Paladin taking levels in Bard

[Talyn]

I am playing a Paladin in our ongoing campaign. He has a homebrew Oath (Oath of Charity) which emphasizes healing and buffing, and he is the party's primary healer. He is a variant human with an 18 Charisma.

For in-character reasons, he has taken a level of Bard, so as of right now, he is Paladin 5/Bard 1.

His next level will be Paladin, but after that, I am not sure how to level him up. Should he take a few more levels of Bard? If so, when should he take them? If he takes more levels, what bard college should he join?

It appears, according to my DM, that the campaign will end around level 12 or 14, if that makes a difference.

[burninatortrog]

Here's what I suggest: Advance in Paladin until Paladin 8 / Bard 1, then advance in Bard to Paladin 8 / Bard 4. This will ensure that you get three Ability Score Improvements, along with some very neat Bard abilities. If your campaign continues to level 14, Paladin 8 / Bard 6 will look very attractive.

I suggest College of Lore, since the Paladin won't benefit much from the College of Valor abilities.

[Mandragola]

Definitely college of lore as half the valour bonuses are wasted.

That said, I'd stick with paladin the rest of the way myself. There's too much good stuff to pass up every level to 12 as a paladin.

[silveralen]

Without a doubt you want to get him to lvl 6 for aura of protection, but as you said that's already a given. After that it depends a bit, though I recommend lore bard if you continue leveling said class. I'm also assuming you are focusing mainly on support over damage and likely will boost cha with your next ability score, just going by how you described your char.

Paladin 8/bard 4: It's hard to say how powerful your lvl 7 oath feature will be without knowing the homebrew, but ability score bonuses are always nice and lvl 8 would allow you to max charisma. Then again, three more level in bard allows you an ability acore increase, and if your are playing him primarily as a buffer/healer you might not need other ability scores as much, so getting a lvl 12 ability increase could be a non issue.

Paladin 11/bard 1: this could work but I don't think it is that great for your concept. You have more than a few levels that don't give a ton of benefit, aura of courage isn't bad but it isn't that stand out to me compared to something like aura of protection. Improved smite is great if you have a melee focus, as most paladins do, but your description seems slightly atypical of most paladins I've seen. It's also worth mentioning that the big benefit of this, the improved smite, would effectively be your capstone, while the paladin 8/bard 4 gets a better strength/dex as a capstone and has more slots of higher level to smite with up till then, making it a bit of a wash there.

Paladin 6/bard 6: This is similar to the first, but you give up an oath feature and ability score increase for better bardic inspiration usable more often, more spells, and counter charm/magical secrets as your capstone. Not a bad trade, you delay your next ability increase a level but gain faster access to all the additional bard abilities.

Personally I recommend paladin 8/bard 4 if your lvl 7 feature is really stand out or you feel a bit MAD and need more ability score increases. Otherwise I think paladin 6/bard 6 probably does what you want.

I don't see a really good reason to take paladin 11/bard 1 myself. It is perfectly functional but I think bard spells, expertise, and cutting words stand out more than paladin's 9-11 features unless you are really optimizing for damage (which it doesn't sound like).

[Talyn]

The level 7 Oath feature for the homebrew is:

Shared Succor: Whenever you use a spell or ability that restores hit points to yourself or a friendly target, another friendly target within 30 feet may regain 2d8+CHA hit points. This ability increases to 3d8+CHA at 13th level and 4d8+CHA at 18th level. This ability can be used once before the paladin must take a short rest.

I agree that College of Lore is clearly the better choice.

I'm not really sure what the big advantage of Magical Secrets is - I have read others on this board and others raving about how powerful it is, but I don't really see what the big deal is.

[silveralen]

The level 7 Oath feature for the homebrew is:

Shared Succor: Whenever you use a spell or ability that restores hit points to yourself or a friendly target, another friendly target within 30 feet may regain 2d8+CHA hit points. This ability increases to 3d8+CHA at 13th level and 4d8+CHA at 18th level. This ability can be used once before the paladin must take a short rest.

I agree that College of Lore is clearly the better choice.

I'm not really sure what the big advantage of Magical Secrets is - I have read others on this board and others raving about how powerful it is, but I don't really see what the big deal is.

That's good enough I'd say paladin 8/bard 4 and paladin 6/bard 6 are equally viable choices, with mainly personal preference mattering.

Magical secrets is good because it is very hard for one to not benefit from being able to pick any spell from any class and add it to your spell book. Regardless of situation, something is almost always helpful. The fact paladin and ranger have a few spells which are unique to them and give more kick than spells of that level normally offer is a big selling point, though that's less amazing in this case.

[burninatortrog]

I'm not really sure what the big advantage of Magical Secrets is - I have read others on this board and others raving about how powerful it is, but I don't really see what the big deal is.

It grants you access to spells that are well outside the scope of what your class can normally do, like counterspell, fireball, or fly. This makes it a great source of versatility for bards.

Each of the spells I listed above can end an encounter with a single stroke, if the conditions are right. That's why the ability that grants you two of them is seen as quite good.

[TheOOB]

I'm not really sure what the big advantage of Magical Secrets is - I have read others on this board and others raving about how powerful it is, but I don't really see what the big deal is.

The bard is a full spellcaster who's spells mostly focus on support and misdirection. That means that oftentimes their spells, which are their main class feature, are not that useful. Enter magical secrets. Not only does it let you pick powerful spells that will always be useful to you, it allows the bard to fill any gaps in the teams abilities. For example, the team I'm DMing lacks any real crowd clearing ability, so the bard took fireball, which is amazingly useful for the group(his 3rd level spell choices are also fairly specialized so a spell that's good in any fight is useful).

Further, those overpowered spells that ranger and paladin get that are balanced cause their half spellcasters? Yup, bard gets em.