Is Empowered Spell compatible with Divine Smite? (using Booming Blade)

Question

Okay this is a complicated one, so I am unsure whether it works and might need some deep diving into text, but I'm curious what people think.

If your sorcerer-paladin has Booming Blade (or Green-Flame Blade) you can smite with it, as a melee weapon attack is part of the spell.

If you use the metamagic 'empowered spell' you can reroll the damage dice of a spell up to your charisma modifier

What I want to know is whether smite damage counts here?

I am already fairly certain that the weapon damage and the extra d8s at higher levels can all be empowered, because the attack is part of the booming blade spell. In other words the attack's damage dice are icluded in the spell's damage dice. (You may disagree, but I'm running under that assumption)

But what about the smite damage? That is usually doubled on a crit along with all the other dice, as it counts as part of the attack's damage dice. So if the smite damage dice are part of the attack's damage dice and the attack's damage dice are included in the spell's damage dice, then by extension wouldn't the smite damage dice be part of the spell's damage dice?

Thoughts?

Answer 1

No.

Rules as Written, the description for Empowered Spell is:

When you roll damage for a spell, you can spend 1 sorcery point to reroll a number of the damage dice . . .

Contrast that wording with the description for critical hits:

When you score a critical hit, you get to roll extra dice for the attack’s damage . . .

Note, Piercer has the same wording as critical hits do for rerolling damage.

It seems to me in the Empowered Spell description, the mention of the damage dice is referring specifically to the damage dice of the spell, not the damage dice of the entire attack.

Additionally, Divine Smite's description explicitly mentions that it deals damage "in addition to the weapon's damage", implying its damage dice are a separate pool.

Lastly, we can feel more secure that this is likely Rules As Intended, due to the Sage Advice about Smite and Great Weapon Fighting, where Smite dice are not rerollable using Great Weapon Fighting, which would match what we have here.