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has anyone combined a paladin/sorcerer or paladin/wizard and used smite with their spells yet? i looked over the description of smite briefly. i knew paladins could smite with ranged weapons, and that they could switch weapons, but it hadn't occurred to me that you could combine smite and spells yet.
The rules for smite only talk about damage, not weapon damage, so by the RAW, this would work.
This seems like it is probably a reasonable tactic, but not overpowered. It's largely balanced by the fact that spell damage generally scales as 1d6/level, while smite damage scales as 1/level. To increase one, you are going to have to decrease the other.
With spells, it's also going to be difficult to apply the smite damage multiple times per round. Quickened Acid Splash requires Wizard 7/Paladin 1 and only does 1d3+1 damage, which is negligible at 8th level.
I don't think it smite is precision damage, so scorching ray would eventually get smite damage 3 times. Still, sorcerer 11/paladin 9 gives 12d6+27 damage (average 69). A paladin 20 with strength 24 and a +5 long sword is doing 1d8+32 (average 36.5), so two hits is better damage (and that is no where close to an optimized build).
A straight wizard/sorcerer or paladin will out-damage this build in most situations. It does increase your versatility. It also creates the option for a smite touch attack, if the target has an insane AC. It also allows access to some range personal spells. Form of the Dragon and smite could be nasty (at least 5 attacks with +0 or -5 penalties).
This probably starts to be a strong build around level 20 and gets better for a while after that. At level 20, you could be sorcerer 12/paladin 8, giving you access to Form of the Dragon I and +8 smite.
To draw a personal conclusion from what udalrich wrote, a single level in sorcerer might be worth it for RP reasons, and having the touch attack smite is a great bonus. The opposite, two levels of paladin for a sorcerer, might be worth it for divine grace and cha to attack bonus, but it may not be worth losing a whole spell level.
We're in a gestalt game at the moment and our paladin/sorcerer laid the smack down on a BBEG (undead) with smite evil and Scorching Ray. It was some pretty sick damage (level 11) for a level 2 spell.
Of course that was gestalt. I can't comment about how useful it would be for a multiclassed pally/sorcerer.