Azrael Lukja's page

Hi guys, I'm currently playing a Paladin (Oath of Vengeance) in the Council of Thieves AP. We're on our way to level 3 and so far the adventure's been great. Now, I'm a big fan of the Pathfinder Paladin but I found something that I need to work around. That is, Feats.
An awful lot of combat feats have INT 13 or DEX 13 as a prerequisite, which I don't meet (and have no chance of meeting in the foreseeable future, as I'm going to raise my STR and CHA).
Can you recommend some good feats that are actually affordable for a Paladin?
I'm playing mine as a classic sword'n'board Paladin of Iomedae, he's more focused on defending others than dealing damage. My DM lets me use Lay On Hands with the shield hand, just so you know before someone points that out. But this isn't important, as we can make this thread into a general "Good Paladin Feats" instead of focusing it on my character.

Me, I found that Antagonize seems to be really good (I'm using it with Diplomacy and not Intimidate, so it's good but not completely broken).
Also, Shield Focus seems to give a nice little bonus.
I don't know how much shield bashing is worth it.

I have some questions on this matter, but before I begin: I'm talking about "casting spells as swift actions" and this can be obtained in different ways. Quicken Spell is certainly the most straightforward but there's also Spell Critical (Eldritch Knight 10°) and probably there's more. If you think that these ways of casting a spell as a swift actions are somehow different and should be treated accordingly, please point it out, because I don't think it's very clear. Now, the questions:
1 - Is having a free hand required when casting spells as a swift action? What I think: RAW it looks like it's required, but I seem to remember that in 3.5 this was not the case. Am I wrong?
2 - Does the arcane spell failure % for casting in armor apply when casting a swift spell? What I think: yes, it does. But if no somatic componente are required (see 1), why should this be?
Thank you very much.