Triton Paladin build suggestions

[Mwhawk2]

Hi all,

Working on a Triton build for an upcoming campaign and I’m wondering if anyone has any experience with Triton Paladins to share. I’m a bit torn on which Oath but leaning toward Oath of the Ancients. My biggest obstacle is determining what deity he might follow. I’d like for him to have a good alignment but have struggled a bit identifying good sea deities. Umberlee or Talos are both interesting but I’m not sure how to build out a backstory for a good or neutral Paladin (particularly an Ancients Pally) who might follow either of them. Any input or suggestion would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[rickayelm]

Deep Sashelas, while he is primarily worshipped by the sea elves he has some followers amongst all the non evil underwater races.

There is also Velkur, the chaotic good god of sailors.

[Lord Haart]

Does it have to be a sea deity? You live on land and under the sky, but you don't necessarily worship a land deity or a sky deity (or even a nature deity, despite that being a backdrop for any place we can live in).

For us sky-scrapers, "sea deities" are associated with specific spheres of influence: stuff sailors, shore-dwellers and maniacal-tsunami-casters are concerned with. Our sea priests don't devote themselves to the ocean, but to the ocean's influence on the land.

For a sea-dweller, a "sea deity" taken for a face value would be a Deity Of Their Whole World And Then Some. But are they? I mean, most D&D settings follow the "ocean is bigger than the land by surface, let alone by habitable volume" rule (Athas, shh). So if such a sea deity gathered most of the worship for all that populace, they'd be THE most powerful/worshipped (or warshipped?) god in the whole pantheon.

Most D&D "sea gods" i know don't look like they are doing that well.

After all, what's the main incentive to worship Umberlee? She can drown you or send a storm after you. Well, a storm is only dangerous if you're near the surface, and as for drowning…


So i'd suppose our "sea gods" are more akin to "surface-of-the-sea" gods for aquatic races, mostly relevant to those who live or travel near the surface or to the shore (and to these poor unfortunate souls that are still forced to breath air once in a while). Meanwhile, most worship goes to the gods whose specific spheres of influence are more relevant to the aquatic cultures' daily lives… whether familiar or alien to us. These are probably the cultures where worship of Mystra, Tempus and Asmodeus (because stuff like magic and war matters anywhere, and you can hardly convince me Asmodeus would pass such a huge sector of market) is intermixed with big and developed organized worship of people who we usually perceive strictly as "crazy cult" material, such as Dagon, Ben-Hadar, Olhydra; along with worship of gods we landlubbers have never even heard of (do you often hear of Persana? She's supposed to be the head god of Faerun's tritons in particular.)

So feel free to invent your own stuff if you want to. Or rip-off from Lovecraft and portrait your particular aquatic race as alien enough that scary and maddening apocalyptic half-deities half-primordial monsters are, to them, a Good thing to worship. Or reinterpret common and well-known deities from a less surface-centric point of view. Or go wild in any other way. If there's a place for something, there's a place for it in the ocean.

[Nidgit]

Obligatory post pointing out that 5e Paladins, except for maybe Devotion Paladins, don't have any requirement to follow some specific god. Ancients Paladins in particular work well as followers of obscure nebulous nature gods/spirits, but even they can be devoted to the general ideals of "be good to each other" rather than any kind of religion.

So maybe you don't pick one right now and just see if you come across some god that works well for your character once they've been more established through play?

[theantesse]

Ancients Paladin is the one that bucks a lot of the traditional deity stuff. Could be that they follow a great fey lord. Or an elemental lord. Or some great force of nature. Or nature itself. They're also the "druid" version of a paladin so look at who a druid might worship.

But if you want my answer, Tritons hail from the Plane of Water, right? Might be cool to worship a godlike giant fish or whale with immense power in the Plane of Water. Like constantly swimming, size of an island, city on his back, giant fish whale. Could also be fun to roleplay how you follow [Cool Magic Whale] but absolutely NO ONE knows what the heck you're talking about because they only know the gods of the Great Wheel that have temples in the Prime Material Plane.