DM's gift giving me a headache!

[wulfire]

Hive mind, I have a problem that I’m hoping you can solve. I'm willing to go along with what the majority says.

I have been playing in a homebrew campaign for about 11 months now, and have a Half Orc, lvl3 Barb / lvl2 Druid, nicely coming along.

Spoiler: Background

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This character was the hook for the party. He and his father (a Wood Elf Monk) was chasing after an unknown monster that had attacked the family home which turned out to be a Vampire lord. The father was turned, but the son (PC) was severely hurt which I used as the basis of my build – Moon Druid for the new ability to wild shape, Barbarian for the rage induced by the events with a homebrew addition of uncontrollable rage when damage taken and Half Orc as he now looked like a monster after being bitten but not turned. The party are now ridding the world of Vampires.

Recently, I went on a sole side quest as a reward of a lot of inspiration die given to me and some nice role-playing on my part, as a result I was awarded a Paladin lvl in order to be the Defender of Nature against all things dark. The daughter of Gaia healed me from the Vampire bite - which was the basis of my build. I have asked my GM whether that means I’m completely healed from the bite and he said yes. That says to me that I am no longer able to call upon the ‘gifts’ left by the bite and I should not be able to use the first 5 lvls and change my race. The GM says it’s up to me and let him know before the next session on what I want to do.
So…
Question: Should I now be a lvl 6 paladin? Or would you give me licence to rebuild the PC to include a lvl in paladin?
Or
Should I continue as I am and claim that the bite is not getting worse and therefore not take an more lvls in barb or druid, but multiclass into a third class?

[HidesHisEyes]

I don’t know because the whole situation is so unorthodox. When I play D&D I try to shape my character to fit the game’s frameworks, rather than the other way around. You were already playing two classes that weren’t designed to in any way represent the concept you had in mind. So… I’d say it doesn’t matter as long as the game is playable and everyone is fine with it? What do you want to do? Whatever that is, tell the GM and if they’re ok with telling a player they have to rebuild their character they should hopefully be ok with whatever you say.

[PallyBass]

IMO Since your class and race choice is the flavor used to reflect the bites effect on you then I think having the bites effects fully healed would mean you are restored to your original race form (wood elf?) and the infectious and feral anger has been removed too, replaced with rightous fury (swap all class levels with paladin levels+ the new level)

If you really like what you are playing though talk with your DM about how your character can change Roleplay wise to reflect the bite being cured while retaining his powers. Perhaps the rage and shape shifting abilities are controlled now, tapping into an inner reserve of strength rather than going wild. Becoming a Zealot Barbarian also would be an excellent middle ground for a raging holy warrior. druid is the poster child class for protecting nature so it can stay as is.

A note for paladins and oaths, you don't actually get any particular Oath powers until level 3 when you select your Oath subclass. So you won't feel particularly nature themed until then.

[Mastikator]

Your DM really shouldn't be choosing your class for you. First priority is to decide if you want to play a druid/barb or a paladin. Because you don't need vampires to be either a druid or a barbarian. You can always say you learned to control the rage/wildshape stuff and now you can expand upon them freely. The DM should give you an item or a feat as a reward, not a level in a class.

[Keravath]

First thing - it is entirely up to you and what you want to play.

Up until now, you have combined barbarian and druid to represent some of the effects of being affected by vampirism. Your character focused on rage and shapechanging with a bit of spell casting. Which is fine.

You then had an experience that cured the residual vampirism and left you on a righteous path to protect nature (and presumably destroy undead).

However, none of this changes who your character IS. They have all their memories, they know the feeling of being affected by vampirism and learned skills whose choices where affected by that outlook, it is up to YOU to figure out how the character responds and combines their skills going forward.

I will assume that you have the stats to make decent characters for barb, druid and paladin - that combination is particularly MAD needing high stats in pretty much everything except INT. If you don't have the stats already then I am assuming that the DM will let you rebuild the character including stats.

There are many options -
1) They remember the rage and power that derived from it. They remember the shape shifting abilities. They remember the new experiences and focus on them to protect nature. However, you don't need a level of paladin to role play this fundamental shift in viewpoint. A barb/druid can already be depicted as a defender of nature. So the character could develop as any combination of barb or druid. Whichever it is though, you'd be better off with either barb 1 or 2 / druid X perhaps for a moon druid or barb X/druid 2 to have a barbarian with shapeshifting and some utility spells in their pocket.

2) You could go with barb/druid/paladin - this is really hard stat wise but if your numbers are high enough you can probably make it work. This option though really doesn't get at the transformative experience for your character since just adding a level of paladin to your character doesn't really make them any more of a defender of nature.

3) One level of paladin really doesn't do that much for you. You could role play the transformation of your internal rage and martial skills into something that reinforces your will and personality (high charisma) that you use to motivate your character going forward.

You could go paladin 2/moon druid X - this lets your moon druid smite creatures when wildshaped and you have more spell slots for this as a full caster. It also retains the wildshaping aspects of the character will transferring the martial skills.

You could also just choose to go into either order of ancients paladin (to focus on protecting nature) or a vengeance paladin (to focus taking revenge on the evil undead who cursed you with developing vampirism).

The paladin options leverage the martial skills you have learned and replaces the internal rage with a focused will to fight - really a transformation from barbarian to paladin. Keep in mind that the paladin's power comes from their Oath and their focus on their own will/power of personality - in 5e, a paladin does not need to have a religious focus at all. If you decide to go with all paladin levels (which I think is completely justified given the transformative experience you described) then you can roll play it as the character losing the wildshaping abilities that were provided by the vampirism curse and the transformation of the rage into focused willpower while retaining your experience casting spells which carries over into the paladin spellcasting.

One advantage of going with pure paladin is at level 6 they get their aura of protection which is one of the really sought after features and is useful for the entire group. You also gain extra attack which your barb 3/druid 2 lacked.

However, a barb/druid needs str/ dex 14 (for medium armor) / con and wisdom while a paladin needs str/cha/con - I'd say at least 16 in str and cha - so if your character doesn't have that already then you'll need to ask your DM if you can adjust your stats for a pure paladin.

In any case, all of these can easily be justified from a roleplaying perspective given the experience you described and if your DM is ok and supportive then it is all up to you to decide how you want to play the character in the future.

[Khrysaes]

I am going to toss blood hunter into the mix to consider, Simply because it feels like the sort of thing that one would be. I.e. recovered from transformation, new powers to slay those the transformation came from. Ehikr not a Matt Mercer subclass, i am sure you could find a homebrew vampire slaying bloodhunter subclass your dm would allow or modify to allow.

Otherwise if you are cured from all effects, physical, mental, and magical, you would logically be a different race as half orc represented the physical changes. then if you are no longer uncontrollably angry, maybe just reflavor your barbarian. Rage can be fluffed as a cold focused rage. If the transforming/wild shaping was part of the effects that were lost, maybe change class or subclass?