I'm not sure I think this is a good idea, but it was something that came up with the player whose shoanti paladin became NG instead of LG.
What if, if a paladin's alignment shifts from LG, but they are still within their deities' allowed alignment, the paladin could no longer gain paladin levels, but didn't lose their previous abilities, like a monk or apparently a barbarian.
Anyway, I'm not sure I like it, but it might be a way of retaining the LG paladin ideal, but opening up a little bit of flexibility. Still, I like paladin's having a really strict code myself.
Huh. Interesting. I can see how that might work with NG, but by that idea you would also be including LN.
It seems to me that the Paladins code and ideals have a tendency to lean towards good more than law. For example, it explicitly states that the Paladin can not associate with evil, but mentions nothing of chaos.
I'll admit, its not something I'm in love with, but my thoughts went something like this:
Ex-Paladins: A paladin that ceases to be good looses his paladin abilities and must receive an atonement spell in order to regain them. The paladin must have a good alignment in order to use his paladin abilities.
A paladin that looses his lawful alignment may not advance in paladin levels until he is once again lawful in alignment (through an atonement or even the natural course of his actions).
A paladin that is good aligned and within one step of his deities' alignment, but is not lawful, may not advance in the paladin class, but may still use their paladin abilities.
A paladin that does not have a patron deity is treated as having a lawful good patron deity for the purposes of becoming an ex-paladin.
I'm not sure I like this myself, but I wanted to throw this out there as a compromise of a sort, that still retains the idea that a functioning, advancing paladin must be lawful good.
In practice, a paladin with a LN patron is kind of screwed here, as he has to remain lawful and he has to remain good.
A paladin with a NG patron has a pretty wide range, since they can still get powers while they are LG, NG, or CG.
At any rate, it was just a thought that came up.
Personally, I could actually go for this. I've played for many, many years with many, many different characters. But I have never once in the history of my gaming career played a Paladin. And I cringe whenever I'm running and a player elects to play one. For some reason it just never seems to work out. Everyone has a different take on how they think a Paladin should act, think, and behave. But this could provide some compromise...