“So with Divine Smite in particular, we realized very early on in Fifth Edition that frankly the Paladin was too powerful, and that excess of power was largely because of how open-ended the use ...

At the root of the Paladin’s “nerfing” is the change to making Divine Smite a spell instead of an ability feature. In the 2014 ruleset, a Divine Smite is something that a Paladin can do ...