Arcane Paladin: Oath of Study (PEACH)

[sandmote]

The Oath of Study on Homebrewery (https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/SkHpQ37X14) (Last updated Dec. 9th)
This is a Paladin subclass themed around arcane spells.

Tenets Tenants of Study
The tenets tenants of the Oath of Study vary between learning institutions, but otherwise share a focus on gaining, maintaining, and spreading knowledge to those who wish to learn, and a few of those who don't.

Preserve Knowledge: What is now known must not be lost. Learn as much as you can, from as many sources as you can.
Defend Learning: Places of learning of critical to storing and spreading knowledge. You must stand against those that would destroy such institutions.
Discover: New knowledge is out there, waiting. Go, and bring this knowledge back.
Pass On: If the knowledge you have gathered is to outlast you, it must be shared with others.



Oath of Study Spells


Paladin Level
Spells


3rd
Feather Fall, Magic Missile


5th
Knock, Magic Weapon


9th
Speak With Dead, Tongues


13th
Dimension Door, Locate Creature


17th
Legend Lore, Wall of Force



I've also considered Comprehend Language, Clairvoyance, Counterspell, and Dispel Magic, but figure the listed spells fit an "arcane" theme slightly better.


Channel Divinity
When you take this oath at 3rd level, you gain the following two Channel Divinity options.

Find Hidden Knowledge: As a bonus action, you grant yourself a +5 bonus to Intelligence checks for the next 10 minutes.
Knowledge of Foes: You spend 1 action observing a creature outside of combat and can learn certain information about its capabilities compared to your own. The DM tells you if the creature is your equal, superior, or inferior in regard to three of the following characteristics of your choice:

Strength score
Dexterity score
Constitution score
Intelligence score
Wisdom score
Charisma score
Armor Class
Current hit points
Total class levels (if any)
Grant Power Arcane: You cast any wizard spell of 1st or second level, consuming a spell slot as normal without needing a spell slot.
I'm fairly sure the first option is underpowered and the second is overpowered, but I'm not sure what else would work better.


Aura Of Halting
Starting at 7th level, you and friendly creatures within 10 feet of you gain a +2 to its AC while you are conscious, and any creature of your choice attempting to teleport or instantly travel any distance while within your aura must first succeed on a wisdom saving throw, or the spell or ability it is using fails. At 18th level, the range of this aura increases to 30 feet.
A defensive bonus in addition to increased saving throws, and one to help target spellcasters.


Arcane Sight Resistance to Spying
You can see things others cannot, granting the following benefits:

You can see invisible creatures and objects within your aura.
You gain darkvision to a range of 60 feet. If you already posses darkvision, its range is extended by 60 feet.
You have advantage on investigation checks and saving throws to discern illusions.


Beginning at 15th level, you are always under the effects of a Nondetection spell.
A fairly simple benefit, at a level most paladin sub classes don't grant much. I'm questioning if I should make it a choice of whether the Paladin can maintain nondetection.


Arcane Master
At 20th level, as an action, you can magically become an avatar of arcane knowledge, gaining the following benefits for 1 minute:


You have resistance to acid, cold, fire, lightning, and thunder damage.
You can use your Lay on Hands feature as a bonus action.
When you use your divine smite, you can regain one expended spell slot. The slot you regain must be of a level lower than the spell slot you expended for your divine smite.


A massive mage-killer boost.

[sandmote]

Thank you for the response, and I agree with pretty much all of it. A good chunk of it was what I initally tried, but could not get to work (as detailed below).

This looks interesting. A few notes though:

Yes, the Grant power arcane is overpowered. At 3rd level, when you get this, you only have 3 1st level spell slots and won't get a 2nd level one till 5th level (the next tier up). If you made this somehow scale by level, it might be better.
I tried initially limiting to the level of your Oath Spells, which looked worse. Should I purely limit it to 1st level spells, or grant 2nd level spells 9th level and 3rd level spells at 17th (ie. half the original progression)? not even grant 3rd level spells?


For the find hidden knowledge, perhaps you can detect the presence of magic items or traps or you gain an insight into a foe.
You can do the other two with detect magic and find traps, so insights sound good. How does the following sound?


Knowledge of Foes
You spend 1 observing observing creature outside of combat and can learn certain information about its capabilities compared to your own. The DM tells you if the creature is your equal, superior, or inferior in regard to three of the following characteristics of your choice:

Strength score
Dexterity score
Constitution score
Intelligence score
Wisdom score
Charisma score
Armor Class
Current hit points
Total class levels (if any)
It's stronger than the Battle Master's Know Your Enemy, but uses up a valuable resource


Some of the higher-level features seem to go against the oath. You are supposed to seek out and share new knowledge, so you become very good at killing wizards (who have much knowledge)....
I was thinking you'd be working against wizards trying to consolidate their power by becoming the sole holders of various knowledge, and possibly reacting to experiments gone wrong.

Admittedly, the original idea was to knock off the Oath of Redemption's Emissary of redemption, with a passive bonus that gets canceled in certain situations. And suggestion for how to get that to work?


The spying ability seems to go against the idea of sharing knowledge. Perhaps insteaad, you are able to spy better, in order to gain more knowledge. Perhaps truesight...
I had trouble making something match the level of other oaths. Truesight is very powerful...
Arcane Sight
You can see things others cannot, granting the following benefits:

You can see invisible creatures and objects within your aura.
You gain darkvision to a range of 60 feet.
You have advantage on investigation checks and saving throws to discern illusions.

And then grant truesight as part of the capstone, with the player reverting to this whenever they lose it?


All in all though, this does look interesting. I always like paladin sub-classes because they often are twists upon the default Oath of Devotion views of paladins. This concept for a paladin very much intrigues me. A library sends its resident paladin out to quest for new knowledge to bring back to the library? Sounds like a cool backstory/character idea.
[/LIST]
I think 3.5 had a couple variants, but I really dislike the stereotypical paladin. And not just the whole stereotype of being lawful stupid and/or stupid good.

[noob]

Resistance to Spying
Beginning at 15th level, you are always under the effects of a Nondetection spell.
A fairly simple benefit, at a level most paladin sub classes don't grant much. I'm questioning if I should make it a choice of whether the Paladin can maintain nondetection.

by getting this ability from your oath you break your oath:

Pass On: If the knowledge you have gathered is to outlast you, it must be shared with others.
you have gathered the knowledge about yourself and you are preventing with that power people from knowing what you know about yourself: with that power you prevent sharing through divination.
Oh sorry I did not see you updated the ability to replace it by something more logical.

[sandmote]

Maybe try doing it by tier? I'm really not sure what to do with this. Maybe just do something like you can temporarily learn a wizard spell but must cast it with your own spell slot? Maybe you can cast this spell using a spell slot that is of level 1 lower than required? I really don't know what to do with this. I am personally not the best at balancing things.
Using a spell slot is probably a good idea. It already gives you the entire list of wizard spells for the appropriate level, so it probably needs the extra balance.


These seems cool. Maybe you can even eat up two of your info slots to learn what its worst save is?
I'll think about that, but it seems a bit meta. The main balance for that is that you're comparing stats with yourself instead of learning them.


I don't really know much about the oath of redemption (don't have xanthar's. That's partly why I try to homebrew sublasses), so I can't comment on that. I know that it doesn't mesh with this level's "constant effect" pattern, but it would be cool if you could somehow steal the knowledge of an enemy wizard by... draining and gaining part of their intelligence score? learning one of their spells if they cast it? Arcane trickster's spell stealing thingy? When withing certain radius of spellcaster, temporarily learn one of the spells? I don't know about balance. But, this would be really cool if you could do something like this.
As far as I recall, that oath is the only one with an always on effect. The others either last for 1 minute or 1 hour per long rest.


sounds pretty good. Maybe there's a bonus on the darkvision front if you already have darkvision? Try to compare to the divination wizards ability. I don't have the PHB in front of me right now so I can't say.
I'll add that when I write it into the original post.


I agree. That's why I like your subclass. If you want another paladin subclass like this, check out my Oath of the Undying.
Oath of the Undying is pretty cool. An excellent tank.


by getting this ability from your oath you break your oath:

you have gathered the knowledge about yourself and you are preventing with that power people from knowing what you know about yourself: with that power you prevent sharing through divination.
Oh sorry I did not see you updated the ability to replace it by something more logical.

That was a reasonable concern, but even before I changed the ability I was considering there to be a distinction between "sharing knowledge" and "having knowledge stolen from you." Additionally, the existing wording doesn't require spreading knowledge to all who wish to learn. As an extreme example, the oath shouldn't be broken if you refuse to teach the evil lich how succeed on their evil plans.

[sandmote]

I was referring to the 15th level oath abilities. The devotion oath has it where you are always affected by a protection form good and evil. Ancients makes you always be unable to be aged magically or suffer from old age.
Apologies for the confusion. My earlier concern with nondetection was whether the spell is always a benefit. For example, if you get captured, you might want to allow your allies to start searching for you with magic.


Maybe add that if you are good, you seek to spread knowledge for the greater good?
I figure that's tied to their alignment rather than the oath. So an Evil Oath of Study Paladin isn't forced to pass on knowledge to help people, and a Good Oath of Study Paladin isn't forced to inform the BBEG how to stop the party.

[Lacuna Caster]

Tenants of Study
Teensy nitpick- that should be 'tenet', not 'tenant'.

[noob]

Apologies for the confusion. My earlier concern with nondetection was whether the spell is always a benefit. For example, if you get captured, you might want to allow your allies to start searching for you with magic.


I figure that's tied to their alignment rather than the oath. So an Evil Oath of Study Paladin isn't forced to pass on knowledge to help people, and a Good Oath of Study Paladin isn't forced to inform the BBEG how to stop the party.

Any oath of study paladin is forced to tell the bbeg how to stop the plans of his party if he have only one other person in his party and that the bbeg is the only one here outside of his party.
But that oath of study paladin is forced to tell a whole lot of other things to the bbeg.

[sandmote]

Teensy nitpick- that should be 'tenet', not 'tenant'.

I've been misreading that this entire time.


Any oath of study paladin is forced to tell the bbeg how to stop the plans of his party if he have only one other person in his party and that the bbeg is the only one here outside of his party.
But that oath of study paladin is forced to tell a whole lot of other things to the bbeg.

I don't follow your reasoning for this, but okay. Any suggestions on how to fix this problem?

[noob]

Forgive me if I misinterpreted what noob meant, but I think that he's saying that if there is nobody else around but the BBEG, you have to share all of your knowledge with him. I don't think you should worry about this as it will never happen, and you could always just find more people to talk to. This just seems like an impossible situation that will never come up. And if this did come up, any reasonable DM should just let it slide.

it happens relatively often: you are in a fight against the bbeg and you only have one team mate left and you have an idea on how to beat the bbeg.
since you might die and that every knowledge must be passed on to at least two persons(else it would not be a plural) then you have to say your plan that you just made(and so which is a knowledge which you did not communicate yet to two other persons)

[sandmote]

it happens relatively often: you are in a fight against the bbeg and you only have one team mate left and you have an idea on how to beat the bbeg.
since you might die and that every knowledge must be passed on to at least two persons(else it would not be a plural) then you have to say your plan that you just made(and so which is a knowledge which you did not communicate yet to two other persons)

"If the knowledge you have gathered is to outlast you, it must be shared with others."

That doesn't require you to share the knowledge immediately, or say that you are forced to share every idea you have. If you want the tested information you have to be retained after you die, you have to share it in some form, with at least some number of beings.

That is, admittedly, an archaic phrasing for the concept, although most the tenets for oaths are written similarly. Still, the basic idea is closer to O-Chul tracking Xykon's spells (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0670.html) than having to tell at least two people everything that pops into your head.

Edit: also superninja109's point about it basically being rules lawyering.

[noob]

"If the knowledge you have gathered is to outlast you, it must be shared with others."

That doesn't require you to share the knowledge immediately, or say that you are forced to share every idea you have. If you want the tested information you have to be retained after you die, you have to share it in some form, with at least some number of beings.

That is, admittedly, an archaic phrasing for the concept, although most the tenets for oaths are written similarly. Still, the basic idea is closer to O-Chul tracking Xykon's spells (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0670.html) than having to tell at least two people everything that pops into your head.

Edit: also superninja109's point about it basically being rules lawyering.

It is still knowledge you gathered in this fight and it must outlast you and since you are likely to die soon.
Also do not forget each time there is a paladin code there will be a gm which only purpose in its entire life is to make your paladin fall even if it is at the cost of his real life.

[sandmote]

It is still knowledge you gathered in this fight and it must outlast you and since you are likely to die soon.
Also do not forget each time there is a paladin code there will be a gm which only purpose in its entire life is to make your paladin fall even if it is at the cost of his real life.

I think I'm making a distinction between an idea and knowledge. After all, your example was

you have an idea on how to beat the bbeg.

I think it wouldn't count as "knowledge" until you try out the idea. At which point the BBEG and everyone present finds out whether the idea works.

Either way, how do you suggest I fix your issue?

[noob]

If the DM wants to, they will be able to.
"Oh yeah, that looked like a monster but it was actually an innocent civilian with illusion magic applied to him. You broke your oath. Too bad"

Yes I know: playing paladins is very hard.