Is a College of Valor bard(Lv5)+ Oath of Ancients paladin(Lv15) the best Tank/Support option?

Question

I am playing my first game and I have a level 2 Variant human Paladin, my current stats look like this:

• Str:13 (+1)
• Dex:10 (+0)
• Con:11 (+0)
• Int:6 (-2)
• Wis:10 (+0)
• Cha:12 (+1)

Feat: Lucky

I am aiming for this character to multiclass into bard at level 15 or maybe earlier, then having 5 levels going into it, then taking the College of Valor. I also have a general idea as to endgame stats

• Str:18 (+4)
• Dex:10 (+0)
• Con:11 (+0)
• Int:6 (-2)
• Wis:10 (+0)
• Cha:17 (+4)

are there any other things I should add to the mix?

My end goal: to become an incredibly unkillable jack of all trades, able to fit into any role while still being able to act as a tank

Clarification and Context

The stats I gained were rolled and did not see anything wrong with them as this was my first time playing. This campaign was (and is still currently going) very roleplay heavy, so combat hasn't really been of importance so far. It took about three hour-hour and half sessions to get to it. Planning for the next session can prove useless between sessions, as he will turn everything topside if he wants. We all started at level one, and the summary on the campaign was just to inspect the going's on of a kingdom's high court. Then the goal became for us to become god-slayers while three of our party members had primal chaos gods for sugar daddy's, two homebrew, one Cthulhu in a party of six. After all this, I realized that becoming a tank who could survive any random crap flung at him while protecting the party as well would be something desperately needed, as we are currently in Arcadia due to two of our members being part of a cosmic chicken fight, and we have no dedicated healer. The best our team has is my character and another paladin who seems to be geared heavily towards offense.
The party comp otherwise is two rouges, a sorcerer and a warlock. I might try to talk the GM into letting my character train with the Einherjar as to raise stats.

TLDR; GM can flip the game on its head whenever he feels like, party is overall squishy, and I want a character who could adapt to various conditions and act as a Tank/Support so that no one would die.

The answer being sought: should I multiclass my OotA paladin at level 15 into bard, then go into College of Valor to improve survivability and flexibility of my character to fill any gaps needed by my party, or, should I try a different mix to provide better support for my party while still being able to play how I want.

Answer 1

You've written:

This campaign was (and is still currently going) very roleplay heavy, so combat hasn't really been of importance so far.

so it seems surprising that you're trying to optimize your combat ability. Why optimize something that you're not using?

You might be imagining that the evil monster at the end of the campaign has some sort of exact predetermined stats, and if your group isn't strong enough to fight the monster, the DM will shrug and tell you that your whole group is dead. This is probably false. What's more likely is that, the day before you get into the final battle, the DM will make up some numbers for the final boss, based on whatever the DM thinks will produce a satisfying difficulty that your group can definitely still win.

Also, most games don't reach fifteenth level. That's a lot of sessions in the future, and it's much more likely that your group will fall apart due to scheduling issues (or due to somebody getting tired of it).

My advice is that you should optimize your character to have abilities that will be fun right now, in the setting that you're currently playing. That might mean having good social skills (Persuasion and Deception), or it might mean having the sort of magic that works outside of combat. Multiclassing into bard would help with either of those things.

(Multiclassing to warlock is also a popular choice for paladins since it gives renewable spell slots for smiting. It might work well for you here.)

---

With that in mind, let me answer your question formally:

should I multiclass my OotA paladin at level 15 into bard, then go into College of Valor to improve survivability and flexibility of my character to fill any gaps needed by my party, or, should I try a different mix to provide better support for my party while still being able to play how I want?

If the paladin class is making you happy in the current roleplaying-heavy setting, you should stay with paladin. If you feel the need for something else, such as better social skills or more magic options, you should multiclass to get that as soon as you can.

You're locked into playing a paladin until fourth level, because your CHA is too low to be allowed to multiclass. The soonest you can multiclass is fifth level, so that's when you should do it.

Normally multiclassing at fifth level would be crazy, since that's when a paladin gets Extra Attack, and that's a large damage boost. But since you're not in combat anyway, fifth level isn't giving you anything useful and you should feel free to start on your bard progression at that time.

---

You've asked about improving your character's survivability. As a paladin, your survivability comes from wearing heavy armor and equipping a shield, and not so much from gaining levels in the paladin class. You might consider getting your STR to 15, because otherwise the good armors will give you a move speed penalty. But a move speed penalty is not the worst thing.

To improve your ability to keep other characters alive, you probably want the Sentinel feat, which makes it hard for monsters to ignore you and attack your allies. Unfortunately to get a feat you have to forego a stat increase, which you badly need.

You probably also want the healing word spell, which lets you quickly get a downed ally back into the fight. You can get this by multiclassing to bard.