Caveat: This might be the wrong place entirely for this thread, and I also might be missing something laughably big as in I'll laugh when it is pointed out. Here goes.
To TLDR: I'm musing on a lightly armored caster flavor with the same kind of restriction and similar but not necessarily equivalent benefits that a paladin gets. What would be thematic and appropriate for something like that, what benefits would be cool and not overpowered? I would like this to be Pathfinder and Golarion related and that's why it is posted here but I understand if this is somehow not the right place.
Earlier today I was idly musing over ephemeral character ideas, and I happened upon this thought. The paladin is a lawful good martial character who follows a code of divine providence, to most gods that fall within one step of lawful good.
In return for a strict and staunch adherence to the precepts they've vowed to uphold, Paladins are granted divine powers to act as a beacon of goodness and law.
Now, there are classes that are casters with divine options. Clerics are obviously divine casters with obligations to their gods. Celestial sorcerers have divine bloodlines. Mystic theurges traffic in divine power at the same time as arcane power. Witches can have benevolent patrons.
However, none of these classes are required to actually adhere to a paladin-style code, where the divine aspect of their powers can be taken away if they fall, The cleric being the most similar exception. The fact stands though that they tend to utilize medium armor and weaponry of whatever kind is counter to the concept I'm trying to produce. They also don't have to hold to a specific code, just not offend their deity.
In essence I'm idly trying to create a lightly armored caster who carries within them the same quantity of discipline and classification of devotion a paladin does, who uses magic as their weapon rather than a sword, mace, or even a bow/crossbow/gun. I'm trying to think of what it would take to make that kind of character a presence akin to a paladin and cool to play.
My general thinking is that the baseline is any kind of nondivine magic as long as it isn't evil in alignment, and that similarly to the paladin they get some sort of boost atop that. Figuring out how to tune and flavor that in an appropriate way is the purpose of the thread.