AdventuresAhoy-Paladin

Backstory:
Althea Filanes, part-time adventurer and full-time traveling merchant, is the third child and only daughter in the Filanes family, which runs a smithing business out of Aliisyos.  While Althea does know how to use the tools of the trade, growing up in the family, she more typically goes out to source and purchase materials for the business.  After all, a smithing business can't run without supplies, and her siblings were better at crafting goods than she was, leaving her to run around the city and to a lesser extent the world to find new suppliers, materials, and customers.  Of course, her inner ten-year-old was greatly enthused by this because the forge is hot, and she got to go explore the world outside of said forge.  She is still expected, however, to behave like a lady and represent the family professionally.  This is how she has come to find herself on Captain Reynold's ship, having purchased passage from one city to another.  The fact that the ship is not staffed by a bunch of sweaty, sweary sailors is a boon.

As a part-time adventurer (because being able to display that your family's goods actually work well helps boost sales), she wears her obvious scale mail armor, with the scales interweaved with a dress, such that she looks like a fancy, adventuring lady.  She typically carries around a cane for defense because she doesn't actually want to kill people, so she finds swords distasteful.  She also carries around a parasol because the sun is quite bright and she hates hats.  Finally, she also has a small shield, which stands out due to how unladylike carrying such a thing is, much to her chagrin.

Outside of her job, her hobbies include being a patron of the arts, enjoying listening to bards.  Her own attempts to learn music have not gone well.  She also writes bad fanfiction of her own life staring herself.  She has done this from a young age.  While they started as a way for her to pass the time as a child (although she finds her backstory in this decade-long story as a "half-angel, half-unicorn, half-human princess" laughable) it now more functions as a way for her to reflect on how she could have behaved better during the previous day and become a better person.  Like a constable has a notebook for keeping track of clues to solve the case, she has fanfiction to keep track of what she's done and do better in the future.  Finally, she off-and-on tries to make herself a combat parasol, a weapon that could replicate her own club-and-shield combat style as well as something that a lady could carry around and not immediately look out of place.

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The character uses a cane (club) as a weapon because, while she doesn't want to fight and certainly doesn't want to kill, she does recognize that she will be forced to defend herself.  While 5E doesn't specifically have rules for knocking people out, I like to pretend that she could actually try to stop further combat with thugs by breaking an arm with her heavy cane.

As far as magic item wishlist, I can only think of a few items I'd really like to get on the character, other than the obvious generic items that are good for everyone like a Cloak of Resistance.  The combat parasol (+1 weapons and shields are major tier, uncommon) and a mithral breastplate (minor tier, uncommon) would let her pull off the lady look without looking like a fighter.  Mithral breastplate is the strongest armor that can be worn under clothing.  Along those lines, Shiftweave (common tier, same as a healing potion) is magic clothes that can switch between five specific sets of clothes, letting her change up her look.  Finally, I'd still like a Ring of Jumping (major tier, uncommon) because leaping from ship to ship is cool.  If she did get some sort of holy weapon (like a Holy Avenger) she would hold onto it and use it only to smite really evil creatures like devils.  Her ten-year-old self would be very disappointed if she got rid of the holy weapon that was destined for the half-angel, half-unicorn, half-human princess, and both her past self and current self would be disappointed if she used it to hurt normal people.

Class-wise, I plan on taking Redemption Paladin on the character, but the character won't be there quite yet.  The build, because of how I'd like the character to go, needs a level of Hexblade (which I very much tried to find a way around as I don't like the idea of a violence-as-a-last-resort character being able to Hex someone).  It solves enough problems that I can't find a way around it.  It removes Strength from being a required stat since the club isn't a finesse weapon.  The character will still need Dex (for the armor), Con (because Redemption paladins need HP to take those blows if anyone actually gets close enough to the paladin to do so), and Cha (because Redemption paladins are a more caster-focused paladin).  Also, the character needs the Warcaster feat to perform Somatic components while using a weapon and shield, which means that the character wouldn't get 1/3rd of the benefits of the feat without taking a spellcasting class that gives access to Cantrips.  So, the character will start with 2 levels of soon-to-be Redemption Paladin and one level of Hexblade Warlock.  I've sort of given up on the idea of having a proper tank in the party because, with only one person actually fighting on the front line, the enemies pretty much can freely walk around my character to get to the backline.