Paladin/Bard build advise

[MakisMato]

So I have been playing a game for about a year now and I am not sure where to go with my build.

I am a silver dragonborn Paladin(AoA 8)/Bard(lore 4). I have some pretty good magic items with a sentinel shield, spellstore ring, Efreeti Chain, ring of free action, +1 scimitar. I have heavy armor mastery and am looking to pick up Shield mastery soon I have expertise in athletics so I figured a free shove every round would be very helpful. I just hit 8 in paladin and exchanged my fighting style from protection to interception.

The campaign is mostly exploration and combat focused, but RP and such does come up. And all of the WotC books are in play as well as Kobald Press which have added a ton of spells to choose from.

What I am having a hard time deciding is what to continue leveling up as and what spells to pick up for magical secrets depending on how much farther I go into bard. I'm sure I am at least going 6 levels in lore bard to pick up haste and probably counterspell, but I think picking up deep focus to get around concentration would be useful as well.

Thoughts and opinions on where to go and what to change?

[Nefariis]

Soo I am currently playing a PalaBard and I started off optimizing for Shield Master with Glory Paladin (Advantage on strength checks), Lore Bard (Expertise) and I've found that it's just not worth the shield master feat.

The official ruling is that you have to make both of your attacks before you can use the bonus action shove. My DM was kind enough to allow me to split up my attacks with the bonus action (attack, shove, attack) - But unless your DM let's you shove first, I would avoid it all together as you can still shove/attack, or attack/grapple, or you can grapple/shove prone without shield master - and with the expertise, you are going to be great at it regardless of Shield Master.

What I ended up doing, was I changed my feat to instead get a +2 CHA which brought me to 20, then I picked up Gauntlets of Ogre Power (19 Strength), then switched from Glory to Vengeance Paladin. I can still shove, grapple, and go prone just as well as I could before, but I didn't have to give up the +2 CHA, which is great for Aura's and Spells, and I have much better all around Channel Divinities.

I'm currently going 6 Vengeance / Lore X - but since you are going 8 Paladin, OoA works great for the Magic Resistance. I dont think I would do any more Paladin though as the Lore Bard benefits at higher levels are much much better than the Paladin benefits.

You can never go wrong with haste and counterspell, especially if you dont have a support wizard.

[Keravath]

I think the final split in levels depends on what sort of paladin you want to play.

The more attacks you have, the better the Improved Divine Smite feature at level 11 paladin becomes. There are also useful aura enhancements at level 10.

Bard levels obviously get you better spell casting an more spell slots for smiting.

So it comes down to whether you want to emphasize the paladin or bard features from here on out.