Much is spoken of paladins, but everyone remains in the “dual wielder” stereotype, a shame, cuse paladin can be so much more using some multiclasses here and there to still be a beast while using a versatile weapon and a shield, and this is what we doin here today, a duelist shield paladin build that focus on being the tankiest, meanest dwarf that this side of the sword coast ever seen.
I’m gonna start this off by saying this is not a meta build if you are looking for the highest dps a paladin can deal in a single attack, if that’s what you want, go oathbreaker and hexblade, another thing, this build is non ilithid powers reliant, which means if you are looking to challenge yourself by playing without using any tadpoles, go for it.
Either way, we’ll start in the nautiloid, your stats must look like this during the tutorial: 16/10/14/8/10/16 (we’ll respec later with withers to dump our strenght, we’ll be using lots of hill giant elixir during act 1 & 2), we’ll be using oath of vengeance for this build
Level 2: get the duelist style, it’s our main focus here and the one thing that makes this build viable during the game.
During act 1, your goals will be getting all the gear you can get, the usual stuff, Helmet of smiting (or haste helm) gloves of heroism, adamantine splint (recommend getting the shield, as we can use it in act 3), boots of speed (remember to get the boots of stormy clamour, if you want to play a troll paladin), sword of screams, safeguard, amulet of misty step and you can choose either titan string or bow of awareness, depends if you like to use the bow as a paladin, and lastly, get auntie ethel’s hair for that sweet +1 charisma.
Level 4: we’ll be getting our first feat, get savage attacker for now
Creche: here we’ll be getting some good gears, like the blood of lathander, ring of elemental infusion, necklace of elemental augmentation, gloves of beligerant skies, diadem of arcane synergy and it’s ring counterpart, let’s not forget the awakened trait we can get by using the zaithisk.
Level 7: this level is probably one of our most important levels, we’ll get one level dip into hexblade and get booming blade since it’s awesome.
Act 2: it’s a treasure hunt for our gear, that being: the killer’s sweetheart (optional), cloak of protection, shield of devotion, darkfire shortbow, githzerai mind barrier trait, and probably the most important item of this build, the charge bound warhammer, get all of this and act 2 is good to go.
Level 8: in level 8 we’ll start multiclassing into sorcerer for some more higher level spells and extra mobility, get
Act 3: During this part of the game, you can ditch some of the gear we have used for so long, like the adamantine splint for the armor of persistance, gloves of beligerant skies for the legacy of the masters, boots of stormy clamour for the boots of persistance, get deadshot, we can swap our shield of devotion for the adamantine shield to keep that crit immunity or you can get Viconia’s walking fortress, it’s your choice really, we’ll also swap our diadem of arcane sinergy for birthright, that’s why we kept the ring around. during act 3, in the house of grief, we can get +3 to our charisma as well, go get it champ, just save scum until you get it.
Level 11: we kept leveling up sorcerer and now we get another feat, get asi and +2 to our charisma, or alternatively, you can get tough
For our metamagic, we will be getting twinned and extended, just imagine you casting command and bro losing 2 turns, i’d be pissed if i was him.
our main spell usage will be towards divine smites, but we can get some more spells for extra mobility, actions and crowd control.
that’s pretty much the build, lmk if you wanna add something or correct something.
