Brobdingnagian at [unixtime wrote:1172565558[/unixtime]]Wow. I was so busy posting up my own Paladin rebuild that I missed this one. It would have made for some nice reference material.
A good go, I think, but there's a couple fundamental problems. Firstly, though those feats you've presented for the Paladin are very good as far as feats go currently, they still have the same basis as current feats, which means, unfortunately, that they fail. Have you read Races of War? The feats presented there are feats that are worth getting because they have a different basis from normal feats. Don't get me wrong here, I'm all in favour of what are essentially class-specific feats, so I'm not saying you should dump them, but simply redesign them based on the Races of War combat feats.
Alright, I have read Races of War, but one of my goals with this was to make it something that could be easily adaptable to any game... and as a result, would use the normal feat system in D&D.
Secondly, spellcasting. Paladin spellcasting was all but useless to start with, and after scrolling through your spell list here, it seems you haven't done a whole lot to improve it. For my own Paladin, I made all spellcasting based off of Charisma, because one of the biggest problems with the class is MAD. I also gave my Paladin higher level spells. Judging from the way you have special abilities laid out, your Paladin seems to have the right levels of spells, but the spells themselves are still too weak to be of any significant use by the time he gets them.
They get much more useful spells at each level than they did before. It's still not *great*, but they're getting a higher caster level, and higher level spells (such as Heal, True Seeing, Freedom of Movement, or Divine Might. These spells are pretty useful, even if it's not as good as what a full caster would get). I'm pretty happy with where the casting is at now, except for a few exceptions.
Anyways, considering they got higher level spells, a better caster level, and basically a whole overhaul of their spell list, I don't quite see where you're going with "I didn't do much to help their casting." I know it's not powerful enough to make them like a Cleric, but again I never intended to make this class as powerful as the Cleric.
Finally, Lay on Hands. Let's say that by level 20, a Paladin has a CHA score of 24, for a +7 Modifier. 20 x 7 = 140. 140 hit points a day at 20th level? I guess that's not bad. I mean, I've never actually played that high before, but it looks good enough. The problem is spending a bunch of those points on other abilities. Let's say... Panacean Touch to cure disease (20), Revitalising Touch to repair, say, 4 points of ability damage (another 20... on an unrelated note, does that also affect ability drain?), Refreshing Touch because your idiot Rogue buddy tried running in a heavy-armour disguise (another 10... and why hasn't he been blown up by a trap or something? Seriously.), Break Enchantment because the Fighter was controlled by an enemy Bard (30 more... of course, that's the core Fighter, not the RoW Fighter...), and finally Energising Touch to restore two lost levels to the Wizard because of those damn Nightshades (+20 again). So now we've got 20+20+10+30+20 to total up to... 100 points. That leaves you with 40 points of healing left. Mind you, all this would normally be taken care of by the party Cleric, and since he worships Heironeous, suddenly you've lost your entire role in the party. Even if he doesn't, he's still showing you up on a dozen levels, not the least being able to beat up Team Fiend better than you without Smite Evil.
This problem has long since been fixed. Please refer to the current version, linked to in my last post. I apologize for not updating it here, but I'm too lazy to reformat for every board I posted on whenever I make an update X_X
I don't mean to be harsh. Really.
I honestly don't mind harshness. I enjoy a good critique. As long as it's not just stupid people ranting >_>
The problem here is not that you want a balanced, useful Paladin. The problem is that despite those cool abilities and the rebalancing of the smite evil ability, you're still using the same Paladin in the PHB, which is really just the Cleric Lite, and therefore the suck.
Uhhhm, you also have spellcasting that is a good deal more powerful (You're getting stuff like Heal now) and several times the healing capability, along with a few handy auras.
It's still not as powerful as the Cleric, but then again, I didn't design it to be. I was aiming more for the Crusader (and indeed, that's what it was playtested against). The playtesting we had on the Wizards Boards (done by several different people) had it come out fairly even with the Crusader at various levels.