Split personality build

Ok, so here's the flavor:

A character with 3 personalities, each represented by one of these classes. Oh, the 3 personalities are brothers who don't get along:

Oath of the Ancients Paladin represents Rowan, the self-righteous elder brother.
Favored Soul Sorcerer represents Reave, the cynical and bitter middle child.
Celestial Warlock represents Rook, the emo/goth youngest.

What would be the optimal level distribution for an 8th level character.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Ideally, you'd want to hit level 5 in one of your classes, as all of them get something major at 5th level. Extra Attack, level 3 spells, or in the warlock's case, both. However, that means prioritizing one class to the exclusion of the other two. For example, if you want to focus on weapon attacks, I'd recommend either Paladin(6)/Warlock(2) or Paladin(5)/Sorcerer(3). The former gets you Extra Attack plus Aura of Protection and your first Eldritch Invocations, the latter gets you Extra Attack and Metamagic. The other option is to build around Eldritch Blast, in which case you want at lease 2 levels in Warlock and 3 in Sorcerer. This would allow you to build a character with a more balanced level distribution, but going up to 6 levels in Sorcerer would probably be preferable.

TLDR

Focus more on weapons: Paladin(6)/Warlock(2)
Focus more on magic: Warlock(2)/Sorcerer(6)
More even class distribution: Paladin(2)/Warlock(3)/Sorcerer(3)

I like the idea a lot, but unless you get some leeway from the DM, or are starting at higher levels, I think 3 classes would be too hard to pull off. It will either take too long to even get to the 3rd class/personality, or you start Paladin 1/Sorcerer 1/Warlock 1 and then be too far behind the curve for most if not all of your career.


The best way I could see this working is for the DM to allow you to level up all 3 classes at once, but not allowing you to mix the features. I know that sounds odd but I've seen it work with 2 classes. You just need some kind of trigger that makes you roll a d6 to determine which personality you're going to be and then you're that personality until it's triggered again.

I’m curious how the multiclassing reflects split personalities — are you only going to be using a given set of abilities/proficiencies when a given “brother” is the alter in charge? Because that seems (in a level-based system like D&D) to either kneecap the character (and thus the party) by having the character seeming change level at times or else not play the concept to the fullest by not segregating knowledge and abilities to the degree that one should.

What I’d instead recommend as an idea, to take advantage of how 5e works, is working with your DM to prepare three versions of the character: each with the same class, but with a different subclass matching the personality of the “brother” (perhaps swapping a point or two of tertiary ability scores as well); different circumstances could cause each to emerge and that would change how you play dramatically (imagine a character who might a Devotion Paladin, Vengeance Paladin, or Conquest Paladin depending on the day, or else a Warlock or three different Patrons, each with a different one of the Pacts). There could be certain things like primary spell lists that are kept constant (because they’re in the logical mind, not the personality) regardless of alter, but you could explore not only a complex character but the full depth of one of the classes this way.

Or not. It’s just a thought (and perhaps not a optimized one, since it works best single-classed).

Actually my original idea was to change personality each time I leveled and maintain 3 separate characters:
Rowan: Pal/Sor
Reave: Sor/War
Rook: Pal/War

The bookkeeping seemed daunting so I was trying out other ideas. The DM was cool with it, though.