I love the Oath feats for their roleplay potential, but I absolutely abhor them as Class feats. For the same reason that skill feats were separated from general feats, I think that these Oath feats shouldn't be put up against class feats.
Now of course, the feats themselves are incredibly powerful when they come into play. If you're fighting vampires the whole campaign, then Shining Oath is nuts. But in most campaigns, where you're not focused on any particular enemy type, you end up with a situation where 90% of the time the feat is useless, and 10% of the time, you're slicing your way through enemies like butter.
I don't think that's the way to approach situational feats in general. I think it would've been better to give a more moderate bonus against the selected enemy, together with some other bonus that's more widely applicable, but also useful against the selected enemy. For example, for the dragon oath, you could set it up so that it provides a smaller damage bonus against dragons, but in exchange, the player receives some way of giving yourself acid, fire, lightning, and/or frost resistance. The resistance is useful against dragons, and also useful in other situations as well, so you don't regret taking the feat all the rest of the time when you're not fighting dragons.
I think the best option, however, would be to just provide the oaths as an optional class feature instead of a feat.
I like the idea of making them more useful broadly (though I forget what they do now, I just know they got buffed hard from the Playtest), but what would making them optional Class Features solve? You've still got an optional choice that can be useless a lot if you aren't fighting much of x, it's just a Feature instead of a Feat now. Still the same problem.
The difference would be that as class features, they aren't competing against more practical options like Deity's domain, Ranged Reprisal, or a multiclass dedication, so there's no opportunity cost to be resentful about.
There are a lot of these situational/flavour abilities competing with combat feats, and wasn't separating feats supposed to remove those conflicts?
Mmm... I'm in two minds here. I take the point that these feats are weird for class feats in just how specific and focused they are. And yet, they do feel uniquely Paladin/Champion to me. It's not everyone who swears to fight X evil and their faith gives them powers in doing so. It's tying into knightly/religious tropes a bit too much for that.
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Retraining is now integrated into the core rules of the game, so when you're not hunting Vampires anymore, switch it out for something more suited for the current task.
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Rysky wrote: Retraining is now integrated into the core rules of the game, so when you're not hunting Vampires anymore, switch it out for something more suited for the current task. That completely defeats the point of taking an oath if you're just gonna back out of it when it's convenient. I'd even go so far as to say that abandoning your oath is a lie, and therefore a violation of the Paladin code.
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Strill wrote: Rysky wrote: Retraining is now integrated into the core rules of the game, so when you're not hunting Vampires anymore, switch it out for something more suited for the current task. That completely defeats the point of taking an oath if you're just gonna back out of it when it's convenient. I'd even go so far as to say that reneging on your oath is a lie, and therefore a violation of the Paladin code. Not really. If I swear an Oath to slay Velstadt and his unholy brood I think it's fair to retrain that once the task is done.
Retraining takes downtime so it isn't a willy nilly swap.
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Malk_Content wrote: Strill wrote: Rysky wrote: Retraining is now integrated into the core rules of the game, so when you're not hunting Vampires anymore, switch it out for something more suited for the current task. That completely defeats the point of taking an oath if you're just gonna back out of it when it's convenient. I'd even go so far as to say that reneging on your oath is a lie, and therefore a violation of the Paladin code. Not really. If I swear an Oath to slay Velstadt and his unholy brood I think it's fair to retrain that once the task is done.
Retraining takes downtime so it isn't a willy nilly swap. ^ This.
You took an oath to destroy vampires, and then you did.
Now there's no more vampires around but you are hearing about Fiends attacking a town nearby.
This is one set of feats for 2nd level. And (I'm at work, so I'll have to look later, but) can't you just choose another 1st level feat instead of the oath feat? Champions get a class feat every 2 levels. This seems like a very nitpicky thing to get..um.. nitpicky about.
Barnabas Eckleworth III wrote: This is one set of feats for 2nd level. And (I'm at work, so I'll have to look later, but) can't you just choose another 1st level feat instead of the oath feat? Champions get a class feat every 2 levels. This seems like a very nitpicky thing to get..um.. nitpicky about. The 1st level feats of the champion aren't exactly numerous. You got the upgrade feat for your reaction and picking a deity. That's it. You probably got one of them at level 1 and might simply not want/need the other one.
Second level also has only Divine Grace as it's only non-oath option. It's a decent feat, but I'd imagine most paladin's will want to use their reaction for their class reaction and shield block most of the time.
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Seems like the perfect time to pick up cleric dedication and recapture some 1e half casting.
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