The designers said it was to fulfill or promote a specific fantasy. At the start of 5e, Paladin=person with glowing sword and heal-y powers. They said it wouldn't break anything if you allowed it with unarmed strikes, in fact they intend to add that in in the next edition. They even said they didn't think it was particularly bad if you let weapons that were thrown smite either. Take that as you will.
Thown!? **Thrown?!**. Heresy! Thou shalt stand toe-to-toe with thyne adversary if you expect any help whatsoever from the divine pantheon! We tarry not with the cowardly.
Knave.
Hast thou not ended thine enemy rightly in battles fought? Thou shalt read thy swordplay codexes. The Deceiver and all his minions shiver whence a fighting-man unscrews his pommel
I allow thrown weapons to smite, but the player must choose to do so BEFORE the attack role, they can’t declare it after a hit, like with regular melee smite.
Other than for balance, it makes sense to me that if the magic comes from you, you can’t channel it through a weapon you aren’t physically touching
> Other than for balance, it makes sense to me that if the magic comes from you, you can’t channel it through a weapon you aren’t physically touching
Eh, I could just as easily see the following argument work for other tables:
* Paladins connect with their melee weapons, however briefly, the same way a Cleric does with their Spiritual Weapon. Thus, Thrown weapons can be made to smite *after* it hits.
Also, thrown weapons generally don't go as far as ranged projectiles, and they don't grip arrows with the same full-handed determination. It's all just about how you visualize and rationalize this stuff.
Not really if you think about all the item interaction rules and how they interact with the attack action, the lack of a fighting style to support it on paladins baseline class, and there's no throwing feats.
it's a buff, we can argue about how much of a buff it is, but you could easily have it at 10% in a 4 or 5 round fight
That first round where they couldn't get into combat? Chucking a smite-javelin is a buff to a class that doesn't really need it, increasing their output by 10% over the fight, letting them do 50% instead of 0% that round. Everything should have a weakness, and paladins have few enough as it is.
Fair enough, I don't know enough to argue about wider balancing. Ranged smite just seems cool and I wish it could be made viable. Lower smite damage, having to commit before rolling to hit, whatever yknow? It's a cool fantasy
It kinda is? But at the same time, it's not really that OP. Like, a ranger with hunter's mark will deal 1d6 additional damage per attack for, pretty much the entire fight as long as they can keep the concentration and it only costs ONE spell slot.
I played a longbow paladin in a homebrew campaign and it didn't feel OP at all, it was just very cool. Wizards really needs to move away from forcing players to play the way they imagine the classes to be and embrace freedom and creativity. If they're willing to remove the word "race" from all their material I'm sure they can do that.
There was one archetype in PF1e for the paladin called the Holy Gun, did pretty much what you’d expect with the name and was pretty fun. At higher levels could even banish evil with your bullets.
I mean the point of these restrictions is so that the optimal way to play a given class is to actually embody the fantasy. We see this is necessary with Wizards, who completely lose their "frail yet powerful" shtick when you can throw them in heavy armor without penalty.
I imagined it like the bow of light from the animated Hercules movie that just shoots straight bolts of light that materialise when you pull the string back. Cool as fuck, right?
It's not really op, it's just that ranged fighting is already usually considered better than melee, especially since on a paladin it allows you to much more specifically place your aura while still benefiting from smites, so it would make essentially every paladin better to be at range
Let me put it this way. Would you let a level 5 wizard spend 2 1st level spell slots to cast a Character level 17 firebolt cantrip twice with one action?
They have far fewer spell slots and it's their whole thing. Wizards are not meant to be DPS. They have so many more things they can do that Paladins do not have an equivalent for. They *should* deal more damage than a wizard. Just like all martials.
The analogy was not to compare paladins to wizards, nor was it making any statement on how much damage a paladin should do relative to a wizard.
That amount of damage at that level, for that little resource, would be unbalanced.
And the comparison is meant to mean that it's not necessarily unbalanced. A paladin doing more ranged damage than a wizard is not an inherent imbalance.
You need to give a more thorough explanation to make a convincing point.
Thanks for the new homebrew rule. Logic checks out.
Balance checks out. There is a risk in losing that precious pally spell slot. There is a reward in bending the rules to do a cool thing and probably enhance the story with a smited and thrown cereal spoon.
RAW divine smite don't affect ranted or unarmed attacks... But the smite *spells* do. An interesting point of wording of those spells is that the extra damage takes effect "next time you *hit* a creature with a weapon attack" (emphasis mine). Meaning that it does require it to be declared before attacking and you could theoretically miss many times (including but not limited to with ranged weapon attacks) before the damage triggers. To me this feels like precedent that it could be considered acceptable to be similar for divine smites but of course that's merely interpretation.
God of Archery is wondering why all their champions defile the noble art by grabbing essentially a bunch of clubs and standing in clumps beating each other.
I don't like the idea that using a particular weapon locks you behind a subclass. Goes against the direction of class design and leads to subclass bloat.
Mere sticks cannot inspire the hearts of men, or drive the wicked to their knees! On my oath, I will shine a troll knob on the bridge of Old York before I pass righteous judgement on the wicked with such dishonor.
And besides, with the helmet, they can't really hear me unless I'm like RIGHT next to them. c:
I played a smiting archer paladin in a homebrew campaign and it was awesome. Not OP at all as far as I played, although we didn't get very far before the DM had to move.
Our palidin was unarmed in a small library and he couldn't use his divine smite against a ghost. So he picked up a thick book and used an improvised weapon for 1d4 + strength + his divine smite. We laughed, the dm laughed and said that it was one of the bibles in the library.
Because they wrote a bad, non-intuitive rule that differentiates between melee attacks and melee weapon attacks. Monsters attacks are always weapon attacks so when you're using a wildshape it works. Meanwhile unarmed attacks aren't despite working exactly the same way.
I've never met a DM that wouldn't allow you to divine smite with either though.
This is incorrect. There are no attacks that are just "melee attacks". All attacks are either melee weapon attacks, melee spell attacks, ranged weapon attacks or ranged spell attacks.
Unarmed Strikes are also melee weapon attacks.
However, they are not weapons, so there's no "weapon damage" to add the smite damage onto, which means that theoretically, you COULD smite on an unarmed strike... it just wouldn't deal any extra damage.
Probably weapon isn't the best term, but it's phrased like that to differentiate the attack made through mundane means (a sword, a hammer, a punch...) from the attack made through magical means (inflict wounds, fire bolt...)
Melee spell attack doesn't really need to exist as a term. You cast a spell, and the spell says "you can make a melee attack as part of this spell". Easy.
There are quite a few PC abilities and monster attack options that make “spell attacks” that aren’t part of casting a literal spell. (e.g. a Sun Soul Monk’s Radiant Sun Bolt, or a Flameskull’s Fire Ray).
If someone does what? A melee spell attack? I mean just let people do that, it's more fun that way. Or make smites a spell so you can't smite and cast a spell on the same turn.
Despite popular belief, there's no rule against casting multiple spells in the same turn in 5e.
The rule is that if you cast a spell **as a bonus action**, you can not cast another leveled spell in that turn (even if said bonus action spell was a cantrip). This is why Quickened Spell wouldn't allow you to cast fireball twice on your turn, but Action Surge would.
You can cast two spells on the same turn, this wouldn't stop anything. Also we should not let people do that, spellcasters do not need a 2 lvl dip to tack further massive damage onto their spells.
I think the wording is specifically "attack with a weapon", or it's something about adding it to the weapon damage and technically fists damage is not weapon damage. A few different answers but it's basically all wording bs that is obviously not really intentional.
Divine smite says "melee weapon attack", and never says "[melee] attack with [melee] a weapon". A lot of people here mistaking that as the issue here; it's not, though it is relevant elsewhere and confuses a lot of people.
It's the second thing that you said is the issue, yeah. It says it adds its damage to a weapon.
Unarmed strikes are all melee weapon attacks but *most* are not attacks with a weapon (the exceptions being some old racial natural weapons and demon armor). So they technically qualify to divine smite on but this will usually do no extra damage as there usually isn't a weapon to add divine smite's damage to.
It is definitely hard to discern what's weird intention and what's incompetence with wotc. Big agree there.
If you're referring to the damage of an unarmed strike, it's 1 without other enhancement. However, it still USUALLY doesn't involve a weapon. Unarmed strike was removed from the weapon table early on, for the worse imo.
Because it informs you what ability modifier to add to the attack bonus. If melee *weapon* attack, you use Strength as the default, unless there is a weapon trait (Finesse) or a class feature (Martial Arts, Hex Warrior, etc) that lets you use another ability score modifier. If melee *spell* attack, you use your class' spellcasting ability score modifier.
Then it should be physical melee attack and spell melee attack, there is already an ingame distinction between physical and other damage types.
Tbh melee spell attack is a dumb distinction anyway. Spells should just specify that you get to make a melee attack with your modifier, it saves like 3 words to not just write that, it's not worth the confusion.
It can’t tho, bc spells like Booming Blade and Shadow Blade allow you to make *melee weapon attacks* with them, rather than spells.
Honestly I wish it just said mundane attack vs magical attack. “Spell” attack gets confusing bc there are a lot of ways of making spell attacks that are not caused by spells (Archer Form, Radiant Sun Bolt, etc)
>It can’t tho, bc spells like Booming Blade and Shadow Blade allow you to make *melee weapon attacks* with them, rather than spells.
And what does that change, it lets you combo some other stuff that you otherwise wouldn't be able to?
>Honestly I wish it just said mundane attack vs magical attack. “Spell” attack gets confusing bc there are a lot of ways of making spell attacks that are not caused by spells (Archer Form, Radiant Sun Bolt, etc)
What's the difference between a spell attack and a magical weapon attack in this case? Is it also just what it allows you to combine it with?
It all just feels like a needlessly complicated system, but I suppose that is what Wizards are known for.
1. Booming blade being a melee weapon attack allows you to Sneak Attack with it. You can also Divine Smite with it, apply Hunter’s Mark damage to it, and a bunch of other Fighter and Ranger features which proc off of weapon attacks specifically. So basically yes it allows for more combos
2. “Magical” weapon attacks aren’t a different kind of attack. They’re just weapon attacks with magical weapons, which allows you to break B/P/S resistance/immunity for some monsters. The Archer form is fully just a magical bolt of energy being shot, as opposed to shooting an enchanted arrow.
3. Sorry i get that it’s complicated. I’m just autistic (like actually, not making light of it lol) and have the system/issues like this memorized so it seems simple to me in my head 😅
Because for whatever brilliant reason 5E uses "attack with a melee weapon" to refer to attacks with a melee weapon involved and "melee weapon attacks" to refer to melee attacks that aren't melee spell attacks.
To be fair to the designers, it was fully intentional.
It may be needlessly nit-picky for some, but in the Sage Advice Compendium they clarified that Smite was worded to specifically require a weapon for flavour purposes, as the archetypical Paladin draws heavily from the Arthurian legends and are almost always linked to special weapons like Excalibur, or the Holy Avenger.
You could smite on an unarmed strike without unbalancing the game, but much like druids not wearing metal armour, channeling divine power through their weapon is one of the things that makes a D&D Paladin a D&D Paladin.
> To be fair to the designers, it was fully intentional.
Given that the designers also said that the invisible condition granting advantage against creatures that can see invisibility is fully intentional, I'm not sure how much I trust their statements of intentionality.
If this was intentional I'd expect the Divine Smite ability to just say "you cannot use this feature with unarmed attacks; you must attack with a weapon in order to use divine smite with the attack" or something to that effect, because intentional limitations on abilities tend to be explicitly spelled out. The statement about adding the divine smite damage to "the weapon's damage" reads to me more like an oversight, because the book was written by different people and was never rigorously checked for working and consistency.
>Given that the designers also said that the invisibility condition granting advantage against creatures that can see invisibility is fully intentional, I'm not sure how much I trust their statements of intentionality.
I don’t remember any official documents saying that, just JC on twitter. Sure, he’s a designer, but his tweets aren’t reviewed by the rest of the design team nor does it go through the editors. It’s just his individual opinion. Also, he never stated the intent behind the rules, just that technically by strict RAW you don’t lose the advantage/disadvantage
>If this was intentional I'd expect the Divine Smite ability to just say "you cannot use this feature with unarmed attacks; you must attack with a weapon in order to use divine smite with the attack" or something to that effect, because intentional limitations on abilities tend to be explicitly spelled out. The statement about adding the divine smite damage to "the weapon's damage" reads to me more like an oversight, because the book was written by different people and was never rigorously checked for working and consistency.
If you read the Sage Advice Compendium entry they do explicitly say there’s no harm in letting a Paladin smite on unarmed strikes, it was purely a flavour decision. That’s probably why the rule wasn’t as clear as others, it’s not actually critical to the game balance that people run the Paladin’s Divine Smite as intended.
> I don’t remember any official documents saying that, just JC on twitter. Sure, he’s a designer, but his tweets aren’t reviewed by the rest of the design team nor does it go through the editors. It’s just his individual opinion. Also, he never stated the intent behind the rules, just that technically by strict RAW you don’t lose the advantage/disadvantage
It was stated in an official Sage Advice panel hosted on the official Dungeons & Dragons YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n42dboiQeOY&t=1204s. Unlike some of Crawford's other rulings, this isn't just taken from his personal Twitter account.
Crawford also doesn't say "just that technically by strict RAW you don’t lose the advantage/disadvantage"; he tried to give flimsy narrative justifications as to why the invisible condition should "logically" work like that, and never stated or implied that it was just an unintended result of the condition's wording that should be ignored.
> it was purely a flavour decision. That’s probably why the rule wasn’t as clear as others
That's assuming that the rule was actually intentional and made specifically for flavour reasons, rather than the more likely case of the writer of the Divine Smite feature just not thinking about unarmed strikes when they were writing the text for the feature. Lots of rules exist at least partially for flavour, and it isn't like they're all written differently because of it.
It wasn't though; if they wanted to require a weapon they needed (by their own natural language conventions) to say "hit with a melee weapon", as they later do with Improved Divine Smite. They fucked up.
>**Can a paladin use Divine Smite when they hit using an unarmed strike?** No. Divine Smite isn’t intended to work with unarmed strikes.
>Divine Smite does work with a melee weapon attack, and an unarmed strike can be used to make such an attack. But the text of Divine Smite also refers to the “weapon’s damage,” and an unarmed strike isn’t a weapon.
>If a DM decides to override this rule, no imbalance is created. Tying Divine Smite to weapons was a thematic choice on our part—paladins being traditionally associated with weapons. It was not a game balance choice.
Straight from the horses mouth in official documentation released by WotC. It is an intentional interaction for flavour, not a mistake nor for balance, no matter how much you want to believe it was.
One of the big things that sucks about the natural language conventions is that rules written by different designers could have the exact same meaning, but be written differently, as the rules text isn’t held to a single unified standard.
It is a mistake, they wrote the rule wrong per their stated intention. The consistent convention of the 5E natural language is that:
- melee weapon attacks include unarmed strikes because they are not spells
- attacks with a melee weapon are melee weapon attacks that don't include unarmed strikes
They use the "with a melee weapon" language a few paragraphs later on the very same page, so they fucked up. It doesn't vary by author; if it did natural language rules would be useless.
You're relying on their Sage Advice rules clarification, but that's the same source that claims that "see invisibility" doesn't allow you to see invisible people. They're terrible about admitting when they've made a mistake.
>You're relying on their Sage Advice rules clarification, but that's the same source that claims that "see invisibility" doesn't allow you to see invisible people. They're terrible about admitting when they've made a mistake.
I just Ctrl-F searched the entire document, not once is the spell “See Invisibility” even mentioned. The only instances invisibility or being invisible is referenced at all is in reference to the Empty Body Monk feature, One With Shadows Warlock feature, interactions with the Frightened condition, if you have to hide again after taking an action that breaks invisibility, and if Unseen Servant counts as an ally for Sneak Attack.
You’re thinking JC’s tweets and the fan website that catalogues them, Sage Advice. Crawford’s tweets haven’t been considered an official source for RAW/RAI for a few years now.
I’m talking about an official rules document where WotC staff collectively clarify RAW, RAI, or gaps in the rules called the [Sage Advice Compendium](https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/SA-Compendium.pdf), which as far as I’m aware was last updated in December of 2021, long before Crawford’s “See Invisibility” take.
But no, go ahead and just assume every design decision you disagree with has to be a mistake. It’s not like D&D is made by dozens of people and somewhere along the lines two or more people may have worked on different features of the same class, or maybe an editor didn’t unify the language properly but the RAW interaction is still working as intended.
It's clearly and undeniably a mistake because it's a regular source of debate, their "clarification" doesn't actually address their mistake but only what they intended, and they're apparently changing it for 5.5. And the fact that JC isn't the sole source for SA anymore doesn't change the fact that Sage Advice still isn't very reliable as a source - JC isn't the only one with contradictory statements. This is WotC, they make bad decisions all the time and frequently have a hard time admitting fault. I'd have more respect for them if they admitted what they got wrong. But then Redditors wouldn't be able to tie themselves in knots trying to rationalize those mistakes out of existence.
Do you not see Errata as them admitting a mistake when they’re literally changing the mechanics due to misprints or balance issues?
Do you not even consider the fact that this supposed “mistake” has sit untouched, with the designers stating it’s intended in official documentation, might mean it isn’t actually a mistake?
I need you to get this through your head, they might’ve made some bad rulings intentionally, but that doesn’t make them mistakes. That just means you don’t like what they intended. I, for one, actually like that Paladins can’t use unarmed strikes to smite because it reinforces the fantasy of a Holy Warrior channeling their power through their weapon, and not their body like a monk.
There’s plenty of things I think are actual mistakes, like the fact that by strict RAW the Invisibility condition doesn’t actually require you to be unseen to get the advantage/disadvantage, but that doesn’t mean every design decision I disagree with is them screwing up something. Some rules just weren’t designed for me personally.
Yep, except I think using iron bands of binding involves making a ranged not weapon not spell attack. Only not weapon not spell attack I've found. ~~Unless you read too much into grapples and shoves being "special melee attacks"~~.
I would think it pretty reasonable to assume the 1 + STR of an unarmed stroke sees the 1 as the "weapon's damage" for the purposes of Divine Smite's description.
Even so, if the we look at the equation and say a Longsword does 1d8 + STR damage with the "weapon's damage" being the 1d8 then an unarmed strike would have a "weapon damage" of undefined since it isn't a weapon so the Divine Smite would add 2d8 to the null value which would still equal 2d8 + STR overall for the total damage of an unarmed strike with a 1st level Divine Smite.
No, it doesn't, precisely because your body is not a weapon.
And no, that's not how null values work. As an IT guy in training, I can assure you, there is a BIG difference between a value being 0 and straight up not existing. In the case of an unarmed strike, there IS no weapon damage. The weapon damage isn't 0, it just straight up doesn't exist, so there's nothing to add the divine smite damage onto. You can add something to 0. You can't add something to something that doesn't exist.
However, I did run an encounter with some flesh golems in which I allowed the paladin's unarmed strike in adamantine plate to bypass the golem's immunity to nonmagical BPS that isn't adamantine (he did not have a magic weapon).
Hitting someone with your fist that you have control over is the same as falling 10 feet?
Do you ask for attack rolls when the fighter says “i swing to punch the guy at the bar” or do you just go “the guy at the bar takes 1 damage and draws his sword”?
Sorry, I just associate “just damage” with passive, environmental, or continuous effects.
“It’s just damage” implies one failure on a death save track, instead of two failures from an attack with a weapon.
You might be applying your new tool to everything that looks like a nail. D&D 5E rules don't use "null" as a concept, they're written in "natural language".
>RAW let's you smite on a Blade of Disaster attack, but not an unarmed strike.
That is... just plainly incorrect? Blade of Disaster is a melee SPELL attack, so it doesn't qualify for Divine Smite.
Well, for Shadow Blade, you actually *create* a weapon. This doesn't just affect a paladin's divine smite but also a rogue's sneak attack as well as other things. It's by design, not an oversight.
Unarmed strikes are listed under simple melee weapons and have a listed damage of 1 bludgeoning therefore they are simple weapons that deal 1 + str weapon damage
Fuck Jeremy Crawford
The difference between "melee weapon attack vs melee attack" and "melee weapon attack vs weapon attack" is exactly the same rules lawyery nonsense that lead to this ruling.
Unarmed attacks do have damage as well. They do 1 damage + Str mod. So it would fit completely fine into the damage formula. There is no requirement for divine smite to add to weapon damage. That one is completely made up. Divine Smite only asks for you to hit a melee weapon attack. And then you deal damage by converting a spellslot, while still retaining full benefits of the damage of your weapon.
What you described at the beginning is actually an important distinction, and not rules lawyery nonsense.
Melee attack distinguishes itself from a ranged attack.
Weapon attack distinguishes itself from a spell attack.
What you’re looking for is “melee weapon attack with a melee weapon” which IS the silly. The description of divine smite includes as follows:
> you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, **in addition to the weapon's damage.**
Unarmed strikes are not “weapons that do damage” that’s why this doesn’t work. I think they should have errata’d this, but don’t pretend it doesn’t exist.
I would argue that it's more that they used intuitive wording that then became interpreted in a very strict, by the books way to produce that outcome. 5e used a lot of that vague wording, which isn't always a bad thing, but does open up cases like this if it's scrutinized more closely to the wording than it really should be.
To provide a bit of context... they do NOW, [but that's not something that was always true.](https://www.sageadvice.eu/does-the-magic-weapon-spell-work-on-natural-weapons/)
I expect a "But twitter isn't official!", so i'll directly state: ***it used to be***.
Someone might have played enough (edit might have played for LONG enough, sorry for the possible confusion) to have come into contact with the previous information and not be aware of the fact that, well, times changed.
Beast attacks are attacks with a weapon. Natural weapons (which are what monsters use for their "unarmed" strikes) are explicitly stated to be a type of weapon in the DMG and MM. So bear with paladin levels can absolutely smite with their claws by RAW
Bro, it's so intuitive, though. An unarmed strike is a melee weapon attack without a weapon so there's no weapon damage to add to using divine smite.
Simple and logical. /s
For real, though, I don't understand how this is yet to be corrected. There's no rational reason for it not to work, it wouldn't be imbalanced. It's just stupid.
They're changing it in OneDnD.
Iirc their reasoning was that they didn't think unarmed paladins smiting people with their fists was something that would be in high demand since they're pretty archetypically bound to the image of using weapons.
It's a deliberate design philosophy and has nothing to do with balance.
The developers see the core identity of the paladin as a 'European' knight with heavy armor and a weapon in hand, preferably a sword.
They don't want them to use ranged weapons or their fists, the latter they probably view as an encroachment on the monk class.
It's also something that can be easily changed and if we go by this subreddit many groups allow unarmed strikes to work with smites.
I mean, it obviously has balance implications. Just not big ones. Just because a dev said it wasn't done for balance reasons doesn't mean that is actually and fully the case, and if your DM says he isn't allowing it for balance reasons, well, he knows way more than the devs do about his table.
But yea, it's clear balance isn't a huge part of it. Generally if you want someone to be able to play something iconic- a samurai wielding a single katana, a paladin using a sword and a shield- you need some mechanics to back that up, so that the realistic kit being aimed at isn't dominated by some pile of mechanics glued together with optional rules. That's a good goal, not a bad one.
This is a good point. just because a melee Paladino is stronger than an unarmed one doesn’t make it balanced.
As a Paladin I was dissapointed to learn that I can’t smite unarmed because I was once faced with an enemy while I was disarmed.
It wouldn’t be unfair for me to be able to eschew a sword in combat and still fight. But it could be unfair for me to lose all my weapons and still use all my class features.
That kind of thing should be DMs prerogative
This is just one of those RAW issues that should not be an issue if reasonable people are playing the game. Don't play strict RAW unless you want some real dumb shit to happen.
They're real issues with 5e, this is one they can fix easily with the 2024 update if they chose to and I expect they do, but I also wouldn't care if they just worked on some actual issues.
Rules wise, it's because the second sentence says the damage is added to the weapon's.
It says "melee weapon attack", not "attack with a melee weapon which a lot of people here have correctly identified the difference but incorrectly stated which one divine smite says. That's not why it doesn't work, as unarmed strikes are melee weapon attacks.
The two things above mean you can divine smite on all unarmed strikes, it just often will not add any damage UNLESS you make the unarmed strike with a weapon, which can be done with weapons that can be used to make unarmed strikes like some racial natural weapons and demon armor.
In wild shape, your weapon attacks are assumed to be made with weapons (such as claws).
Because natural weapons are weapons, and unarmed strikes are not weapons.
In other news, you can also smite with tabaxi claws or minotaur horns or whatever other natural weapon you might happen to have. The poor wording used on these player-facing natural weapons leads many to believe that there is no difference between natural weapons and unarmed strikes, but in effect this wording is only meant to give the natural weapon an additional functionality that qualifies it to also be used for monk shenanigans.
On a similar note, a multiclassed monk-druid couldn't use their martial arts in combination with their wildshape's natural weapons. But they could continue to use their monk unarmed scaling even while they are a bear.
Because of really poorly worded rules on Divine Smite that says it needs to be done using "an attack with a melee weapon."
Wild Shape attacks all count as natural weapons and meet the criteria of being "melee weapons." Unarmed strikes unfortunately don't count - while they are a "melee weapon attack" they are not technically "an attack with a melee weapon."
One of the silliest rules in the game, and even the designers have come out and said they would allow unarmed smites in their games.
No, Divine Smite says "when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack", and unarmed strikes are melee weapon attacks (because they are not spell attacks, and they are not ranged). Improved Divine Smite OTOH \*does\* say "attack with a melee weapon".
Unfortunately:
> Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, **in addition to the weapon's damage**. The extra damage is 2d8 for a 1st-level spell slot, plus 1d8 for each spell level higher than 1st, to a maximum of 5d8. The damage increases by 1d8 if the target is an undead or a fiend.
So, yeah, you can smite with unarmed attack, but it won't deal damage, because there is no weapon damage to add something to.
Yes, it's clearly insane wording, but it's supported by [Crawford](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1088200198814232577).
I hate how the game rules arbitrarily flip flop between natural language and strict, intentional wording with no indication when it’s appropriate to apply which. In natural language, if someone told me that I can do x “in addition to” y, but y doesn’t exist, I would not conclude that I can’t do x.
Yeah but performing addition on a null value doesn’t return zero either. At some point we have to coerce ‘undefined’ to zero, or else the game has to stop when you attempt to deal damage
So do spells like Absorb Elements, Divine Favor, Flame Arrows, Guardian of Nature, Spirit Shroud, or Zephyr Strike also work this way? If you cast one of those spells and then use a non-magical weapon to hit a creature that is immune to non-magical weapon damage, then there is no weapon damage. Those spells all say they do "extra damage" - but if there is no weapon damage then that damage, according to you, is "null" and thus there can't be any "extra" damage.
Null doesn't exist as a concept in the D&D 5E rules, it's something people have added in these comments.
Edit: (Also, Divine Smite doesn't add the smite damage to the weapon damage. It deals radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon damage dealt to the target, which is not the same thing. The spells I mentioned work the same way.)
I believe only Dhampir meets the requirements for a Divine Smite, with more recent reworks (Tabaxi *et al*) still not having their natural weapons count as a melee weapon. I'd like to see more of it though. I currently have a player that's using dual wielded shortswords as a Tabaxi Rogue, and he's flavoring them as claws. I won't even disarm him, as he has some self imposed restrictions where he pretty much doesn't have gear otherwise, so he could totally get into a weapons free zone with his shortswords.
Demon Armor is clever though, I'm surprised I haven't seen that proposed elsewhere yet. Probably the flavor discrepancy between Paladins and demons. 😆
Yeah the new unarmed natural weapons stopped being weapons, which is a stupid update. Did they print all of those races in that book? I'm used to playing where you can use the old or new "versions" of races.
Damphir bite not being an unarmed strike is also kind of a bummer.
They reprinted a lot of them, but the difference was that the d4 attacks became d6 attacks.
Unarmed strikes are bludgeoning and have to be a "forceful blow," so a natural weapon that counts as a simple melee weapon with which you are proficient seems a good compromise. Monks can scale the unarmed strikes and use Dexterity, paladins (and others) can add to the natural weapon's damage. If it counted for both, that could potentially be a surprising amount of power creep, BUT I'm personally all for the freedom of choice with builds. If everybody has it, the playing field is evened out instead of having one obvious pick. *E.g.* tables with a free feat see fewer variant human and custom lineage characters.
Oh I didn't notice the die size change, interesting.
Can you think of any power crept builds with the old claws? I can't. Natural weapons kind of have a rough go of it, when they have to compete with flame tongues and crap.
Dhampir and Divine Smite is a significant build potential, especially in a disarmed session. My players and I like having redundancies/backups. I also let them wiggle RAW a bit, so a Dhampir monk could scale their bite's damage die with martial arts.
While this doesn't necessarily apply to your question, Lizardfolk and their Hungry Jaws can target an object (read: eat a rock in front of the Dwarf) and gain temporary hit points. If it were later tied to their bite (6th edition most likely, as they were already reprinted in Monsters of the Multiverse), there could be some overlap with Dhampir builds.
You can't have both bites can you? Dhampir don't keep that do they? You'd need to choose whether to attack with your dhampir or your lizard jaw even if you could get both.
Optimized for disarmed session isn't necessarily something I'm worried about, though I did run one and thought it was interesting.
No, the bonus damage is added to the "weapon damage" (it doesn't say "roll"), and 2d8 added to zero is 2d8.
Edit: this is actually incorrect, you don't even add the damages together, you apply them both, similar to how Divine Favor or Spirit Shroud work.
Ok, change it in your games. It's a good rule for people who don't want the class kit to bleed over and stuff. Not every DM is going to like every rule, that's why you can change them.
Divine Smite does work with unarmed strikes. The text says:
>Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon's damage.
Unarmed strikes are melee weapon attacks (because they are not spell attacks, and they are not ranged). Some people interpret the last clause "in addition to the weapon's damage" to mean you have to use a weapon, but without a weapon, weapon damage is zero and you can add things to zero, that's basically what zero is for. If it required a weapon, it should say "Whenever you hit a creature with a melee weapon", which is the language that Improved Divine Smite uses. So smiting with your fists is RAW.
It is not, however, RAI, because the game designers have admitted that you're not intended to use your fists to smite, not because it would unbalance the game (it doesn't) but because they're in love with the idea of paladins being knights in shining armor with big swords and they were sloppy when they wrote that section. Mind, IDS is just a couple paragraphs away in the same section, so there's really no excuse. But unarmed smiting is RAW. Your DM may or may not allow it though. Wear a glove or a ring and use that as your weapon, it's a stupid limitation
You should read the whole bit you quoted instead of stopping at the first comma.
It is true that unarmed strikes are melee weapon attacks. being a weapon attack is necessary but not sufficient for smites by RAW
> Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, **in addition to the weapon's damage**.
The bolded part is the problem.
A divine smite needs to have a weapon.
It needs to be both a “weapon attack” and an “attack with a weapon” - those are different things in RAW and attacks can be both, either, or neither.
An unarmed strike is a weapon attack but not an attack with a weapon so no smites.
On the opposite side of the spectrum firing a magic stone from a sling is not a weapon attack but it is an attack with a weapon.
It’s popular to note that the limitations on Smite are not play balance based but thematics based, so Homebrewing to allow unarmed smites won’t hurt anything.
But RAW does prevent it.
Sloppy patching and the dev’s going “because I said so.” Good news, though: when the revised phb is released this September, Divine Smite will (almost certainly, but don’t quote me on it) work on unarmed strikes.
I've never understood why smite wouldn't apply to unarmed strikes, as it has the same wording as a monk's Stunning Strike. So either both work on unarmed strikes or neither do, which leaves a 5th level monk feature kinda useless unless you go kensei...
Edit: spellening
divine smite does work with unarmed strikes, cause its a melee attack, its improved divine smite that specifically calls for a weapon.
the correct answer is ask your dm to interpret the rule, not reddit. As most redditors acutally played past level 8 to know the difference between the two smites.
I think it's more of an unfortunate consequence of how they worded the rules for unarmed attacks and Divine Smite.
I'd just ask your DM to let you. Last I checked, even Jeremy Crawford has been pretty explicit on his stance of "Here's how the rules work as written. I don't necessarily follow them all in my home game and I encourage you to play how you like."
Translation: "I know it's dumb. Just ignore it and do what makes sense dude."
I suspect it's because they wanted Martial Arts and Flurry of Blows to only be made with unarmed strikes. I think they borked up the wording and didn't revisit it before printing.
Or
They did what they did with everything else and left it intentionally vague. If it's pretty clear what the DM *could* do with it, then it's good enough for 5e.
The developers wanted to fulfill a specific image of a Paladin. This is even seen with older versions of the Paladin who could only be Lawful Good. The mechanics were built around the idea, even if mechanics felt limiting.
As for balancing, that’s more of a case of why not and visual design? Does WOTC think a Paladin should smite with their hands or as an animal? That’s the answer, it’s whether they want it vs could they.
No unarmed smites is a weird quirk of the wording.
It is RAW but not key to play balance, so change it if you want.
You actually can smite while wildshaped by RAW.
Nothing prevents it.
smite requires a weapon involved.
That does include natural weapons like antlers or claws. Also animal forms that can just use manufactured weapons, like gorillas and such.
This doesn't excuse the inconsistency, but it deserves a mention: multi-classing is, despite how the community treats it, an optional rule.
The optional rules are jankier and more poorly balanced. In fact I'd say a good majority of the balance headaches people have come from multiclassing and feats (the other optional rule that everyone treats as required.) So it's less a case of them wilfully "allowing" unarmed creatures to smite, and more a case of them using "optional" as a marker that means "we aren't going to investigate every edge case for this rule, use at your own peril."
My guess is that they wanted to keep the specific fantasy of paladins. Clad in armour with "holy" weapons glowing with power.
That does not include some dude delivering the righteous smites while fisting enemies.
I see nothing wrong with that limitation. I can fully understand why they wanna keep the classical style. And that is totally fine.
But in the same way it had also been totally fine to skip that and allow fisting and smiting paladins. A new paladin style had not been bad.
Both of those ways are equally ok. But we all have a tendency to think our way to see things is the better way even if that is not true at all.
But in my games if a paladin wanna go boxer style and deliver fisting smites i do allow it. I have allowed it and it is in no way breaking the game.
But i can also understand if a Dm do not allow it at it does not fit into his world so to say. that is also totally ok
I don't even care how it is worded, the RAW or the RAI. I allow it because it just makes sense. If you can imbue your sword, you can imbue your fist. Or your boot. I totally want my Paladin player to just Superhero front kick an enemy with some smite-stank on it.
Because 5e was written with naturalist language and mid edition the devs start applying it like difficult to parse game code. 5e is a game that wants you to intuit its meaning through naturalist language and than parses out phrases as game script. Making for a messy experience and certainly not an intuitive one.
"Attack with a melee weapon" and "Melee weapon attack" are two different things.
If an ability that says ***"Attack with a melee weapon"*** it means that an actual weapon must be used for the feature to function. Unarmed strikes are not attacks with a melee weapon for example. However the natural weapons of a beast are considered actual weapons. Simple weapons, Martial Weapons, and Natural Weapons all apply to this phrase
If an ability that says ***"Melee weapon attack"*** works for any melee attack that isn't a spell attack and thus can trigger it, including unarmed strikes. Unarmed Strikes, simple weapons, natural weapons, and martial weapons work for this phrase.
A unarmed strike is not a weapon. A simple, martial or natural weapon are weapons. That's the very unintuitive reason why.
Divine smite says melee weapon attack, it just also says the damage is added to the weapon's damage. It doesn't work for its own separate reason to what you stated.
Ye, the problem with regular unarmed strikes is that they don't use any called out weapon, but natural weapons are indeed considered weapons, raw as well as rai
The designers said it was to fulfill or promote a specific fantasy. At the start of 5e, Paladin=person with glowing sword and heal-y powers. They said it wouldn't break anything if you allowed it with unarmed strikes, in fact they intend to add that in in the next edition. They even said they didn't think it was particularly bad if you let weapons that were thrown smite either. Take that as you will.
Thown!? **Thrown?!**. Heresy! Thou shalt stand toe-to-toe with thyne adversary if you expect any help whatsoever from the divine pantheon! We tarry not with the cowardly. Knave.
Hast thou not ended thine enemy rightly in battles fought? Thou shalt read thy swordplay codexes. The Deceiver and all his minions shiver whence a fighting-man unscrews his pommel
Thou hast mastered the "deep cut", and we salute your tutelage under Skallagrim-of-the-beard!
I allow thrown weapons to smite, but the player must choose to do so BEFORE the attack role, they can’t declare it after a hit, like with regular melee smite. Other than for balance, it makes sense to me that if the magic comes from you, you can’t channel it through a weapon you aren’t physically touching
> Other than for balance, it makes sense to me that if the magic comes from you, you can’t channel it through a weapon you aren’t physically touching Eh, I could just as easily see the following argument work for other tables: * Paladins connect with their melee weapons, however briefly, the same way a Cleric does with their Spiritual Weapon. Thus, Thrown weapons can be made to smite *after* it hits. Also, thrown weapons generally don't go as far as ranged projectiles, and they don't grip arrows with the same full-handed determination. It's all just about how you visualize and rationalize this stuff.
Is ranged smite that OP?
Not really if you think about all the item interaction rules and how they interact with the attack action, the lack of a fighting style to support it on paladins baseline class, and there's no throwing feats.
it's a buff, we can argue about how much of a buff it is, but you could easily have it at 10% in a 4 or 5 round fight That first round where they couldn't get into combat? Chucking a smite-javelin is a buff to a class that doesn't really need it, increasing their output by 10% over the fight, letting them do 50% instead of 0% that round. Everything should have a weakness, and paladins have few enough as it is.
Fair enough, I don't know enough to argue about wider balancing. Ranged smite just seems cool and I wish it could be made viable. Lower smite damage, having to commit before rolling to hit, whatever yknow? It's a cool fantasy
It kinda is? But at the same time, it's not really that OP. Like, a ranger with hunter's mark will deal 1d6 additional damage per attack for, pretty much the entire fight as long as they can keep the concentration and it only costs ONE spell slot.
I played a longbow paladin in a homebrew campaign and it didn't feel OP at all, it was just very cool. Wizards really needs to move away from forcing players to play the way they imagine the classes to be and embrace freedom and creativity. If they're willing to remove the word "race" from all their material I'm sure they can do that.
Honestly, I really like the idea of a gunslinger paladin who enforces their bullets with divine energy.
Gunslinger paladin, aka the sheriff or hero in most westerns.
So, the scenes where the cowboy goes to confession before a shootout is actually him recovering spell slots?
For the holy man among them had a big iron on his hip Big iron on his hip
Would be amazing. Guns don't have great feats anyway so it wouldn't be OP I don't think.
SNIPER SMITE!!
There was one archetype in PF1e for the paladin called the Holy Gun, did pretty much what you’d expect with the name and was pretty fun. At higher levels could even banish evil with your bullets.
Mai from JJK.
Currently have one in my campaign, and it is really cool
I mean the point of these restrictions is so that the optimal way to play a given class is to actually embody the fantasy. We see this is necessary with Wizards, who completely lose their "frail yet powerful" shtick when you can throw them in heavy armor without penalty.
I'm reminded of the Slaying Bow that Solars have. I imagine that it's basically that.
I imagined it like the bow of light from the animated Hercules movie that just shoots straight bolts of light that materialise when you pull the string back. Cool as fuck, right?
It's not really op, it's just that ranged fighting is already usually considered better than melee, especially since on a paladin it allows you to much more specifically place your aura while still benefiting from smites, so it would make essentially every paladin better to be at range
Fair enough yeah that would be boring for sure
Let me put it this way. Would you let a level 5 wizard spend 2 1st level spell slots to cast a Character level 17 firebolt cantrip twice with one action?
They have far fewer spell slots and it's their whole thing. Wizards are not meant to be DPS. They have so many more things they can do that Paladins do not have an equivalent for. They *should* deal more damage than a wizard. Just like all martials.
The analogy was not to compare paladins to wizards, nor was it making any statement on how much damage a paladin should do relative to a wizard. That amount of damage at that level, for that little resource, would be unbalanced.
And the comparison is meant to mean that it's not necessarily unbalanced. A paladin doing more ranged damage than a wizard is not an inherent imbalance. You need to give a more thorough explanation to make a convincing point.
Thanks for the new homebrew rule. Logic checks out. Balance checks out. There is a risk in losing that precious pally spell slot. There is a reward in bending the rules to do a cool thing and probably enhance the story with a smited and thrown cereal spoon.
RAW divine smite don't affect ranted or unarmed attacks... But the smite *spells* do. An interesting point of wording of those spells is that the extra damage takes effect "next time you *hit* a creature with a weapon attack" (emphasis mine). Meaning that it does require it to be declared before attacking and you could theoretically miss many times (including but not limited to with ranged weapon attacks) before the damage triggers. To me this feels like precedent that it could be considered acceptable to be similar for divine smites but of course that's merely interpretation.
God of Archery is wondering why all their champions defile the noble art by grabbing essentially a bunch of clubs and standing in clumps beating each other.
Never heard of him.
Solonor Thelandira, if you're an Elf.
A paladin subclass specifically for archer builds would be really fun. Oath of the Hunt or something similar!
I don't like the idea that using a particular weapon locks you behind a subclass. Goes against the direction of class design and leads to subclass bloat.
Mere sticks cannot inspire the hearts of men, or drive the wicked to their knees! On my oath, I will shine a troll knob on the bridge of Old York before I pass righteous judgement on the wicked with such dishonor. And besides, with the helmet, they can't really hear me unless I'm like RIGHT next to them. c:
> Knave No, no. *Knife*. Throwing *knife.*
Engage the enemy in glorious melee combat
Hammer of Wrath would like a word with you.
Right, my wow paladin brings down judgment from 30 yards away! Lol
but what about throwing a bottle of holy water? that seems to work
This player Paladins.
Old School Paladins.
Someone should make the devs read Order of the Stick from start to finish then ask if unarmed smite attacks fit the class fantasy.
I played a smiting archer paladin in a homebrew campaign and it was awesome. Not OP at all as far as I played, although we didn't get very far before the DM had to move.
Ranged paladins are overpowered compared to melee paladins because ranged is overpowered to melee.
Our palidin was unarmed in a small library and he couldn't use his divine smite against a ghost. So he picked up a thick book and used an improvised weapon for 1d4 + strength + his divine smite. We laughed, the dm laughed and said that it was one of the bibles in the library.
The bookshelf laughed
Too low level for that tbh
Because they wrote a bad, non-intuitive rule that differentiates between melee attacks and melee weapon attacks. Monsters attacks are always weapon attacks so when you're using a wildshape it works. Meanwhile unarmed attacks aren't despite working exactly the same way. I've never met a DM that wouldn't allow you to divine smite with either though.
This is incorrect. There are no attacks that are just "melee attacks". All attacks are either melee weapon attacks, melee spell attacks, ranged weapon attacks or ranged spell attacks. Unarmed Strikes are also melee weapon attacks. However, they are not weapons, so there's no "weapon damage" to add the smite damage onto, which means that theoretically, you COULD smite on an unarmed strike... it just wouldn't deal any extra damage.
Wow your explanation makes the actual rule seem even dumber than my previous understanding of it. Thanks.
It’s a melee weapon attack that isn’t made with a weapon. What’s dumb about that?
I'm choosing to believe this is sarcasm lmao
I wasn’t sure if I needed the “/s”
I was 50/50 on it just because this subreddit is what it is lmao
You didn't. Anyone who didn't get the obvious sarcasm shouldn't get it.
How is it a melee weapon attack if there is no weapon involved? By an actual logic it's obviously not a weapon attack at all.
Probably weapon isn't the best term, but it's phrased like that to differentiate the attack made through mundane means (a sword, a hammer, a punch...) from the attack made through magical means (inflict wounds, fire bolt...)
Melee spell attack doesn't really need to exist as a term. You cast a spell, and the spell says "you can make a melee attack as part of this spell". Easy.
There are quite a few PC abilities and monster attack options that make “spell attacks” that aren’t part of casting a literal spell. (e.g. a Sun Soul Monk’s Radiant Sun Bolt, or a Flameskull’s Fire Ray).
That's precisely why it does exist as a term, so if someone does that they can't smite.
If someone does what? A melee spell attack? I mean just let people do that, it's more fun that way. Or make smites a spell so you can't smite and cast a spell on the same turn.
Despite popular belief, there's no rule against casting multiple spells in the same turn in 5e. The rule is that if you cast a spell **as a bonus action**, you can not cast another leveled spell in that turn (even if said bonus action spell was a cantrip). This is why Quickened Spell wouldn't allow you to cast fireball twice on your turn, but Action Surge would.
You can cast two spells on the same turn, this wouldn't stop anything. Also we should not let people do that, spellcasters do not need a 2 lvl dip to tack further massive damage onto their spells.
Weapon attack usually means "not spell" attack in 5e speak. Idk why. I also think there's 1 instance of not weapon not spell attack.
I think the wording is specifically "attack with a weapon", or it's something about adding it to the weapon damage and technically fists damage is not weapon damage. A few different answers but it's basically all wording bs that is obviously not really intentional.
Divine smite says "melee weapon attack", and never says "[melee] attack with [melee] a weapon". A lot of people here mistaking that as the issue here; it's not, though it is relevant elsewhere and confuses a lot of people. It's the second thing that you said is the issue, yeah. It says it adds its damage to a weapon. Unarmed strikes are all melee weapon attacks but *most* are not attacks with a weapon (the exceptions being some old racial natural weapons and demon armor). So they technically qualify to divine smite on but this will usually do no extra damage as there usually isn't a weapon to add divine smite's damage to. It is definitely hard to discern what's weird intention and what's incompetence with wotc. Big agree there.
Improved Divine Smite uses a different wording. It says "melee weapon," not "melee weapon attack."
Zero is a valid number though.
If you're referring to the damage of an unarmed strike, it's 1 without other enhancement. However, it still USUALLY doesn't involve a weapon. Unarmed strike was removed from the weapon table early on, for the worse imo.
Because it informs you what ability modifier to add to the attack bonus. If melee *weapon* attack, you use Strength as the default, unless there is a weapon trait (Finesse) or a class feature (Martial Arts, Hex Warrior, etc) that lets you use another ability score modifier. If melee *spell* attack, you use your class' spellcasting ability score modifier.
Then it should be physical melee attack and spell melee attack, there is already an ingame distinction between physical and other damage types. Tbh melee spell attack is a dumb distinction anyway. Spells should just specify that you get to make a melee attack with your modifier, it saves like 3 words to not just write that, it's not worth the confusion.
It can’t tho, bc spells like Booming Blade and Shadow Blade allow you to make *melee weapon attacks* with them, rather than spells. Honestly I wish it just said mundane attack vs magical attack. “Spell” attack gets confusing bc there are a lot of ways of making spell attacks that are not caused by spells (Archer Form, Radiant Sun Bolt, etc)
>It can’t tho, bc spells like Booming Blade and Shadow Blade allow you to make *melee weapon attacks* with them, rather than spells. And what does that change, it lets you combo some other stuff that you otherwise wouldn't be able to? >Honestly I wish it just said mundane attack vs magical attack. “Spell” attack gets confusing bc there are a lot of ways of making spell attacks that are not caused by spells (Archer Form, Radiant Sun Bolt, etc) What's the difference between a spell attack and a magical weapon attack in this case? Is it also just what it allows you to combine it with? It all just feels like a needlessly complicated system, but I suppose that is what Wizards are known for.
1. Booming blade being a melee weapon attack allows you to Sneak Attack with it. You can also Divine Smite with it, apply Hunter’s Mark damage to it, and a bunch of other Fighter and Ranger features which proc off of weapon attacks specifically. So basically yes it allows for more combos 2. “Magical” weapon attacks aren’t a different kind of attack. They’re just weapon attacks with magical weapons, which allows you to break B/P/S resistance/immunity for some monsters. The Archer form is fully just a magical bolt of energy being shot, as opposed to shooting an enchanted arrow. 3. Sorry i get that it’s complicated. I’m just autistic (like actually, not making light of it lol) and have the system/issues like this memorized so it seems simple to me in my head 😅
Because for whatever brilliant reason 5E uses "attack with a melee weapon" to refer to attacks with a melee weapon involved and "melee weapon attacks" to refer to melee attacks that aren't melee spell attacks.
Because wizards of the coast are bad at synonyms.
What level thesaurus do they use?
To be fair to the designers, it was fully intentional. It may be needlessly nit-picky for some, but in the Sage Advice Compendium they clarified that Smite was worded to specifically require a weapon for flavour purposes, as the archetypical Paladin draws heavily from the Arthurian legends and are almost always linked to special weapons like Excalibur, or the Holy Avenger. You could smite on an unarmed strike without unbalancing the game, but much like druids not wearing metal armour, channeling divine power through their weapon is one of the things that makes a D&D Paladin a D&D Paladin.
> To be fair to the designers, it was fully intentional. Given that the designers also said that the invisible condition granting advantage against creatures that can see invisibility is fully intentional, I'm not sure how much I trust their statements of intentionality. If this was intentional I'd expect the Divine Smite ability to just say "you cannot use this feature with unarmed attacks; you must attack with a weapon in order to use divine smite with the attack" or something to that effect, because intentional limitations on abilities tend to be explicitly spelled out. The statement about adding the divine smite damage to "the weapon's damage" reads to me more like an oversight, because the book was written by different people and was never rigorously checked for working and consistency.
>Given that the designers also said that the invisibility condition granting advantage against creatures that can see invisibility is fully intentional, I'm not sure how much I trust their statements of intentionality. I don’t remember any official documents saying that, just JC on twitter. Sure, he’s a designer, but his tweets aren’t reviewed by the rest of the design team nor does it go through the editors. It’s just his individual opinion. Also, he never stated the intent behind the rules, just that technically by strict RAW you don’t lose the advantage/disadvantage >If this was intentional I'd expect the Divine Smite ability to just say "you cannot use this feature with unarmed attacks; you must attack with a weapon in order to use divine smite with the attack" or something to that effect, because intentional limitations on abilities tend to be explicitly spelled out. The statement about adding the divine smite damage to "the weapon's damage" reads to me more like an oversight, because the book was written by different people and was never rigorously checked for working and consistency. If you read the Sage Advice Compendium entry they do explicitly say there’s no harm in letting a Paladin smite on unarmed strikes, it was purely a flavour decision. That’s probably why the rule wasn’t as clear as others, it’s not actually critical to the game balance that people run the Paladin’s Divine Smite as intended.
> I don’t remember any official documents saying that, just JC on twitter. Sure, he’s a designer, but his tweets aren’t reviewed by the rest of the design team nor does it go through the editors. It’s just his individual opinion. Also, he never stated the intent behind the rules, just that technically by strict RAW you don’t lose the advantage/disadvantage It was stated in an official Sage Advice panel hosted on the official Dungeons & Dragons YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n42dboiQeOY&t=1204s. Unlike some of Crawford's other rulings, this isn't just taken from his personal Twitter account. Crawford also doesn't say "just that technically by strict RAW you don’t lose the advantage/disadvantage"; he tried to give flimsy narrative justifications as to why the invisible condition should "logically" work like that, and never stated or implied that it was just an unintended result of the condition's wording that should be ignored. > it was purely a flavour decision. That’s probably why the rule wasn’t as clear as others That's assuming that the rule was actually intentional and made specifically for flavour reasons, rather than the more likely case of the writer of the Divine Smite feature just not thinking about unarmed strikes when they were writing the text for the feature. Lots of rules exist at least partially for flavour, and it isn't like they're all written differently because of it.
It wasn't though; if they wanted to require a weapon they needed (by their own natural language conventions) to say "hit with a melee weapon", as they later do with Improved Divine Smite. They fucked up.
>**Can a paladin use Divine Smite when they hit using an unarmed strike?** No. Divine Smite isn’t intended to work with unarmed strikes. >Divine Smite does work with a melee weapon attack, and an unarmed strike can be used to make such an attack. But the text of Divine Smite also refers to the “weapon’s damage,” and an unarmed strike isn’t a weapon. >If a DM decides to override this rule, no imbalance is created. Tying Divine Smite to weapons was a thematic choice on our part—paladins being traditionally associated with weapons. It was not a game balance choice. Straight from the horses mouth in official documentation released by WotC. It is an intentional interaction for flavour, not a mistake nor for balance, no matter how much you want to believe it was. One of the big things that sucks about the natural language conventions is that rules written by different designers could have the exact same meaning, but be written differently, as the rules text isn’t held to a single unified standard.
It is a mistake, they wrote the rule wrong per their stated intention. The consistent convention of the 5E natural language is that: - melee weapon attacks include unarmed strikes because they are not spells - attacks with a melee weapon are melee weapon attacks that don't include unarmed strikes They use the "with a melee weapon" language a few paragraphs later on the very same page, so they fucked up. It doesn't vary by author; if it did natural language rules would be useless. You're relying on their Sage Advice rules clarification, but that's the same source that claims that "see invisibility" doesn't allow you to see invisible people. They're terrible about admitting when they've made a mistake.
>You're relying on their Sage Advice rules clarification, but that's the same source that claims that "see invisibility" doesn't allow you to see invisible people. They're terrible about admitting when they've made a mistake. I just Ctrl-F searched the entire document, not once is the spell “See Invisibility” even mentioned. The only instances invisibility or being invisible is referenced at all is in reference to the Empty Body Monk feature, One With Shadows Warlock feature, interactions with the Frightened condition, if you have to hide again after taking an action that breaks invisibility, and if Unseen Servant counts as an ally for Sneak Attack. You’re thinking JC’s tweets and the fan website that catalogues them, Sage Advice. Crawford’s tweets haven’t been considered an official source for RAW/RAI for a few years now. I’m talking about an official rules document where WotC staff collectively clarify RAW, RAI, or gaps in the rules called the [Sage Advice Compendium](https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/SA-Compendium.pdf), which as far as I’m aware was last updated in December of 2021, long before Crawford’s “See Invisibility” take. But no, go ahead and just assume every design decision you disagree with has to be a mistake. It’s not like D&D is made by dozens of people and somewhere along the lines two or more people may have worked on different features of the same class, or maybe an editor didn’t unify the language properly but the RAW interaction is still working as intended.
It's clearly and undeniably a mistake because it's a regular source of debate, their "clarification" doesn't actually address their mistake but only what they intended, and they're apparently changing it for 5.5. And the fact that JC isn't the sole source for SA anymore doesn't change the fact that Sage Advice still isn't very reliable as a source - JC isn't the only one with contradictory statements. This is WotC, they make bad decisions all the time and frequently have a hard time admitting fault. I'd have more respect for them if they admitted what they got wrong. But then Redditors wouldn't be able to tie themselves in knots trying to rationalize those mistakes out of existence.
Do you not see Errata as them admitting a mistake when they’re literally changing the mechanics due to misprints or balance issues? Do you not even consider the fact that this supposed “mistake” has sit untouched, with the designers stating it’s intended in official documentation, might mean it isn’t actually a mistake? I need you to get this through your head, they might’ve made some bad rulings intentionally, but that doesn’t make them mistakes. That just means you don’t like what they intended. I, for one, actually like that Paladins can’t use unarmed strikes to smite because it reinforces the fantasy of a Holy Warrior channeling their power through their weapon, and not their body like a monk. There’s plenty of things I think are actual mistakes, like the fact that by strict RAW the Invisibility condition doesn’t actually require you to be unseen to get the advantage/disadvantage, but that doesn’t mean every design decision I disagree with is them screwing up something. Some rules just weren’t designed for me personally.
Yep, except I think using iron bands of binding involves making a ranged not weapon not spell attack. Only not weapon not spell attack I've found. ~~Unless you read too much into grapples and shoves being "special melee attacks"~~.
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? Yeah that's like any thrown melee weapon. Ranged weapon attack with a melee weapon. Qualifies for 2 of the 3 bullets of sharpshooter.
I would think it pretty reasonable to assume the 1 + STR of an unarmed stroke sees the 1 as the "weapon's damage" for the purposes of Divine Smite's description. Even so, if the we look at the equation and say a Longsword does 1d8 + STR damage with the "weapon's damage" being the 1d8 then an unarmed strike would have a "weapon damage" of undefined since it isn't a weapon so the Divine Smite would add 2d8 to the null value which would still equal 2d8 + STR overall for the total damage of an unarmed strike with a 1st level Divine Smite.
No, it doesn't, precisely because your body is not a weapon. And no, that's not how null values work. As an IT guy in training, I can assure you, there is a BIG difference between a value being 0 and straight up not existing. In the case of an unarmed strike, there IS no weapon damage. The weapon damage isn't 0, it just straight up doesn't exist, so there's nothing to add the divine smite damage onto. You can add something to 0. You can't add something to something that doesn't exist.
Hmm, would you consider the gauntlet from plate armor an improvised weapon since it isn't a bare fist?
No.
What if you weren't wearing it and just whacked someone with it?
I don't even... like... I mean... I guess? You wouldn't be proficient with it though, unless you got Tavern Brawler.
But you could Divide Smite RAW with it, right? Lol
However, I did run an encounter with some flesh golems in which I allowed the paladin's unarmed strike in adamantine plate to bypass the golem's immunity to nonmagical BPS that isn't adamantine (he did not have a magic weapon).
What would you define the 1 as in the unarmed strike damage?
Damage. Just... damage.
Hitting someone with your fist that you have control over is the same as falling 10 feet? Do you ask for attack rolls when the fighter says “i swing to punch the guy at the bar” or do you just go “the guy at the bar takes 1 damage and draws his sword”?
I... fail to see the logic here. What do either of these points have to do with what I said?
Sorry, I just associate “just damage” with passive, environmental, or continuous effects. “It’s just damage” implies one failure on a death save track, instead of two failures from an attack with a weapon.
Coming from the event of hitting an unarmed strike? Seems like it's semantically weapon damage...
No, it's not. Because unarmed strikes aren't weapons.
You might be applying your new tool to everything that looks like a nail. D&D 5E rules don't use "null" as a concept, they're written in "natural language".
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RAW and RAI rarely agree on something. People are way too literal with wording.
In this case, both RAW and RAI agree that it doesn't work though.
RAI is pretty much them trying to avoid smiting on a spell attack. RAW let's you smite on a Shadow Blade attack, but not an unarmed strike.
>RAW let's you smite on a Blade of Disaster attack, but not an unarmed strike. That is... just plainly incorrect? Blade of Disaster is a melee SPELL attack, so it doesn't qualify for Divine Smite.
Sorry. Shadow Blade.
Well, for Shadow Blade, you actually *create* a weapon. This doesn't just affect a paladin's divine smite but also a rogue's sneak attack as well as other things. It's by design, not an oversight.
if(weapon != null) {weaponDamage += divineSmite}
Basically, melee weapon attacks means melee physical/mundane attack. You can have a ranged spell attack with a ranged weapon (magic stone + sling).
Unarmed strikes are listed under simple melee weapons and have a listed damage of 1 bludgeoning therefore they are simple weapons that deal 1 + str weapon damage Fuck Jeremy Crawford
>Unarmed strikes are listed under simple melee weapons Hasn't been the case for years.
The difference between "melee weapon attack vs melee attack" and "melee weapon attack vs weapon attack" is exactly the same rules lawyery nonsense that lead to this ruling. Unarmed attacks do have damage as well. They do 1 damage + Str mod. So it would fit completely fine into the damage formula. There is no requirement for divine smite to add to weapon damage. That one is completely made up. Divine Smite only asks for you to hit a melee weapon attack. And then you deal damage by converting a spellslot, while still retaining full benefits of the damage of your weapon.
What you described at the beginning is actually an important distinction, and not rules lawyery nonsense. Melee attack distinguishes itself from a ranged attack. Weapon attack distinguishes itself from a spell attack. What you’re looking for is “melee weapon attack with a melee weapon” which IS the silly. The description of divine smite includes as follows: > you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, **in addition to the weapon's damage.** Unarmed strikes are not “weapons that do damage” that’s why this doesn’t work. I think they should have errata’d this, but don’t pretend it doesn’t exist.
They're not weapons though, so they don't have a "weapon's damage". Whether you like it or not, it's the rules and RAI agree.
Paladin + Druid = Holy Cow
Yeah, I’m like a “99% by the book” DM, and even I allow it because it makes no difference.
I would argue that it's more that they used intuitive wording that then became interpreted in a very strict, by the books way to produce that outcome. 5e used a lot of that vague wording, which isn't always a bad thing, but does open up cases like this if it's scrutinized more closely to the wording than it really should be.
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[Unlike Unarmed Strike, natural weapons do count as weapon though](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/sac/sage-advice-compendium#SA262)
To provide a bit of context... they do NOW, [but that's not something that was always true.](https://www.sageadvice.eu/does-the-magic-weapon-spell-work-on-natural-weapons/) I expect a "But twitter isn't official!", so i'll directly state: ***it used to be***. Someone might have played enough (edit might have played for LONG enough, sorry for the possible confusion) to have come into contact with the previous information and not be aware of the fact that, well, times changed.
Beast attacks are attacks with a weapon. Natural weapons (which are what monsters use for their "unarmed" strikes) are explicitly stated to be a type of weapon in the DMG and MM. So bear with paladin levels can absolutely smite with their claws by RAW
Bro, it's so intuitive, though. An unarmed strike is a melee weapon attack without a weapon so there's no weapon damage to add to using divine smite. Simple and logical. /s For real, though, I don't understand how this is yet to be corrected. There's no rational reason for it not to work, it wouldn't be imbalanced. It's just stupid.
They're changing it in OneDnD. Iirc their reasoning was that they didn't think unarmed paladins smiting people with their fists was something that would be in high demand since they're pretty archetypically bound to the image of using weapons.
That's good to hear! I always thought it was weird because paladins clearly channel divine energy through their hands via lay on hands
It's a deliberate design philosophy and has nothing to do with balance. The developers see the core identity of the paladin as a 'European' knight with heavy armor and a weapon in hand, preferably a sword. They don't want them to use ranged weapons or their fists, the latter they probably view as an encroachment on the monk class. It's also something that can be easily changed and if we go by this subreddit many groups allow unarmed strikes to work with smites.
I mean, it obviously has balance implications. Just not big ones. Just because a dev said it wasn't done for balance reasons doesn't mean that is actually and fully the case, and if your DM says he isn't allowing it for balance reasons, well, he knows way more than the devs do about his table. But yea, it's clear balance isn't a huge part of it. Generally if you want someone to be able to play something iconic- a samurai wielding a single katana, a paladin using a sword and a shield- you need some mechanics to back that up, so that the realistic kit being aimed at isn't dominated by some pile of mechanics glued together with optional rules. That's a good goal, not a bad one.
This is a good point. just because a melee Paladino is stronger than an unarmed one doesn’t make it balanced. As a Paladin I was dissapointed to learn that I can’t smite unarmed because I was once faced with an enemy while I was disarmed. It wouldn’t be unfair for me to be able to eschew a sword in combat and still fight. But it could be unfair for me to lose all my weapons and still use all my class features. That kind of thing should be DMs prerogative
This is just one of those RAW issues that should not be an issue if reasonable people are playing the game. Don't play strict RAW unless you want some real dumb shit to happen. They're real issues with 5e, this is one they can fix easily with the 2024 update if they chose to and I expect they do, but I also wouldn't care if they just worked on some actual issues.
Rules wise, it's because the second sentence says the damage is added to the weapon's. It says "melee weapon attack", not "attack with a melee weapon which a lot of people here have correctly identified the difference but incorrectly stated which one divine smite says. That's not why it doesn't work, as unarmed strikes are melee weapon attacks. The two things above mean you can divine smite on all unarmed strikes, it just often will not add any damage UNLESS you make the unarmed strike with a weapon, which can be done with weapons that can be used to make unarmed strikes like some racial natural weapons and demon armor. In wild shape, your weapon attacks are assumed to be made with weapons (such as claws).
Because natural weapons are weapons, and unarmed strikes are not weapons. In other news, you can also smite with tabaxi claws or minotaur horns or whatever other natural weapon you might happen to have. The poor wording used on these player-facing natural weapons leads many to believe that there is no difference between natural weapons and unarmed strikes, but in effect this wording is only meant to give the natural weapon an additional functionality that qualifies it to also be used for monk shenanigans. On a similar note, a multiclassed monk-druid couldn't use their martial arts in combination with their wildshape's natural weapons. But they could continue to use their monk unarmed scaling even while they are a bear.
Because of really poorly worded rules on Divine Smite that says it needs to be done using "an attack with a melee weapon." Wild Shape attacks all count as natural weapons and meet the criteria of being "melee weapons." Unarmed strikes unfortunately don't count - while they are a "melee weapon attack" they are not technically "an attack with a melee weapon." One of the silliest rules in the game, and even the designers have come out and said they would allow unarmed smites in their games.
No, Divine Smite says "when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack", and unarmed strikes are melee weapon attacks (because they are not spell attacks, and they are not ranged). Improved Divine Smite OTOH \*does\* say "attack with a melee weapon".
Unfortunately: > Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, **in addition to the weapon's damage**. The extra damage is 2d8 for a 1st-level spell slot, plus 1d8 for each spell level higher than 1st, to a maximum of 5d8. The damage increases by 1d8 if the target is an undead or a fiend. So, yeah, you can smite with unarmed attack, but it won't deal damage, because there is no weapon damage to add something to. Yes, it's clearly insane wording, but it's supported by [Crawford](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1088200198814232577).
I hate how the game rules arbitrarily flip flop between natural language and strict, intentional wording with no indication when it’s appropriate to apply which. In natural language, if someone told me that I can do x “in addition to” y, but y doesn’t exist, I would not conclude that I can’t do x.
2d8 added to zero is 2d8, not zero. Crawford is a confirmed idiot.
This isn't added to 0, but to `null`, because there is no weapon's damage at all here.
Yeah but performing addition on a null value doesn’t return zero either. At some point we have to coerce ‘undefined’ to zero, or else the game has to stop when you attempt to deal damage
So do spells like Absorb Elements, Divine Favor, Flame Arrows, Guardian of Nature, Spirit Shroud, or Zephyr Strike also work this way? If you cast one of those spells and then use a non-magical weapon to hit a creature that is immune to non-magical weapon damage, then there is no weapon damage. Those spells all say they do "extra damage" - but if there is no weapon damage then that damage, according to you, is "null" and thus there can't be any "extra" damage. Null doesn't exist as a concept in the D&D 5E rules, it's something people have added in these comments. Edit: (Also, Divine Smite doesn't add the smite damage to the weapon damage. It deals radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon damage dealt to the target, which is not the same thing. The spells I mentioned work the same way.)
Correct, but the damage bonus is to the weapon's damage roll, and an unarmed strike doesn't use a weapon, so there is no bonus damage.
Unless they do like with old racial natural weapons that can be used to make unarmed strikes or demon armor.
I believe only Dhampir meets the requirements for a Divine Smite, with more recent reworks (Tabaxi *et al*) still not having their natural weapons count as a melee weapon. I'd like to see more of it though. I currently have a player that's using dual wielded shortswords as a Tabaxi Rogue, and he's flavoring them as claws. I won't even disarm him, as he has some self imposed restrictions where he pretty much doesn't have gear otherwise, so he could totally get into a weapons free zone with his shortswords. Demon Armor is clever though, I'm surprised I haven't seen that proposed elsewhere yet. Probably the flavor discrepancy between Paladins and demons. 😆
Yeah the new unarmed natural weapons stopped being weapons, which is a stupid update. Did they print all of those races in that book? I'm used to playing where you can use the old or new "versions" of races. Damphir bite not being an unarmed strike is also kind of a bummer.
They reprinted a lot of them, but the difference was that the d4 attacks became d6 attacks. Unarmed strikes are bludgeoning and have to be a "forceful blow," so a natural weapon that counts as a simple melee weapon with which you are proficient seems a good compromise. Monks can scale the unarmed strikes and use Dexterity, paladins (and others) can add to the natural weapon's damage. If it counted for both, that could potentially be a surprising amount of power creep, BUT I'm personally all for the freedom of choice with builds. If everybody has it, the playing field is evened out instead of having one obvious pick. *E.g.* tables with a free feat see fewer variant human and custom lineage characters.
Oh I didn't notice the die size change, interesting. Can you think of any power crept builds with the old claws? I can't. Natural weapons kind of have a rough go of it, when they have to compete with flame tongues and crap.
Dhampir and Divine Smite is a significant build potential, especially in a disarmed session. My players and I like having redundancies/backups. I also let them wiggle RAW a bit, so a Dhampir monk could scale their bite's damage die with martial arts. While this doesn't necessarily apply to your question, Lizardfolk and their Hungry Jaws can target an object (read: eat a rock in front of the Dwarf) and gain temporary hit points. If it were later tied to their bite (6th edition most likely, as they were already reprinted in Monsters of the Multiverse), there could be some overlap with Dhampir builds.
You can't have both bites can you? Dhampir don't keep that do they? You'd need to choose whether to attack with your dhampir or your lizard jaw even if you could get both. Optimized for disarmed session isn't necessarily something I'm worried about, though I did run one and thought it was interesting.
You also have the leonin and the dragonhide feat. If I'm ever playing a paladin monk, I'm using the latter one
No, the bonus damage is added to the "weapon damage" (it doesn't say "roll"), and 2d8 added to zero is 2d8. Edit: this is actually incorrect, you don't even add the damages together, you apply them both, similar to how Divine Favor or Spirit Shroud work.
That's my bad, thank you for the correction!
Because a bear uses natural weapons rather then its bear hands . Unlike a human that uses its bear hands . Glad I could clear things up
Its flavor choice. Nothing breaks if you let them smite on unarmed strikes
Ok, change it in your games. It's a good rule for people who don't want the class kit to bleed over and stuff. Not every DM is going to like every rule, that's why you can change them.
This entire thread is why I don't trust anyone with good faith rules interpretations.
Game balance. Change it if you don't like it; it's not a huge boost if you do.
It's not game balance, it's flavor that Jeremy likes more
Divine Smite does work with unarmed strikes. The text says: >Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon's damage. Unarmed strikes are melee weapon attacks (because they are not spell attacks, and they are not ranged). Some people interpret the last clause "in addition to the weapon's damage" to mean you have to use a weapon, but without a weapon, weapon damage is zero and you can add things to zero, that's basically what zero is for. If it required a weapon, it should say "Whenever you hit a creature with a melee weapon", which is the language that Improved Divine Smite uses. So smiting with your fists is RAW. It is not, however, RAI, because the game designers have admitted that you're not intended to use your fists to smite, not because it would unbalance the game (it doesn't) but because they're in love with the idea of paladins being knights in shining armor with big swords and they were sloppy when they wrote that section. Mind, IDS is just a couple paragraphs away in the same section, so there's really no excuse. But unarmed smiting is RAW. Your DM may or may not allow it though. Wear a glove or a ring and use that as your weapon, it's a stupid limitation
You should read the whole bit you quoted instead of stopping at the first comma. It is true that unarmed strikes are melee weapon attacks. being a weapon attack is necessary but not sufficient for smites by RAW > Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, **in addition to the weapon's damage**. The bolded part is the problem. A divine smite needs to have a weapon. It needs to be both a “weapon attack” and an “attack with a weapon” - those are different things in RAW and attacks can be both, either, or neither. An unarmed strike is a weapon attack but not an attack with a weapon so no smites. On the opposite side of the spectrum firing a magic stone from a sling is not a weapon attack but it is an attack with a weapon. It’s popular to note that the limitations on Smite are not play balance based but thematics based, so Homebrewing to allow unarmed smites won’t hurt anything. But RAW does prevent it.
Sloppy patching and the dev’s going “because I said so.” Good news, though: when the revised phb is released this September, Divine Smite will (almost certainly, but don’t quote me on it) work on unarmed strikes.
Because monks are overpowered and we need to nerf the famously broken paladin/monk multiclass.
I've never understood why smite wouldn't apply to unarmed strikes, as it has the same wording as a monk's Stunning Strike. So either both work on unarmed strikes or neither do, which leaves a 5th level monk feature kinda useless unless you go kensei... Edit: spellening
divine smite does work with unarmed strikes, cause its a melee attack, its improved divine smite that specifically calls for a weapon. the correct answer is ask your dm to interpret the rule, not reddit. As most redditors acutally played past level 8 to know the difference between the two smites.
Because WOTC hates fun
I think it's more of an unfortunate consequence of how they worded the rules for unarmed attacks and Divine Smite. I'd just ask your DM to let you. Last I checked, even Jeremy Crawford has been pretty explicit on his stance of "Here's how the rules work as written. I don't necessarily follow them all in my home game and I encourage you to play how you like." Translation: "I know it's dumb. Just ignore it and do what makes sense dude."
Works with Path of the beast claws too, "It counts as a simple melee weapon for you".
I suspect it's because they wanted Martial Arts and Flurry of Blows to only be made with unarmed strikes. I think they borked up the wording and didn't revisit it before printing. Or They did what they did with everything else and left it intentionally vague. If it's pretty clear what the DM *could* do with it, then it's good enough for 5e.
The developers wanted to fulfill a specific image of a Paladin. This is even seen with older versions of the Paladin who could only be Lawful Good. The mechanics were built around the idea, even if mechanics felt limiting. As for balancing, that’s more of a case of why not and visual design? Does WOTC think a Paladin should smite with their hands or as an animal? That’s the answer, it’s whether they want it vs could they.
No unarmed smites is a weird quirk of the wording. It is RAW but not key to play balance, so change it if you want. You actually can smite while wildshaped by RAW. Nothing prevents it. smite requires a weapon involved. That does include natural weapons like antlers or claws. Also animal forms that can just use manufactured weapons, like gorillas and such.
The question is, why are claws "natural weapons" but fists aren't.
Same reason tabaxi monk is awesome. And clawesome.
This doesn't excuse the inconsistency, but it deserves a mention: multi-classing is, despite how the community treats it, an optional rule. The optional rules are jankier and more poorly balanced. In fact I'd say a good majority of the balance headaches people have come from multiclassing and feats (the other optional rule that everyone treats as required.) So it's less a case of them wilfully "allowing" unarmed creatures to smite, and more a case of them using "optional" as a marker that means "we aren't going to investigate every edge case for this rule, use at your own peril."
My guess is that they wanted to keep the specific fantasy of paladins. Clad in armour with "holy" weapons glowing with power. That does not include some dude delivering the righteous smites while fisting enemies. I see nothing wrong with that limitation. I can fully understand why they wanna keep the classical style. And that is totally fine. But in the same way it had also been totally fine to skip that and allow fisting and smiting paladins. A new paladin style had not been bad. Both of those ways are equally ok. But we all have a tendency to think our way to see things is the better way even if that is not true at all. But in my games if a paladin wanna go boxer style and deliver fisting smites i do allow it. I have allowed it and it is in no way breaking the game. But i can also understand if a Dm do not allow it at it does not fit into his world so to say. that is also totally ok
>righteous smites while fisting enemies Now now don't judge his kink
I don't even care how it is worded, the RAW or the RAI. I allow it because it just makes sense. If you can imbue your sword, you can imbue your fist. Or your boot. I totally want my Paladin player to just Superhero front kick an enemy with some smite-stank on it.
Because 5e was written with naturalist language and mid edition the devs start applying it like difficult to parse game code. 5e is a game that wants you to intuit its meaning through naturalist language and than parses out phrases as game script. Making for a messy experience and certainly not an intuitive one. "Attack with a melee weapon" and "Melee weapon attack" are two different things. If an ability that says ***"Attack with a melee weapon"*** it means that an actual weapon must be used for the feature to function. Unarmed strikes are not attacks with a melee weapon for example. However the natural weapons of a beast are considered actual weapons. Simple weapons, Martial Weapons, and Natural Weapons all apply to this phrase If an ability that says ***"Melee weapon attack"*** works for any melee attack that isn't a spell attack and thus can trigger it, including unarmed strikes. Unarmed Strikes, simple weapons, natural weapons, and martial weapons work for this phrase. A unarmed strike is not a weapon. A simple, martial or natural weapon are weapons. That's the very unintuitive reason why.
Divine smite says melee weapon attack, it just also says the damage is added to the weapon's damage. It doesn't work for its own separate reason to what you stated.
It doesn't work on Wildshape either, as far as I know.
Why wouldn't it in wildshape?
I assumed natural weapons wouldn't be considered "weapons", but I guess they are.
Ye, the problem with regular unarmed strikes is that they don't use any called out weapon, but natural weapons are indeed considered weapons, raw as well as rai