Class Acts: Paladins (PFRPG) PDF

This pdf of the Class Act-series is 4 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD, leaving us with two pages for 4 new paladin-oaths for oathbound paladins, so let's take a look!

-Oath of Battle: Gain battle-spells (among which s TRUE STRIKE!), replace smite veil with combat feats, mounted combat or weapon focus for his divine bond, impose a penalty on foes seeking to aid allies vs. the paladin equal to his cha-mod and at 20th level, use an almost undispellable transformation.

-Oath of Law: Gain detect chaos instead of detect evil, lawful spells and replaces his mercies with the ability to lawbind creatures. Those violating the strictures specified by the lawbound spell are immediately hit by the magic. It would be nice to know whether these lawbound spells lingering on the creatures can be dispelled via the usual means or not, though.

-Oath of Liberty: Gain movement-related spells à la longstrider and freedom of movement as well as the ability to use a mercy that duplicates the knock-spell and use knock with his lay on hands ability. They replace the divine bond options for axiomatic, flaming and flaming burst weapon qualities with ghost touch and thundering and gets his cha-mod to sunder-damage when attacking objects. His aura of mercy is changed so that allies within 10 foot may use his mercies.

-Oath of Redemption: Comes with spells like confess and atonement, deals non-lethal damage with his smites (including e.g. the damage from flaming etc. weapon properties) and gets increased spell-DCs when casting n them. His diplomacy, sense motive and Intimidate-checks vs. evil creatures are increased by 1/2 class level in exchange for divine grace and finally they may lead any but chaotic evil cohorts and followers. My favorite one of the oaths.

The pdf also provides two general feats for the Oathbound paladin:

-Oathbound Spell Focus: +2 DC to Oath-spells, stacks with other spell foci.

-Oathbound Spell Suite: You gain twice as many oath spell slots, but may not prepare the same spell twice unless you get it double from different oaths.

Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good, I didn't notice any significant glitches. Layout adheres to Abandoned Art's 2-column no-frills standard and the pdf has neither bookmarks, nor artwork, but needs neither at this length.

I really, really, really like the concept of Paladin Oaths and thus also looked forward to this pdf. And it delivered...sort of, While the oaths herein are well-crafted, interesting and feel relatively balanced (true strike smite...OUCH! The Oath of Battle warrants some playtesting...), they also are the tried old concepts, with the exemption of the redemption-oath, though that focus also has been done before. While not per se bad, this Class Act is not too creative and not on par with the brilliance that e.g. is the Peacebringer archetype. All in all a good product, though I'd love to see more far-out oaths in future 3pp-releases. My final verdict will clock in at a solid 4 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.

So this new supplement lays out new Oaths (as presented in Ultimate Magic) for the Paladin. The new Oaths are Battle, Law, Liberty, and Redemption.
Battle is an interesting Oath that essentially trades out Smite Evil for 4 bonus combat feats and a complimentary feat to your Divine Bond. You'll trade out your big Smite bonuses for a little more fighter-like versatility. While losing Smite is a pretty big blow, I can certainly see a few places where this is a worthwhile transition. For those taking the game into the upper echelons of play, this Oath also trades out your capstone ability for at will use of the Transformation spell, which should be fairly potent combined with the bonus feats and other abilities.
The Oath of Law trades out Detect Evil for Detect Chaos, and trades out the paladin's Mercies for an ability called Lawbinder. I have to be honest here, this Oath is way more likely to see use on an NPC than a character, as Lawbinder has few practical applications for your average PC.
The Oath of Liberty is one of my favorites, giving the Paladin the ability to cast Knock as an SLA, making some themey changes to his Divine Bond, and giving him a cool way to share his Mercies through his allies.
The final Oath, Redemption, is fairly cool, transforming the Paladin's Smite damage into non-lethal, giving big bonuses to social checks vs. evil creatures, trading out Divine Bond for scaling bonuses to spell DC's, and replacing Aura of Resolve with the Leadership feat. There's a place for this guy in more than one campaign. Plus, this is probably the best Oath to tack the two new feats presented at the end of the .pdf onto.
Overall, a lot of fun and themey goodies for specialized Paladins, presented with the usual Abandoned Arts skill.