D&D 5E Paladin and Lay on hands question

[Evenglare]

So one of my players really likes playing dark knight characters. So before the official oathbreaker paladin preview was released we kind of just set up a couple of homebrew rules. Anyway now that the oath breaker is out I'm mandating the character to revise his character to fit in line with what the books have. No problem here, but he does want to keep one thing.... we switched out lay on hands into an inflict damage ability. Now at lower levels I don't think it's a problem but that scaling by level x 5 gives a pretty hefty amount of damage to inflict in later levels. I was thinking of making him draw from his own HP to power the ability. What do you think? We didn't even mess with the cure disease stuff but perhaps you could spend 5 HP to poison a target?

What does enworld think about this? or should I just use the rules as is? He also wants to change damage type of smite from divine to necrotic, which I have no issues with.

 

[Piratecat]

I was going to say it's overpowered, but you know, I'm not so sure it is. A 10th lvl paladin can inflict 50 pts of dmg with attacks; doing 50 pts with an inflict damage ability not only duplicates that effect, it removes the flexibility of on-call healing. I suspect I'd test it to see.

 

[Jaelommiss]

If you think that level x 5 is overpowered then you could give him charisma modifier x level instead. He could boost it to 5 x level if he really wanted, but it would take a few ability score increases that would otherwise have gone to str, con, or feats.

As an alternative, give him level x 5 but make him make attack rolls when he tries to use it.

 

[Piratecat]

I think attack rolls (or rather, spell attacks) are mandatory regardless.

 

[Paraxis]

I would keep damage dealing to the divine smite ability and spells, maybe change divine smite to necrotic damage instead of radiant damage.

As far as lay on hands, make it selfish, it only works on the paladin the only others he can use it on is undead. You might want to change it up further by saying he can only use it as a bonus action after attacking a target, the max h.p healed by his lay on hands is the damage he just dealt.

 

[Blue]

Let's lookk at the spell lists to see what is valued more:

Cure Wounds (1st level slot): 1d8+mod, say average 7.5 for 1st level (16-17 ability score)
Inflict Wounds (1st level slot): 3d10, requires hit, average 16.5, say 50% chance to hit for 8.25 damage

Those are about the same. In anything curing is a bit dearer, and having the flexibility to dish out healing in small doses (wake up someone unconscious for 1, heal just the right amount without wasting any) is another plus for healing that damaging lay-on-hands doesn't have.

Keep it with the 5 x Level and not wasted on a miss. It's balanced and sometimes you need to go big in order to keep it interesting.

 

[Quartz]

I must confess to being uncomfortable with this. Darkness notwithstanding, the 'dark knight' characters are heroes, not villains. A straight-up Oath of Vengeance paladin would seem more appropriate.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Since you asked...

Personally I wouldn't mess with Lay on Hands. He gets inflict wounds as a spell, and he can use it that way. He can just refrain from using Lay on Hands on anyone other than himself and/or pets if so desired.

Changing radiant damage to necrotic? Absolutely yes. I expect that to be an extremely popular house rule, if not explicitly mentioned in the DMG. The 4e DMG had something like that for evil priests (see--there are some things 4e did that I like), and I'm giving a 48% chance it is mentioned again in this DMG. (I'd give it higher, but with so much stuff going into the DMG, it's the kind of thing that could get forgotten.)