The best defense is a good offense. But por que no los dos? Smite evil and guard your friends with your shield of justice!

Paladins have always been one of the most popular classes. They mix great defensive options, supportive spellcasting, healing features, and in 5E, they have a satisfying combat mechanic in Divine Smite. Paladins are great for roleplaying! Trying to follow tenets of devotion and exploring how those shape your response to things allows for interesting character development.

This short series isn’t about power gaming. The goal is to showcase some interesting builds unique to Tales of the Valiant and describe some strong options. Player builds don’t need to be optimal to have fun. Sometimes a build can even revolve around doing something suboptimal that is more fun than being maximally effective.

Most paladins are STR-based martial characters who are great at frontline melee combat. A good d10 hit die and access to heavy armor and shields keeps you up. Weapon options vary from sword-and-board, two-handed great weapons, or polearms. With CHA, paladins are good at social encounters and can act as the party face, especially if there’s no bard.

This build takes advantage of some unique features available for shields to help support allies when your paladin tanks in melee. So let’s build . . . The Shield Master.

Level 1: Starting out.

Sometimes this section has talked about other class options, but this build is about paladins.

Choose the paladin class

Builds don’t normally start with equipment, but this one has “shield” in the marquee, so don’t look for subtlety. Starting with chain mail and a shield, your armor class is 18. Take any one-handed martial melee weapon of your choice and five javelins, which is your backup ranged option.

Divine Sense is great for exploration and can help lead to combat encounters without being surprised. It’s also helpful for fighting invisible enemies if they are Celestial, Fiend, or Undead as you know their location and it doesn’t take an action to activate.

Lay on Hands scales well for secondary healing with good action economy as you use a bonus action for self-healing or an action to heal allies or cure their diseases. Keeping 1 point of Lay on Hands available to quickly heal a downed ally is a reliable way to save them from death saves.

Ability Scores

Using the point buy method, a balanced set of ability scores looks like this:

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
17	10	14	8	11	14

The classic issue with paladins is that you need to be good at everything. Prioritize STR with a 17, because we want to increase it to 18 at the 4th-level Improvement and then pick a talent. Having a good CON score is important for hit points and possibly maintaining concentration if you’re going to be tanking in melee. CHA can be higher if you’re willing to further dump WIS and DEX, but both of those are important stats for saves.

Lineage

There’s some flexibility here depending on your preference for background. Humans are great for their starting talent, and this build wants to start with the Hand to Hand talent to use your shield as an improvised weapon. Whether you get that at 1st level from the human lineage’s Ambitious trait or as a talent choice from the Rustic background is up to you.

For this, let’s try a nonhuman lineage. Syderean might be a fun option to play a celestial protector archetype, clad in heavy armor with a large shield to protect allies and radiant with divine power. Whether your mortal form is due to unknown parentage, mysterious forces, or rediscovering power from a reincarnated soul, there are many possibilities for great roleplay and character storytelling in a journey for self-identity.

Other strong features of the syderean lineage include Far Sight giving you both darkvision and vision through magical darkness, resistance to necrotic damage from Otherworldly Form, and choosing Celestial for Blessed Guise to gain 1 minute of flying speed and attacking with radiant damage. Lots of great choices.

Using a shield as an improvised weapon should be fine within the rules, but discuss this with your GM ahead of time. Mechanically, the only benefit to not using a longsword to attack is having a free hand open for occasional spellcasting or grappling. The damage from Hand to Hand to attack with an improvised weapon is 1d8 + STR, which is the same as a longsword. But the cool factor of hitting an enemy with a shield bash as a weapon attack, then using Divine Smite for a burst of radiant energy goes so well with this theme. Especially with radiance of the spectral wings! If not, the standard sword and board is going to be just as effective and more flexible later when you’re looking for magic weapons.

Heritage

Fireforge is a great heritage choice. Mechanically, it’s nice for a being infused with celestial energy to have resistance to fire. Anointed is great thematically to have advantage recalling or interpreting information about Celestials and Fiends. Cloud can also be good if you want a cantrip like Guidance or Resistance.

Background

Choose Rustic for the Hand to Hand talent.

Skills

Choose proficiency in Athletics and Persuasion. This plays to your STR and CHA focus.

Level 2: Get Divine Smite, Martial Action, and Spellcasting.

One reason a paladin is so fun to play is that early on, every level gives you great features. The progression feels very satisfying. Divine Smite feels powerful to selectively add radiant damage to your strikes, especially on a critical hit. Spellcasting for 1st-circle Divine spells has a lot of great options for early game, such as bless, divine favor, healing word, protection from evil and good, and shield of faith.

Martial Action is a class feature shared by paladins, fighters, and rangers that allows using a bonus action to either perform weapon options or one of the martial actions available to the class. Weapon options are a great addition to Tales of the Valiant to give more tactical decisions in combat and provide weapon types more interesting characteristics than just the damage die.

For this build, choose Guard for the Martial Action. This is a great defensive feature to protect you and your nearby allies in melee combat. Use your shield to impose disadvantage on the first attack from one nearby enemy creature. Your positioning on the battlefield becomes more important to try to stay in front of your party rogue or monk to use this feature. It also helps optimize your action economy, giving a reliable, repeatable use for your bonus action that is strong in the early game when enemies are limited to single attacks.

Level 3: Choose Your Subclass.

Paladin subclasses represent the sacred oath that you follow and the manifestation of the powers they reflect. How well you follow your tenets or if things cause you to break your oath are interesting thematic and storytelling components that affect class mechanics and make roleplaying fun.

Choose the Justice subclass and swear to destroy evil. Use Channel Divinity: Judgement to focus on the toughest enemy, giving you advantage on attack rolls and additional radiant damage equal to your CHA modifier. Channel Divinity: Burden of Guilt is great situationally to make up for some of the paladin’s weaknesses against highly mobile or flying enemies. The Justice Oath Spells are all staples: misty step, haste, greater invisibility, and greater hold.

The new spell on the list, pendulum, is crazy! This 1st-circle Arcane spell has either an ally or enemy replace their d20 rolls for attacks, ability checks, and saves with an alternating sequence of 1, 20, 2, 19, 3, 18, 4, 17, and so on. There are so many applications for this in and out of combat. Guaranteeing failures or successes is very powerful. If you can reliably generate advantage, such as attacking a prone target, or disadvantage, such as with the Guard martial action, this spell really shines.

Level 4: Use Your Improvement.

Increase STR by 1 to 18. Take the Shield Mastery talent.

This is one of the other major features of wielding a shield for this build. When you make a DEX save to avoid taking damage, like from a fireball spell or a triggered trap out of combat, you can use your reaction to further halve any damage taken. If you use your action to Dodge, such is if you are trying to hold a choke point at a door or tank a large swarm of enemies, your AC increases an additional amount equal to the armor bonus of your shield.  

As a bonus action, you can attempt to shove a creature either 5 feet away or prone. Most importantly, this is not tied to taking the Attack action beforehand. If you move 10 feet or more, directly toward a creature, before using the bonus action, you have advantage on your contested STR check.

A great round to start combat could be charging toward an enemy, using a bonus action to shove prone with advantage, and then either attacking with advantage against a prone enemy in melee or grappling the prone enemy, with advantage from Hand to Hand. This reduces their speed to 0, setting up your allies to attack in melee with advantage until the enemy can break your grapple.

When you and your frontline allies are in combat, you can use your bonus action to continue shoving enemies prone or protect someone with the Guard martial action, while also bashing enemies with your shield.

Try to upgrade to plate armor during these next few levels to increase your armor class to 20 with your shield.

Level 5: Multiattack Arrives.

The extra attack synergizes well with the advantage from shoving prone, the extra radiant damage from Channel Divinity: Judgement, and the divine favor spell if you chose to use it.

You also get 2nd-circle Divine spells, like aid, calm emotions, gentle repose, hold, silence, and see invisibility.

Level 6: Auright, Auright, Auright.

Aura of Protection gives nearby allies a bonus to saves equal to your CHA. It’s one of the best party features, and it’s always active while you are conscious. Since your CHA is currently 14, the bonus +2 to saves is as good as having a +2 ring of protection for every party member! Even the most risk averse player will start keeping their character closer to you for the safety of your aura.

Level 7: More Aura.

Adding a bonus to initiative rolls equal to your PB (currently +3), to your 10-foot aura makes it even better. If the party takes out one target before it can act, this can mitigate potential damage and make the encounter easier.

Level 8: More Self-Improvement.

Increase STR by 2 to 20. Maxing your primary stat in tier 2 is important to keep up with scaling for enemies.

Level 9 and on

The level progression continues to give good features. Aura of Courage prevents allies from being frightened. The Heroic Boon for Radiant Strikes adds more radiant damage to our attacks.

Looking for a magic shield with an AC bonus is great for defense, as well as magic plate armor. For most STR melee characters, a +1 javelin with a returning charm makes for a reliable ranged option.

Discuss with your GM about whether improvised attacks with a magic shield count as magical in the cases of enemies with immunity to non-magical attacks. If your GM is generous, they might even allow you to add the AC bonus to the attack. Otherwise, look for magical weapons like a +1 longsword. A sun blade or holy avenger is a great later-game option for that on-theme fit with our celestial paladin.

For Improvements at Level 12 and 16, increase CHA by 2 at each to help boost the bonus for Aura of Protection, spellcasting, and Channel Divinity: Judgement damage.

May you shine brightly on evil!

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