3.5 Paladin alternative features

[paladinn]

So I've been spending a bit of time going/back over 3e, 3.5 and PF1. Obviously I have no life. IMO 5e is a good game, but too tightly bound (i.e. not very hackable, due to bounded accuracy). And PF2 has pretty much jumped the shark for me. I'm mainly a C&C guy these days, as it has a lot of the feel of the OSR with modern mechanics. But that said, 3x, in its 3 editions, is likely the fullest-flowering of the game.

That said, I'm obviously a huge paladin fan. I'm looking at the various class abilities for paladins in the 3, and trying to come up with something that would be powerful-but-unbroken, and work with my vision of a paladin. I see them as blessed and devoted warriors, paragons of virtue (in theory) but Not junior clerics. Spell-casting is out. I know there have been a number of renditions of spell-less paladins; I'm not sure which is the best. In addition, there are several class abilities that I can see replacing or heavily modifying:

Aura of Good (L1) seems to serve no real "practical" purpose. It's basically a flare that announces, "Hey I'm Good!" A replacement would be preferred
The different Auras, especially from PF, are interesting and seem to add a lot to the paladin's abilities. Maybe start off with one aura (say, Protection from 5e) at L1 and add to it (Courage, Resolve, Justice, etc.) every few levels?

I'd like to fold the Remove Disease and/or the Mercy abilities into the Lay on Hands ability. In 5e, curing a disease takes 5 points from the LoH pool. But the Mercies are a lot of the paladin abilities at higher levels.

If I'm not allowing spells, and removing most Mercy upgrades, I'd really like to maximize smites. PF gives 7 smites/day by L20. Smites, IMO, are now the paladins' main "thing." The NG Sentinel alternative also has a Dispel Evil ability that is reminiscent of OD&D.

Divine Health is good unless it's rolled into one of the auras. Likewise Turn Undead (I repackage as Turn Unholy, ala 5e). Mount I really don't care about, and PF's Divine Bond seems like a kludge

I also like the idea of a L20 capstone; I'm just not sure PF's Divine Champion is the one. But I'm not sold on 5e's Holy Nimbus either (besides the stupid name).

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I want to make a totally bad@$$ good guy who can really lay the smackdown without drifting into cleric domain (sorry, bad joke).

Thoughts?

[Biggus]

Aura of Good (L1) seems to serve no real "practical" purpose. It's basically a flare that announces, "Hey I'm Good!" A replacement would be preferred


I don't think this makes sense unless you're removing detect alignment abilities from the game entirely. It's not meant to serve a practical purpose to the paladin, it just means that as a devoted follower of good, you show up as such to detect spells, like good clerics do.

[Morphic tide]

I'd start with looking at the A-Game Paladin (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?457144) stack of existing 3.5 AFCs for what effects you'd be fine with and a "target" for what pushing the spells looks like to understand how pushing what you're sacrificing works, as well as the functional Bard conversion and the Divine Spirit AFC for the current state of "good non-spell Paladin value". Note that the latter starts with "triple your Lay On Hands volume at 5th level with an other-people's-actions sack summoned 30 ft. away". There is some fascinatingly ridiculous support for Paladins as-is.

On the PF1e end, the Divine Guardian, Tempered Champion, Virtuous Bravo, and Warrior of the Holy Light archetypes trade out spellcasting entirely, with Divine Guardian and Tempered Champion getting bonus feats (three and five respectively, the former a defensive list and the latter mostly weapon focus tree) while Virtuous Bravo gets Panache from PF1e Swashbuckler and Warrior of the Holy Light gets Lay On Hands bonuses. The analogous Complete Champion Holy Warrior gets four bonus feats from a list of Divine feats, Smite feats, and mounted combat feats, while the Complete Warrior spell-less Paladin gets an absolutely pathetic set of Supernatural abilities.

I'll further note that the PF1e Mercies are explicitly Lay On Hands riders, not a separate usage. They're reliant on the uses-per-day setup of the PF1e Lay On Hands and so are finicky to translate to 3.5's point-pool implementation.

If you want auras, look at the Dragon Shaman from Player's Handbook II, Divine Mind from Complete Psionic, and Marshal from Miniature's Handbook for in-system examples that tend to be a useful point, as opposed to the often-"frilly" PF1e Auras. If only because those are restricted to 10 ft. instead of being 30 ft, 10 ft. scaling to 60 ft, and 60 ft. to begin with respectively.

In my opinion, the best "springboard" to brew around for what you've described would be either PF1e Warrior of the Holy Light or Complete Champion Holy Warrior, starting the stack of trades with Lay on Hands or Turn Undead as the "engine" replacing spell slots. Note that the PF1e Paladin's Channel Positive Energy is the system's replacement for Turn Undead and is fueled directly by Lay On Hands, so this point actually does have direct interchangability on later stages of 3.PF shenanigans.

Mind, this is assuming you're looking at making it an effective stack of discrete AFCs like the A-Game Paladin with better thematic cohesion than that trainwreck rather than a direct replacement as many people have done before.

[paladinn]

I'd start with looking at the A-Game Paladin (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?457144) stack of existing 3.5 AFCs for what effects you'd be fine with and a "target" for what pushing the spells looks like to understand how pushing what you're sacrificing works, as well as the functional Bard conversion and the Divine Spirit AFC for the current state of "good non-spell Paladin value". Note that the latter starts with "triple your Lay On Hands volume at 5th level with an other-people's-actions sack summoned 30 ft. away". There is some fascinatingly ridiculous support for Paladins as-is.

On the PF1e end, the Divine Guardian, Tempered Champion, Virtuous Bravo, and Warrior of the Holy Light archetypes trade out spellcasting entirely, with Divine Guardian and Tempered Champion getting bonus feats (three and five respectively, the former a defensive list and the latter mostly weapon focus tree) while Virtuous Bravo gets Panache from PF1e Swashbuckler and Warrior of the Holy Light gets Lay On Hands bonuses. The analogous Complete Champion Holy Warrior gets four bonus feats from a list of Divine feats, Smite feats, and mounted combat feats, while the Complete Warrior spell-less Paladin gets an absolutely pathetic set of Supernatural abilities.

I'll further note that the PF1e Mercies are explicitly Lay On Hands riders, not a separate usage. They're reliant on the uses-per-day setup of the PF1e Lay On Hands and so are finicky to translate to 3.5's point-pool implementation.

If you want auras, look at the Dragon Shaman from Player's Handbook II, Divine Mind from Complete Psionic, and Marshal from Miniature's Handbook for in-system examples that tend to be a useful point, as opposed to the often-"frilly" PF1e Auras. If only because those are restricted to 10 ft. instead of being 30 ft, 10 ft. scaling to 60 ft, and 60 ft. to begin with respectively.

In my opinion, the best "springboard" to brew around for what you've described would be either PF1e Warrior of the Holy Light or Complete Champion Holy Warrior, starting the stack of trades with Lay on Hands or Turn Undead as the "engine" replacing spell slots. Note that the PF1e Paladin's Channel Positive Energy is the system's replacement for Turn Undead and is fueled directly by Lay On Hands, so this point actually does have direct interchangability on later stages of 3.PF shenanigans.

Mind, this is assuming you're looking at making it an effective stack of discrete AFCs like the A-Game Paladin with better thematic cohesion than that trainwreck rather than a direct replacement as many people have done before.

Maybe I missed something here. I'm not interested in MC with anything, definitely not with Bard.

Anyway, I think I have my default/go-to/"generic" paladin figured out. It's a step up from 3.5 but not quite what's in PF1. And with a bit of tweaking it'll work for 3.5, PF, C&C or even 5e.

Now on to the ranger.. lol.

Gratzi!

[Deepbluediver]

Aura of Good (L1) seems to serve no real "practical" purpose. It's basically a flare that announces, "Hey I'm Good!" A replacement would be preferred.
What about some kind of morale booster- something that improves saves or skillchecks?
Or Perhaps helps stave off death? (auto-stabliziation, extra rolls, etc, however your group does it) Level-1 characters are kinda squishy so look for inspiration in whatever form helps resolve the issues in the first few levels.
So as another alternative maybe a chance to regain used abilities/spellslots? Or easier mechanically, a chance to just consume them in the first place? Like a 10% chance to not use up a spell slot when casting a spell.

[Morphic tide]

Maybe I missed something here. I'm not interested in MC with anything, definitely not with Bard.
What's being referred to is how the A-Game Paladin converts a bunch of Paladin stuff into Bard stuff, the way the Virtuous Bravo archetype swaps spells for PF1e Swashbuckler Panache. It's still "the paladin class", but with Bard class features because that's how "alternative features" tend to pan out.