Elemental Paladin Oath: Water (5e Paladin Subclass)

The Oath of the Deluge

Your worship of the elemental has made you a merciful and wise paladin; you know the powerful cleansing magic of water and the strength of a surging tide.

How you came to serve Water:

1) Childhood Accident: you survived a brush with a watery death. The divine touch of your god kept you from death’s door.

2) The Spirit’s Call: the water spirits come to you in your dreams. They teach you how to shape water.

3) Purified: you were poisoned or diseased. A paladin in services to the Water Lord washed away your ailments.

4) Avenging the Fallen: a demonic invasion has claimed your family, town and nation. You seek to end the threat.

5) Legacy of Water: your father was a paladin, and his father before him and his before as well. Your bloodline has always served.

6) Auspicious Birth: you were born under auspicious signs or conditions; perhaps you washed ashore in a seashell or were found inside a nest of seaweed or river reeds.

Servitors of the Primordial, Zaban'shaa, are called the Namishi. They have a commitment to protecting places of power for their watery lord. The Namishi are accomplished healers and warriors. The fighting style of the Namishi is ebb and flow, waiting for a weakness. They provide healing to any community in need and harbour the infirm at their strongholds. Water plays a great role in healing. Strongholds are always in places when fresh water is plentiful. Paladins carry many waterskins to fuel their healing spells.

The Namishi have a deep connection to the spirits of their ancestors. They revere the dead and honour them with offerings at family altars: a serving of food, the catch of the day, tokens won in battle. This connection grants the water paladins protection and insight.

The Namishi and Köz Esgar are enemies locked in an ancient, primordial feud. Diplomacy between the factions is never successful and allying with one makes an enemy of the other.

Tenets of the Deluge:

Soothe the Wounded: bring the healing grace of water to those in need.

Extinguish the Rampant Flame: take battle to those that spread flame or heinous destruction in their wake.

Sure as Surging Seas: be steadfast, decisive and forthright. A wave never turns aside until it breaks on the shore.

No Elemental Alliances: you can serve no other Primordial force.

Oath of the Deluge Spells

You gain oath spells at the levels listed.

3rd: Healing Word, Armor of Agathys

5th: Hold Person, Misty Step

9th: Water Walk, Spirit Guardians

13th: Conjure Minor Elementals, Control Water

17th: Conjure Elemental, Cone of Cold

Lay on Hands and Healing Waters

Water enhances the soothing touch of healing provided by the paladin. This water calms the spirit of the healed and frees them from suffering, washing away pain. When a paladin uses water to Lay on Hands, the target may make a saving throw against any of the following condition effects, if permissible by the DM: blinded, deafened, frightened, paralyzed, stunned.

If water is used in the casting of any healing spell of 1st level or higher, add two to the total amount healed.

Channel Divinity

At 3rd level you gain the following two CD options:

Elemental Weapon: as Sacred Weapon (p86), the weapon deals cold damage.

Turn the Unholy: You can censure elementals or fiends. Within 30 feet of you, each elemental or fiend must make a Wisdom saving throw. If the creature fails its saving throw, it is turned for 1 minute or until it takes damage.

Aura of Frost

At 7th level, you are surrounded with an aura of cold. You are immune to cold damage.  Friendly creatures within 10 feet of you have resistance to cold damage.

Spirit Call

At 15th level, the paladin can call ancestral spirits to answer questions, as a Commune spell. This ritual calls upon the collected wisdom of the entire paladin bloodline. Unlike the Commune spell, the process of calling ancestors is long (at least 1 hour, but all day and night could garner better results) and in addition to the listed spell components requires an ancestral altar or powerful magic item once belonging to an ancestor. During the ritual, the paladin calls out the great deeds of the ancestors and invokes the names of his bloodline as far back as possible. His ancestors come to him and answer his three questions, they are not omniscient and their knowledge is limited to what they knew in life. When the communing ends and the ancestors return to rest.  The cumulative failure for Spirit Call is 10% (not 25% as Commune).  

Elemental Form

At 20th level, you gain the blessing of Zaban’shaa. Using your action, you can assume a watery or icy behemoth form for 1 minute and gain the following benefits:

• You gain 50 temporary hit points. You regenerate 5 of these temporary hit points at the start of each turn.
• Enemies that start their turn within 5 feet of you suffer 5 points of cold damage.
• Spells of cold and healing can be cast as bonus actions.

New Paladin Spell

Frost Smite

Casting Time: 1 bonus action

Range: Self

Components: V

Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute.

The next time you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack during the spell’s duration, your  weapon attack deals an extra 1d6 cold damage and the target is coated in a sheen of ice and its speed is reduced by 10 feet. At the start of its turn until the spell ends, the target makes a Strength saving throw. On a successful save, the target breaks free of the cloying ice and its movement returns to normal. If the target or a creature within 5 feet uses its action to break the ice, the spell ends.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell with a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the initial extra damage increases by 1d6 for each spell slot above 1st.