Will the Real Holy Warrior Please Stand Up? [Class fix+1 PrC, 3.5, PEACH]

[Roc Ness]

Also, have you been able to playtest this yet? I'm going to in a couple weeks and I'd love so pro tips from someone who has played this class.

Hey Arq! If you try to convince our DM to let Lethren take levels in this class, I will back you the whole way through.
Just Sayin'

Anyhow, I don't have any pro tips for this, but I have done some sorta simulation battles with it at different levels, so I could give you some general tips.

Spoiler

Show

1) The Spell Compedium has heaps of ridiculously cool and useful paladin spells you can use with this class. Two of note are Knight's Move, which allows a teleport at a swift action, and Righteous Aura, which grants a sacred bonus to Charisma (so it stacks with pretty much anything, except Sacrifice, sadly) for hours and makes you self-destruct upon death, healing your allies and hurting your enemies. The down side is that afterwards you can only be raised with True Ressurection.

2) Turn undead on this Paladin is actually really, really useful. When being mobbed by lots of undead, fiends and the like, a swift-action turn can thin the crowd very well and make your life a bit easier. It gets even more useful at level 18 (or was it 19?) when you can turn anything evil. If you are going to use it a lot, the Turn-Undead special abilities are reccommended. You could still use it to do divine metamagic like the clerics do, except most of spells aren't as useful to you persisted.

3) Undead paladins can't use sacrifice without literally sacrificing themselves at the end of it. Undead paladins now need to make sure that whoever heals [harms] them has a good way of restoring mobility at the same time. They also will have a bit of trouble healing themselves without using a Special Ability to get negative energy spells. Construct paladins will simply have touble healing at all, as the Repair spells are not part of the Cleric or Bard spell line. Unliving and Construct Paladins are advised to take the Unliving Healing ability so as to be able to heal themselves at early levels without needing to invest in UMD items or sinking Special Abilities into negative energy spells.

4) Use Sacrifice carefully, and only when you are sure allies nearby can get to you immediately when you reach -1. Readied actions are very useful for this, you can move next to an ally with a readied Heal, collapse, and be immediately put back on your feet by said ally.

5) A paladin with a mount companion with spirited charge and a lance is very, very deadly.

6) If you have lots of Allies, get the defensive aura special abilities. These become even greater if you have gestalt levels in Marshal or Dragon Shaman, or if you are dragonblooded and have the Draconic Aura feat, as all your allies simply need to stay within 6 squares of you to reap double benefits.

7) Thanks to the endless Paladin level to Damage vs Evil, Two weapon fighting are actually a little bit viable, as you get double that Holy Strike damage. However, you will still be useless if you can't find ways to Full-Attack. Also, you still are a bit feat-starved, and might have trouble fulfilling the ability requirements of certain feats.

8) As No. 7, but with Archery. Unlike TWF, you can full-attack (and gain many, many extra attacks) easily for a lot of damage. With Archery, you could be even more feat-starved than with TWF, though, asides from having the same requirement-filling problem.

9) Note that Holy Strike applies to all damage from the paladin. Hitting a Zombie with a Cure Light Wounds will also net extra damage. Throwing Alchemist's fire will generate Holy Strike damage with all enemies hit with splash damage.

10) There are a fair few spells that gain deal ridiculous damage when channeled via Swift Crusader, however, most of them are high-level and not really viable until then. Of note are Bolt of Glory, up to 15d6 untyped no-save damage to an undead or evil outsider, and Heal and Harm (gained via special ability), both of which deal up to 150hp damage (Will save for half). In addition, of note is that you can combine this channelling ability with a full-attack to affect two or more allies (or one ally more than twice) with a single spell. A full-attack on an ally with a channelled Heal spell could heal 600-damage hit points.

11) Never forget the Justiciar ability, if you ever need to subdue a violent or sadistic Neutral being. The Subduing Strike feat allows you to deal non-lethal damage with absolute ease should you be required to subdue non-evil beings often.

That's pretty much all I can think of. This Paladin is best unmulticlassed, but if you are going to multiclass the best levels to exit Paladin are 3, 5, 7 and possibly 11. If you are going to play this Paladin in a Gestalt game, I recommend a class with lots of Charisma synergy (obviously). The Marshal is a good dip (you can get Charisma to Initiative using the Motivate Charisma aura), Sorcerer is good if you don't mind not wearing heavy armor, and from sorcerer you can take levels in the Abjurant Champion (+9 AC Shield, Swiftblade (Charisma to Initiative, huge benefits while hasted like extra actions) or Arcane Duelist (Charisma to AC in a 2-level dip) PRCs. Bard is also good if you would like the Snowflake Wardance feat and can ignore alignment restrictions. Martial Initiators are always good, as usual. Rogue and Scout are okay if you just want extra Skill Points. Rogue is better than Scout in general (plus Rogues have that variant is fighter bonus feats), but Scout fits better thematically (a Paladin shouldn't be a rogue!). Ranger is a very viable class if you want to play a TWF/Archery Paladin, thanks to bonus feats that don't require you to have X insane unpaladinish Dex, and you can combine Ranger with Scout for a Swift Hunter build. Ranger has little ability synergy, however. Favored Soul and Cleric are good, but the abilities you get are a bit redundant, they eat up action economy a bit and unlike the Sorcerer they don't really have all that many PRCs that could grant new benefits to the Paladin.

If you want good homebrew classes to multiclass/Gestalt with, I could suggest Lix Lorn's Proud Warrior and Dragoonwraith's Swordmage, off the top of my head. Both because they have good Charisma synergy.