Introduction
Paladin multiclass builds have been popular since 5e hit shelves in 2014. The Sorcadin held sway for a long time before being supplanted by the Hexadin as the go-to multiclass build. But while those two builds are certainly the most well-known paladin multiclass combos, there is another way: The Bardadin.
The Bardadin doesn’t have the Sorcerer’s ability to melt high-level spell slots into efficient 1st-level smites, and they don’t have the Warlock’s ability to recharge their smites slots on a short rest, but Bard makes up for those capabilities with panache. By combining that with the Paladin’s durability and divine smite, you also conveniently solve one of the biggest problems with martial bards: their poor damage output.
The Bardadin is an excellent example of the cost/benefit analysis inherent in multiclassing. The Bard and the Paladin both have good multiclass break points at levels 2 through 6, and making that trade means giving up powerful high-level features like 9th-level bard spells or the Paladin’s Aura Improvements.
Subclass Options
There’s also a lot of flexibility in your choice of subclasses here. The Paladin’s proficiencies cover a lot of what’s granted by martial bard subclasses, which alters the decision somewhat. The advice offered in our Practical Guide to Multiclassing still mostly applies, but there’s some extra nuance beyond what that article can reasonably cover.
Abilities
Bard
This section is in addition to the advice on the Bard’s core features detailed in our Practical Guide to Multiclassing, and only covers a subset of subclasses which we believe are obviously relevant to the Bardadin. Other subclasses may still be great here, but they don’t need additional explanation.
- College of Swords: The armor proficiencies are redundant, and Extra Attack only matters if you don’t get to level 5 in paladin (which you might not do). Fighting style is nice, but Blade Flourish won’t be impactful unless you go to level 5 to get Font of Inspiration. It’s hard to justify this on a paladin-heavy build, but it’s fine on a bard-heavy build.
- College of Valor: The armor proficiencies are redundant, and Extra Attack only matters if you don’t get to level 5 in paladin (which you might not do). Battle Magic would be amazing on a bardadin, but it’s such a high-level feature that it doesn’t justify how little you get for the rest of your career. I only recommend college of valor at high levels once Magical Secrets comes online.
- College of Whispers: The most obvious and appealing thing here is Psychic Blades. Much like Divine Smite, the damage is multiplied on a critical hit. So if you can fish for critical hits (consider paralyzing your target first) you can drop a fistful of dice on them with one attack. If you’re going paladin-heavy, I recommend stopping at 3 levels of whispers bard. If you’re going bard-heavy, I recommend starting in bard for the extra skills, paladin 2, then back to bard.
Paladin
This section is in addition to the advice on the Paladin’s core features detailed in our Practical Guide to Multiclassing, and only covers a subset of subclasses which we believe are obviously relevant to the Bardadin. Other subclasses may still be great here, but they don’t need additional explanation.
- Oath of Devotion: Sacred Weapon neatly solves much of your MAD issues, allowing you to focus almost exclusively on Charisma much like a Hexadin does. It only works once per rest, but that might be fine if you only want to swing a weapon part time. If you take this to level 5 in a Bard-heavy build, access to Lesser Restoration will let you fill in for most of the functions of a cleric, but it’s fine to stop at 3 if you’re more focused on bard things.
- Oath of Vengeance: Vow of Enmity provides easy Advantage, but you only get it once per rest. That might be fine if you only want to swing a weapon part time. You also get Hunter’s Mark, which is decent but competes for your Concentration with a lot of other great buffs which may be more impactful, especially with the Bard’s improved spellcasting compared to the Paladin. If you go this route, the subclass features stop being interesting for the Bardadin after level 3.
- Oath of Glory / Oath of the Watchers: Both make good support options, so if you’re trying to build a supportive Defender, these are a good combination. But you’re basically only here for Channel Divinity, so consider stopping at paladin 3.
- Oath of the Ancients: Ensnaring Strike is really good if you have the Charisma to make the save DC reliable and the spell slots to keep using it. Fortunately, bards have both. If you can hit a target early in a fight, you can effectively put them in time out while your party deals with the rest of the encounter. Sure, you could get the same spell from two levels of ranger, but that’s not why we’re here. Ancients has several great points and you might go all the way up to paladin 7 for Aura of Warding.
Example Build – The Whispering Vengeance Bardadin
“I swear to all the gods, I’m going to smite you so hard right now.”
In this build, we’ll combine College of Whispers and Oath of Vengeance to create a high-damage crit fishing build. We’ll lean into College of Whispers to create a sort of infiltrator spy character. Our go-to tactic will be Vow of Enmity combined with Elven Accuracy to get a roughly 14% crit chance per attack, and then drop Psychic Blades and Divine Smite together on a crit for a big pile of damage.
Admittedly, Hold Person is a safer way to get crits, and we’re going to do that, too. But things with Legendary Resistances exist, and those things can’t stop us from crushing them under a pile of damage dice.
For another example build, see Bardadin: The Portable Punching Bag.
Ability Scores
Like other paladins, the Bardadin is MAD, requiring high stats in three ability scores. The Bard also has a smaller hit die than the Paladin, so you don’t have the staying power to tank as many hits as a typical paladin. This build is still primarily a caster, but with the ability to occasionally dive into melee and stab things for a huge pile of damage, so we’re going to focus primarily on Charisma and we’re going to build around Dexterity and light armor to support our skills.
We’re going to have to settle for poor Constitution so that we can get enough Strength to multiclass out of paladin. It’s frustrating, but we can compensate with magic.
| Base | Increased | |
| Str | 13 | 13 |
| Dex | 15 | 16 |
| Con | 12 | 13 |
| Int | 8 | 8 |
| Wis | 8 | 8 |
| Cha | 15 | 17 |
Race
Custom Origin Half High Elf. Booming Blade will substitute for Extra Attack in a lot of cases, and the +2/+1/+1 ability score increases are great on a MAD build like this.
Background
Spy. It’s technically a variant on Criminal, but that doesn’t particularly matter. The skills and tools are great: Deception, Stealth, a gaming set, and Thieves’ Tools.
Skills and Tools
Since we’re opting for light armor, we don’t need to start at level 1 as a paladin to get heavy armor proficiency. We could start as a bard for an extra skill, but we’ll get that skill when we multiclass, so it doesn’t matter much in the long term.
We’ll plan to start as a paladin and take Intimidation and Persuasion for our class skills. When we get another skill from our first level in bard, we’ll take Insight.
Feats
At 4th level we’ll take Elven Accuracy. Vow of Enmity gives us easy Advantage, and eventually we’ll be able to cast Improved Invisibility. The additional accuracy will offset our loss of DPR when we’re attacking using Dexterity.
At 16th level, Bard 12, we’ll take Piercer to lean into our crit-fishing strategy.
Levels
| Level | Feat(s) and Features | Notes and Tactics |
|---|---|---|
| 1 – Paladin 1 | Proficiencies Divine Sense Lay on Hands | At this level we’re a dexterity-based paladin. Use Booming Blade for the extra damage if your target moves. Plan to fight with a rapier and shield, and trade your armor for breastplate as soon as possible because that’s the max AC we can get without sacrificing Stealth. |
| 2 – Paladin 2 | Fighting Style (Defense) Spellcasting Divine Smite | We’re taking Defense here because it will offset our relative frailty. Dueling seems tempting, but we’ll never get Extra Attack, so it won’t do much for us. Our spellcasting and Divine Smite need some comparing because we have a fun combo here: Thunderous Smite allows us to push an enemy 10 feet away when we hit them in addition to dealing 2d6 damage. That’s a tiny bit less than Divine Smite’s 2d8, but since we’re attacking with Booming Blade we’re also forcing enemies to take damage to get back into melee. |
| 3 – Paladin 3 | Sacred Oath: Oath of Vengeance Divine Health Channel Divinity – Abjure Enemies – Vow of Enmity Oath Spells | At this level we swear vengeance on… someone. Anyone, really. That person over there? Sure, they’ll do. Vengeance! We also get to practice with Vow of Enmity, which is fun, and we get Divine Health for… bard things. |
| 4 – Paladin 4 | Feat: Elven Accuracy | Now we’re off to the races. Vow of Enmity turns on, the short sword comes out (we might try for TWF sometimes), and it’s time to murder things. 14% crit chance per attack, so you’re not going to crit constantly, but it’ll be often enough to feel good. Unfortunately, this level in paladin also means giving up 9th-level bard spells. We could start our bard levels here, but it’ll delay our first ASI/feat to 7th level, which is rough. We’re also stopping paladin just before we get both Extra Attack and 2nd-level paladin spells, which is unfortunate because we don’t get great options like Find Steed. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage (0 at this level), Advantage, and 1st-level Smite on crits: 9.15 |
| 5 – Bard 1 | Skill: Insight Bardic Inspiration (d6) Cantrips: – Minor Illusion – Vicious Mockery Spells Known: – Dissonant Whispers – Faerie Fire – Healing Word – Tasha’s Hideous Laughter | Out first level in bard comes at level 5, which is where people are getting things like Extra Attack and Fireball. It’s admittedly a difficult level because there’s a difficulty spike here, but our cantrip damage does increase so our Thunderous Smite+Booming Blade combo remains effective, and at range Vicious Mockery does fine. Our first level of bard makes us the equivalent of a level 3 spellcaster, so we get 2nd-level spell slots. We’ll remain one spell slot level ahead of our maximum spell level known for our whole career. Conveniently, we can both upcast things and dump our highest-level spell slots into Divine Smite (up to 4th-level slots when we get there because that hits the max of 5d8 Divine Smite damage). This also makes it easy to justify retraining lower-level spells known for higher-level spells since we have more high-level spell slots than usual compared to straight bard of the same bard level. For spells we pick mostly crowd control and debuff options, but we’ll also grab Healing Word because it’s always a great option to have. If your party already has ample healing available, consider dropping Healing Word in favor of something like Feather Fall or Heroism. Faerie Fire and Tasha’s Hideous Laughter both offer sources of Advantage so we can dive in and stab stuff. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage, Advantage, and 2nd-level Smite on crits: 15.29 |
| 6 – Bard 2 | Jack of All Trades Song of Rest (d6) New Spell Known: – Heroism | Heroism will help compensate for our relatively poor durability, but remember that it’s a Concentration spell and the temporary hp won’t mitigate the saves to maintain Concentration if you get hit. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage, Advantage, and 2nd-level Smite on crits: 15.29 |
| 7 – Bard 3 | Bard College: College of Whispers Psychic Blades (2d6) Words of Terror Expertise – Stealth – Insight New Spell Known: – Enhance Ability | With our expertise, we’ll lean into our infiltrator/spy/assassin concept and take Stealth and Insight to compensate for our relatively low Dexterity and our dumped Wisdom. We also get 3rd-level spell slots and 2nd-level bard spells. We grab Enhance Ability because it’s an amazing buff outside of combat, allowing us to dramatically improve our effectively at sneaking around and at doing Face things. Psychic Blades comes online and our critical hits get terrifying. On a crit we drop both Divine Smite and Psychic Blades for a total of 8d8+4d6 damage before we even look at our weapon or Booming Blade or whatever else we were doing. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage, Advantage, Psychic Blades, and 3rd-level Smite on crits: 18.57 |
| 8 – Bard 4 | Ability Score Increase: Charisma (17 -> 19) New Cantrip Known: – Prestidigitation New Spell Known: – Hold Person Spell Retrained: – Healing Word -> Aid | We get our second ASI/Feat right on time, and we’ll increase Charisma. We’re slightly behind the Fundamental Math, but that’s totally fine. When weapons come out, we’re riding on Elven Accuracy against big single targets and we’re tanking and relying on support options the rest of the time. We drop Healing Word since you can use Aid in place of Mass Healing Word. Aid also fixes our low hp due to having 13 Constitution. As we gain levels and get bigger spell slots, we can consider upcasting it for even more HP. Hold Person won’t always work, but when it works it works super well and there are few other characters better suited to critical hits than a smite-bot paladin. If you’re feeling spicy, drop your shield, grab two shorts swords, and double your crit/smite/psychic blades. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage, Advantage, Psychic Blades, and 3rd-level Smite on crits: 18.27 (it went down because we’re falling behind the Fundamental Math with Dexterity) |
| 9 – Bard 5 | Bardic Inspiration (d8) Font of Inspiration Psychic Blades (3d6) New Spell Known: – Any | Font of Inspiration makes us much more sustainable. We use both Bardic Inspiration and Psychic Blades much more frequently. We also get 4th-level spell slots and 3rd-level bard spells. Psychic Blades improves at this level right as we get the last level of spell slots that will increase our Divine Smite damage. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage, Advantage, Psychic Blades, and 4th-level Smite on crits: 20.55 |
| 10 – Bard 6 | Countercharm Mantle of Whispers New Spell Known: – Tongues | We’ll grab Tongues because it’s helpful for a Face and because we eventually want to use Shadow Lore, which is blocked by language barriers. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage, Advantage, Psychic Blades, and 4th-level Smite on crits: 20.55 |
| 11 – Bard 7 | New Spell Known: – Greater Invisibility | We also get 5th-level spell slots and 4th-level bard spells. Greater Invisibility does great things for us. First, it gets us easy advantage on attacks without worrying about saving throws. Second, it’s fantastic defensively, reducing or removing the need for a shield, so we can try two-weapon fighting to maximize the possibility of critical hits. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage, Advantage, Psychic Blades, and 4th-level Smite on crits: 25.28 |
| 12 – Bard 8 | Ability Score Increase: Dex (16 -> 17) and Cha (19 -> 20) New Spell Known: – Any | We’ll split an ASI at this level to max out our Charisma and start advancing Dexterity a bit so that we can take a hybrid feat in 4 levels. There aren’t any other spells which stand out as directly relevant to our build at this level. Charm Monster could work, but Polymorph is also very tempting. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage, Advantage, Psychic Blades, and 4th-level Smite on crits: 25.28 |
| 13 – Bard 9 | Song of Rest (d8) New Spell Known: – Hold Monster | We also get 6th-level spell slots and 5th-level bard spells. We have maxed Charisma and Hold Monster. Our go-to strategy now becomes “paralyze the biggest thing on turn 1, then TWF smite it into non-existence on turn 2”. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage, Advantage, Psychic Blades, and 4th-level Smite on crits: 25.28 |
| 14 – Bard 10 | Bardic Inspiration (d10) Expertise – Deception – Persuasion Psychic Blades (5d6) Magical Secrets – Find Greater Steed – Pass Without Trace | Another two Expertise options. We’ll lean into our capabilities as our party’s Face and take Deception and Persuasion. Magical Secrets is awesome. Despite our multiclass spellcasting, Magical Secrets works based on our levels in bard rather than our total spellcasting abilities, so we don’t get to cheat and pick 6th-level spells yet. We’ll grab Find Greater Steed so we can summon a pegasus and Pass Without Trace so we can be impossibly sneaky. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage, Advantage, Psychic Blades, and 4th-level Smite on crits: 27.28 |
| 15 – Bard 11 | New Spell Known: – Any | We also get 7th-level spell slots and 6th-level bard spells, but we only get one spell known. Again, no standout spells here. Staples like Eyebite and Mass Suggestion work great. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage, Advantage, Psychic Blades, and 4th-level Smite on crits: 27.28 |
| 16 – Bard 12 | Feat: Piercer (Dex 17->18) | We’re really leaning into the critical hits here. Piercer takes our Dexterity to 18, increasing our attack bonus, weapon damage, Stealth bonus, and initiative. At this stage medium armor and light armor get us the same AC, so wear whichever you like. Piercer also gets us some extra damage output on a crit, further improving our terrifyingly high crit damage when we dive into melee. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage, Advantage, Psychic Blades, and 4th-level Smite on crits: 28.20(Dexterity improved, piercer bonus damage die included, but reroll disregarded) |
| 17 – Bard 13 | Song of Rest (d10) New Spell Known: – Any | We also get 8th-level spell slots and 7th-level bard spells. Yet again, no real standout spells here for our tactics. Teleport to get in or out before or after smite-botting someone is nice, but we also have an impossibly high Stealth modifier (18 Dex, Expertise, Pass Without Trace, possibly Enhance Ability) so maybe you’re fine with walking in and out of places. In that case, maybe take Etherealness so you can get through walls. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage, Advantage, Psychic Blades, and 4th-level Smite on crits: 33.05 |
| 18 – Bard 14 | Magical Secrets – Contingency – Heal Shadow Lore | Contingency is just impossibly good. “When I draw a short sword, cast Improved Invisibility.” Now you can start smite-botting on turn 1. Heal is just a good spell to have. If your party has ample healing, consider other options like Plane Shift so you can take the show on the road and smite-bot enemies on other planes of existence. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage, Advantage, Psychic Blades, and 4th-level Smite on crits: 33.05 |
| 19 – Bard 15 | Bardic Inspiration (d12) Psychic Blades (8d6) | The cap on Psychic Blades damage. We also get 9th-level spell slots and 8th-level bard spells, which is far as we get with the level split in this example build. Remember that we gave up access to 9th-level bard spells when we took our fourth level in paladin. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage, Advantage, Psychic Blades, and 4th-level Smite on crits: 36.05 |
| 20 – Bard 16 or Paladin 5 | Varies | We have choices to make here. Another level in bard gets us an ASI or a feat and another 5th-level spell slot. Another level in paladin gets us Extra Attack and access to 2nd-level paladin spells. Extra Attack doubles our chances to crit (or increases it by 50% if you attempt two-weapon fighting), and that’s very tempting for a smite-bot, so let’s call that the default here. DPR with Booming Blade initial damage, Advantage, Psychic Blades, and 4th-level Smite on crits: 36.05 DPR with Extra Attack, Advantage, Psychic Blades, and 4th-level Smite on crits: 42.97 That’s a pretty steep gap in DPR. To get here however, we’ve certainly made some sacrifices. In order to make our multiclass minimums, we’ve chosen to leave our Constitution at 13 and never picked up the save proficiency, leaving us with a +1 for Concentration saves for our entire career. We could have continued until Paladin 6 and Aura of Protection would have at least compensated for that issue, but it would have cost the last improvement to Psychic Blades. We’ve also elected to go for Elven Accuracy and Finesse weapons instead of just wearing the Heavy Armor and using that Strength we needed to have for multiclassing anyway. This does let us crit more often, but following the unpredictability of critical hits can often result in wasting a Critical Psychic Smite on something that only has 1 hit point left. The build’s DPR relies on big, inconsistent damage spikes from crits, and those are just as likely to come at the end of a fight as they are at the beginning. To summarize: The DPR looks really exciting, and the critical hits will feel very satisfying, but his build’s weapon attacks aren’t consistently reliable, and when you can’t count on your weapon attacks you’re reduced to a bard several levels behind the party. To make the build consistent, you need to rely heavily on Hold Monster, which doesn’t come online until most published campaigns have ended. Still. Big crits. |
