There are beings from beyond the material plane that threaten all life. Demons, celestials, and unmentionable monstrosities strain at the fabric of the multiverse trying to gain a foothold on the material plane. Foolish mages will sometimes even try to summon them, ignoring the danger out of hubris or desire for power. Paladins of the Oath of the Watch keep guard against such creatures, ensuring that ancient seals remain intact, divine beings remain incorporeal, and knowledge of unspeakable horrors is lost to time.
Paladins who swear the Oath of the Watch protect all of the material planes and welcome into their ranks creatures other orders shun without discrimination. Vampires, werewolves, and fae creatures labor side-by-side with the humaniod races to protect their planes against a common enemy more powerful than any of them.
I created this subclass for the purpose of a game that will start next month where I wanted to play an archaeologist-turned-demonslayer. I thought about reflavoring an Oath of the Ancients paladin, but decided I wanted someone who was specifically focused on extraplanar threats. I decided to focus on Outsiders (beings from the Outer Planes) because it added some cohesion and I liked the idea of not caring about the difference between an angel and a demon. Paladins of this oath are probably neutral as a result. I also liked that it let me play into the "avert existential risk" space, though I ended up not emphasizing it much. Homebrewery, PDF
Oath Spells: There are a lot of very flavorful non-combat spells, and I originally had almost all of the granted spells be situational utility spells. This was part of my motivation to add emphasis to opposing mages who summon Outsiders, as it justified adding Counterspell and Slow. The spells are powerful and certainly a draw of the class, but I don't think it's too much.
Channel Divinity: Turn Outsiders was easy, but the other channel divinity was quite difficult to come up with. I'm not thrilled with it, but it works well enough. The idea is to tie into the flavor about putting the Material Planes as a whole first, which I reference in the flavor text though didn't make an oath. I'm curious if it feels in flavor enough to keep, or alternatively what you'd replace it with.
Aura of Detection: This was the hardest part to nail down, but at least I have something thematic that fits here. It's pretty weak compared to other auras, but provides low-grade utility throughout.
Magical Secrets: The idea that in addition to locking away magic you've been picking it up as you go seems like a great flavor win to me. I thought about adding a rider to it like the wizard rider about copying spells, but . A subtle source of power for this ability is that the spells don't need to be prepared, so you have more versatility in your spells each day.
Planar Protector: My idea of the ultimate capstone is an ability that you're happy to use to its fullest once, at the end of the campaign. I am thinking about saying that the creature simply doesn't get a save to override Legendary Resistance but I'm not sure how OP that is / how much it's worth bothering to balance capstones.
Random things: I like the symmetry of having one eldritch horror, one demon (yes Xenagos isn't a demon in MTG but he sure looks like one here), and one angel in the images. However it bothers me slightly that two of the images depict the same paladin. Unfortunately I couldn't find art for either of them that I liked more. I would probably prefer to replace the art depicting fighting an angel than the cover at. How silly am I being?
I was highly surprised and very sad to find it was somewhat difficult to find Dresden Files fan art. I thought there'd be buckets of that.
Submitted December 09, 2019 at 11:23PM by StellaAthena https://ift.tt/38jxxxw
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