This is actually a suggestions but it didnt seem to fit in the other forums since its neither abilities and races nor playtesting. If its wrong please move it.
On topic:
Something that bugged me ever since I first played DnD (started with 3.0) is that Paladins are absolutely unusable in evil themed parties, without using non-core material.
Every hero can have his evil opposite. The valorous fighter, and the heroic barbarian can as well be bloodthirsty slaughterers, the cunning but good-hearted rogue might as well be a backstabbing (literally) murderer and thief. the great wizards and sorcerers of light can be evil necromancers and fireball flinging destroyers. the enlightened healer and priest of the god of the sun can also be an evil undead controlling priest of death and decay. The druid bringing nature and humanoids to live in harmony with each other could also be summoning beasts to bring destruction about humans. The nature loving ranger could also be a murderous ambusher. The bard traveling from one place to another collecting great tales to tell the people and inspire them could also be a mischievous evildoer travelling only to bring despair to the people.
But the paladin? The paladin is only the paladin. And the only way to become something else is by a prestige class. The black guard is all nice and good, but it is near impossible to go with that option if you start in an evil party at level 1.
So I think it should be incorporated in the core rules that Paladins should also be able to start with parties that are not good aligned.
Why should evil parties be limited in their choice of classes?
as for mechanically, i thought it could work in a similar fashion as a cleric channeling either positive or negative energy.
So the alignment restrictions will be expanded to LG or LE (or maybe CE instead)
The evil aligned paladin will then have the opposite powers of the good aligned one (aura of evil, detect good and smite good instead of aura of good, detect evil and smite evil)
Basically the evil opposite will look like the Unearthed Arcana variant evil paladins.
So yeah, I would love to see at least one evil option for the paladin in the core material, so that class isnt so limitedly accessible anymore.
You'd also have to go over the spell lists for any variant Paladins.
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One thing I'd do, if I was headed this route, would be to look at the differences between the 3.5 Paladin and the Pathfinder Paladin, and then apply the same sort of logic to these classes.
The Unholy Warrior handbook, from Green Ronin, as well as the Blackguard PrC, might be useful places to pillage ideas from.
There's also the possibility of taking an evil Cleric with the Holy Warrior Alternate Class Feature (from the Pathfinder Companion) and working that out as a form of unholy warrior.
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This is actually a suggestions but it didnt seem to fit in the other forums since its neither abilities and races nor playtesting. If its wrong please move it.
On topic:
Something that bugged me ever since I first played DnD (started with 3.0) is that Paladins are absolutely unusable in evil themed parties, without using non-core material.
Every hero can have his evil opposite. The valorous fighter, and the heroic barbarian can as well be bloodthirsty slaughterers, the cunning but good-hearted rogue might as well be a backstabbing (literally) murderer and thief. the great wizards and sorcerers of light can be evil necromancers and fireball flinging destroyers. the enlightened healer and priest of the god of the sun can also be an evil undead controlling priest of death and decay. The druid bringing nature and humanoids to live in harmony with each other could also be summoning beasts to bring destruction about humans. The nature loving ranger could also be a murderous ambusher. The bard traveling from one place to another collecting great tales to tell the people and inspire them could also be a mischievous evildoer travelling only to bring despair to the people.
But the paladin? The paladin is only the paladin. And the only way to become something else is by a prestige class. The black guard is all nice and good, but it is near impossible to go with that option if you start in an evil party at level 1.
There are two ways around this:
The AD&D way was to have the Assassin as a core class. In every way, the assassin was a true polar opposite of the paladin. He wasn't a fighter fiercely standing in the forefront of battle against the valorous champion--he was a murderer in the shadows, evil and duplicitous. Godly v. godless; honor-bound v. duplicitous; steadfast v. skulking. I had a blast playing an assassin in an evil-aligned party for three years. I know that most folks think of the blackguard as the paladin's opposite but I personally like having more contrast and the assassin was the greatest contrast for a paladin the AD&D game could admit.To do this in 3.5, just break down the prestige class into a base class. There are a lot of on-line builds to do that and it works great thematically in the game.
The alternative is to bump the paladin up to a prestige class from the beginning. It makes a lot of sense to do this given the blended nature of the class, the alignment restriction, and the conceit of the class that a paladin is chosen by his deity, not a self-made holy warrior.
This fix has been applied in a game I played in (as a dragon PC using hte rules from Dragon 320--the best savage species work I have ever used) and it worked out great. The Fighter 2/Cleric 4 who became a paladin really felt like something special. His 'knighting' occured after he earned it and he was forever after a true holy warrior. No rookie in the field, he knew his faith and his sword and applied both to good effect.
I know backwards compatibility compels Pathfinder to keep the Paladin as a core class. As a DM though, I think the prestige-only paladin is a great counterpoint to the prestige assassin and doing this modification brings the AD&D sensibility about alignment restriction and its effects into much plainer focus in the 3.5 mechanics. Fie on Blackguards! Onward Assassins!
You'd also have to go over the spell lists for any variant Paladins.
That's true, but you could actually just change the paladin spell list so that it says Bless/Bane, Bless/Curse Water, Cure/Inflict wounds, and then have it in the paladin class section explained, which paladin recieves which of the two spells.
There are two ways around this:
The AD&D way was to have the Assassin as a core class. In every way, the assassin was a true polar opposite of the paladin. He wasn't a fighter fiercely standing in the forefront of battle against the valorous champion--he was a murderer in the shadows, evil and duplicitous. Godly v. godless; honor-bound v. duplicitous; steadfast v. skulking. I had a blast playing an assassin in an evil-aligned party for three years. I know that most folks think of the blackguard as the paladin's opposite but I personally like having more contrast...
That is also a good solution I think. This way evil parties don't have the same class but at least something that good ones dont posess.