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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kithas" data-source="post: 7162421" data-attributes="member: 97587">When you say battle turtle I'm interpreting somewhere between a tank and a damage dealer in my terminology and that seems on track with the rest of your wants. You seem to be leaning towards tankiness over damage with choices like protection and sentinel.First thought I had was that if you want to use the tunnel fighter style you'll definitely need to check with your dm. My group is pretty lenient on unearthed arcana stuff and we don't even allow anything from the underdark ua.So to start, welcome to 5e. It's a strange place but I hope you learn to love it as I have.My posts are usually as organized as my thoughts so I'm just gonna rapid fire them at you. Your Con is too low. I'm not sure if you rolled stats, did array, or point-buy to generate them but if you can you want a higher con for sure. Did you add your ratial dragon born stat bonuses? If so you have some overall low stats but that's ok. Paladins are pretty forgiving on stats. If you have to choose between a good cha and a good con I would suggest con. In 5e a large %age(up to 55% for paladins) of your max health is based on your con, regardless of your class. For you it's the difference in having 144hp or 244hp at level 20, that's a long way off but at level 10 it's 74 vs 114 (104 if you have a +4 con). Your Cha, while important for a paladin, is not often used. Since you have no cantrips and all of your leveled spells will do most of their effect even if your enemies pass the save, the difference between a high cha paladin and a medium cha paladin is pretty minimal. But having that huge pool of hp will let you protect your allies and not get dropped super quickly. You may even want to grab the Tough feat early for the huge spike in hp it gives you. Generally the +2 in Con is better but especially early the %difference tough can give you can push it over the top.On to how to protect people. As people posted above, in 5e it's hard. They don't have many options to actually protect people baked into the system. And some of the ones they do, Protection fighting style, are pretty garbage. The style itself sounds good but it costs too much. It dictates that you have to be within 5' of them and have an open reaction and even then it only imposes disadvantage on the attack, not stopping it. As a paladin you have far better options available to you. The level 2 spell Warding Bond lets you take half of all damage that one of your party members takes. The materials can get expensive but it's usually pretty easy to talk each party member into pitching in to buy their own ring, that way you only have to buy one for yourself, then you can choose any of them that's in trouble, run over and give them half of your hp! The second option  is in the Oath of the Crown subclass. I forget the name but it's the level 7 ability that lets you use your reaction to take all of the damage from a particular hit. You get to see everything about the attack before you decide to spend your reaction on it.  It has no larger economy(like spell slots or sorcery points) and it only costs your reaction so remember to save your reaction if you think you'll need it. The main downside is that short range of 5'.On to weapon choice. Paladin is an odd class in 5e in my opinion weapon wise because you get powerful spells(Divine Favor, Crusader's Mantle) and features(Divine Smite and Improved Divine Smite) that reward you for having as many attacks as possible, which screams two weapon fighting. However that's one of the few fighting styles they don't get. Despite that it is still my recommendation for you, if you grab the defensive style from Paladin and twf from a 1 level dip in fighter you end up only losing 1 ac vs using a shield and gain a ton of damage and versatility. As far as  what to dual wield the best starting out is handaxes, 1d6 damage, decent thrown range and light, everything you could want. Later on it'd probably be good to grab the Dual Wielder feat for an extra ac(now you're even with shield users) and a one handed d8 weapon that strikes your fancy. Keep some handaxes for ranged options, paladin has precious few options for hitting further than 5' away. That begs the question of when to grab the level 1 in fighter, I would say at character level 3 or 6 depending on how bad you want extra attack and your first asi. By level 20 it would probably be good to get level 2 in fighter as action surge is one of the best features in the game but I would advise waiting until after level 11 paladin so you get improved divine smite asap. Hitting for 2d8+1d4+Str 3 times a turn is just too good to delay.General tanking advice; If the baddies are hitting you, that's great. If they aren't hitting you, punish them for it. Since aggro is completely dm personality and context based it is perfectly likely that they could just ignore you. You want to make that as bad of a decision as possible for them. Warding bond is a great way to do this because it means they can't even focus down your ally efficiently. The other really good way is just to be a threat yourself. "Sure the Wizard can't take as much damage as me but if you don't attack me I'm just gonna cut you up on your way to him."</blockquote>

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