Baradin- 10 Sword Bard / 2 Paladin

Abuse strength elixirs so you can have near max con and dex. Dump int.

Start 2 Pali then add bard in. Respec full Pali at lvl 5 for extra attack then respec to 2 Pali / 5 bard at lvl 7.

You can either treat this as a great weapon smiter or use it to abuse the helm of arcane acuity / bane or the mystic scoundrel combo.

Abusing elixirs means you can avoid ASIs to pick up alert and either savage attacks or great weapon master.

Either way, you’ll have heavy armor, 2 magical secrets, lvl 6 spells and tons of smites.

Full Vengeance paladin is good:

• Great weapon master, ASI Str, Alert/Savage Attacker

or

Lockadin, 8 Bladelock/ 4 Vengeance:

• GWM, ASI Cha, Savage Attacker/Alert

Gearwise:

• Balduran Helm
• Cloak of Protection
• Armor of Persistence
• Legacy of the Masters
• Disintegrating Night walkers
• Amulet of Greater Health
• Callous Glow Ring
• Strange Conduit Ring
• Balduran Giant Slayer
• Hellrider's Longbow

Also get:

• Hag's hair, but not mandatory
• Araj's Strenght potion, if going full paladin
• Mirror of loss, str or cha, if going the multiclass route, get the +1 cha too.

Starting stats should be like, for full paladin:

• 16 str
• 10 dex
• 16 con
• 8 int
• 10 wis
• 14 cha

Now for multiclass with warlock:

• 8 str
• 16 dex
• 14 con
• 8 int
• 10 wis
• 17 cha

life cleric 6 oath of ancient paladin 6 with heavy armor master, healing gear and triple warding bond for an absolute tank that makes your team healthy, blessed and resistant towards anything while smiting any who stands in your way.

As you have seen, there are a lot great multiclass builds, just because divine smite is so good, that it pairs very well with every other caster class. Most people use 10 Level sword bard and only to of paladin to get the smites, the other common reccomendation is sorcerer because of its great spells (haste, counterspell) and the most possible spellslots to smite with from convertet sorcery points.

If you are new to the game, builds with less multiclass are usually more enjoyable, since they have a natural development of the build and are a little simpler to put together.

If you play as a dark urge, it is very likely, that you at one point or another will break your oath, so maybe plan to play an oathbreaker all along. In my opinion, vengance is a little better since it gets better spells (misty step, haste) and a great channel oath (vow of enmyty, wich grants you 10 rounds of advantage if you cast it on yourself) so maybe start with vengance and try to keep the oath as long as you can, or restore it as often as possible, but i will refere oathbreaker further on.

Pure Oathbreaker is a strong build on its own, the problem is, that a pure oathbreaker paladin wants to have high str or dex for attacking, high charisma since it gives a tremendous boost to his defense (aura of protection) and its damage (aura of hate) and also some constitution to be able to take some hits.

So you could eigther distribute your points to have a half decent stat in all of them, or use stat altering elixirs (elixir of hill giant strength) or gear (gloves of dexterity, club of hillgiant strength are available quite early in the game) or you can find ways to let your attacks scale with charisma so that you dont really need str or dex at all. This can be achieved through at least 3 levels in pact of the blade warlock, one level of hexblade (after Patch 8 drops), using weapons that scale with your spellcasting modifier (sylvan scimitar, infernal rapier, both obtainable in late act 2) or through the shillelagh cantrip (wich despite its description will scale with your current spellcasting modifier, not only with wisdom, wich will be charisma in a paladin).

I will post builds from easy to difficult to assamble as a response to that comment, pick wich one you like most:

as someone who is running the 2 paladin / bard thing in my current honor mode run, I can say that in practice it very much feels like a paladin still. You get your smites, and 90% of the time you want to be smiting, but you still have the utility of bard spells

I personally went with a dex based paladin just to make it less multi-attribute dependent, and I hate having to manage elixirs every day so I didn't want to just dump str and use elixirs for it.

One trick if you do decide to do this though, go into your reactions tab in your spellbook and set divine smite to a reaction, this allows you to automatically add a smite to a weapon attack, and with the slashing flourish that swords bards get, you can smite 2 people with one attack. Pretty damn awesome. And no matter what type of paladin you build I would still recommend turning smites on as a reaction. I would also suggest turning on "ask for confirmation" so you aren't forced to always burn your spell slots for every weapon attack you make. More control in your hands the better

This character has also been incredible for stacking radiating orbs and reverberation on enemies. Luminous armor + gloves of belligerent skies + boots of stormy clamour shuts down enemies so fast.

It’s effectively a paladin due to the play style

You Command : Approach enemies towards you and then smack them with smites

If you’re playing tactician, 7 paladin 5 warlock is considered the best true paladin multiclass, but the 10/2 smite swords bard is a stronger build

I think my favourite paladin build is 6 vengeance paladin / 6 sorcerer (storm or wild magic both work well).

It gives you high level spell slots to use for smiting and some other options. You can use arcane acuity if you want. Hold person will be fantastic for you.

When I built them I went with the following:

Species: Wood Half-Elf

Fighting style: GWF or protection. Str: 17 (+1 hags hair) Dex: 8 (can set to 18 with gloves of dex) Con: 14 Int: 8 Wis: 10 Cha: 16

Feats: GWM, ASI: str +2 (or alert or savage attacker if you got the +2 str potion, or you are using elixirs)

Go paladin to 5 for extra attack and then I think I went to 6 because the aura is awesome, then level up Sorceror to give you access to high level spell slots. Meta magic: quickened spell is a must for the bonus action hold person cast.

Gear will depend on which act you are in but you should definitely get the Unseen Menace from the Githyanki Crèche, the quartermaster has it and whilst you are there grab the gloves of dexterity to Bump your dex up to 18 (as long as no one else needs them).

Other gear will largely be what others suggest.

The paladin I've ran most is lockadin some varient I usually always run oathbreaker I like the dialogue

7 pal 5 warlock works under hm 11 pal 1 hexblade in hm 8 OB 3 Thief 1 Hexblade also good in HM

Sorcadins I like 7 OB pal 5 white drag sorc 6/6 is superior in a lot of cases using either crown veng or devo

Bardadins Never ran one hot take because theyre crazy good but I dont really like playing bard though I have played a few mixes on party members but seen a few builds One I saw was a lore bard paladin with high defences and control spells

The other is a 10/2 swordsbard paladin but that just plays as a martial bard for the most part

Wizadin 10 bladesinger 2 crown paladin is really good

6/6 sorcadin with shadowblade is the strongest, as someone else mentioned c4b wrote a really good guide on sorcadins, though I’m not 100% sure if it’s updated for patch 8 (although really the changes boil down to shadow blade now being BiS and booming blade opening up easy arcane synergy with the ring)

Personally I’m a fan of just full 12 OB with racial booming blade to keep things simple. Room for GWM ASI CHA and SA feels pretty great. Since you plan to use Minthara though I’d run 11/1 with hexblade to still get booming blade and you get the shield spell on top, which is decent enough.

Crown paladin is also fun. I don’t think anyone on your team is using reverb or rad orb gear (lorelock maybe?), so crown can take that and fill the revorb role with spirit guardians. More offensively focused spirit guardians beyblade. There are a few decent variations but full 12 or 11/1 with hexblade same as OB are probably the most common ones.

I like the bardadin either 10 swords bard 2 pali or 6 lore bard 6 pali. Combining command and cutting words is glorious :)

Try 6 paladin 6 sorcerer. You'll have spell slots for days and you'll smite constantly

Sorcadin is an incredibly versatile addition to any party for me. Look up c4b's guide on it on this subreddit

There is several good paladin build in my opinion (2pal/10bard , 6pal/6sorc ,7pal,5sorc) I advice 6/6 for vengeance paladin you got first aura and extra smites and utilites from from sorc (quick and double spells) for 6/6 you get 6 level droconic buff to one of the selected element resist + that type of damage buff to your spells(as you charisma modifier ) 7/5 for if you want really want to protect your team I advice ancient paladin it's aura give your team spell resist 2/10 it's strong build with full spell progression it's like bard with smites

I don't advice warlock 5 + pal 5 triple attack builds it's little cheesy they don't work on honour mode + you don't use str as attack roles personaly for RP wise iwant my paladin to have high str

Depends how you want to go about it, 12 paladin works just fine but if you’re looking to multiclass I suggest giving this beauty a once over, generally anything is viable in this game though

I'm doing vengeance paladin myself. Figure I'd go 6 levels of paladin, then start either warlock or sorceror.

Sorceror gives you more spell slots to smite with and gives you metamagic for things like twinned haste, and also allows you to consume metamagic points to fill your spell slots back up, so you can smite more between long rests.

Warlock gives you smite slots that restore on short rest and that are always max casted, and it gives you a Ranged option in edlritch blast that scales on PLAYER level instead of class level. Going pact of the blade also is the only other way besides fighter 11 to get extra extra attack, and this will be on top of it scaling off of your charisma instead of strength, making you less multi ability score dependant.

You could also rock swords bard and gain flourishes, which would be fun to use.

Paladin 12 is also fine. Ancients paladins get the amazing magic resist aura at 7, vengeance paladins get access to haste and misty step, and I think at paladin 12 you get an extra 1d8 smite damage or something. Paladin is VERY good regardless.

grab a 2h weapon, kill. occasionally smite.

My favorite two Paladin builds are the support defender Paladin and the smash it and make it dead Radiant Orbs/reverberation Paladin, and third is the Darkness Fearadin.

Support Paladin: 7 Oath of the Ancients/4 Life Cleric/1 White Dragon Sorcerer

Gotta Smite ‘Em All Bardadin 2 Oath of Vengeance/10 Swords Bard with Radiant Orbs and Reverberation gear

Dark Fearadin 7 Oathbreaker Paladin/5 GOO Blade Lock

Probably the best paladin build is a 2 paladin/10 swords bard because this gets full spell slots, extra attack, flourishes, and the only access to banishing smite. If you combine the helmet of arcane acuity with the band of the mystic scoundrel you can also benefit from extra strong control spells as a bonus action.

12 straight paladin is also strong and less stressful as you can’t really screw up if you raise strength OR dex, con and charisma, and make sure to take Savage attacker at some point.

I always liked paladin warlock pact of the blade multiclass. 7/5 or 6/6 even without getting the third attack in honor mode it’s really strong. You can leave strength that way and fully go on charisma and dex.

5 lvl in warlock first for 2 attacks then paladin all the way. Is how I would do it

Its really simple!

You want 6 paladin asap for the aura.

You want to stockpile strength elixirs if possible, always use them and raise your other stats instead.

Pick defense fighting style, so you can use whatever weapons you come across.

If you want damage, Great Weapon Master with Devotion or Vengeance and a 2 hander is the way.

If you want to be supportive, Devotion or Ancients while maxing cha.

Cha increase, savage attacker and GWM are your best feats.

Orcs are the best for critical hit smites, and have a passive that keeps them at 1 hp instead of dying once per day.

Gnomes (deep gnome is best) have advantage on all mental saves

Wood elf runs fast

Halfling is probably the strongest for rerolling 1s, especially if you go devotion and/or focus on saves.

Those are probably the best races in general, altho gith and duergar I suppose belong on that list too.

People are throwing out meta damage builds that rely on knowing the game well, specific gear, etc. You're playing honor with friends, and you're playing blind.

Worry about lategame builds later, you can always respec. You want your oath at 3, feat at 4, extra attack at 5 and aura at 6.

If you're not sure how to optimally play a hard fight early, throwing up bless on your party, using lay on hands healing, and/or smiting the big bad thing are all going to really help your squad.

As far as lategame builds go, 6-8 paladin is ideal. My personal favorite is 6 paladin, 4 thief 2 barbarian because you can clear fights without smiting. That setup ends up with like 50-60 damage per hit using 0 resources, it cant fail saves and it never misses.

Higher level smites only add 4.5 damage per spell level 3 thief levels gives you an extra bonus action for a smite spell, which adds 7 damage.

Anyways thats nice, but any good paladin damage setup is going to slay bosses. A blind honor mode run is more likely to end because you got in a tough spot while out of resources.

It is and it isn't. It hits the main features of a paladin while having all the features of a bard too. While strictly its a bard with a paladin dip I feel like it operates as a much better resourced paladin. In honor mode I would prefer an effective build rather than a thematic one.

For Honor mode if you want to min max there's really two builds you should consider:

1. Go straight paladin until level 7, then at level 8 respec into 2 paladin / 6 swords bard (since bard doesn't get extra attack until level 6, you just go straight paladin until 8), and keep going bard until you're 2/10. Use the band of mystic scoundrel in act 2 to cast vicious mockery (or any other enchant/illusion spell) between melee swings.
2. 10 paladin 2 fighter (action surge and a 2nd fighting style is, imo, better than improved divine smite and a 3rd feat since there are some enemies that reflect radiant damage back on you). This build lets you get all 3 paladin auras, so you'll have bonus to saving throws equal to your CHR modifier, immunity to being frightened, and the oath specific aura / relentless avenger if you pick oath of vengeance. EDIT: You can use band of mystic scoundrel with this build too, but you'll have to take magic initiative: bard as your level 8 feat and get vicious mockery as the cantrip.

Make note that some people in this thread are suggesting paladin/warlock, but on honor mode the extra attacks from pact of the blade and level 5 paladin DO NOT STACK.

SSB is definitely the strongest. And luckily someone already made a guide so that it can be new player friendly as well! As a new player I suggest taking ASI STR +2 rather than GWM for your first feat. It’s easy to forget to toggle GWM as a new player and can make you feel like you just can’t hit anything.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/s/R0CbzmwuzN

Check out that guide for an easy to follow path to victory!

I personally use 2h weapons on my Pallies and select GWM - though I toggle off the passive at low levels, so something else may be better.

What say you, smarter than me, folks?

Savage attacker is the best talent for most paladin builds.

Keep in mind, this is just my own opinion, but this is what I'd recommend for a new player build. No multiclassing, just a solid Level 1-5 Paladin that allows you to accomplish these key things based on your post:

• Do the most damage
• Fight with a two-handed weapon
• Use cool spells

For Levels 6-12, let me know if you'd like me to go into more detail and I'd be happy to! Just didn't want to overwhelm on the first post haha. I could go on for ages, I have played a paladin both in BG3 and D&D 5th edition.

Race: Not super important in BG3 I've found, so if you've got something you want aesthetically, it's probably fine. Paladins already get proficiency in all armor and martial weapons, so any races that give you those proficiencies won't be adding anything new. With that in mind, you'll want races that add new spells, new defenses against mental effects, or features that make you more resilient and quicker. For that reason, I'd recommend the following options:

• Drow - two additional spells (Faerie Fire and Darkness), advantage on charmed condition. Be aware that drow are typically seen as evil in the Forgotten Realms and there are several conversations in Act 1 that will reflect that, but if you select Seldarine-sworn drow, you are considered to have broken away from the evil drow, so you'll get dialogue options that reflect that.
• Gold Dwarf - additional hit points
• Gnomes - any gnome is going to grant you Gnome Cunning, which straight up gives you advantage on Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saving throws. Short story for newbies - this is going to make you MUCH more resilient against mental effects that might charm you, frighten you, or otherwise cause you to be incapacitated in some manner.
• Wood Elf - an extra 5 feet of movement may not sound like a lot, but adds up for a martial class!
• Half-Orc - several awesome benefits for a martial, including Relentless Endurance and better critical hits. You even get Intimidation proficiency, saving you one skill
• Zariel Tiefling - two additional smite spells are always great, especially for a Paladin who already will want to use these spells!

Background: Pick your favorite. If you want to add a touch of sneakiness to your build, Urchin is a great option since you don't have high DEX. If you want to be a better liar, Charlatan is great (and you'll already have good Charisma to work with Deception proficiency). Overall, I'd try to pick a background that aligns with how you're going to approach the world and conversations, because there will be moments where the game grants you a thing called "Inspiration" for doing something in-line with your background.

Level 1:

• Subclass: Oath of Vengeance
• Ability scores: STR 15 / DEX 10 / CON 14 / INT 8 / WIS 10 / CHA 14. Put a +1 in STR and a +2 in CHA to get both scores up to 16. DEX, INT, and WIS are all flexible depending on what you want, but I put DEX and WIS a little higher so that you can have slightly better initiative in combat. WIS skills are some of the most important in the game.
• Skills: Persuasion, Intimidation, and Insight are all pretty strong in this game for conversation.
• Lay on Hands: This feature allows you to restore hit points as an action a few times per day, and increases number of uses and number of hit points restored at higher levels. A really solid in-combat and out-of-combat buff do the flat number of HP restored.
• Inquisitor's Might: Once per short rest, you get to add some additional damage to your weapon attacks by using your bonus action. At early levels, this is very strong, so make sure you use it as much as you can.

Level 2:

• Fighting Style: Great Weapon Fighting will make you deal more damage on average with heavy weapons, while also improving your Divine Smites and any additional buffs you stack on to them!
• Spells: Prepare Bless, Divine Favor, Thunderous Smite, and Command. Paladins can switch spells prepared whenever they're not in combat, so don't worry if you have some you don't like! Also, be very careful, because some of these are concentration spells, and the game doesn't make it clear that when you cast another concentration spell, you lose concentration on the first one if you already had it. Keep a lookout at the bottom-left corner of your UI for a little circle that shows any active spells you're concentrating on.
• New feature: Divine Smite. Make sure you go into the reactions settings (top-right of the toolbar at the bottom of the screen) and ask the game to prompt you on whether you want to add Divine Smite damage to a hit. I tend to save these for critical hits, since they're a lot more effective, but sometimes you need that extra push to get an enemy down to 0 HP even with a normal hit.

Level 3:

• You get two new Channel Divinity options. Vow of Enmity is really strong against single target foes, and only takes your bonus action. Getting advantage both improves your chance to hit and your crit chance.
• You also get two new spells: Hunter's Mark and Bane. Bane is not as good as Bless imo, but Hunter's Mark could be situationally useful, although I'd prefer Divine Favor for a concentration spell that grants damage.

Level 4:

• Feat: Great Weapon Master. This allows two major things:
  • You'll get a passive feature that allows you to take a -5 penalty on your chance to hit, but if you hit, you'll deal an additional 10 damage. I would make sure you attach this passive feature to your main toolbar, and learn to switch it off or on depending on how high your chance to hit is against a target. If you still have a high chance even with the penalty applied, go for it.
  • Whenever you kill a creature or score a critical hit, you just get to attack as a bonus action for free.
  • This feat also works with any type of heavy weapon, so it doesn't restrict you to things like polearms. Really nice for a newbie where you'll want to play around with all of the weapons the game throws at you!

Level 5:

• Extra Attack! This is a massive level for any martial class. You'll definitely feel a power spike here as you now get two chances to hit a creature on your turn.
• You also double your number of spell slots and get new spells known. Misty Step is EXCELLENT, allowing you to much more efficiently teleport around the battlefield. Hold Person is a nasty debuff if you can find a target with a high % chance of success. Also, smiting with 2nd-level spell slots on critical hits will feel amazing.

I did a oath of ancients paladin and I just beat the game with him.

He was a decent all arounder. The great thing about paladin isn’t just their melee skills, which they are a B+ at, but they are also a great party leader since they have high charisma. They can persuade relatively easy In conversations. Most martial classes aren’t like this. It’s a benefit you might overlook when you play long enough as a paladin.

Oaths of ancients is nice for talk to animals, which I did quite a lot of in the game. It’s not technically necessary, but it’s so much more fun if you do.

I found I rarely used the healing hands ability, but I did use the healing aoe for two turns move.

I also had him cast bless before battle a lot especially since he got extra damage with a piece of equipment if he’s concentrating on a spell.

Probably the worst thing about paladin is getting back spell charges for smites can only come back after a long rest. They only get two attacks in their base form as well.

Paladins are quite powerful though, and like any strength based character they can jump incredibly far which is super useful in battle.

The other irritating thing about paladins is you have to very careful to not break their oath or else they will become an oath breaker paladin. I didn’t want that and had to reset several times across my journey because I didn’t realize the consequences of a decision would make me lintels my oath.

I mean you don't need a multiclass build to make Paladin work. You can just stay as a Paladin the whole way, no real build needed.

As a new player, there's no reason you can't just do 12 levels of Paladin to keep it simple.

People have covered it really well so I won’t get to into the builds besides saying that every paladin subclass is really powerful and you can’t go wrong just going all the way to 12 with it. I recommend either two handed weapons or the classic one handed and shield. For most paladins you want 14 con and 16 in each of strength and charisma asap. You CAN make a dexterity paladin if you want to dual wield or use a rapier and shield, but I prefer strength regardless.

For ancients and vengeance 16 charisma is fine, you will want to push strength to 20 asap. Devotion can choose to emphasize charisma because of sacred weapon. This slows down your damage by requiring an action to set up, but makes you way more likely to hit, while also improving your spells and aura of protection (one of the strongest abilities in the game).

For picking subclasses: vengeance is the strongest offensively. If you really want to take a two handed weapon and smite everyone very hard, play this. Ancients is incredible defensively. Very good healing and group resistance to spells. Devotion is a nice middle ground, where you get a good reason to use charisma more and some good support abilities. All three of them can use any weapon combination that you want.

For feats, consider great weapon master or polearm master. Paladin needs a lot of stat points but one or even both can be nice if you want to take them.

I too love and adore Paladins. It’s a hard choice for every time I sit down to play to not pick one. I’ve found that even after patch 8, the Sorcadin is amazing. Play Paladin for 6 levels. Sorcerer for 6 levels. All awesome.

For me it's 7 Ancients Paladin 5 Hexblade. You can go Shadowblade and a shield or I prefer going 2H weapons with Great Weapon Master and Fighting style. In act 1 use use everburn blade/doom hammer/Blooded Great axe. In act 2 use Halberd of Vigilance. Continue to use it until you get Baldurans Giantslayer. Once you get Giantslayer you'll want the Gauntlets of Hill Giant strength so you can continue to use Bloodlust elixrs.

Other good weapons are: Soulbreaker Great sword, Silver sword of astral plane (if you're a Gith or disguise self), Sword of Chaos, Sussar Greatsword.

I'm a simple man: Oath of Ancients, 1 or 2 levels of Hexblade (to be SAD), grab Ethel's hair (charisma), retake my oath, ASI Charisma, try really hard not to break my oath again. Maybe throw in some sorcerer at later levels as a little treat (more smite slots). I keep "stealth archering" into a Radiant orb/reverberation build (gloves of belligerent skies, Boots of Stormy Clamour, Luminous Armor, Blood of Lathander, Coruscation ring, Callous glow ring, thunderskin cloak, and Grymskull helm) and god does it feel pretty good.

I ducked the hex blade dip on my last run by chugging potions but you can get shield prof off Paladin if it’s your starting class.

6/6 sorcadin is the best paladin build overall, and patch 8 does improve it a fair bit. You get max level shadowblade which is the strongest melee weapon in the game, booming blade allows you to easily get arcane synergy from the ring while still keeping the acuity hat for control, you get the most important aura and with angelic potions can basically create infinite spell slots to smite to your heart’s content. If you’re draconic sorc and have your melee weapon enchanted with the matching element from drakethroat, you get + CHA damage on booming blade (weapon damage, not elemental damage, so it gets doubled by resonance stone if you’re using shadow blade), yes this is probably a consequence of spaghetti code but it’s neat. Vengeance is probably the best oath here. ASI CHA and savage attacker are your feats (assuming shadowblade)

The new crown subclass is along with oathbreaker the best paladin subclass to take more than 6 levels in. Crown gets spirit guardians at level 9 so you can run pretty standard cleric revorb beyblade things while actually being competent with your weapons and having smites.

Hexblade being a thing means 11/1 paladins are also very common to go for CHA weapon attacks + booming blade but this is genuinely not even that much of an improvement if any over 12 paladin with STR gloves as long as you’re playing high (half) elf to get booming blade, unless you’re down for some bug abuse with craterflesh, or maybe martial exertion. But yeah it basically frees up your glove slot. You can’t use shadow blade so GWM + one of ASI CHA and savage attacker (or both if you just go full paladin) are probably the overall best choices.

There also exists some multis with bladesinger and swords bard but those just take two paladin levels for the smites so I wouldn’t exactly call them paladins.

Paladin 6/Sorc 5/Wiz 1

Is my favorite build. So many spell slots to smite with. Strong spells to cast when targets are too far. Can learn a ton of spell scrolls even with just 1 wiz lvl.

I'm a forest gnome, oath of ancients, tempest sorc Wizz that can smite damn hard or cast strong spells followed by flying to my enemy when I can't reach them. Or I can quicken powers and cast strong spells as a bonus action AND smite them in melee twice all in the same turn. Then learn almost all wizard spells for utility on top of all that.

Not to mention I get to wear heavy armor and shields, have aura of protection and concentration shield of faith so I'm virtually unhittable. Pick war caster feat. Gnome cunning also makes me Hella good at saving throws.

Then I can choose even more defence with a shield or go hard on great weapons.

Let a companion cast haste on you as well, and you are an unstoppable god.

Edit: forgot to mention sorcery points, which is also a great boon for spell slots

You can respec later for 100 gold if you decide to. I have no idea what will be most fun for you, and don’t leave it up to anyone else. I’d suggest playing forward and decide when the time comes.

Oath of devotion dark urge playthrough, don’t renew your oath until you deciding you RPwise did a worthy enough deed to be able to

Paladin is pretty strong in this game. Between heavy armor/shield builds with Auras and Divine Smite your paladin will be a pretty heavy contender in most fights. Survivability is greatly increased with Ancients because of your extra healing and Spell Resistance.

That being said, good luck keeping your oath. This game has some non-sensical fail conditions for paladins.

5 warlock pact of blade and 7 oath breaker paladin. This gives you 3 attacks per action and up to 3 action (haste and blood elixir) so 9 attacks per turn. Each of your attacks have double charisma modifier (aura of hate and pact weapon). I dual wield the harmonic rapier in off hand for another charisma modifier on attacks and use a +3 weapon on main hand. This build is super busted.

Mixing 7 Paladin and 5 warlock with pact of the blade gives three attacks per action and warlock spell slots that recharge on short rest. You also don’t need to worry about strength as pact of the blade will use your charisma for weapon attacks.

Going 7 Paladin 5 sorcerer gives you a lot of spell slots and access to a bunch of useful spells.

Mixing even just 2 levels of Paladin with 10 swords Bard gives you a ton of spell slots, let’s you be good at all the skills so you can pick the locks and persuasion the npcs. Their flourishes can let you smite two people at once, or get 4 extra AC.

Depends on what you consider strong and what you want out of your paladin.

If going with a damage focus then I suggest level 1 make sure to get a 17 str (if want a stronger early game, but slightly weaker later game otherwise take 16 str and put the other points elsewhere) and rest up to you (will probablty want a good con and cha score, but not required) Race doesn't matter too much, but if maximizing damage then go drow or half orc. For subclass devotion or vengeance work fine, but would recommend vengeance as voe of enmity is better then radiant weapon. Now to maximize damage take 2 short swords and from leve1 to 3 cast bless or divine favor round 1 and then use action and bonus action to attack adding a d4 to each (divine favor) or hitting either imporved accuracy. At level 2 take 2 weapon fighting style if want to maximize damage at every stage otherwise take 2 handed weapon fighting style.

At level 4 take great weapons master, and use the -5 to hit for +10 damage and switch to a heavy weapon as well as using bless as go to spell. Vow of enmity will be a big boon here giving you advantage to hit your target, so will make up for the -5 to hit giving big damage increase. Also focus on weapons and magic items that give you bonuses to hit because want to offset that minus 5 to hit as much as possible. (If want the extra damage now then if left str at 17 use the hag could make it 18, and if didn't then take a +1 to charisma and either way going oathbreaker now isn't a worry since we wanted to become one eventually). Also at level 4 if took 2 weapon fighting style respec to 2 handed weapon fighting style or defense fighting style.

Level 5 increases damage a lot but will be the same as level 4 tactics wise.

Level 6 great defensive bonus, but wont do much for damage.

Level 7 if oathbreaker will get charisma added to damage, so maybe respect for better charisma score if have a lot low, but keep str at 18. If not an oathbreaker can go fighter, bard, sorcerer, or warlock. The last 3 give good ranged cantrips, so now low/lower dex paladin has good ranged option for when can't get into melee. Fighter gives second wind and later action surge. Sorcerer and bard do give more smite spell slots as well as useful spells, and warlock we will be eventually switching to.

Level 8 if stayed paladin either take str to 20 if have a very nice 2 handed magic weapon, or if have good magic polearm then take polearm master to get bonus action attack as well per turn and more chances to get oppurtunity attacks. If you want could respec here to 5 paladin 3 warlock raising charisma as high as you can and taking great weapons master, but will mean you lose aura of protection which is an amazing buff.

Level 9 no matter what want to respec here unless did last level. Take charisma as high as possible and paladin to level 6 then warlock to level 3 taking pact of the blade, and making whatever 2 handed weapon you have your pact weapon.

Level 10 take warlock to 4 getting either cha to 20, or pole arm master based on what equipment you have.

Level 11 take warlock 5 for extra extra attack.

Level 12 take paladin 7 for aura of hate and will need to be oathbreaker.

If you don't go oathbreaker damage will be lower, but will still hit really hard, and can change other aspects for concept and what not. If decided to go tome warlock (or sorcerer for 5 levels can get haste and through in game things a 24 str), so are benefits to other paths as well as it feeling more organic or being more fun for you to play.

Paladins can also make good tanks, support characters, or could get a strong control character that's a paladin multiclass, so by most OP what do you want them optimized for? Paladins in general are one of the strongest classes and can bend to a lot of different areas.

Forgot to say the reason for Drow is Farie Fire a great alternative spell to bless, especially if someone else on the party can cast bless. The reason for half orc would be making the crits hit just a little harder majority of damage will come from straight bonuses to the damage roll unless are smiting then can really add up the values fast.

Hope this helps.

Half-Orc is arguably best for paladins due to how crit dice work. The tiefling with smite is handy too. But wood elf or half wood-elf are nice for that bit more movement since paladin has no good ranged options exclusive to them. Halflings are always nice with their lucky.

But even with half orc in the lead, the differences aren't that big, so pick what you like.

Just go vanilla paladin until you find reason to change. Focus on str because it gives you higher attack (more chances to smite).

I really like Zariel tiefling for MC vanilla paladin. Mostly because you get thaumaturgy for performance/intimidation checks. You also get some extra smites that don’t cost a spell slot. And thematically it works well for paladin.

Half orc is also a strong choice, you get intimidation for free and their savage attacks is probably mathematically best for smiting.

Any other race for theme also works. You already have every armor/weapon prof so you don’t NEED anything. Elves get Perception. High elves can get Friends. Just avoid subraces that mostly give armor/weapons (shield dwarves).