Two Variations on the Same Character

So I've had this monster-hunter character floating around in my head for a while.

I'm planning to play the character in Adventurer's League, which as a restriction that you can only do "PHB+1" characters - in other words, the race and subclass have to, at most involve one book other than the player's handbook.

The character is supposed to be a kind of witch-hunter, Van Helsing, Witcher-type character. A sort of dark man who does dark deeds that need doing. (My homebrew setting has a faction called the Nachtjagers who perform this function in the vampire-controlled region of the Empire.)

My initial thought was a Fallen Aasimar Vengeance Paladin.

Alternatively, I've had a Variant Human Monster Slayer Ranger.

I actually came up with slightly different backstories for each - the Ranger is Neutral Good, and has a wife and two kids who are being held hostage in a sort of gilded cage situation by the nobleman (who is probably in some sort of cult) whose werewolf daughter the ranger killed in self-defense.

The Paladin is Lawful Neutral, and witnessed his village and family destroyed by abyssal cultists and a massive Goristro, and whose angelic guide fell battling said demon and was their spirit was tainted in the process (hence the Paladin being a Fallen Aasimar.)

So I've now written up level-1 character sheets for both characters, and I'm trying to decide which of them I'd like to play first.

One thing that's motivating me is a discovery about the nature of Slayer's Prey, a Monster Slayer feature. I realized that it only grants bonus damage once per turn, which throws some of my thoughts about using crossbow expert to hit as many times in a turn as possible with a hand crossbow somewhat into disarray (Hunter's Mark would still give every hit 2d6 damage, so it still might work as a build.) I'm sort of leaning, then, toward the paladin.

One tricky thing is that in adventurer's league (and the way my friend who often runs AL games runs her home game) is that any heavy armor class needs to save up a ton of money to get plate armor (my poor level 5 fighter is still going around in chain mail, but thanks to the defensive fighting style and a +1 shield, he's actually at 20 AC.) And given that the paladin would very much be built around using a two-handed weapon (I usually go for Mauls, but flavor-wise a Greatsword feels better for this one) he's going to be stuck at 16 AC for a good long while.

So I think I am leaning toward the Paladin for now. I think if another friend ever gets around to running Curse of Strahd, I'll strongly consider the Ranger variant.

One thing I needed to figure out was a deity. I've decided to go with Kelemvor, who is a lawful neutral death god (he's detailed in Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, which of course came out before Xanathar's. I'm sure that he'd be listed more specifically as a Grave god now.) I imagine that this character (his name is Rackham Moore - the Ranger is Atrus Moore... though now I kind of like Atrus better for the Paladin...) was meant to serve some more clearly benevolent deity, but chose Kelemvor after his angelic guide was defeated.

Given that the paladin is very grimdark, I think I need to come up with an angle to make him fun for the other players and the DM. One way is to simply lean in hard on the absurdity of how grimdark he is. I guess I'll work it out at the table.