I searched far and wide to find the best race for a Paladin and discovered myself that; Dragonborn, Half-Elves and Variant Humans make the best race for a Paladin in my point of view. Dragonborn because of the Ability Score factors. Half-Elves again for the same reason and finally Variant Humans again for the same reason and also the feat you get, unfortunately, Feats are useless without a subscription or unlocking it in the marketplace. But anyways I wanted to know what the majority of people thought so I created this thread so that I could gather what most people thought the best race was for a Paladin.

I think Dragonborn is the best Race for a Paladin. 

I'm actually working on a guide which includes this very topic, but I'll just focus on some things about picking your race. The first thing to ask is what type of paladin you actually want to be, and I think there are roughly four types and some mix with each other. 

1. Strength based paladins, these are your polearm builds, the heavy armor bros, the whap things with a greatsword the size of your mother people. In this case, you having one of the better strength races is the priority. Variant Humans, Centaurs, Goliaths, Bugbears, Half-Orcs, and Minotaurs.

2. Dex based paladins, or Dexadins. These are almost always using a rapier and shield + a bow for ranged, and you have a LOT of options for this build including many of the strongest ones. A few of the various Elf subraces with charisma are quite strong like the Mark of Shadow, Mark of hospitality Halfling, Mark of Passage Human, Feral Tieflings, Svirfneblin,  Aarakocra, Kenku, Tabaxi, Goblins, and Kobolds.

3. Charisma focused paladins, this can somewhat blend in with the other two since a lot of just passive paladin features work off of it, but you can also max it and multiclass with hexblade warlock, a blaster focused warlock, bard, or sorcerer. If you want to be pure you can take the divine warrior fighting style (UA) and get access to cantrips which also scale with your charisma. This is about races that are +2 to your charisma, like Half-Elves, most of the Tiefling subraces, Aasimar, Yuanti Pureblood (one of the best races), Changeling, or even Tortles if you really don't want to bother raising your dexterity or strength.

4. The final category is more niche races that really depend on your archtype. Conquest paladin will enjoy any race that can get an extra fear effect such as Aasimar or Dragonborn (they have a feat for it). Grappling builds might enjoy something like the Simic Hybrid, Centaurs, or any of the flying races or ones that can give you expertise or bonuses to athletics in some way. You could also build maximum tank with enough health to make a barbarian or moon druid blush and make liberal use of all those spells and features that let you take damage for your friends.

TLDR, Figure out what sort of paladin your actually wanting to play and what oath it is, because there is a diverse enough amount of playstyles of paladin that you can really mix and match them.

Dragonborns make great paladins with bonuses to STR and CHA.

Half-Elves are interesting as well as you can go traditional paladin route and get a bonus to CHA, STR, and CON. If you want to focus on one stat you can take one to three levels of hexblade depending on what kind of weapon you want to use and focus on CHA. With a three level dip in Hexblade you can use a heavy weapon with CHA and if you take Elven Accuracy you have a great build to try and fish for crits to pump smites into.

Aasimar and Tieflings get racial casting and bonuses to CHA which make them great options and they are flavorful when considering tying your paladin into a story of redemption or something. Even if its cliche if you embrace it and play well it can still make for a great RP experience.

Yuan Ti, Tabaxi, and Half-Orc make for interesting choices.

Tortle

Yuanti are actually one of the strongest racial choices, because of how well it can synergize with both the basic paladin, and especially with Oath of the Ancients. Imagine +4 or +5 to all your saves, advantage on any save for spells, and then you also automatically take half damage from all spells. It basically means you are mostly spell immune and it's a very enjoyable way to play. 

I would have to agree that It really depends on what sort of Paladin you want to play and in a way, nearly every race is viable for a Paladin and also the Oath you are going to take up.

Half-elf gets my vote, just the pure bulk of ability scores, str/dex with con and cha. Can't be too unhappy knowing your level 1 is off to a good start. And you could try to intentionally make it an oddball (no puns intended) to fit in half feats along the way

Second goes to V.Human for specialized roles like polearm master, shield master or inspiring leader paladin.

I'm also a fan of any dex paladin that gets a dex/cha bonuses, like Eladrin

I don't really like dragonborn paladins because they're hard to optimize  (but Xanathar's dragon's fear seems dang nice) and they're personally missing a racial bonus like a level 3 or level 5 ability to cast dragon's breath *the spell* per long rest.

Neither do I like Aasimars as paladins because their racial is an action (they seem better fit as a sorcerer) but I'd be happy to role play as any Aasimar paladin, Scourge types especially sound sweet.

Also a shout out to any Half-Orc Paladins that use Great Axes. They probably have the most damaging smite on a crit.

I vote for a slightly odd half-elf mechanically. But I'd play any of them. Especially the one that turns into a burning lantern that is driven to destroy all evil.

Quote from dahhahm >>

Half-elf gets my vote, just the pure bulk of ability scores, str/dex with con and cha. Can't be too unhappy knowing your level 1 is off to a good start. And you could try to intentionally make it an oddball (no puns intended) to fit in half feats along the way

Second goes to V.Human for specialized roles like polearm master, shield master or inspiring leader paladin.

I'm also a fan of any dex paladin that gets a dex/cha bonuses, like Eladrin

I don't really like dragonborn paladins because they're hard to optimize  (but Xanathar's dragon's fear seems dang nice) and they're personally missing a racial bonus like a level 3 or level 5 ability to cast dragon's breath *the spell* per long rest.

Neither do I like Aasimars as paladins because their racial is an action (they seem better fit as a sorcerer) but I'd be happy to role play as any Aasimar paladin, Scourge types especially sound sweet.

Also a shout out to any Half-Orc Paladins that use Great Axes. They probably have the most damaging smite on a crit.

 

I vote for a slightly odd half-elf mechanically. But I'd play any of them. Especially the one that turns into a burning lantern that is driven to destroy all evil.

 

The very first character I played in Dungeon's and Dragon's was a Half-Elf Paladin and he really went on to be an OP player. But then again any race is good depending on what sort of Paladin you would want to go on to be. All races have there Pros and Cons.

I like Variant Human because well, I like Polearm Vengeance Paladins and the sooner you can get Polearm Master, Great Weapon Master and Sentinel the better ;-)

Half Orc -> +2 Strength, +1 Con, Proficiency with Intimidate, extra damage die on critical hits... 

Depends how well you roll. ;)

Jokes aside, and ignoring campaign-specific context I'd say Variant Human or Half-elf, at least for point buy or standard array. The 16-16-14 you can get as a half-elf combined with Fey Ancestry is nothing to sneer at. Variant Human is always good as an all-rounder and the bonus feat is always nice. Warcaster or Resistance: CON are nice alternatives to PAM. :)

Depends heavily on more specific build concepts, particularly subclass, but in general?  More often than not?  Variant Human.  Paladin, with its split attack and casting stats, and it's high reliance on constitution - as a melee class in need of HP AND a caster class in need of concentration saves - is more demanding on your stats than most other classes in the game, not just during character creation where vuman's modular bonuses are good enough (even if not as strong as some alternatives, most notably half elf), but also during your progression.  While many paladins don't manage it, ideally you would like to max out both your weapon stat and your casting stat, which leaves precious little room for feats.  And that hurts because there are a lot of feats that a paladin would really like to have.  Damage-focused paladins really want one or both of Polearm Master and Great Weapon Fighter.  Sentinel is almost a must-have for most tanking paladins, and they'd really like Alert, too.  Support Paladins get a ton of mileage out of inspiring leader and healer.  Near about any paladin would like to pick up either warcaster (especially multiclass paladins who can pair it with Booming Blade and/or the Shield spell) or Resilient Con in order to shore up concentration saves, especially Conquest paladins who rely heavily on concentration based spells. Every character would like to take Lucky.

A 1-2 level hexblade dip can help - not so much with starting stats, you'll still need at least a 15 strength for heavy armor or a 13 strength to multiclass and a 14 dex for medium armor, but it does help with the ASIs a bit, but even then it puts even more pressure on maxing out your Charisma before doing anything else and with the combined access to Booming Blade and Shield it really does push warcaster hard for shield using builds.  two handed builds can skip it, but they need to take three levels of hexblade to get the key benefit, at which point it's not really a 'dip' and is putting a lot of pressure on the rest of your build.

Point is, there are a ton of great feats for paladins, but most paladin builds either don't have room for them or take a serious hit to important stat progressions in order to do so, and even hexadin builds that free up a couple asis have difficulty making room for feats before the latter half of their progression.

Variant Human's bonus feat is thus an *even bigger* deal to paladins than it is to most other melee characters.  For fighters a human bonus feat lets you get a feat combo in a few levels earlier, where as for paladins the human bonus feat may be the difference between taking any feats at all during the lifespan of most campaigns, and again, there are a lot of really good feats for paladins.

So yeah, in general I'd say Variant Human is the optimal race for paladin, though there are many great races that come very close, including Half Elf, all 3 Aasimar subraces, Mountain Dwarfs for strength based paladins who relegate charisma firmly to a secondary role, Eladrin for dexadins, Tritons especially in maritime games especially, Changelings for hexadins specifically, etc.  Furthermore, while standard humans and Dragonborn aren't among the most optimal races for paladin, paladin is among the most optimal classes for those races, so stuman and dragonborn paladins can be optimal from a race-first perspective.

Further, there are specific paladin builds that arguably benefit more from the specific features of other races than they can from the Vuman's bonus feat.  A crit fishing smite build would really like the triple advantage from Elven Accuracy, and between the +2 racial bonus to cha, +1 to cha from elven accuracy, and cha based melee attacks from a 1 to 2 level hexblade dip, a half elf could fit elven accuracy into the build without slowing stat progression, making half elf probably the best race for crit fishing paladins specifically, especially as the rest of their racial features are all really good for paladins already.  It's worth noting that said build would still probably take Polearm Master as their first ASI, even before elven accuracy, and thus would suffer a single ASI delay in charisma advancement that they won't catch up on until their 3rd asi, which many campaigns will never see, so a Vuman version that sacrifices elven accuracy in order to get polearm master for free at first level would still be quite competitive with the half elf version.

Or for another example, dedicated Conquest paladins - by which I mean conquest paladins who make fear-based control tanking their primary combat strategy - really want to be Fallen Aasimar if the race is available (sadly not adventurer's league) and they're playing a typical strength-based build (including heavy armor hexadins), what with the suitable stat mods and a number of perfectly aligned racial features including a rare charisma-save based frighten effect at level 3.  Conquest Dexadins should instead consider Eladrin, specifically one that remains in the winter form at all times, perhaps dedicated to the court of a winter Fey or to the service of a winter themed patron deity like the 4e version of the Raven Queen - as eladrin combine suitable dexadin stat mods with their own range of useful class features, in particular a short rest teleport, as mobility can be a problem for paladins, especially those who don't have misty step as an oath spell) with a frighten effect attached.

Again though, Vuman is a strong here as well, able to bring in Sentinel at first level, something all Conquerors would love to have in order to give them an effective tanking tool against frighten-immune enemies, but a feat that most conquerors cannot afford until late in their build, if at all, forcing them to fall back into a direct damage role in those encounters, which is something they're far less well equipped for than paladin builds dedicated to damage output specifically.

Or take dexadins in general, one of the reasons to choose dexadin is to have a reasonable stealth score - for instance if you want to play a paladin in an otherwise stealthy party and you don't want to be the one character throwing off the infiltration tactics that an entire party of stealthy characters can manage.  In that case, access to dark vision can be a bigger deal than it is in more typical parties, and while a vuman could pick up darkvision via a 1 level shadow sorcerer dip or 2 level warlock dip the combination of needing Str 13 to multiclass and Dex 14 for medium armor makes it difficult to reasonably do in points buy games.  So yeah, that's another particular sort of paladin build, albeit a relatively uncommon one, where non-vuman racial choices might be superior.

Note that warcaster is not a valid human bonus feat for paladins, as first level paladins do not meet the spellcasting requirement.  You could start as a spellcasting class and multiclass into paladin after first level, but that's problematic for armor proficiency and/or stat requirement reasons.

I should say Half-Elf, because since elven races includes more variants than human, I suggest you should take the role of a character born by a father (Human variant)and a mother (Wood elf). Hmmmm, what a nice combination there, huh ???

Then, by those racial traits ( from your parents ), try calculating what racial traits your char should get, what proficiencies to take, and what Flaws you get ( this part I suggest you should get something like i.e., low CHA due to the rejects by the elfish race, or whatever ).

Heh, if you manage getting a good profile of your char there, I guess your DMs gonna get a hard job including some parts of your familiar traits over the actual Campaign you're playing.

Fallen Aasimar is the best race, but they aren't on this list.

I'll fight ya mate, I say the all the Aasimar are geared better towards Sorc or Pally2/SorcX, since they gotta use their racial ability as a full action.

So, use the racial ability, and then a spell to get ready for combat.

As a Fallen Aasimar, a +2 Charisma, +2 Strength, Extra necrotic equal to level on one attack each round, healing, light cantrip, and necrotic and radiant resistance! Also, the aura that lets you frighten enemies! Awesomely useful for Conquest paladins, already one of the best damage dealing paladins in the game.

I'm not sure why you'd call conquerors "one of the best damage dealing paladins".  Spiritual weapon is nice, but obsoleted by PAM, which most damage focused paladins should be taking, and a lot of features are save dependent forcing you to prioritize spellcasting stat above, or at least parallel to, weapon attack stat.  Sure, you can hex dip, but that just puts even more pressure on bonus actions, further reducing the value of spiritual weapon.  Even on a hexadin, wouldn't you get more damage out of vengeance or devotion's CD's, crown's spirit guardians, or especially oathbreaker's damage aura?

Not that conquest is bad, conquest has a bunch of great features, but I'd personally put it much more in the tanking/support type role along with redemption and ancients.

Spiritual Weapon is not what I was referring to, though it is a nice ranged damage boost. It was their ability to lock down enemies by frightening them, the aura that doesn't allow them to move while frightened, which significantly increases your chances of being able to attack them, increasing your damage output. Their Channel Divinity that allows you to add 10 to an attack roll allows you to hit when you would normally miss, which increases damage output, their level 15 ability that damages enemies when attacked, which increases damage output, and their Capstone, that lets you make one more attack each turn, increasing damage, and allowing crits on 19's, which increases damage output. 

Literally all of their abilities allow them to deal more damage. How do you not call them "one of the best damage dealing paladins"?