The Smite spells being consumed even on missed attacks is also SEVERELY hurting the Paladins action economy in its currently implementation.
I’ve not checked the combat logs thoroughly yet to see what is happening with smiting, but I’m pretty sure that when I tried to use searing smite and missed, it didn’t consume a spell slot or bonus action, just the action. That may have been my Zariel tiefling’s inherent searing smite rather than their paladin smite, but I’d think they’d be implemented the same way. Admittedly that’s just on the initial turn and I haven’t got round to working out what happens on subsequent ones for smite effects that persist for a number of turns.
For divine smite, I’ve been using the reaction prompt rather than active selection, and that only seems to fire when I hit and have at least one remaining spell slot, so I’m not sure what is wrong with that? Though I’ve not looked into whether activating smite consumes a reaction or what happens when choosing divine smite as an action, so is that where you see the problem?
EDIT: I’m looking now and realise that that the inherent tiefling searing smite doesn’t actually use a spell slot unlike the paladin one, which I guess makes sense as not every Zariel tiefling is going to be of a class that has spell slots. My point still holds for the bonus action, but I’ll keep an eye on spell slots from now on.
