what's better for a paladin?

[Mystic Muse]

should I go for a strength increase or a charisma increase? (through items.)

[Rhiannon87]

Charisma. Strength is handy and shouldn't be a total dump stat, but since pretty much all of a paladin's major abilities-- save boosts, lay on hands, etc-- are based on CHA, that's the one you want to raise.

[T.G. Oskar]

As a better explanation:

Strength aids you in your melee attack and damage rolls, plus with the weight. Being the Paladin a melee character, usually Strength should be pretty high.

Charisma, on the other hand, enhances your attack bonus with your Smite Evil, the bonus to saves from Divine Grace, and the amount of healing with Lay on Hands.

Thus, that depends on how much you intend to be as a Paladin. If you're going for a dip in Paladin, Charisma is much better than Strength, depending on what is the kind of dip you want. If you want to be a full-fledged Paladin, then BOTH are important to raise. Usually, you'll want Charisma to be increased by items most of the time, since those are semi-permanent (so as long as they aren't suppressed or destroyed, they work fine), while Strength is best left for buffing spells (such as Bull's Strength and similar spells).

[ericgrau]

Strength. Charisma boosts your saves, attack bonus on smites and lay on hands healing. Strength boosts your attack bonus all the time and your damage too.

Saves: I admit this one is quite handy. Depends on what kind of monsters you fight. But the cost of boosting saves with items is lower than the cost of boosting strength. So I'd say it becomes more of a concern after you have that +5 cloak of resistance. You could pay more for a +6 cloak of charisma, but then your saves will actually be the same or lower than if you made charisma a secondary stat.

Attack bonus on smites: Yeah, like I said, strength gives just as much and it applies all the time, not just smites.

Lay on hands healing: Your typical cure spell does about 1d8 + 2 per 2 cleric levels, or 6.5 / 2 = 3.25 average per level. But heal does 10 points per level, and it's questionable whether or not pre-heal cure spells are worth the combat round. Lay on hands might give you 5-7 per level with a good cha, and lay on hands works only once. Or if you subdivide its use it becomes even less likely to be worth the round, and between combat healing could be replaced by a cheap wand of cure light wounds. So basically once per day you get to be a so-so cleric from a rather large investment in cha. Are you sure you wouldn't do more to protect your allies by reducing the incoming damage by killing something instead?

So I'd do str, cha then con if you're worried about saves. Or even str, con then cha if you aren't so much. Depends on the campaign. Either way I'd get only enough dex and wis. Probably 12-13 minimum on each, since you can boost wis later with a periapt if you really need to (or an ioun stone if you don't have the item slot).

EDIT: Oh ya, cha also gives more turn attempts. But how many turn attempts per day do you need for the few undead that are weak enough to be turned by a paladin?