Quote Originally Posted by Nifft View Post
How about Dragon Shaman, Warlock, Psychic Rogue, and Hexblade?
In the list I used, they placed Warlock/Psychic Rogue in Tier 3 and Dragon Shaman/Hexblade in Tier 5. Further down the thread they have a brief summary for why every class is where it is. Apparently this revised list was put together by committee.

Quote Originally Posted by Palanan View Post
I like how you’re approaching the setting overall, and I wouldn’t say that what you’ve described places any limitations on gods per se.

You mention city-states, which fits the Conan theme very well, and could serve as a parallel to ancient Mesopotamia, where dozens of city-states fought endlessly over borders and trade. Each of those city-states was organized around a temple (or two temples in some cases), which was not only the center of religious activity, but also the economic and administrative hub for the city and its surrounding territory.

If you incorporate this approach into your setting, then each city-state has its own patron god, with a dedicated priesthood in the city’s central temple. Paladins would thus be the divine agents of each city’s patron god, pursuing the god’s interests—which are by definition the city’s interests—both within the city walls, across the city’s territory and wherever else the city’s interests require intervention.
That's a rather elegant solution. I like the idea of the priest hierarchy being more political than crusading; instead they use paladins to enforce their edicts. I think I'd have to open up the Freedom/Tyranny/Slaughter variants to cover all the different alignments of the city-state patrons. That would give you one class which can only be LG/CG/LE/CE and another (Incarnate) which can only be NG/LN/CN/NE, which feels like there could be some friction there to be mined for rival factions.