The Oath of The Ancients is one of the most fun paladin subclasses available in fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons: You have all the flavour of a druid and all the divine fury of a paladin. Baldur's Gate 3 adapts the class faithfully, keeping its best abilities and combos viable in their level one-to-twelve adventure.

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The standout features of the Oath of the Ancients appear beyond level six, making the Oath of the Ancients function best as an end-game build that you either plan towards or reclass into. With the right build and items this paladin is one of the best tanks in the game.

Best Build For An Oath Of The Ancients Paladin

This Oath of the Ancients Paladin is highly dependent on a couple of key items, namely the Sylvan Scimitar or Infernal Rapier. These let you use your charisma for attack rolls using them and allow the Paladin to neglect strength and dexterity in favour of having a maximised charisma and constitution.

If you do not have either of these items you can still make the build work, substituting the values for charisma and dexterity and picking up a finesse weapon.

  • 10 strength
  • 13 dexterity
  • 16 constitution
  • 8 intelligence
  • 10 Wisdom
  • 17 Charisma

From here, the build progresses as follows:

Level

Ability

Notes

2

Protection Fighting Style

The AI in this game loves to focus attacks on whoever has the lowest AC. This gives tanking characters a lot of work to do. Protection lets you ward off a key attack against an ally.

4

Feat: Ability Improvement (dexterity, charisma)

This brings your attacking and spellcasting stat up to 18. The dexterity bonus lets you dodge fireballs slightly better.

8

Feat: Ability Improvement (charisma +2)

Maxing your core stat is never a poor build choice in this game. You can choose to take the level 12 feat here instead and delay your attack progression.

12

Mage Slayer

The Oath of the Ancients Paladin is great at defending against spellcasters and this lets you better attack them.

The main choices you'll be making between these levels are which spells you have prepared, but paladins can change these freely outside of combat. This means you'll never need to worry about learning a spell that is made obsolete by a later feature.

Spell (level)

Use

Heroism(1)

The temporary hitpoints each turn add up to an astounding 50HP for a first-level spell, but you'll rarely make perfect use of them. The immunity to fear is amazing due to how strong the debuff is in this game. It will eventually be made obsolete by the level 10 ability Aura Of Courage.

Thunderous Smite(1)

Knocking an enemy prone will help other melee attackers, especially rogues.

Bless(1)

The go-to spell for when you don't need concentration for anything else. The best targets for this are allies who make multiple attacks per turn, such as dual-wielders.

Cure Wounds (1)

Paladins have a limited number of spells that benefit from using higher-level slots. Your Lay On Hands will outperform the healing from this spell, but more healing is never a bad thing.

Aid(2)

Other divine spellcasters will be able to upcast this further for a greater buff but are more likely to have other needs for their high-level slots.

Warding Bond(2)

The lynchpin of Ancients Paladin, lets you protect allies outside your aura and becomes available before level seven when Warding Aura comes online. Damage Reduction is applied to the redirected damage, letting you make amazing use of items like Adamantine Splint Armour.

Warden of Vitality (3)

Ranged healing on a bonus action is great: paladins don't get access to healing word so this comes online a lot later than the same ability in other classes. Despite this, paladins have fewer uses for their bonus actions so can make better use of it.

Revivify(3)

You don't need to have this prepared at all times, but it's useful to remember so you save yourself the cost of a resurrection.

Equipment For An Oath Of The Ancients Paladin

This build is only directly reliant on a couple of key items, the weapons and armour. Other item slots are going to be dependent on what items the rest of your group is using, as they'll often be able to make better use of them.

Item

Effect

Use

Sylvan Scimitar or Infernal Rapier

Both weapons use your charisma instead of dexterity on attacks

The Infernal Rapier is the stronger of the two weapons, but might already be needed for an ally's build. The Cambion it summons can help with tanking if you deliberately conjure it in an exposed position.

Adamantine Splint Armour

This heavy armour reduces all damage taken by two and negates critical hits.

The Adamantine Splint Armour does everything a paladin needs and leaves rarer options like Helldusk Armour for the characters who benefit most from it. The damage reduction will apply to attacks bounced via Warding Bond, letting you safely have multiple bonds set up and not worry about absorbing too much.

Viconia's Walking Fortress

Enemies have a disadvantage on spell attacks

Viconia's Walking Fortress further doubles down on your defences against magic. If you make your defences too strong, enemies might ignore you for easier targets, so this is a double-edged option.

Sarevok's Horned Helmet

Expands range for landing critical hits

Multiplying your critical hit chance is good on any paladin. Since this is a medium armour, it is unlikely to have been dibsed by an assassin rogue.

Amulet of Greater Health

Raises constitution to 23

An Amulet of Greater Health will boost this character's constitution from 16 to 23, giving an extra three hitpoints per level, but will produce a much bigger gain when given to a character with a lower starting constitution.

Ring of Free Action

Cannot be paralysed or hindered from moving

This item leaves you free to position your aura optimally, and you can prepare restoration to cleanse paralysis from allies.

Risky Ring

Gives an advantage on all attacks and a disadvantage on all saves

The Risky Ring is normally best used by assassin rogues, but an Ancients Paladin can use it to draw spells and attacks towards themselves while landing critical smites more often. Enemies love targeting the person who has a disadvantage on all their saves. The Ring of Free Action and Aura of Warding will negate the worst consequences.

Playstyle For An Oath Of The Ancients Paladin

In combat, the Oath of the Ancients has three main roles to juggle.

Role

Notes

Smiting

This is typical of all paladins: You want to hit enemies often and try to get lucky critical hits you can turn into boosted smites.

This requires you to play on the front lines, fighting in melee and rarely sparing actions for spellcasting or other tasks.

Damage Negation

This part is unique to the Ancients Paladin, where you want to make the most of your warding aura and defensive skills to negate as much damage as possible. Allies can only benefit from your aura when standing very close to you, meaning a lot of the time you'll only be providing these bonuses to other melee fighters and possibly a mid-range fighter such as a polearm master.

Allies that are routinely outside your aura can be protected using Warding Bond. If you have a start-of-day list of buffs you always cast, add this to it.

Backup Healer

Healing abilities you'll largely be using outside of combat to top people up. Moving to heal a person often requires breaking formation, and this can lead to other allies taking more damage than you removed with the healing.

If you find that enemies are too frequently ignoring you for squishier allies, deliberately weaken your defences to become a more attractive target. Dropping your shield is one way to do this and makes you the best option for carrying torches if your party doesn't have the light cantrip.

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