Paladin Oath
Oath of Denial
The Oath of Denial is for paladins who spurn the gods, rejecting divinity and all its trappings. Denial paladins believe all the gods are frauds, perpetrating a grand deception on the peoples of the world, and seek to expose the liars for what they are. Each paladin may have their own beliefs about what the gods truly are — maybe dead and gone, maybe powerless charlatans, maybe mighty extraplanar beings but still something less than divine. But all denial paladins aim to educate the world about this rotten scam.
Denial paladins are inherently unusual and often unwelcome, especially around the faithful. They may come from any background and practice any alignment; virtous truth-tellers coexist in the oath alongside spiteful hatemongers.
Tenets of Denial
Paladins who swear the Oath of Denial take a vow to oppose the false gods.
- The Gods Lie: All divinity is false, all deities lie.
- Spread the Word: The people must know of the perfidy of the heavens.
- Trust No Faith: Priests and clerics may be innocent fools or scheming villains, and you are the one to judge them.
Oath of Denial Features
| Paladin Level | Features |
|---|---|
| 3rd | Oath Spells, Channel Divinity |
| 7th | Aura of Denial |
| 15th | Unbreakable Will |
| 20th | Avatar of Faithlessness |
Oath of Denial Spells
Starting at 3rd level, you learn an additional spell when you reach certain levels in this class, as shown in the table below. The spell counts as a paladin spell for you, but it doesn’t count against the number of paladin spells you can prepare.
| Paladin Level | Spells |
|---|---|
| 3rd | command |
| 5th | silence |
| 9th | counterspell |
| 13th | compulsion |
| 17th | dispel evil and good |
Spells marked a with a * are custom spells included in an appendix at the end of this document. Spells marked with a K are by KibblesTasty and also included in the appendix.
Channel Divinity
You gain the following two Channel Divinity options. See the Sacred Oath class feature for how Channel Divinity works.
Empowering Oath
You can use your Channel Divinity to mock the gods and assume power you were never meant to have. As a reaction when you see a spell of 5th level or less cast within 120 feet of you, you can learn to mimic its power and add it to your list of Oath Spells. You can learn one spell this way for each spell level you are able to cast, and in order to learn a new spell, you must forget any you previously learned of the same spell level. If you learn a spell on the Cleric spell list this way, it physically pains you to cast it; any time you cast the spell, you lose hit points equal to its spell level.
Once you learn counterspell, you can use this feature as part of the same reaction you use to cast counterspell.
Empowering Oath can obviously be very disruptive in some games, particularly games that include lots of homebrew spells. Your GM may choose to restrict it to just spells in the SRD in order to limit unbalanced combinations, and might also look at a supplement like Spells That Don't Suck to rein in outliers even more (see Appendix 1).
Disrupting Smite
You can use your Channel Divinity to bring your Oath's power to bear against those who offend your tenets. As a bonus action when you use your Divine Smite, you can disrupt the target, inflicting the following effects for 1 minute:
- The next time it makes a saving throw against one of your spells, it does so with disadvantage.
- The next time you hit it with an attack, you inflict bonus psychic damage equal to your paladin level.
- The next time the target makes a saving throw to maintain concentration on a spell, it makes the saving throw as if the triggering damage were doubled. This applies immediately if it is currently concentrating on a spell.
- You can choose for your Divine Smite to deal psychic damage instead of radiant.
Aura of Denial
Starting at 7th level, your steadfast focus on reality extends in an aura to those around you. This aura extends 10 feet from you in every direction, but not through total cover. Creatures of your choice within the aura have advantage on saving throws to avoid being charmed and automatically disbelieve illusions caused by spells of a level less than or equal to your Charisma modifier.
At 18th level, the range of this aura increases to 30 feet.
Unbreakable Will
At 15th level, your iron will protects you against the servants of the gods. You gain resistance to radiant and necrotic damage. In addition, when you would fail an Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma saving throw, you can choose to succeed instead. You can succeed on a saving throw in this way once, regaining the ability to do so after finishing a short or long rest.
Avatar of Faithlessness
At 20th level as an action, you can force reality around you into a consistent shape for 1 minute. All illusions you choose within 30 feet of you are instantly dispelled, and every creature within 30 feet are affected as if it failed a saving throw against the zone of truth spell. In addition, you can use your Disrupting Smite once on each of your turns without expending a use of your Channel Divinity.
Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.
Oath of Denial quirks
The following are some optional quirks for a player of this Oath to choose from.
| d6 | Quirk |
|---|---|
| 1 | You keep tally-mark tattoos for the number of priests you've swayed from their faith. |
| 2 | You sometimes ask your comrades to cast pointless spells, just so you can practice counterspelling them. |
| 3 | You are just incredibly argumentative. |
| 4 | You never met a holy book you didn't want to burn. |
| 5 | You never met an authority you didn't want to oppose. |
| 6 | You kind of hate that you really like the party cleric. |
Appendix 1: Spell Sources
Spells used are available in these collections, all of which are free to use and reference for any purpose.
- Spells That Don't Suck is a set of spells by Omega Ankh and somanyrobots, creating replacements for problematic spells contained in first-party WotC materials. These are marked with SDS.
- So Many Spells is a set of wholly original spells written by somanyrobots. These are marked with S.
- Kibbles' Casting Compendium is the complete set of spells written by KibblesTasty. These are marked with K.
Change Log
v0.2
- Fixed an error on Unbreakable Will
- Clarified Empowering Oath
- Added missing duration to Avatar of Faithlessness
v0.1
- Rough Draft
Credits & References:
- Oath of Denial created by somanyrobots Discord | Patreon
Art
Knight of Sorrows, by Zezhou Chen © Wizards of the Coast LLC
Background Image Stains
License
© 2025 somanyrobots, CC BY-NC 4.0
Includes spells from Kibbles' Casting Compendium 2.0 by KibblesTasty Homebrew LLC, which is licensed CC-BY and available here.
Includes spells from Spells That Don't Suck by Omega Ankh and somanyrobots, which is licensed CC-BY and available here.
Fan Content Policy
This work is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.
5E SRD Content
This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 (“SRD 5.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available here.
The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available here.