I'm starting a new campaign in 2 weeks with a high elf paladin Oath of Vengeance. The setting is mainly Sword Coast/Faerûn. The nearest Elven city I could find was Lothen of the Silver Spires in the Highforest. The story I really like is that I'm chasing some Fey servants that attacked the city, and I'm chasing them. I just need some help on how I got the Paladin job, and what his background is.
First thing is to check with your DM. There are differing opinions about whether or not paladins in this edition get their powers from some higher power, or simply from their oaths. It would not be productive to re-litigate that discussion here, since this is a specific campaign and not just theory. So you should talk to the DM and see which way it’s going to work in your campaign. That can go a long way toward answering your questions. For a vengeance pally, it’s pretty easy if you are chasing some creatures that just attacked your home, probably they hurt or killed someone close to you, and you vowed revenge. Or even they didn’t hurt anyone particularly close, just the idea that they dared attack your home could be enough to set you on a path of vengeance. If your DM requires you to be religious, there are a number of backgrounds that could work: maybe acolyte or knight of the order, probably lots of others, those are just the first I can think of. If you’re not religious, the sky is the limit. You could be a guild artisan who’s shop was destroyed, a noble who’s fighting for the honor of their family, a soldier or mercenary veteran who thought they retired but after the attack, they are pulled back into the fight Really any background can work. Find one that seems like it will tell an interesting story.
Yeah, a lot of this will be campaign specific. If you have access to Xanathar's Guide to Everything, it has some good thoughts and suggestions on paladin origins and backstory elements. Google searching "Faerun knightly orders" might also provide some ideas.
If your game is set in the current period of the Forgotten Realms, I don't think Lothen is still a high elf city. I'm not super familiar with realms lore, but a wiki check seems to indicate that it fell to demons ages ago and is currently overrun by orcs. Again, though, I'm no realms lore expert, and your game might differ from that lore regardless, so check with your DM.
For a high elf in particular, they do have bitter cultural enemies, particularly orcs and drow, but they are not, as a rule, especially vengeful. There are three different main high elven cultures in the realms - sun, moon, and star elves - but none of them are they naturally prone to the kind of lawful mindset - unforgiving, unbending, and single minded nearly to the point of risking self destruction - that is commonly associated with the oath of vengeance. It's not that a high elf paladin would never swear such an oath, but rather that one that did would likely be somewhat out of place within high elf society, and that might provide motivation for your character to take up an adventuring life among the human nations, far away from your elven homelands. Perhaps your home community suffered some great wrong but opted to settle the grievance in a way that your character felt constituted a denial of justice to the victims, and your inability to live with that drove you away. Maybe you were a member of an elven knightly order tasked with defending your community and were already training as a paladin with the intent of taking a less confrontational oath - perhaps an oath of the ancients or oath of redemption - when the incident occurred, prompting you to abandon the path you were training on to seek another order, and maybe another patron deity.
One of the suggestions in Xanathar's guide for paladin backstories is to come up with a rival. Perhaps a fallen paladin - maybe a mentor or former peer who abandoned their oath and became an oath breaker. Such a fallen paladin might be responsible for the incident that caused you to leave your community, and you might be hunting them still. Your oath of vengeance might be an oath against them specifically. Alternatively, your paladin rival might not be a villain, but rather a friend or mentor who shared your original path, and who has remained true to it where you have embraced a darker more vengeful way, and who now hopes to show you the error of your ways and bring you home. Maybe a Redemption paladin with a habit of showing up just in time to save your enemies from your killing blow, letting your foes escape if only to prevent you from staining your hands with their blood.
...
Or maybe something completely different. Many high elves live in the cosmopolitan, if largely human, cultures of the realms. Perhaps you've never been part of typically high elf society, and instead grew up around humans and their short, dizzying lifestyle. Maybe you joined one of the more stern human knightly orders, finding the dedicated lifestyle of the paladin and rigid code of the oath of vengeance to be appealing points of stability in a chaotic human world that never quite aligned to the slower rhythms of your elven heart. Or maybe you've been a low ranking member of an order for decades, but you'd been unable to progress as a paladin due to your flighty elven nature being unable do dedicate yourself towards any particular oath. But one day, after having seen so many of your childhood human friends naturally age and die in front of your eyes, blooming and wilting like yearly flowers, some new young friend falls victim to a terrible crime, and the sheer injustice of someone who had so few years to live already losing what little they should have had compounded with all those other natural losses in your 100 year young elves soul to be just too much, and that's what drives you towards an oath of vengeance.
....
Regardless of where you were trained or how you got here, you just want to make sure your backstory leaves you as a young adventuring knight looking to prove yourself by slaying the guilty and avenging the innocent as you prepare to swear your paladin oath proper and fully commit yourself to that path. In 5e that happens at level 3, so levels 1 and 2 can be thought of as sort of a personal test, the paladin going out into the world to live and quest according to the oath they mean to swear as a way of proving to themselves that it's the right path for them.
Alright thanks for the advice! Will definitely try and make an Oath of Vengeance paladin who doesn't see the world black and white and just focuses on his revenge no matter what.
Alright thanks for the advice! Will definitely try and make an Oath of Vengeance paladin who doesn't see the world black and white and just focuses on his revenge no matter what.
Consider a Mercenary Veteran. Whatever caused you to swear your oath led you to join one of the mercenary groups first, hoping that you'd be able to encounter your target that way. Having failed to accomplish vengeance through that means but having developed some martial skills, you began the path that will lead you into your oath of vengeance. Outlander is always a good generic option. As has been said, you can use any background to get the story that you are looking for.
A Sage or a Hermit could have been studying about evil fey and their studies led them to the discovery that this particular fey was particularly dangerous. You could have notified the proper authorities and your sibling or best friend was sent to deal with the fey and was killed during the action.
The oath of the ancients does have the ability to pull off a quasi vengeance against the fey considering that one of their Channel Divinty options is Turn the Faithless and targets all Fey and Fiends within 30 ft. That might be a good option if you wanted to dip Ranger for 3-4 levels. A Fey Wanderer could give an interesting story that way, but most of the others could work as well. However, that does limit your Paladin progression in favor of a thematic flavor.
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I'm starting a new campaign in 2 weeks with a high elf paladin Oath of Vengeance. The setting is mainly Sword Coast/Faerûn. The nearest Elven city I could find was Lothen of the Silver Spires in the Highforest. The story I really like is that I'm chasing some Fey servants that attacked the city, and I'm chasing them. I just need some help on how I got the Paladin job, and what his background is.
Any advice?
First thing is to check with your DM. There are differing opinions about whether or not paladins in this edition get their powers from some higher power, or simply from their oaths. It would not be productive to re-litigate that discussion here, since this is a specific campaign and not just theory. So you should talk to the DM and see which way it’s going to work in your campaign.
That can go a long way toward answering your questions. For a vengeance pally, it’s pretty easy if you are chasing some creatures that just attacked your home, probably they hurt or killed someone close to you, and you vowed revenge. Or even they didn’t hurt anyone particularly close, just the idea that they dared attack your home could be enough to set you on a path of vengeance.
If your DM requires you to be religious, there are a number of backgrounds that could work: maybe acolyte or knight of the order, probably lots of others, those are just the first I can think of.
If you’re not religious, the sky is the limit. You could be a guild artisan who’s shop was destroyed, a noble who’s fighting for the honor of their family, a soldier or mercenary veteran who thought they retired but after the attack, they are pulled back into the fight Really any background can work. Find one that seems like it will tell an interesting story.
Yeah, a lot of this will be campaign specific. If you have access to Xanathar's Guide to Everything, it has some good thoughts and suggestions on paladin origins and backstory elements. Google searching "Faerun knightly orders" might also provide some ideas.
If your game is set in the current period of the Forgotten Realms, I don't think Lothen is still a high elf city. I'm not super familiar with realms lore, but a wiki check seems to indicate that it fell to demons ages ago and is currently overrun by orcs. Again, though, I'm no realms lore expert, and your game might differ from that lore regardless, so check with your DM.
For a high elf in particular, they do have bitter cultural enemies, particularly orcs and drow, but they are not, as a rule, especially vengeful. There are three different main high elven cultures in the realms - sun, moon, and star elves - but none of them are they naturally prone to the kind of lawful mindset - unforgiving, unbending, and single minded nearly to the point of risking self destruction - that is commonly associated with the oath of vengeance. It's not that a high elf paladin would never swear such an oath, but rather that one that did would likely be somewhat out of place within high elf society, and that might provide motivation for your character to take up an adventuring life among the human nations, far away from your elven homelands. Perhaps your home community suffered some great wrong but opted to settle the grievance in a way that your character felt constituted a denial of justice to the victims, and your inability to live with that drove you away. Maybe you were a member of an elven knightly order tasked with defending your community and were already training as a paladin with the intent of taking a less confrontational oath - perhaps an oath of the ancients or oath of redemption - when the incident occurred, prompting you to abandon the path you were training on to seek another order, and maybe another patron deity.
One of the suggestions in Xanathar's guide for paladin backstories is to come up with a rival. Perhaps a fallen paladin - maybe a mentor or former peer who abandoned their oath and became an oath breaker. Such a fallen paladin might be responsible for the incident that caused you to leave your community, and you might be hunting them still. Your oath of vengeance might be an oath against them specifically. Alternatively, your paladin rival might not be a villain, but rather a friend or mentor who shared your original path, and who has remained true to it where you have embraced a darker more vengeful way, and who now hopes to show you the error of your ways and bring you home. Maybe a Redemption paladin with a habit of showing up just in time to save your enemies from your killing blow, letting your foes escape if only to prevent you from staining your hands with their blood.
...
Or maybe something completely different. Many high elves live in the cosmopolitan, if largely human, cultures of the realms. Perhaps you've never been part of typically high elf society, and instead grew up around humans and their short, dizzying lifestyle. Maybe you joined one of the more stern human knightly orders, finding the dedicated lifestyle of the paladin and rigid code of the oath of vengeance to be appealing points of stability in a chaotic human world that never quite aligned to the slower rhythms of your elven heart. Or maybe you've been a low ranking member of an order for decades, but you'd been unable to progress as a paladin due to your flighty elven nature being unable do dedicate yourself towards any particular oath. But one day, after having seen so many of your childhood human friends naturally age and die in front of your eyes, blooming and wilting like yearly flowers, some new young friend falls victim to a terrible crime, and the sheer injustice of someone who had so few years to live already losing what little they should have had compounded with all those other natural losses in your 100 year young elves soul to be just too much, and that's what drives you towards an oath of vengeance.
....
Regardless of where you were trained or how you got here, you just want to make sure your backstory leaves you as a young adventuring knight looking to prove yourself by slaying the guilty and avenging the innocent as you prepare to swear your paladin oath proper and fully commit yourself to that path. In 5e that happens at level 3, so levels 1 and 2 can be thought of as sort of a personal test, the paladin going out into the world to live and quest according to the oath they mean to swear as a way of proving to themselves that it's the right path for them.
Alright thanks for the advice! Will definitely try and make an Oath of Vengeance paladin who doesn't see the world black and white and just focuses on his revenge no matter what.
Consider a Mercenary Veteran. Whatever caused you to swear your oath led you to join one of the mercenary groups first, hoping that you'd be able to encounter your target that way. Having failed to accomplish vengeance through that means but having developed some martial skills, you began the path that will lead you into your oath of vengeance. Outlander is always a good generic option. As has been said, you can use any background to get the story that you are looking for.
A Sage or a Hermit could have been studying about evil fey and their studies led them to the discovery that this particular fey was particularly dangerous. You could have notified the proper authorities and your sibling or best friend was sent to deal with the fey and was killed during the action.
The oath of the ancients does have the ability to pull off a quasi vengeance against the fey considering that one of their Channel Divinty options is Turn the Faithless and targets all Fey and Fiends within 30 ft. That might be a good option if you wanted to dip Ranger for 3-4 levels. A Fey Wanderer could give an interesting story that way, but most of the others could work as well. However, that does limit your Paladin progression in favor of a thematic flavor.