Thoughts on optimizing a Palabardarian

[ravenkith]

Well, here's the idea:

Somehow using the Barbarian, Bard and Paladin classes to make a fun build that ends up being more than the sum of its parts, something reminiscent of Mance and his boys from the north of the wall.

Essentially, the idea is to take the toughness of the Barbarian and somehow mate it with the nova and defensive capabilities of the paladin and then add bard to generate more smite fuel and give lots of skill options.

In theory, this wouldn't even be that difficult from a multiclassing requirements perspective, because Barbarian requires STR 13, Bard requires CHA 13, and Paladin requires STR and CHA 13.

Given that the idea here is that a gish-type skill monkey with multiple options in and out of combat, Constitution is probably going to need to be relatively high as well. Wisdom and Dex are probably going to need to be de-prioritized, but given that we can use medium armor and shields, AC won't necessarily suffer too much from from this, and with our ability to get resistance to basically every type of damage but psychic while raging and the potential to add CHA to saves anyways, we shouldn't be hurting too much on that front.

So we start with Point buy scores of 15, 10, 13, 10, 10 and 14.

We then take the Wood Half-Elf racial variant. This will round the scores out to 16, 10, 14, 10, 10 and 16.

We'll take undercommon and add it to common and Elven as our languages, and we have our first real tough choice of either the Fleet of Foot or Mask of the Wild traits. While that extra 5 foot of movement would be a huge advantage in foot races, the ability to hide when only lightly obscured in any natural environment is really, really flavorful, even if it is situational. Mask of the Wild it is. We also get 60 foot darkvision, and fey ancestry, which gives us advantage on saves vs charms and immunity to magical sleep.

Our first level is going to be Barbarian here. That maxxed out d12 is pretty juicy at first level, for starters. We get rage, unarmored defense, and proficiency in light and medium armor, shields, simple weapons, martial weapons, STR and CON saving throws (mmm con pro), and two skill choices. Perception is a must for us: our low wisdom means we need proficiency to make up for it. We'll also talk athletics so we can do strong guy things like grapple and climb. For our background, we'll take the Outlander background. This'll get us proficiency with Survival and Stealth, a Lute, and the Sylvan language. We also get the Wanderer background feature, which lets us become the woodsy, wildling character we always wanted to start as. Our weapon strategy here is a one handed weapon, medium armor, and a shield, in order to bump up AC to help survivability at low levels.

At second level, we're going to switch to Paladin. Paladin level one gives us divine sense and lay on hands (5).

3rd: Paladin 2. Here we get an upgrade to lay on hands, spellcasting, a fighting style (defensive), and divine smite. Note that certain spells here are very nice for our build.

4th-6th: Paladin 3-6. Oath of Devotion. Here you'll pick up the Channel Divinity ability that can, for one minute long, make your weapon magical and add your Charisma to your attack rolls. You'll also get an ASI (Great Weapon Master), extra attack, and aura of protection. Character Level 5 is a key turning point for us as we transition to a great weapon instead of sword and board. In theory, with our HP, medium armor, defensive style, half melee weapon damage from rage, and the ability to do emergency self-heals with LOH, we should be pretty hard to kill. We also ought to be able to Nova HARD for a minute or so with the extra damage from GWM and smites with most (3 of 5) of the penalty to hit offset by our Channel divinity.

7th-8th level: Back to Barbarian for the second and third levels of that class, where we'll pick up reckless attack, danger sense, and go bear totem barbarian. Note at this point, while raging, we take half damage from every type except psychic. We get our charisma bonus to saves, and have advantage against charms and anything that forces a dex save that we can see coming. We can even use reckless attack to get advantage on all attack rolls if we want to.

At character level 9, we take our first level of bard. We're ultimately taking bard all the way to level 10, and we're going Lore Bard.

Bard level 1, we get a musical instrument (horn), and a skill of our choice (intimidation). We also get bardic spellcasting and bardic inspiration.
2nd level, we get Jack of all trades and song of rest.
3rd level we go lore bard, and get Cutting words (hahahahahah - we can now use our reactions - even while raging - to make people suck at doing their jobs), expertise (in Perception and Stealth), and three MORE proficiencies. I personally pick up Deception, Insight and Persuasion here, as our former outlander/wildling has better learned to deal with people after a lifetime alone, and this increase reflects that.
At 4th level we get an ASI. I'm dumping both of the points we get into Charisma. It makes our spell saves harder to resist, adds to our ability to save against enemy spells, and adds to our nova to hit when using channel divinity, reducing the penalty to just -1 for 10 extra points of damage.
At 5th level Bard we get font of inspiration. Short Rest Bard points!
6th level bard is the extra magical secrets level. There are some doozies you can take here. You also get countercharm. Yay.
7th level bard is basically a dead level, just giving you spell progression.
8th level Bard gives you an ASI. Charisma again! Now we're maxed out. When you GWM and Channel divinity, you have NO penalty to hit.
9th level Bard, again, is just spell progression.
10th level bard gives you more magical secrets (oh those tasty, tasty secrets), and your next set of expertise (2 skills).
Lastly, you take that 4th level of Barbarian to get another ASI.

At this point, it is worth noting that you have 4 1st level spells, 3 2nd/3rd/4th, 2 5th, 1 6th and 1 7th level slot available to you. That's a whole mess of smiting IN COMBAT, plus an awful lot of utility spells you can take to deal with problems when you are out of combat. You're going to probably want to lean heavily in favor of things like Knock, Invisibility, See Invisibility, Animal Friendship, Longstrider, Motivational Speech - basically long-acting spells that don't take concentration, but then you can also take a couple of 'killer' spells that might actually use concentration (like Hynotic Pattern), or spells like Synaptic Static, which do damage and has a save or suck rider that can be cast on a combat and have a lasting effect BEFORE wading in to melee.

Then there's the extra secrets spells that you can cherry pick (four of them, two of them 3rd lvl or below and two 5th level or below).

Thoughts? Comments?

[saucerhead]

You will fall behind in progression when you spend three levels in Barbarian. I wonder, why do you want to go this route? Do you have only 3 players or less? Paladin combines really well with warlock or sorcerer or bard, but the barbarian levels are lost when you want to use the heavy armor of a paladin. You can't rage and thereby gain resistance or the damage bonus in heavy armor. You can multiclass Barb/Pally, but it will hinder you more than help. You are better off letting someone else in the group go rage beast.

[ravenkith]

obvious item choice for this build is an Amulet of Health: setting Con to 19 is a damn good idea.

Another likely choice would be a cloak of protection.


You will fall behind in progression when you spend three levels in Barbarian. I wonder, why do you want to go this route? Do you have only 3 players or less? Paladin combines really well with warlock or sorcerer or bard, but the barbarian levels are lost when you want to use the heavy armor of a paladin. You can't rage and thereby gain resistance or the damage bonus in heavy armor. You can multiclass Barb/Pally, but it will hinder you more than help. You are better off letting someone else in the group go rage beast.

The idea here is that you're a nova monster, but NOT a character that is a one trick pony, and will ALWAYS have a way to be useful, whether the party is in combat, out of it, or travelling overland. You're never going to be bored sitting at the table because your character can't add something to the situation that you happen to be in.

Combining the rage of a barbarian with the reckless attack feature, then stacking that with the channel divinity ability and adding into that GWM and smite means that you are, for at least one minute, going to be able to pop out at least two attacks each round that will have advantage on each, your normal attack bonus, and +10 to damage, as well as up to 5d8 smite damage with whatever weapon you are using (probably a greatsword). If you drop something, you get an extra attack.

You can also grapple things fairly easily, and push them prone, thus mitigating the negative effects of reckless attack on at least one of your opponents. Cutting words can be used to make them suck at resisting you (raging or not).

If something attacks you (especially if it is the big bad), you can also use cutting words (d10) to make them less likely to hit you.

If they DO hit you, you're taking half damage from whatever it is they are doing. If someone comes after you with spells, you have at least got a reasonable chance to save, especially if it is an area of effect/dex spell, or something that targets con.

If the situation calls for it, you can hold the rage and use spells to crowd control, or switch to a different method of targeting if the AC is just too damn high.

With this character, when you are NOT being a rage monster and generally hard to kill in combat, you can ALSO be a utility player with the ability to contribute basically at all times. You have the capability to sneak around. You can pop locks. You can Face if you have to (note my second set of expertise goes into Athletics and Insight).

You can even help the party survive in the wilderness, thanks to your background.

You end up with 15 in Athletics, 12 in Insight, perception and stealth, 11 in Deception, Intimidation and persuasion, 8 in performance, 6 in survival, and 3 in everything else. a 22 passive Perception and insight. This is way more skill monkeying than a normal barbarian could do, and hey, you aren't going to be stuck waiting for combat to roll around again (whenever that might be).

Plus you then have spells for utility on top of all that, lol.

Paladin will give you things like Cure wounds, detect magic, detect poison and disease, protection from evil and good, purify food and drink, sanctuary, thunderous smite, aid and find steed.

Bard gives you mage hand, minor illusion, prestidigitation, and vicious mockery at will. You hen can get things like animal friendship, feather fall and longstrider, etc. etc., just from the bard spell list, but then you can go stealing other classes' spells as well!

So spiritual weapon becomes a choice. A spell that doesn't require concentration and lasts for a full minute that allows you to make a bonus action attack with a force based melee spell attack...that scales. This spell, when upcast, can add an additional 3d8+5 to your attack routine (which, lest we forget, is already pretty NOVA'd up). Maybe that's not your cup of tea. Maybe you want to be able to fly, or bring healing spirit to the table for out of combat party healing.

Maybe you just want to be able to toss a fireball or, maybe you want to put together a Sanctuary/Animate Dead/Crusaders Mantle spell combo together.

You could even use your Bard magical secrets to steal find greater steed and go riding around on a pegasus if you want. Fire shield? Sure, you could take it.

I mean, use your imagination.

But seriously, yes, you lose spell progression - but with this build, you aren't using your spell slots to deal damage anyway. That's what Smites are for.

[Man_Over_Game]

IWarlock might make a better dip than Bard, since Armor of Agathys is heavily improved by Barbarian Rage.

Heck, you could ditch the Paladin AND Bard levels altogether and just go for the Hexblade Warlock Eldritch Smite build and make a fairly well-optimized character that does all of the things you're already looking to do, while still requiring little Charisma and using virtually all of your features.

Something like Hexblade Warlock 5, Barbarian 2 is actually a really solid and powerful mage-tank build.


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If you're still only interested in your Paladin build, I'd still recommend swapping Bard levels for Warlock, and changing your Paladin subclass to Vengeance. Warlock is more consistent than Bard, and Vengeance requires much less Charisma and spellcasting than Devotion.

[Nidgit]

For a build like this, I'd probably stick with S&B the whole time and go Swords Bard. I'd also go with Vengeance instead of Devotion Paladin to give an alternative to using Reckless Attack.

The final build would be something like Swords Bard 14/Barbearian 3/Vengeance Paladin 3. Between Rage, your base AC of 20 (Medium Armor, Shield, Defense style), and boosts from Defensive Flourish, you should be quite difficult to take down. 28.5 base damage per turn isn't anything to write home about but you've got plenty of ammo for Smites, frequent advantage, 7th level spells, and good skill monkey abilities to augment that.

I can't think of any Feats that are particularly important to this build, so I'd say go Half-Elf for a starting array of 16/14/14/8/10/14. Level 1 in Barbarian is still fine, but then I'd go 6 in Bard for Extra Attack and Font of Inspiration, 2 in Paladin, 2 more in Barbarian, 1 more in Paladin, then Bard the rest of the way. Yeah, your spell progression isn't great, but starting at L9 they're mostly used for Smiting anyway. ASIs are probably CHA/CHA/STR, which means you'll often need Reckless Attack or Vow of Enmity active to hit armored stuff at high levels.

[ravenkith]

IWarlock might make a better dip than Bard, since Armor of Agathys is heavily improved by Barbarian Rage.

Heck, you could ditch the Paladin AND Bard levels altogether and just go for the Hexblade Warlock Eldritch Smite build and make a fairly well-optimized character that does all of the things you're already looking to do, while still requiring little Charisma and using virtually all of your features.

Something like Hexblade Warlock 5, Barbarian 2 is actually a really solid and powerful mage-tank build.


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If you're still only interested in your Paladin build, I'd still recommend swapping Bard levels for Warlock, and changing your Paladin subclass to Vengeance. Warlock is more consistent than Bard, and Vengeance requires much less Charisma and spellcasting than Devotion.

In my opinion, Warlock is basically a trap for anything beyond, at most, 3 levels, and is usually best left as a 1 level hexblade dip, FWIW.

In this case, the problem lies primarily with the Warlock's eldritch smite. The issue is that the Warlock chassis that underlies Eldritch smite is total ass, no offense.

With Warlock, you still have to burn spell slots in order to smite, but you don't even get a THIRD spell slot until the 11th class level. Fourth? Oh, that comes at 17th warlock level. You never get a 5th spell slot, even if you go to 20. Nor do you ever get above a fifth level spell. At most, you're going to be getting all of two or maybe three smites per combat your entire career. Yikes!

With the build I propose, you get 17 slots by level 20, with the ability to throw up to 7 max-level smites per day. Granted your Warlock can recharge his spell slots on a short rest, but in terms of the ability to Nova in a single battle, the Bard chassis just generates MORE, especially because you can throw the 7 5d8 smites, followed by 3 4d8, 3 3d8, and 4 2d8 smites into the mix as well, which the Warlock straight up CAN'T do.

Comparing the two builds at level 7, both builds can have extra attack, meaning that across ten rounds of combat, they will each get 20 attacks, all other things being equal This, of course, assumes that you are using two of your invocations on Thirsting Blade and Eldritch smite.

At this point, your build can smite twice per combat, each at 4d8 for a total of 8d8. My build can smite 6 times per combat, with 2 at 3d8 each, and 4 at 2d8 each, for a total of 14d8 extra damage. Except, my build has the Great Weapon Master feat, and can offset the minuses to hit to a great degree, meaning that I can use that -2 to hit, +10 to damage way more often than you can (assuming you took the same feat and are looking at -5 to hit/+10 damage), and thanks to my find steed, I can give myself advantage to hit basically all the time, only without the negatives of reckless attack.

Add into that the fact that my character is now getting his CHA mod added to all saves, has an extra bonus point to his armor class from his defensive fighting style, and I can't help but think I'm actually coming out ahead, here.

Keep in mind, up until this point, your warlock wouldn't even have been able to smite at all, whereas mine could have been chunking smites since level 3.

Additionally, we haven't even got to the part where my character gets full spell progression or skill monkey abilities that will need to be factored into the equation, yet.

Now as far as switching to a vengeance paladin, that's certainly something to consider, but frankly, it's a poor choice, in that the vow of enmity gives you advantage on your attack rolls for 1 minute. For me, having my steed able to 'help' in combat means I get advantage whenever I need it. Taking vengeance means not gaining anything of value here. Compare this to the Devotion ability to add your charisma bonus to attack rolls and make your weapon considered magical....it's clear which is superior, if you ask me.

Now Vengeance DOES give you access to the nifty Hunter's Mark spell, but that spell requires concentration, so using it means you wouldn't get to use your rage. That seems like a bad trade to me: you gain an average of 3.5 extra damage a hit at the cost of a spell slot, but prevent yourself from gaining +2 damage each turn and resistance to all weapon damage types. In terms of damage output/mitigation of incoming damage, one of those two is clearly superior, again.

Just my $0.02.

[Sudsboy]

Well, here's the idea:

Somehow using the Barbarian, Bard and Paladin classes to make a fun build that ends up being more than the sum of its parts, something reminiscent of Mance and his boys from the north of the wall.

Thoughts? Comments?

I am running this character in a campaign now, and he will end up barb5/pal2/bard13. I'm currently barb5/pal1. He's going to burn spell slots for smites while raging, and take only out of combat and buff spells. Wolf totem barb, and Whispers bard for extra damage dice.

Edit to add that his magical secrets will be Fire Shield and Armor of Agathys. He has the sentinel feat from variant human.

[ravenkith]

For a build like this, I'd probably stick with S&B the whole time and go Swords Bard. I'd also go with Vengeance instead of Devotion Paladin to give an alternative to using Reckless Attack.

The final build would be something like Swords Bard 14/Barbearian 3/Vengeance Paladin 3. Between Rage, your base AC of 20 (Medium Armor, Shield, Defense style), and boosts from Defensive Flourish, you should be quite difficult to take down. 28.5 base damage per turn isn't anything to write home about but you've got plenty of ammo for Smites, frequent advantage, 7th level spells, and good skill monkey abilities to augment that.

I can't think of any Feats that are particularly important to this build, so I'd say go Half-Elf for a starting array of 16/14/14/8/10/14. Level 1 in Barbarian is still fine, but then I'd go 6 in Bard for Extra Attack and Font of Inspiration, 2 in Paladin, 2 more in Barbarian, 1 more in Paladin, then Bard the rest of the way. Yeah, your spell progression isn't great, but starting at L9 they're mostly used for Smiting anyway. ASIs are probably CHA/CHA/STR, which means you'll often need Reckless Attack or Vow of Enmity active to hit armored stuff at high levels.

Not getting access to smite until level 9 would make this a tough build to play all the way through, don't you think?

Also, your saves are going to be spectacularly bad by the time you're done, with your highest being a 7 in con. Having a +0 in wisdom is just begging to get mind-effed, too, I think.

Granted, in terms of weapon damage, witht he 20 AC AND the resistances, you're going to be really touh against one angle of attack, but holy hell are you going to have a tough time with INT/WIS.

[ravenkith]

I am running this character in a campaign now, and he will end up barb5/pal2/bard13. I'm currently barb5/pal1. He's going to burn spell slots for smites while raging, and take only out of combat and buff spells. Wolf totem barb, and Whispers bard for extra damage dice.

Edit to add that his magical secrets will be Fire Shield and Armor of Agathys. He has the sentinel feat from variant human.

Why wolf totem?

Whispers bard is not a bad idea, but you'll only get an extra 5d6 once per round at 10th level, going to 13 doesn't increase this any. In addition, Whispers bard GIVES you extra attack, so the 5th level of Barbarian is kind of a waste, unless you have a mad on for fast movement or something.

You may be MUCH better off doing your break points at Barb 4, Paladin 6 and Bard 10: just rearrange things so you get Bard 5 earlier, like Nidgit did.

[Sudsboy]

Why wolf totem?

Whispers bard is not a bad idea, but you'll only get an extra 5d6 once per round at 10th level, going to 13 doesn't increase this any. In addition, Whispers bard GIVES you extra attack, so the 5th level of Barbarian is kind of a waste, unless you have a mad on for fast movement or something.

You may be MUCH better off doing your break points at Barb 4, Paladin 6 and Bard 10: just rearrange things so you get Bard 5 earlier, like Nidgit did.

Whispers bard doesn't give you extra attack. 5th barb for extra attack, wolf totem to help the other martials in my party. The extra 5d6 will get held for a crit. Paladin 6 for the aura is a good choice, but I'd already committed to barbarian before deciding to multiclass. If I were going that high in paladin, I'd skip barbarian altogether and build the character with smite and magical secrets shadowblade.

The extra bard levels are for more spell slots to spend on smites. Perhaps in a white room scenario it's a waste, but at our table those come in handy, as we get fewer rests than recommended.

[Sudsboy]

Whispers bard doesn't give you extra attack. 5th barb for extra attack, wolf totem to help the other martials in my party. The extra 5d6 will get held for a crit. Paladin 6 for the aura is a good choice, but I'd already committed to barbarian before deciding to multiclass. If I were going that high in paladin, I'd skip barbarian altogether and build the character with smite and magical secrets shadowblade.

The extra bard levels are for more spell slots to spend on smites. Perhaps in a white room scenario it's a waste, but at our table those come in handy, as we get fewer rests than recommended.

If you really wanted to limit yourself to 10 bard levels in my build, maybe take 3 levels of champion fighter for expanded crit to get off more frequent crit smite/whisper attacks and action surge.

[Arkhios]

One thing you could do, is to keep your total multiclass spell slots level in line with full paladin, if doing it. This way, you would at least remain competitive with paladin's class chassis

Paladin 11/Bard 5/Barbarian 4 for example would have just as many spell slots as a paladin 20, while getting 3rd level spells from both paladin and bard, Font of Inspiration, Improved Divine Smite, Aura of Courage, as well as Rage 3/day and the first primal path features, just to name a few overall benefits.

You certainly fall behind by one ASI, but your key stats are the same as a full paladin has.

And of course, you lose access to 4th and 5th level spells, but that's acceptable.

[ravenkith]

Well, here's (ddb.ac/characters/24650283/eAbnNr)the link to the final build that I came up with (goes to DND Beyond public link).

The long and the short of it is that you are going to start the game with a Wood Elf Barbarian with the base stats:
STR 16, DEX 14, CON 10, INT 10, WIS 10 and CHA 16

1. Barb 1 (S&B)
2. Barb 1/Pal 1 (S&B)
3. Barb 1/Pal 2 (S&B)
4. Barb 2/Pal 2 (S&B)
5. Barb 3 (Bear Totem)/Pal 2 (TWF)
6. Barb 3 (Bear Totem)/Pal (Devotion) 3 (TWF)
7. Barb 3 (Bear Totem)/Pal (Devotion) 4 (TWF)
8. Barb 3 (Bear Totem)/Pal (Devotion) 5 (TWF)
9. Barb 4 (Bear Totem)/Pal (Devotion) 5 (GWM)
10. Barb 4 (Bear Totem)/Pal (Devotion) 6 (GWM)
11. Barb 4 (Bear Totem)/Pal (Devotion) 6/Bard 1 (GWM)
12. Barb 4 (Bear Totem)/Pal (Devotion) 6/Bard 2 (GWM)
13. Barb 4 (Bear Totem)/Pal (Devotion) 6/Bard (Lore) 3 (GWM)
14. Barb 4 (Bear Totem)/Pal (Devotion) 6/Bard (Lore) 4 (GWM)
15. Barb 4 (Bear Totem)/Pal (Devotion) 6/Bard (Lore) 5 (GWM)
16. Barb 4 (Bear Totem)/Pal (Devotion) 6/Bard (Lore) 6 (GWM)
17. Barb 4 (Bear Totem)/Pal (Devotion) 6/Bard (Lore) 7 (GWM)
18. Barb 4 (Bear Totem)/Pal (Devotion) 6/Bard (Lore) 8 (GWM)
19. Barb 4 (Bear Totem)/Pal (Devotion) 6/Bard (Lore) 9 (GWM)
20. Barb 4 (Bear Totem)/Pal (Devotion) 6/Bard (Lore) 10 (GWM)

As indicated in the progression above, at lower levels (1-4), you're going to use the sword and board style. Barbarian starting cash of 80gp will let you get a chain shirt, a shield and a Longsword starting out with 5gp for incidentals. This'll give you an HP of 12 at level 1, with a starting ac of 13 (Shirt) + 2 (shield) +2 (dex) for a total of 17. At level 3, when you get your second level of Paladin, you'll take the defensive fighting style, giving you a +1 to AC, and somewhere in your run from 1st to 4th, you'll be looking to upgrade to a breastplate. At your peak, you'll hit AC 19.

Of course, as is indicated at 5th level, in order to keep up with other martial characters, who get their extra attack at this level, you will probably want to switch to a two weapon fighting style. You will use your bonus action, whenever possible, to deliver a second attack. You'll most likely pick up a pair of short swords for this purpose. This will have the negative effect of removing your shield bonus, dropping your AC back down to a 17.

Now many of you are probably objecting pretty strongly to this idea, as you are losing out in terms of un-enhanced weapon damage per hit and AC as compared to a straight classed sword and board paladin or fighter, as they could theoretically be rocking heavier armor at this point, but it is important to recall the two main functions of rage - on the one hand, bear totem rage reduces ALL incoming damage (except psychic) by half, and on the other hand, it actually increases your damage per hit by two points. These two functions (the damage mitigation in particular) give the Palabardarian a stronger foundation (see discussion below).


So assuming that you are sword and boarding as a straight classed paladin, You'll have AC 19 or 20, and you'll be rolling a d8 as your base weapon damage, for an average damage of 4.5 per hit, with two hits per round. By going down the path we have taken, without rage, our warrior has an AC of just 17, and delivers a weapon average of 3.5. However, WITH rage, our warrior will have advantage on all his attacks (net effect roughly +5 to hit on each strike), +2 to damage on each strike, and taking 50% damage from each hit. We really aren't losing out in terms of damage output, and what we are gaining is effectively guaranteeing (during rage) that 50% of all attacks will miss us, including those that are the results of spells or target things OTHER than AC (like saves).

Of course, this is true from level 5 onward. While your Paladin sword and boarder's ac could increase more than ours by getting a magic shield or switching to heavier magic armor than us (at the cost of his dex bonus), realistically, without multiclassing or SOMEHOW specializing, a 24 AC is probably going to be the limit of what the straight Pally can do, anyway. Because of bounded accuracy (including the fact that a nat 20 ALWAYS hits), AC, as a defense, actually becomes much harder to rely on to keep damage from breaking through as you level.

For example, at level 5, my AC 17 and the Paladins AC 19 - well a CR 5 air elemental has a bonus to hit of +8, as a random example of a CR 5 critter. On a d20 roll, the air elemental will hit my character on a 12 or higher, and the straight paladin on a 14 or higher. In exchange for a 10% increase of likelihood to hit, I'm getting to negate 50% of the damage that actually connects (assuming I'm raging). Now, look at that same elemental's whirlwind attack: we both have to make the same save. We're the same level. I have proficiency, he doesn't, but lets say we have the same save score - we both fail anyway: I take HALF the damage he will.

The same goes for fireballs, cones of cold, lightning or thunder damage types - basically everything except psychic - as long as I'm raging, I take less, just because I am raging.

As we level up, eventually we get to face bigger monsters, with bigger bonuses. A CR 9 cloud giant has a +12 to hit, meaning that he has only to roll a 12 or more on the die in order to hit an AC of 24. Of course, he only needs to roll a 5 to hit an AC of 17, BUT, even if he hits us, we're still only going to take half damage.

Now compare that to facing a Behir, where the creature (CR 11) has an electric attack with a dex save of DC 16. While both characters get to add their CHA mod to saves at this level, our barbarian gets advantage on the save. Assuming we both make the save, the straight paladin takes half damage. We take quarter damage. If we both fail, the straight paladin takes everything, while we take half.

Of course, at this level (10), our barbarian has gotten the extra attack feature from Paladin 5, and can either opt to now do three attacks in a round, all smiting, or, as I recommend, transition to a Great Weapon Mastery build (take the feat at 10 with Barbarian 4), now using the feat to take a -5 Penalty to hit and gain a +10 on damage, which can be offset in large part (eventually completely) by the Devotion Paladin's Channel Divinity ability to add Cha MOD to attack rolls for a minute/long rest.

Take it up a notch further, to a CR 17 adult red dragon, who has a +14 to hit. The dragon will hit the straight paladin on a 10 or better (50%). Our mix character? On a 3 or better - but for a maximum of 50% damage. But when the dragon breathes fire, the paladin will make his save without advantage, we will make it with, and if we succeed we take 1/4 of the damage, if we FAIL we take half.

As you can see, the damage mitigation function of a bear totem rage allow you to mitigate at least as much damage in melee as a high ac would (They might also miss the attack altogether, slim a chance as that might be), but they ALSO allow you to mitigate damage that attacks defenses other than AC as well, which, strictly speaking, makes damage resistance a better tactic, especially at mid-to-high levels.

Of course, none of this math takes into account the bonus abilities that will come the Palabardarian's way thanks to his Cutting Words class feature, which can be used to either boost AC temporarily or mitigate damage directly, or the other class features that Barbarian or Bard offer, such as proficiency in con saves, expertise in things like stealth, perception, athletics and insight, and the various spells that you can add to your list of choices, including such magical secrets as counterspell and healing spirit at level 16 and getting access to steel wind strike and wall of force as your capstones. This of course doesn't take into account the massive number of more powerful spell slots that you get to bring to the table as possible smite fuel.


Keep in mind that the equipment you're going to shoot for with this build is, in no particular order:
Amulet of Health (Attuned) (sets CON to 19)
Greatsword +2
Ring of Evasion (Attuned) (3/day, choose to succeed a dex save)
Adamantine Breastplate (Immune to criticals) (if you are lucky, maybe get your DM to add a bonus to this? +2 would be ideal)
Cloak of Protection (Attuned) (+1 to AC, +1 to saves)