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Thanks for the suggestions!

I've looked at a finesse guide that basically said that a finesse melee fighter will never do as much damage as a strength melee fighter, and that finesse fighting is more about doing combat maneuvers (so controlling the fight?) and getting in multiple attacks that have stacking damage on them. ( here's a link to it). The guide talks about monk and how unarmed strike can be good.

Based on those suggestions, I'm thinking that maybe enlightened paladin might work. I'd keep weapon finesse, and at level 3 take two weapon fighting and instead of attacking twice each turn I'd just try to trip enemies each turn to help my teammates. With Confident Defense, I'd have a really good AC by level 3. At level 4, the ki points also solve my speed issues. I'm just not a fan of the rest of the archetype abilities.

After looking more at Divine Hunter, it seems to be the better choice. I can attack at melee range, so I can still tank. I can wear a buckler, so I only lose 1 AC. It also does more damage, and I can switch weapon finesse with another feat. So I think I could actually tank better with divine hunter, which is kinda funny XD

I kinda wish I made a monk at this point though. I just think a tiny gnome punching and tripping large creatures would look hilarious XD.

Hey guys! So I'm new to playing pathfinder (I've only played D&D 5e), and made a gnome paladin during the first session of a pathfinder Kingsmaker campaign. I originally planned on making a cleric, but changed my plan at the last minute once I learned we didn't have a tank. I took the "sword Scion" trait, and made it so my character wanted to learn to be an aldori sword fighter as his background. I made the mistake of trying to build my character as a dex fighter (with 12 str and 16 dex). I took Weapon Finesse as my first feat.

We played our first two sessions and I realized I messed up. We are level 1 and my character has these problems:

- he's slow - with a movement of 20 ft, it takes me two moves to keep up with my fast teammates. So I'm not there to protect them

- he does no damage - the combination of being small, and not realizing the aldori dueling sword applies to weapon finesse only if you have proficiency in the dueling sword means I do no damage

- he's not a threat - I learned quickly that the way to tank in pathfinder is to be a threat. My character is a 3 ft gnome who barely does damage and is slow and late to battle, so enemies always attack the rest of the party.

I talked to the DM, who told me he's let me change the class archetype of my character, but not the stats or the class. I want to make this character work with the original idea I had. I've thought of making my character a holy Tactician, but I'm still having trouble with making my character a viable tank. Do you guys have any suggestions on how to do that for my character without having to just dump him?