Please Evaluate and Critique Honestly.
Okay, so from a technical point of view I attempt here to make a PrC that makes a CG paladin variant/ranger character viable, with some modifications due to the fluff... and also to avoid have splat together under the same class features table some abilities from both classes (to a degree).
On the fluff side, this holy warrior represents the hunting branch of Asterlian, a brass dragon deity of love, passion, sensuality feasting, hunting and at home in the wilderness, specially mountains, temperate forests, underground and moonlight related settings. Chaotic good and . It's symbol is an orange, bright flame (representing the raw power of passion and tied to the brass dragon element).
For a lack of a better name, we will call it holy knight of Asterlian meanwhile (HKoA).
Prerequisites
Base attack bonus: +6
Skills: Knowledge (religion) 3 ranks, Bluff 3 ranks, Perform (any) 3 ranks, Survival 5 ranks.
Alignment: Chaotic Good.
Special: Favored terrain (underground, mountains or forest), Smite evil, divine grace.
Class features
Base attack bonus and hit dice: Medium, d8 (Though ranger and paladin are both direct front line fighters, the class features were powerful and I did not want to remove them so I took a medium BAB to balance it).
Skills: 4 points, take the ranger list and add bluff, diplomacy, perform, knowledge (religion) and remove intimidate.
Savint Throws: High fortitude.
Spellcasting: Every level, the HKoA gains a "spellcasting level" as ranger. The idea of "ranger only" is to keep strong ties to nature spells and make wisdom an important stat, even more so with the addition of bonus domains (see below).
LV Class features
1 Smite evil, lay on hands, bonus domain: good.
2 Track
3 Cleansing fire
4 Scales of Asterlian
5 Bonus domain: Charm
6
7 Favored terrain (underground, forest or mountain)
8 Improved cleansing fire
9
10 Bonus domain: fire. Wyrms'might.
Bonus domains: At level 1, the HKoA gets the Good domain as a bonus domain, at level 5 he adds the Charm domain and at level 10 the fire domain. The effective cleric level for the domains is his ranger spellcaster level. Keep in mind that at any rate the HKoA will only be able to cast very little spelsl even at high level and only of up to 4th level.
Other Abilities that keep improving over level: Smite evil, lay on hands, track and one new favored terrain at 6th level (underground, forest or mountain).
New abilities:
Cleansing fire: At 3rd level, the HKoA can spend a use of his lay on hands to forego the healing effect and grabt its target weapon instead the flaming ability, At 8th level, the flaming burst property is bestoewd upon it. The duration is equal to the charisma modifier of the HKoA.
Scales of Asterlian: DR 5/+1, Energy resistance 5, natural armor improves by 1.
Wyrms'Might: The HKoA gains a +2 inherent bonus to his strength score. Furthermore, his DR increases to 10/+2, his energy resistance to 10 and his natural armor to +2.
Along with the fireball and firewall from the fire domain, this seems like an attractive capstone ability, in spite of the 2 odd empty levels. Am not sure what to do with them, but IMO they could be left empty for balance purposes. If I move wyrm's might to level9, the capstone becomes sort of "meh". If I move the bonus domain, the "domain every 5 levels" idea gets screwed.
*bump*