Paladin: Oath of Knowledge (completed)

[Requilac]

Greetings all, I have come to here to get ideas on how I may improve my homebrewed paladin sub-class; the oath of knowledge. Here is
a link to the content, the information found there should cover everything you need to know about it. Currently it is in its rough draft form and is very open to change, so please send any suggestions. I am not too attached to any of the features currently. What do you all think of this?

[JNAProductions]

Unshakable Will is way too good. Paladins are already kings of saves (second only to high level Monks), so giving twice proficiency to all mental saves? That's insane. Just giving Int saves and resistance to Psychic is good enough.

Rest of it looks good.

[Requilac]

Ehh, I just replaced unshakable will with danger sense. That feature was more than a little overpowered.

[Requilac]

Anybody else got anything to say? It has been three days since anyone posted here. And even then since the beginning of this project I got only one complaint on a single feature. If no one responds in another three days I am going to consider it completed.

[Blackbando]

I'll give a quick drive-by review of this, while I have a few minutes to spare, right now.

Spells
They all look thematically nice. I'm a little skeptical if hallucinatory terrain is a good idea for the theme of the class, but the other spells fit perfectly.

Channel Divinities
Considering how much info Eyes of the Tactician can grant, which admittedly is dependent on the creature on how useful it is, I think it should be a bonus action. Aside from that, they're pretty good.

Aura of Vigilance
I feel like it should add your Charisma modifier instead of a flat +5, but aside from that it's pretty fine.

Danger Sense
I think this works well for the subclass, but part of me feels like it could be something else that fits more.

Mantle of the Commander
The fact it has a creature take the Attack action makes me a little uneasy, but considering this is a classic 20th level paladin super-saiyan mode, it should be fine.

Overall
Pretty good subclass, which may have some issues thematically, potentially, but otherwise is mechanically balanced.

[Requilac]

Spells
They all look thematically nice. I'm a little skeptical if hallucinatory terrain is a good idea for the theme of the class, but the other spells fit perfectly.

I don’t have great confidence in hallucinatory terrain either. So far my main strategy was to just give them all divination spells , but I could only find one good 4th level divination spell for them so I was a little hard pressed by what I could add in for the second slot. I don’t see anything thematically innapropriate about hallucinatory terrain though. Just imagine how useful that spell would be to any sort of military strategist. The issue though is that I am not sure how much use it will get. I considered giving them dimension door, but I don’t quite see how that fits in any better.

Channel Divinities
Considering how much info Eyes of the Tactician can grant, which admittedly is dependent on the creature on how useful it is, I think it should be a bonus action. Aside from that, they're pretty good.

The thing about eyes of the tactician though is that it grants information which you could most likely pick up on without using the feature. Guessing a monster’s damage and condition immunities is not really hard. To keep it from being underpowered I did not want it to be a bonus action.

Aura of Vigilance
I feel like it should add your Charisma modifier instead of a flat +5, but aside from that it's pretty fine.

Good idea, I will make it dependent on charisma modifier and add it in whenever I get the time.

Danger Sense
I think this works well for the subclass, but part of me feels like it could be something else that fits more.

The issue with this is that all paladins get some passive defensive feature themselves at that level, and I don’t quite know what else I could add in. If you have any ideas for what I could replace it with I am all ears, but to be completely honest, I don’t know what else it would work any better.

[DaveOTN]

I feel that a paladin operating under this oath would be honor-bound to use Eyes of the Tactician for almost all of their Channel Divinity actions. With "striving to obtain more knowledge whenever possible" and "meticulously study your enemy and learning every weakness" as tenets of the oath (not tenents, by the way), one could make a credible argument that failing to use Eyes of the Tactician when you have the chance is denying yourself useful information. You never know - maybe you'll realize that random orc #4 has a 19 intelligence, tipping off the party that he's actually a wizard.

It's probably a minor point, but I might rewrite those two tenets to provide more explicit guidance that hopefully rules out that avenue for a vengeful DM. Maybe:
Pursue Knowledge: Information is a valuable weapon. While you can act with limited information in an emergency, you pledge to gather as much information as possible on a situation before acting as time allows.

Know Your Enemy: If you know yourself and you know the enemy, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. You never pass up an opportunity to interrogate a foe, examine capture correspondence, or study a monster in its native habitat.

That's just a first pass - maybe something like that? I'm just trying to keep the spirit of those sections while avoiding a reading that says "Use Eyes of the Tactician at at every opportunity."

[Requilac]

I feel that a paladin operating under this oath would be honor-bound to use Eyes of the Tactician for almost all of their Channel Divinity actions. With "striving to obtain more knowledge whenever possible" and "meticulously study your enemy and learning every weakness" as tenets of the oath (not tenents, by the way), one could make a credible argument that failing to use Eyes of the Tactician when you have the chance is denying yourself useful information. You never know - maybe you'll realize that random orc #4 has a 19 intelligence, tipping off the party that he's actually a wizard.

It's probably a minor point, but I might rewrite those two tenets to provide more explicit guidance that hopefully rules out that avenue for a vengeful DM. Maybe:
Pursue Knowledge: Information is a valuable weapon. While you can act with limited information in an emergency, you pledge to gather as much information as possible on a situation before acting as time allows.

Know Your Enemy: If you know yourself and you know the enemy, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. You never pass up an opportunity to interrogate a foe, examine capture correspondence, or study a monster in its native habitat.

That's just a first pass - maybe something like that? I'm just trying to keep the spirit of those sections while avoiding a reading that says "Use Eyes of the Tactician at at every opportunity."

I don’t believe I quite understand what you are trying to say. Are you saying that someone would never use cripple the arcane because eyes of the tactician would always be the more thematically appropriate option to go with? To me that does not make much sense. Part of the tenets of the oath of knowledge is also pragmatism (show under restraint), so the most thematically appropriate thing to do would actually to do whatever is most efficient. If cripple the arcane will end up being more useful than eyes of the tactician, than they should use that. Of course eyes of the tactician will receive greater use as it works in more situations than cripple the arcane, but that does not mean cripple the arcane will receive absolutely no use. I am struggling to understand where your concerns are coming from.

[Requilac]

It has been a week since I made any changes to this class, and everyone so far has agreed that it is well built for the most part. If you have anything left to say, do so in the next 24 hours, because if no further changes are made to it by then than I would put it in its final draft form. By the end of that time I am going to be moving the homebrew page over to my lovecraftian homebrew compendium in my signature so you will probably notice that the normal link does not work, but you can still find the class there.