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Hi all, we recently got a great DM who wants to run weekly games at the flgs. After playing a demo session, I really want to get into D&D regularly. I've been a fan of the PC games (Icewind Dale, Baldurs gate, Neverwinter Nights) so I thought I had a decent head start in creating my character. But after going through the phb it seems a lot of stuff has been added/changed and I am a little confused.

That being said I wanted to play a Chaotic Good Tiefling Paladin taking the Oath of the Ancients. (Henceforth named Zeruvar)

My backstory would go something along this.

Zeruvar grew up in an isolated cabin deep in the woods with a Tiefling father and human mother. He has a sister, and they were close, being as they only had each other. Their parents were former adventurers who fell in love with each other over time, and decided to live a secluded life away from the city. (father being a ranger, while the mother was a cleric ). Their mother usually leaves for the town to gather supllies and occasionally visit the temple while their father stays near the cabin hunting for food. But the main reason he stays behind is because the local townsfolk are wary of his appearance, and he would rather not give them reason to worry. Their years of adventuring has given them an ample amount of treasure that provides a comfortable life for them, but they are simple folk living a simple lifestyle.


i'll flesh out the backstory some more when I get some more ideas, but suffice to say that tragedy strikes the family killing both parents and the sister getting lost. Havent decided on whether it was monsters, bandits, or misguided people who attacked. A priest from the local temple worries that the mother hasn't come by for her weekly temple visit so he checks out the cottage and finds the boy barely alive. No one outside the temple knows that the mom was married and had a tiefling family. The priest takes Zeruvar to the temple and cares for him, where he grows up as an acolyte. He grows up a little hot headed because he wants to find his sister and avenge his family, added to the fact that the loval villagers have he usual tiefling prejudices and id like to make it a point of his life to search for his sister. He eventually becomes a paladin of the temple and sets out to look for his sister and seek justice for his family.


So some questions Inwould like some help with:
A Is there a Chaotic Good deity that can fit my character? i know there's always Corellon, but I wanted Mielikki as my patron deity. She is not CG though, but she has had CG followers, no paladins though so Is that possible?
B I'd like to be different and go for a dual weapon fighting paladin. Think frost deathknights in WoW. I havent seen any restrictions so far in the phb, so im assuming this is doable?

If i think of anymore questions I'll ask them later, but for now those 2 are what pops up im my mind

To answer your questions:

A) Ask your GM. They'll know better than any of us how they run the cosmos, what organizations will be around and how people will take to them.

B) You can do it but your off-hand attack will probably be somewhat weak as I don't believe paladins get access to the two-weapon fighting style. You're really not losing out too much particularly if you take defensive fighting style which is weapon independent.


As a more generalized bit advice: Don't develop your character's story too much before play. Creating an involved back story can be fun but more often than not it winds up being a straightjacket or something that gets ignored. Even for vets it's hard to really understand how a character will play out at the table. Most campaigns are going to give you a lot of choices and it's hard to really know how you'll play those out ahead of time. If you're really trying to fit a really specific mold you've created things can feel stilted and inorganic.

If you create your character with just a rough personality sketch and one or two sentences that give a general origin, you have a lot more space to operate in. This is because as you play the game and get a feel for how you play that character you can develop their fine details in a way that fits your play and the tone of the game. I'm at the point where as a GM I pretty much always my characters to not develop a back story ahead of time, beyon what we need to integrate them into the immediate opening events.

It is your bonus action to make an attack with an off hand weapon, though you don't get to add your Str/Dex to the damage. There are one or two Feats that are useful for dual wielding so you will want to check with your DM if he is using Feats, as they are optional. Anyone can Dual Wield, it isn't like 3.5/PF where you have to specialize in it to be able to do it effectively.

@Chongara

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. I'll ask him the next time he runs a session. It's going to be a bunch of new players so I hope he can accomodate me.

@Ahtman

Great! I was thinking there has to be some sort of penalty for wielding two weapons (from previous rulesets) but couldn't find anything of that sort in the phb.