I'm currently running a 5th level Paladin who is an hospitaler/Oath of Charity paladin at 5th level. My charisma is 18, giving me a +4 modifier.
With my abilities I have the Charitable Hands ability that allows my Lay on Hands to heal a person for 2d6 +50% of the result but I only heal myself 2d6 -50% of the result.
Now here is the tricky part, I also have the Reward of Life feat, which can be found in Ultimate Magic. This feat allows me, that when I heal an ally, or someone else in general, with my Lay on Hands I also heal myself for a number of points equal to my CHA modifier, so 4.
The question is do I half that and only heal 2?
At first I figured no, because I wasn't the target of the Lay on Hands myself but, that is the ability that is triggering my healing for the most part.
No, because the healing received through use of the feat is not from Lay On Hands - it's an entirely different effect. Lay On Hands is the trigger for said effect, nothing more.
Also 2nd question!
Because Charitable Hands says it functions as but replaces Lay on Hands, does that mean I can't have the Reward of Life feat since I do not techincally have Lay on Hands as a class feature which is the prerequisite for having the feat in the first place?
Not sure according to RAW, but I'd allow it as DM.
I have heard that when an archetype replaces a class feature you are still counted as having the original class feature for purposes of feats and the like. Not sure if that's legal, but I read it someplace on these boards.
I'd say that Charitable Hands is a modification of Lay Of Hands and should still count as Lay On Hands for purpose of picking feats.
As a side note:
I was thinking the same thing. If you treated Charitable Hands as a different ability then there would be no way to modify you ability with feats. And you couldn't even get extra uses of it as the Extra Lay on Hands feat requires you HAVE Lay on Hands.
Obviously though this logic of another ability working as an ability for the purposes of getting feats doesn't work for all replacement abilities.
Side not: Extra Lay on Hands is a nifty ability for an Oath of Vengeance Paladin as they can use 2 uses of LoH to get an extra smite, thus making Extra LoH feat effectively Extra Smite. Cool guys doing cool things!