The other variation of this build would be the common 10 swords bard / 2 paladin. You would lose a feat and vow of enmity advantage, but gain magical secrets and a level 6 spell slot. Both versions have their trade-offs. My version keeps things simple and utilizing regular bard CC spells to gain free criticals and keeping up advantage for all attacks. Also, for early game, you're better off going 16 dex and 16 charisma for +3 bonus to each. Only makes a difference for the first 3 levels, but glad someone pointed that out.
The thing that always has confused me is a flourish is two attacks and a dual wield is two attacks, so do they offset or is that actually four attacks as a dual wielder?
My most legendary build is still 2 levels Paladin, 6 Swords Bard, 3 sorcerer, and 1 wizard. I further enriched it by mastering Freecast for infinite spell slots and sorcery points. Also went dual wielder and used the Deva mace as my main weapon for the crazy extra radiant damage. This character was definitely my god build with crazy high AC, smites on every attack, and being able to quicken all spells. With wizard I can also learn whatever spell I want to from scrolls
The level up order is just as listed. With 2 levels Paladin get heavy armor, defense, and smite. 6 sword bard gives flourishes, extra attack, some useful spells and spell slots, and take dual wielding for the 1 feat. 3 levels in sorcerer to combine with free cast for infinite spell slots and sorcerer points, can also quicken spells to use with your bonus action. 1 wizard, learn whatever spells you want from scrolls such as haste, misty step, or fireball.
For stats, main ones are strength, charisma, and constitution. Int just depends on what wizard spells you take. I used the hill giant gauntlets and amulet of health though so I could dump those stats and boost the rest.
Bard level 1: Str:10 Dex: 17 Con: 14 Int: 8 Wis: 10 Cha: 15 Vicious Mockery Minor Illusion Dissonant Whispers Longstrider Speak with Animals Tasha's Hideous Laughter Bard 2: Feather fall/Healing Word Bard 3: Subclass: College of swords Hold Person Fighting style: Two weapon fighting Bard 4: Mage Hand Enhance ability AP: DEX,CHA Bard 5: Glyph of Warding Bard 6: Extra Attack Fear/hypnotic pattern/cloud of daggers/shatter Bard 6/Paladin 1: Subclass: Oath of vengeance Bard 6/Paladin2: Fighting style: Defence Bard 6/ Paladin 3: Vow of Enmity Bard 6/ Paladin 4 Feat: Savage attacker Bard 7/paladin 4 Cloud of Daggers Bard 8/Paladin 4 Shatter Feat: AP-DEX Gear: Helmet of Arcane Acuity Cloak of Protection Armor of Agility Helldusk Gloves Disintegrating Nightwalkers Amulet of Greater Health Strange Conduit Ring Band of the Mystic Scoundrel Sword of Lifestealing Knife of the Undermountain King The Dead Shot
I'd love to make a case for the alert feat. since initiative is determined by a d4+dex roll instead of the standard d20 check like in 5e, having a +5 initiative really does wonders. going first lets you setup a great glyph of warding or hold person/control spell of some sort with your MC. The game hands out so many ability score increasing features/items that I'd argue you don't need one of the ASIs as you go towards level 12. Going first changes the encounters across the games drastically.
I'm playing on explorer so it doesn't make much of a difference if I hit hard or like a wet noodle but I'll try it out anyway because it's a build that seems to be fun and cool to play with. Tysm for the video and making it easy to understand and follow.
if due to "hold person" criticals are guaranteed there is an other option for the offhand. the "slicing shortsword" witch inflicts bleeding when attacking with advantage (vow of enmity for the win^^). that opens up great combos with a tiger barbarian
Yeah it worked great! If there's anything I'd change it's that you should start with 16 dex and 16 charisma. That will get you the +3 bonus to charisma before your first feat.
For the TL;DR crowd: 6 Swords Bard (ASI Dex feat), 4 Vengeance Pal (Defense fighting style, Savage attacker feat), 2 Bard (ASI Dex Feat); to end up with 8 Bard, 4 Pal
I like to do 6/7 paladin (ancients) and 6/5 bard. you loose some spellslots and an ASI but this game hands out ability boost items like candy and you get paladin auras (protection and spell resist) and still get font of inspiration from bard. less damage but a lot tankier and better support for the party. I found this really helpful for higher difficulties.
Ok, so far, out of all the TH-camrs.. your list is by far the least snoozy, best explained and uptempo'd how-to vid on how to build the Bardadin.. I watched 3 others before I found your's and they all had me snoring in the first 5, and on top of that they'd be leaving critical answers out.. like, why am I doing this instead of that.. thank you. You have a new subscriber, I'll be checking daily for your BG3 content.. also, good command voicing, keeps everyone focused, luv it..!!
Like the critical setup with hold person, did something similar, but had laezel do the melee attack, while my swordsbard 10/ fighter 2 did alpha strike with bow OP flurish and then hold whatever is left on the battlefield, let the gith clean it up afterwards 🤣
Nice build. One thing I always find myself questioning with these bard builds is why go max dex or strength when smite damage scales from charisma, can anyone shed some insight into this?
It could yeah. You could always put your dex points into strength at first, you’ll just have a later initiative order and will need to rely on heavy armor. But, it works well
Eh I dunno about the stat score but I guess that's if you are not focused on smiting. since you start with Bard. I can't bring myself to do that. There are just better characters for wearing Agility Armor. I'd tested it with Wyll but the key difference is he's a Warlock. I have a friend playthrough where when I multiclass it will be a Sword Bard Paladin but for now its raw Paladin until I get to LV 8 to ensure I get Extra Attack + Divine Smite (Bard 6 Pal 2) But I am still gonna start 2 Pal because I'm not giving up HAP It may be 4 Pal and 8 Bard overall to ensure I get 3 feats with Dual Wielder being neccessary to dual wield Deva Mace. Giving up STR when your job is do melee damage is just not good to me. Two of those feats being Savage Attacker + Dual Wield you're talking about insane DPS. If you want the one ABI then yeah CHA or DEX since you can get STR for free with the Drow at Moonrise and Hag Hair for easy +3 if you score at 17 starting
If you're full dex, heavy armour isn't going to be better. And you don't need STR for melee damage lol. The only way that helps on this particular build combat wise is to resist being shoved, which isn't an issue when most or all enemies will be CC'ed anyway. Plus initiative; super important as that means at turn 1 or 2 you can CC enemies before they even get a chance to attack. And yes, with hag hair you could potentially settle on just one ASI if you want and use duel wield feat.
@@Crozyn The dual wield feat is rule-of-cool. Yes, being a dual wielding smite machine that leaps and flourishes is cool but is he wielding two longswords?
No HP ceiling, that's why it's so good lol. And yeah, you can use 2H weapons too, just swap to str and str feats or use anything else (GWM works well with advantage).
@@Crozyn Wonderful! And thank you so much for your prompt response. I think I am going to follow your build to the letter, except using 2H weapons (I will still have the same stat spread as you have; I will just use strength elixirs and gloves to cover up the lack of strength).
Criminal BG is my BG. BG isn't too important, but the best BGs are either for slight of hand or persuasion. Stealth is inherited from race and BG. You don't actually need it with this particular build.
Are there a lot of foes you can’t Hold/Sleep? Just occurs to me that you don’t need crit gear or advantage if you’re setting up all your crits that way. Just go big damage and probably 2h. Even with Acuity you could set that up with flourishes pretty easily right?
The ones you can't hold, you can sleep. The thing is, band of the mystic scoundrel is act 3. So you don't want to base a build off of that. You still want good crit because you still need to setup arcane acuity stacks before hold person/sleep. So your crit stays high even before hold person. It's really just a paladin thing. Critical divine smites are too good and a perfect slashing flourish can give you multiple divine smite criticals.
How long does this build take to come online, I find that so many TH-camrs don't tell you how long it takes for the build to actually be effective cause I'm at lvl 4 so far and its not hitting...
What would be the difference between going STR instead of DEX for DW? That’s where I was leaning towards this build… also I broke my oath early in the game and don’t want to spend $1k gold just yet to respec. Still good?
You lose initiative and armour class with medium armour if you do that, I wouldn't recommend it. You do gain carry weight and better shoving. Any reason in particular to go strength? The biggest loss with oathbreaker is no vow of enmity for advantage. If you can live without that, then no need to worry about it to respec.
@@Crozyn DEX adds so much compared to STR. Initiative, AC, Sneak, Steal, Acrobatics, ranged attack potential with dual crossbows and special arrows, dex saves vs AoE attacks. Initiative alone is huge. Having your murdermachine go first in battle is a big deal, since it can delete or CC whatever threats are on the battlefield immediately.
@@Crozyn Command is absurd. Get people to just drop their weapon and then pick it up, and there you go, the big bad is now trying to punch you to death.
I’m modeling my build after this somewhat but I think I’m using the Dex gloves so I can redistribute my dex points and ASI Charisma to 18 If I used my 3rd feat on Two Weapon fighting would you do the build any differently without the light weapon restriction? I know KUK is great for crit on 19 but for your Main Hand?
I think you mean dual wielding feat, cause you already get two-weapon fighting at swords bard level 3. Personally I wouldn't recommend it, unless you were a strength bardadin. Dual maces/morningstars would give you a cool vibe, but for dexterity your best option is stacking crit and those are light weapons.
I'm trying this build (10 Bard/2 Paladin) with the Infernal Rapier and 20 CHA so I can be SAD. Not that the extra Save DC really matters all that much with Arcane Acuity. Gave myself the gloves of dexterity for initiative. Dual wielding didn't make that much sense on a second glance because my bonus action is spoken for by the Mystic Scoundrel ring, so I have Ketheric's Shield equipped instead for more Save DC. The efficiency of this build is insane, though. I had been Warlock 2/Lore Bard 10, but I found that I wasn't doing anything except EB--it's almost like the Warlock class is built around using EB every turn instead of other spells or something--so being a Bard felt a bit wasted. Not so with the Bardadin. This insanely busted Ring basically lets you play two characters on one turn. I also don't necessarily see the point of running a ton of crit- or advantage- focused gear if you're just going to use hold person/hold monster and auto-crit everything. There isn't really a wrong way to do this, though, as I'm sure regardless of whether you go STR, DEX, or CHA you're still stomping. Probably the actual correct build takes GWM and uses a 2H weapon for max auto-crit damage since Arcane Acuity makes save DC less of a thing, but I did enjoy casting DC 29 Hold Person on Gortash and freezing him right through his Legendary Resistance. Also, most of your damage will be from Smites anyway.
Why 17/15 for your starting dex/cha if you're just gonna spend your first ASI bumping them both? You could just make those 16/16 instead, and you'd have better cha for those first 4 levels of play, and functionally identical dex. You just spend your ASI to put both points in Dex and get it to 18 at the same point you were already going to. 17/15 only makes sense if you're gonna take a feat that bumps an ability score, plus the hag's hair.
Been playing around with this build for a few hours now and it's a lot of fun but the off hand weapon doesn't see much use, as I'm mostly using CC or VOE as a bonus action. I still think 10 bard / 2 Paladin is probably better tho because the Risky Ring removes the need for VOE and there is plenty ways to mitigate disadvantage on saving throws.
Does this work as well with strength? I’d really like to do a similar build but with long swords or maces, and maybe heavy armor as well. This build looks sick but I dunno, I just like bigger weapons on a tanky Paladin-type character.
Yeah, simply swap dex and strength. Start with paladin to get heavy armour proficiency. Both options work, you lose out on initiative since you'll have lower dex though. You'll probably want to see about adding the alert feat. Edit: You'd need the dual wield feat too for the maces/longswords.
The other variation of this build would be the common 10 swords bard / 2 paladin. You would lose a feat and vow of enmity advantage, but gain magical secrets and a level 6 spell slot. Both versions have their trade-offs. My version keeps things simple and utilizing regular bard CC spells to gain free criticals and keeping up advantage for all attacks.
Also, for early game, you're better off going 16 dex and 16 charisma for +3 bonus to each. Only makes a difference for the first 3 levels, but glad someone pointed that out.
The thing that always has confused me is a flourish is two attacks and a dual wield is two attacks, so do they offset or is that actually four attacks as a dual wielder?
It's three attacks total. The flourishes use the main hand for the two attacks, then you use offhand for the bonus action attack.@@bobbyfordstudios
@@Crozyn So dual wielding gives you an extra attack like normal. Nice. Thanks for the reply
My most legendary build is still 2 levels Paladin, 6 Swords Bard, 3 sorcerer, and 1 wizard. I further enriched it by mastering Freecast for infinite spell slots and sorcery points. Also went dual wielder and used the Deva mace as my main weapon for the crazy extra radiant damage. This character was definitely my god build with crazy high AC, smites on every attack, and being able to quicken all spells. With wizard I can also learn whatever spell I want to from scrolls
make a video of your build pls :D
Swordbard 6, warlock 5, wizard 1 (three attacks and 4th level spells) or swordbard 6, sorcerer 6 (get to use bonus actions to deliver spells)
The level up order is just as listed. With 2 levels Paladin get heavy armor, defense, and smite. 6 sword bard gives flourishes, extra attack, some useful spells and spell slots, and take dual wielding for the 1 feat. 3 levels in sorcerer to combine with free cast for infinite spell slots and sorcerer points, can also quicken spells to use with your bonus action. 1 wizard, learn whatever spells you want from scrolls such as haste, misty step, or fireball.
@@dallinadams9422 What about stats? Int is relevant?
For stats, main ones are strength, charisma, and constitution. Int just depends on what wizard spells you take. I used the hill giant gauntlets and amulet of health though so I could dump those stats and boost the rest.
Bard level 1:
Str:10
Dex: 17
Con: 14
Int: 8
Wis: 10
Cha: 15
Vicious Mockery
Minor Illusion
Dissonant Whispers
Longstrider
Speak with Animals
Tasha's Hideous Laughter
Bard 2:
Feather fall/Healing Word
Bard 3:
Subclass: College of swords
Hold Person
Fighting style: Two weapon fighting
Bard 4:
Mage Hand
Enhance ability
AP: DEX,CHA
Bard 5:
Glyph of Warding
Bard 6:
Extra Attack
Fear/hypnotic pattern/cloud of daggers/shatter
Bard 6/Paladin 1:
Subclass: Oath of vengeance
Bard 6/Paladin2:
Fighting style: Defence
Bard 6/ Paladin 3:
Vow of Enmity
Bard 6/ Paladin 4
Feat: Savage attacker
Bard 7/paladin 4
Cloud of Daggers
Bard 8/Paladin 4
Shatter
Feat: AP-DEX
Gear:
Helmet of Arcane Acuity
Cloak of Protection
Armor of Agility
Helldusk Gloves
Disintegrating Nightwalkers
Amulet of Greater Health
Strange Conduit Ring
Band of the Mystic Scoundrel
Sword of Lifestealing
Knife of the Undermountain King
The Dead Shot
I'd love to make a case for the alert feat. since initiative is determined by a d4+dex roll instead of the standard d20 check like in 5e, having a +5 initiative really does wonders. going first lets you setup a great glyph of warding or hold person/control spell of some sort with your MC. The game hands out so many ability score increasing features/items that I'd argue you don't need one of the ASIs as you go towards level 12. Going first changes the encounters across the games drastically.
Im playing this build on my second run and oh boy its amazing. Thanks for your guides 🎉
How do you think this would fair on an honor run?
I'm playing on explorer so it doesn't make much of a difference if I hit hard or like a wet noodle but I'll try it out anyway because it's a build that seems to be fun and cool to play with. Tysm for the video and making it easy to understand and follow.
if due to "hold person" criticals are guaranteed there is an other option for the offhand. the "slicing shortsword" witch inflicts bleeding when attacking with advantage (vow of enmity for the win^^). that opens up great combos with a tiger barbarian
Really interesting build, thanks for the share. Both effective and fun from an RP perspective.
Yeah it worked great! If there's anything I'd change it's that you should start with 16 dex and 16 charisma. That will get you the +3 bonus to charisma before your first feat.
And then when choosing ability improvement feat at lv 4, put 2 points in Dex to get that to 18?@@Crozyn
Yeah@@Meaverickk
For the TL;DR crowd: 6 Swords Bard (ASI Dex feat), 4 Vengeance Pal (Defense fighting style, Savage attacker feat), 2 Bard (ASI Dex Feat); to end up with 8 Bard, 4 Pal
I like to do 6/7 paladin (ancients) and 6/5 bard. you loose some spellslots and an ASI but this game hands out ability boost items like candy and you get paladin auras (protection and spell resist) and still get font of inspiration from bard. less damage but a lot tankier and better support for the party. I found this really helpful for higher difficulties.
Lovely build
Thanks
Ok, so far, out of all the TH-camrs.. your list is by far the least snoozy, best explained and uptempo'd how-to vid on how to build the Bardadin.. I watched 3 others before I found your's and they all had me snoring in the first 5, and on top of that they'd be leaving critical answers out.. like, why am I doing this instead of that.. thank you.
You have a new subscriber, I'll be checking daily for your BG3 content.. also, good command voicing, keeps everyone focused, luv it..!!
Like the critical setup with hold person, did something similar, but had laezel do the melee attack, while my swordsbard 10/ fighter 2 did alpha strike with bow OP flurish and then hold whatever is left on the battlefield, let the gith clean it up afterwards 🤣
Nice build. One thing I always find myself questioning with these bard builds is why go max dex or strength when smite damage scales from charisma, can anyone shed some insight into this?
Mainly to land the hit, but you can get around that by having advantage.
Could the same basic build be done except using 2H strength weapons? I'd be relying on elixirs until I'd get the strength gloves.
It could yeah. You could always put your dex points into strength at first, you’ll just have a later initiative order and will need to rely on heavy armor. But, it works well
Eh I dunno about the stat score but I guess that's if you are not focused on smiting. since you start with Bard. I can't bring myself to do that. There are just better characters for wearing Agility Armor. I'd tested it with Wyll but the key difference is he's a Warlock. I have a friend playthrough where when I multiclass it will be a Sword Bard Paladin but for now its raw Paladin until I get to LV 8 to ensure I get Extra Attack + Divine Smite (Bard 6 Pal 2) But I am still gonna start 2 Pal because I'm not giving up HAP
It may be 4 Pal and 8 Bard overall to ensure I get 3 feats with Dual Wielder being neccessary to dual wield Deva Mace. Giving up STR when your job is do melee damage is just not good to me. Two of those feats being Savage Attacker + Dual Wield you're talking about insane DPS. If you want the one ABI then yeah CHA or DEX since you can get STR for free with the Drow at Moonrise and Hag Hair for easy +3 if you score at 17 starting
If you're full dex, heavy armour isn't going to be better. And you don't need STR for melee damage lol. The only way that helps on this particular build combat wise is to resist being shoved, which isn't an issue when most or all enemies will be CC'ed anyway. Plus initiative; super important as that means at turn 1 or 2 you can CC enemies before they even get a chance to attack. And yes, with hag hair you could potentially settle on just one ASI if you want and use duel wield feat.
@@Crozyn The dual wield feat is rule-of-cool. Yes, being a dual wielding smite machine that leaps and flourishes is cool but is he wielding two longswords?
Also, does the Glyph of Warding have the HP ceiling like the regular Sleep does? I don't use regular Sleep because the HP ceiling is so low.
No HP ceiling, that's why it's so good lol. And yeah, you can use 2H weapons too, just swap to str and str feats or use anything else (GWM works well with advantage).
@@Crozyn Wonderful! And thank you so much for your prompt response. I think I am going to follow your build to the letter, except using 2H weapons (I will still have the same stat spread as you have; I will just use strength elixirs and gloves to cover up the lack of strength).
What is the BG you selected? Also... Why stealth? You're frontline, no point in going stealthed.
Criminal BG is my BG. BG isn't too important, but the best BGs are either for slight of hand or persuasion. Stealth is inherited from race and BG. You don't actually need it with this particular build.
Are there a lot of foes you can’t Hold/Sleep? Just occurs to me that you don’t need crit gear or advantage if you’re setting up all your crits that way. Just go big damage and probably 2h.
Even with Acuity you could set that up with flourishes pretty easily right?
The ones you can't hold, you can sleep. The thing is, band of the mystic scoundrel is act 3. So you don't want to base a build off of that. You still want good crit because you still need to setup arcane acuity stacks before hold person/sleep. So your crit stays high even before hold person.
It's really just a paladin thing. Critical divine smites are too good and a perfect slashing flourish can give you multiple divine smite criticals.
How long does this build take to come online, I find that so many TH-camrs don't tell you how long it takes for the build to actually be effective cause I'm at lvl 4 so far and its not hitting...
Mostly online at level 8 since you get extra attack with 6 bard levels and divine smites with 2 paladin levels.
Does the Vow of Enmity trick still work after patch 6?
It should
Doesn't not having Banishing Smite make you sad though?!
Not really, it's an action and bonus action so the cost is high to use it.
1:19 how do you break up this page to look at all ur stats?? is it just different on console
Maybe it's different idk. I'm just on PC with no mods.
What would be the difference between going STR instead of DEX for DW? That’s where I was leaning towards this build… also I broke my oath early in the game and don’t want to spend $1k gold just yet to respec. Still good?
You lose initiative and armour class with medium armour if you do that, I wouldn't recommend it. You do gain carry weight and better shoving. Any reason in particular to go strength?
The biggest loss with oathbreaker is no vow of enmity for advantage. If you can live without that, then no need to worry about it to respec.
@@Crozyn DEX adds so much compared to STR. Initiative, AC, Sneak, Steal, Acrobatics, ranged attack potential with dual crossbows and special arrows, dex saves vs AoE attacks.
Initiative alone is huge. Having your murdermachine go first in battle is a big deal, since it can delete or CC whatever threats are on the battlefield immediately.
How do you CC non-humanoid bosses without Hold Monster? For instance, Raphael?
Glyph of warding: sleep, hypnotic pattern, or command: halt.
@@Crozyn Hmm, those things work against Raphael?
They work against non-humans so it should work against him@@alfarabi73
@@Crozyn Command is absurd. Get people to just drop their weapon and then pick it up, and there you go, the big bad is now trying to punch you to death.
You want bhaals armour from vendor. Gives vulnerability to piercing, so DOUBLES the damage from swords
I’m modeling my build after this somewhat but I think I’m using the Dex gloves so I can redistribute my dex points and ASI Charisma to 18
If I used my 3rd feat on Two Weapon fighting would you do the build any differently without the light weapon restriction? I know KUK is great for crit on 19 but for your Main Hand?
I think you mean dual wielding feat, cause you already get two-weapon fighting at swords bard level 3.
Personally I wouldn't recommend it, unless you were a strength bardadin. Dual maces/morningstars would give you a cool vibe, but for dexterity your best option is stacking crit and those are light weapons.
I'm trying this build (10 Bard/2 Paladin) with the Infernal Rapier and 20 CHA so I can be SAD. Not that the extra Save DC really matters all that much with Arcane Acuity. Gave myself the gloves of dexterity for initiative. Dual wielding didn't make that much sense on a second glance because my bonus action is spoken for by the Mystic Scoundrel ring, so I have Ketheric's Shield equipped instead for more Save DC. The efficiency of this build is insane, though. I had been Warlock 2/Lore Bard 10, but I found that I wasn't doing anything except EB--it's almost like the Warlock class is built around using EB every turn instead of other spells or something--so being a Bard felt a bit wasted. Not so with the Bardadin. This insanely busted Ring basically lets you play two characters on one turn.
I also don't necessarily see the point of running a ton of crit- or advantage- focused gear if you're just going to use hold person/hold monster and auto-crit everything. There isn't really a wrong way to do this, though, as I'm sure regardless of whether you go STR, DEX, or CHA you're still stomping. Probably the actual correct build takes GWM and uses a 2H weapon for max auto-crit damage since Arcane Acuity makes save DC less of a thing, but I did enjoy casting DC 29 Hold Person on Gortash and freezing him right through his Legendary Resistance. Also, most of your damage will be from Smites anyway.
Why 17/15 for your starting dex/cha if you're just gonna spend your first ASI bumping them both? You could just make those 16/16 instead, and you'd have better cha for those first 4 levels of play, and functionally identical dex. You just spend your ASI to put both points in Dex and get it to 18 at the same point you were already going to. 17/15 only makes sense if you're gonna take a feat that bumps an ability score, plus the hag's hair.
This is kinda genius
I'm re speccing a character now.
I'm trying to figure out how a War cleric / Paladin / Fighter might be viable.
Anything can be viable with gear really lol
Been playing around with this build for a few hours now and it's a lot of fun but the off hand weapon doesn't see much use, as I'm mostly using CC or VOE as a bonus action. I still think 10 bard / 2 Paladin is probably better tho because the Risky Ring removes the need for VOE and there is plenty ways to mitigate disadvantage on saving throws.
Does this work as well with strength? I’d really like to do a similar build but with long swords or maces, and maybe heavy armor as well. This build looks sick but I dunno, I just like bigger weapons on a tanky Paladin-type character.
Yeah, simply swap dex and strength. Start with paladin to get heavy armour proficiency. Both options work, you lose out on initiative since you'll have lower dex though. You'll probably want to see about adding the alert feat.
Edit: You'd need the dual wield feat too for the maces/longswords.