Quote Originally Posted by Derpaligtr View Post
The fighting style adds a little bit of damage,
The bonus action attack from PAM already adds your STR mod to damage. Dual-wielding requires a fighting style to do this.

that damage pales in comparison with what you get from sneak attack or smite.

So no, you don't need the fighting style.
You don't need the fighting style with a rogue, because you're much more concerned about landing that Sneak Attack. Sneak Attack is infinite, Smite is not, so every bit of sustainable damage for a paladin helps.

Even the feat you don't need with Rogue or Paladin. It's helpful with the Paladin for getting +1 AC (they aren't as mobile) amd slightly more damage on the weapon die...

However you can do just fine without the fear and the fighting style can be ignored completely.
The feat does more than +1 AC. It also lets you use any one-handed melee weapon for dual-wielding, and lets you draw/sheathe two weapons at once. You can argue how important this is, but it's a nice quality-of-life feature for dual wielders.

Sure, you don't need either of them. And if you wanted a bonus action attack on a paladin without any feats, dual-wielding would be pretty much the only way to do so. But if you were considering getting the Dual Wielder feat on a paladin, you might as well get PAM instead.

Again, a majority of your damage comes from extra damage like sneak attack or smite. Two weapon fighting is about giving you more oportunities to get that extra damage off.
And again, if you're going featless, dual-wielding is the only way to go if you want that bonus action attack. The point I'm trying to make is that if you were going to get the Dual-Wielder feat (and possibly the fighting style), PAM does everything it does better, and gives you a choice of great weapon fighting or sword-n-board.

I suppose I'll add an addendum to my previous post. The third reason you would opt for dual-wielding over PAM is, "I can't spare a feat."

But the point I was originally making was that even a build that was optimized for two-weapon fighting would be inferior to one that was optimized for PAM, unless it met one of the previously mention criteria (DEX build or no polearm/shield prof.).