Oath of the Deeptouched

Chosen for a Strange Fate:

Everything was going fine until the Event. Life was good, perhaps you had already started your training as a warrior of Faith and Justice when it happened, or maybe it's why you decided to strike out on the path in the first place. But whenever, or however it happened, something changed your life forever. Thing is, you don't even really know what it is. At some point, you looked around, and everything was... Wrong. People dead or missing, horrors that Should Not Be attacking, or maybe you just woke up in somewhere completely alien to where you thought you went to sleep. Whatever it was, you either got past it, or used as fuel for your new journey. Maybe you were reinvigorated by the disaster, determined to cleanse the world of any that would ever commit such an atrocity. Maybe you soldier on despite the despair it seeded in you, trying to do what good you can in a world that just doesn't seem to care about you.

But Something cares about you.

As you sleep, you have strange dreams that make no sense. Something Calls to you, but you have no idea what is calling, or what it calls you to do. Your healing may cure wounds, but the scars left behind seem to... breathe... sometimes. Your holy smite still censures the wicked as it always has, but the way it looks makes the term 'holy' seem somehow incompatible. Your view of reality seems to shift in and out of focus, and when you are in combat often it seems like you are shattered into pieces of yourself as you shift from one foe to the next, only solidifying into yourself as the fighting calms. Your attachment to the world fades. Thankfully your conviction seems to be returning, if nothing else. Maybe others look at you with strange looks, maybe they don't understand your justice. Maybe you don't either. But this is True. It is Right. The world makes no sense anyway, doing what is Right was all that could ever be expected of you. As you stride the world, you mete out justice with an even hand. Whose justice? The only kind that matters. And what that means was never really up to you anyway, was it? 

Tenets of the Deeptouched:

The tenets held by those who are chosen in this way by an entity are unique in that they never make such an oath, at least not one that they know of. Their ideals change over time as they grow less tethered to our plane of existence, from concepts of justice that we are familiar with, to an unshakable faith in the utterly alien. There are some common trends, however, in how these changes tend to manifest in the style of such a paladin’s sense of justice:

Inexorable: A Deeptoched paladin is unsure of many things a normal person holds to be certain. Certainty for one of these knights is that of their actions. Once they have decided to carry out a task, it will be finished

Unflinching: In the pursuit of a justice not well understood, many times a paladin may find themselves isolated and beset from all sides. But the Deeptouched know a far different kind of fear, and the pain they feel is detached from reality. So often they must fight for their right to exist; they will not be moved by earthly persuasion or intimidation. 

Inscrutable: The mind of an eldritch knight is beset by strange visions and dreams. They may seem to interact normally with others, especially if they have a strong connection to this world, but when asked about their goals or reasons they will often give almost nonsensical answers, incongruent with what any would expect.

Alien: Owing in large part to their tenuous grip on reality, Deeptouched Paladins are rarely well connected socially. They seem odd to many, and do not have a drive to be with people. They may end up in a party, seemingly by chance or contrivance, and one can never really know if being there was really part of their strange goals, or if they just didn’t really know how to be somewhere else.

 

Channel the Deep

When you take this oath at 3rd level, you gain the following two Channel the Deep options that use your Channel Divinity. 

Threefold Eye: As an action, you may use your Channel Divinity to open an Eye that does not Exist. Your vision inverts, and the world is shrouded in inky blackness like a deep sea, but that which should be hidden from sight becomes clear to you. For 1 minute, you are blinded, but can instead see traces of magic, and can sense the presence of invisible entities. This effect does not tell you the nature of any magic/entities detected, only of their location. This sight has a vision radius of 60ft.

This effect can be ended early as an action, or if you fall unconscious.

 

Edict of Retaliation: As a bonus action, you can use your Channel Divinity to issue a command of vengeance against any creature that attacked you since the end of your last turn. You gain advantage on attack rolls against affected creatures for 1 minute or it falls unconscious or its hit points drop to 0 

 

Spells of Deepened Knowledge

You gain knowledge of these spells at the paladin levels listed.

Deeptouched Spells

Shifting Deep

As your connection to the Far Realms deepens, your grip on reality loosens, making you surprisingly hard to pin down. The moment an enemy takes their eye off you, it seems as if you are everywhere they look, an inevitable end that will not sit and quietly wait for them.

Starting at 7th level, when you would make an opportunity attack against a hostile creature, you may instead use your reaction to move up to half your movement speed. This movement does not provoke opportunity attacks.

Twisting Fate

Beginning at 15th level, your Edict of Retaliation twists causality around your foes, allowing you to paradoxically smite enemies before you are struck. 

When an enemy under the effect of your Edict of Retaliation makes an attack on you, you may use your reaction to make a melee attack against them if they are in range. This attack is made before the enemy's attack does, and if the creature would be otherwise unable to make the attack after the result of your own, the attack they made is nullified. 

Using this feature forfeits use of your action on your next turn, and this feature cannot be used more than once on a single creature within a single combat.

Avatar of the Deep

At 20th level, as an action, you can become an Avatar of the Deep, manifesting it's incongruities wherever you are. For 1 hour, gain the following benefits:

The earth no longer holds a claim on you. You have flying speed of 60ft as you shift erratically through the air

A paradoxical aura surrounds you, making all reality within tenuous and uncertain. Enemies that enter or begin their turns within a 30ft radius of you must succeed on a  Wisdom saving throw, or be utterly lost in the realm you have brought into being.

Enemies who fail this Wisdom save have disadvantage on attack rolls against any target within the aura as long as they remain in it, be it you or an ally, who is only tethered to reality by your connection to them.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.