and the general ease of access.
Oathbreaker
The player may lose their powers if dealing with the state of a holy fighter becomes too daunting to them, or if they commit too many evil offenses. As an oathbreaker, they gain access to powerful necrotic magic like darkness and fear. This is a great way to make your character an anti-hero, as well as grants you control over the undead. Due to the state of the oathbreakers’ magic, they often give up many abilities related to their former oath in exchange for that of the oathbreakers’ shadows. They serve themselves ultimately rather than the people, making them highly versatile.
As an Oathbreaker, you’ll have the ability to form a dreadful aspect; making you particularly terrifying to have to fight against. They take on the wicked traits of evil such as the ability to control undead, or willingly cause spiteful suffering. Their divine sense has been altered from someone meant to use medicine and cure wounds into something to dispatch vengeance, and become a force of reckoning.
Oathbreaker
Best Paladin Subclass
Overall, the best Paladin subclass is the Oathbreaker if you’re seeking an open-play style. It gives up a lot of social abilities from the other Paladin oaths, however, the Oathbreaker gains the ability to raise the dead, summon darkness, and a very useful aura of fear. These abilities keep your character aggressive, and with the healing and buffs that come naturally to the general Paladin class. Luckily, as an oathbreaker, you’ll be able to use the class magic outside of an oath, as well as gain your own great abilities.
Best Paladin Spells
The Paladin’s best spells are either their large array of smites, or their wide arrays of auras. Both of these allow the Paladin to be useful both in and out of combat and add both a combative edge, and a spiritual shield to your party. No matter what oath you take as a Paladin, you’ll gain access to unique heals and auras which makes you more than just a front-line attacker; keeping yourself and your party going!
Best Paladin Feats
There are two major feats you’re going to want to take on as a Paladin, that being an initiation into any of the major spell-casting platforms based on Charisma like Warlock, Bard, or Druid. These features will plug the holes in general magic that the Paladin class has. The second most important feat to pick up is tough, as it will make your health points increase by 2 additional points per level. This allows your character to become incredibly tanky, and more durable in battle.
-source: Gameranx
Best Paladin Builds
Due to the general purpose of the Paladin, the best builds are ones who specialize not only in the combat potential they have but what they can do outside of it. You’ll be a natural leader, spell caster, and damage dealer so try to focus on what you’re missing. Characters often lose access to one aspect of a campaign because they’ve thrown everything into one hat. You can focus your time on everything around you, using the best of everything. Luckily, as fans of Dungeons and Dragons, it’s clear that Larian Studios knows their holy warriors; offering magic that has no mercy, and no place for evil monsters.
