Hey gang,
I finally get to play a character for a bit after spending years DMing and am trying to lock up a good backstory. The character is a whip fighter who is somewhat mentally a child to help deal with being held captive by mountain giants for years. My plan (and has been exectuded successfully during our first session) is to roll a perception roll every so often to see how he is interpreting the world around him.
Anyone mind giving this a quick read and tell me if it is a bit too "bleh" or generic "shattered PC"? I tried to bake in reasons why he always knows to react/attack when in combat and also left a few open trails for the DM to pick up on since there isn't anything definitive as to what happened to his parents (assumed dead), his sister or how he escaped.
Kraid remembers little of the time before the of his younger years but can recall that he came from a small village nested along the southern side of the Spine of the World where he would spend most of his days picking flowers and playing with farm animals while under the watchful eye of his older sister. Sadly, those peaceful times did not last his village was raid by mountain giants where the young were captured and the adults were more than likely killed.
Being a captive of the giants Kraid was forced to do tasks that the giants could not do due to their rather large and clumsy hands. His captives soon learned that Kraid wasn't very well suited for day to day tasks and threw him in the fighting pits and thus separated from his sister.
Unbelievably, young Kraid flourished in the pits and he was spared as long as he continued to fight. He started off by fighting small beasts and then eventually moved up to more serious fights against other humanoids. During his fights he often used a very stylized combat method that almost mimicked a dance earning him the nickname "Dancer". With each fight young Kraid's conscience became heavier and heavier causing him to create a false reality of where he is still back at his home village with his big sister playing with goats and picking poises. Over time his grip on the real world became less and less but he still managed to when fights through self perseverance.
It is unsure as to how Kraid actually escaped the captivity of the mountain giants (even to himself) or what happened to his sister but it is obvious that Kraid is still locked in the past of a pleasant reality.
Side Note: I am having issues coming up with an Ideal for the character since he is somewhat of a child
Even a child would see that what happened to them was bad, and wouldn't want it to happen to other kids. So some sort of, "protect the other children from bad stuff" should be fine.
Not a bad backstory at all. Are you going to use a shield with the wip? Or two whips?
Tangent:
My HotDQ Paladin uses a Whip as a second weapon. I first pulled it out for this -
Local lord has recently declared that affairs of honor can be settled by duel to the death. Aristocratic dandy (age 20) calls out peasant boy (age 10) for "besmirching his sister's honor" by guiding her near a house of ill repute on the seedy side of town. Dandy proposes to duel kid. Enter Paladin, who happened to hear the commotion. Pulls aside kid, tell him to announce that he takes me as his second - to fight for him. I rush the beginning of the duel because I don't want to discover some obscure way for the Dandy to get out of it. I try to use a Channel Divinity on him (would have restrained; think putting the jerk in handcuffs) but missed. He crits me with Rapier. This does not even bloody me. I hit him with the whip and he goes down in a humiliated heap.*
My Paladin is age 40. So this grown man just gave a college-ager a Whipping. Who's your daddy !?
I have also been wielding a Whip (because of the reach) when I got both a crit and max rolled damage. Alas that my rapier does about the same on an average roll.
If you like to swashbuckle, imagine your whip like Indiana Jones' and go to town. 
* - I also protected his sister's honor, because nobody talked about her any more; they were talking about him. 
Your character occasionally has nightmares. He tries to suppress what has happened to him, but somethimes it leaks out when his guard is down. He might awaken sitting bolt upright with the echo of his scream bouncing off the walls, or curled into a tiny ball weeping like a frightened child.
He knows that his escape somehow involved using the Whip to extend his reach over an obstacle, then squeezing through a small crack the giants could not fit into and did not know about (sort of like a mousehole in the wall allows access to everything inside). He had carefully obscured the structural flaw that he was supposed to be fixing.
When in town, his favorite thing to do is gather kids and play games between supper and sunset - piggyback rides, leapfrog, duck duck goose - is even more fun than being with a wench for the night.
Similar to Spock in Star Trek 0 getting mad when you insult his mother, this guy launches when you torment a child. Paladins stand in awe of his righteous anger. People who emotionally manipulate kids ... well, they need to learn from a Monk how to run fast and far; he will hunt them down and punish them.
There are no Psionics rules (yet?) but if ever there are, a trained and compassionate Telepath could help him work through what happened and what he wants to do with himself. Conversely, another sort of Telepath entirely could find the mental 'levers' to drive him completely mad. Maybe he feels the manipulation.
If you decide the character cannot locate / rescue his family, have him 'adopt' a foster-mother &c. He is dependent on them as a child would be, but also a capable protector and defender of them. Under the right ministrations (Spiderman's Aunt May) he could find happiness.