Improved sunder/greater can be awsome if you can get yourself an adamantium greatsword. Other feats I would suggestion are toughness, cleave, the step up tree (step up, following step, step up and strike)
Fey Foundling. Extra Lay on Hands. Lunge.
Extra lay on hands is good if you go the greater mercy / ultimate mercy route, lung can be critical depending on your game and honestly I don't find fey foundling that good.
Fey Foundling is probably the single best feat for paladins that you could possibly take, if you want to make you paladin nigh unkillable.
Swift action healing yourself for +2 hp per die of healing with Lay on Hands. It's really awesome for survivability.
Furious Focus is so so in my opinion.
Extra lay on hands is good if you go the greater mercy / ultimate mercy route, lung can be critical depending on your game and honestly I don't find fey foundling that good.Fey Foundling is effectively changing your Lay on Hands dice from d6s to d10s. This is a very good thing. It adds 2 per die, not 2 per heal.
That's correct, though it's slightly better than nd10 in the worst case scenarios, and slightly worse in the best case scenarios. At level 7, Fey Foundling will boost your healing from each LoH by about 60% on average, and will increase your minimum (worst case scenario) by 200%, from 3 HP to 9 HP.
Extra LoH becomes better in conjunction with Fey Foundling.
At level 7, using all uses of your baseline LoH will heal on average (16 CHA for 6 total uses): 63 HP. With extra LoH, you get 94.5 HP.
At level 7, using all uses of your LoH with Extra LoH and Fey Foundling will heal on average: 148 HP. That's a difference of ~10 CLW casts from just having Extra LoH, and a difference of ~15 from no feats at all, which makes a big difference in your ability to not soak up all of your caster's healing (or in burning through wands of CLW), and in your staying power in a tough battle where you're burning a LoH every round.
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It really depends on what you want your paladin to do.
If you're just shooting for massive damage, then go with Power Attack, Furious Focus, Weapon Focus, Improved Crit, etc to make sure you hit more and harder.
If you want to control the battlefield, pick up some combat maneuver feats, and maybe a reach weapon for tripping anyone who tries to get adjacent to you. Bonus points if you can talk a caster ally into walking around with a wand of Enlarge Person for you, but expect to buy the wand with your own cash.
If you want to focus more on healing (yourself and/or your allies), then stuff like Extra Lay on Hands, Greater Mercy, and Ultimate Mercy are the way to go.
The real question is what you want to do with the character. Regardless, Fey Foundling is always a good choice, as explained already.
Ditch Furious Focus. It only applies to the attack that you are going to hit with anyway.
I recently became aware of the Hurtful + Cornugun feat combination from another thread. If a Paladin has already has power attack and a high intimidate skill check already taking these feats are almost a must. Heck who doesn't what another attack at full bab. Combine this with Haste and make a full round attack action, you are getting 3 attacks at full BAB a round.
What are your race/stats?
Consider playing a half orc so you can pick up Ferocious Resolve. Combine that with Fey Foundling and they have to kill you to stop you. And killing a Paladin with Fey Foundling is pretty hard. Corngun Smash works well for this character. Just make sure to pick up bully to get intimidate as a class skill.
I'd say stick with human, and pick up Fey Foundling and Power Attack at first.
Unsanctioned Knowledge is a bit of a debated topic on the forums, overall it's a good feat if you want access to more spells or if someone else in the group lacks Haste.
Improved critical is actually a wasted feat if your Divine bond is with a weapon, because you can make it keen at 5th level.
Greater Mercy works well for extra healing dice.
If you have the skill points and a trait to spare, Cornugon Smash and Dreadful Carnage (and if possible, Signature Skill) are great in-combat, potentially great flavor for a Paladin, and Intimidate in general gives you another option to use outside of combat.
Actually Improved Critical is a very good feat for a paladin because it stacks with Bless weapon. Use a Falchion and when attacking evil creatures you will be getting more critical hits than you can imagine. Auto confirming a critical on a threat range of 15-20 means a lot of damage. There are better uses for divine bond than keen.
You mustn't sunder! Down that path lies darkness...
(3e players will get the joke :P )
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1- Fey Foundling
H- Power attack
3- Furious Focus or Weapon Focus (I like weapon focus beyond Level 6+)
5- Unsanctioned Knowledge (Keep that Int @ 13)
7- Lunge
9- Improved Critical- Falchion
Take the Trait Dangerously Curious and Pump up that UMD skill. Thanks being Human and a 13 Int.
Divine Bond your Falchion.
Enjoy Laying the Smack Down.
I do not Like Greater/Ultimate Mercy as it requires so many LoH uses....after the first few fights you might as well call them wasted feats. And also what are you a healer or a Destroyer? Leave that Ultimate Mercy crap to a player who wants to play a Band aid. Not you.
There are better uses for divine bond than keen.
Not many considering he doesn't even qualify for the feat yet.
Still, I wouldn't recommend taking the feat until later levels when you have enough bonus from Divine Bond to get your weapon maxed to +5 and give it Holy.
Really though, having the feat only helps in situations where you can't prebuff.
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^
It also helps on the Fly to help overcome situational fights.
Fighting Trolls: Give it Flaming to kill the Regeneration
Fighting a White Dragon: Again Fire is good
The best I can tell you is get a +1 Adamantine Falchion
Beyond that it is really up to you how to proceed with your weapon of Doom. If an AP gives you a lot of a certain type of Creatures then Bane might be an Obvious Choice as it gives huge bonuses to fighting that certain creature.
Remember +1 Adamantine is a Great Base Weapon. Grabbing a MW cold Iron weapon as back up is nice to have as well incase disarmed or having trouble passing Cold Iron DR. But eventually you will blow through that DR with your Main weapon.
Another great option if you have a reliable Arcane or DIvine Caster is Spell Storing...a Highly overlooked way of giving your Caster an extra offensive spell a round. And depending on the Spell (Vampiric TOuch) Give yourself a Combat boost as well.
But remember this:
Keen does not work with Bless weapon....But Improved Critical does. Typically never take a feat that you can mimic with Gold...but on a Paladin the Feat is worth more than the Keen enchantment because it works along with Bless for Auto Confirms.
You could also "spend" feats on Variant Multiclassing into Barbarian. No alignment restrictions on VMC outside of some very specific cases.
Brilliant energy, flaming burst, holy, merciful and speed all seem to be very useful. Admittedly they are situational, but the paladin can choose which one he uses each time. Most of them do require higher than a +1 bonus, but at lower level often the best use is simply to add bonus to your already magic weapon. Keen is good before you can pick up improved critical. Flaming Burst on a falchion with improved Critical and bless weapon is actually pretty good.
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Agreed with Rycaut. Greater Mercy is a great feat by itself, especially when combined with Fey Foundling.
If you want to be able to raise people from the dead for free on days when you're not adventuring, then Ultimate Mercy is good, too. But as pointed out by Fruian Thistlefoot, you aren't going to use it the same day that you need your Lay on Hands for other things. But again, that's not the point. The point is saving the 5k gold that you'd spend on diamond dust for a normal Raise Dead.
What spells what you recommend for Unsanctioned Knowledge?
Depends on what the party already has going for it. Divine Power and/or Dimension Door make great 4th level slot options (the latter opens up the Dimensional Dervish feats). If no one else has it, pick up Haste for sure. Shield of Faith can be useful, as can Wrath, and I am partial to Bladed Dash. There are more good options though, those are just my favorites.
Another possibility for a high-level feat is Divine Interference. You won't qualify until level 13, but it can be worth taking just to make the DM reroll natural 20s against you or your allies.
Eldritch Heritage (Orc) pays off nicely at high levels: The inherent bonus to Strength is higher than you could normally get (+6 vs +5), and you can then put that Wish money into CHA or CON instead. Power of Giants lets you get Righteous Might after all. Touch of Rage and Fearless unfortunately don't do much for you, unless you're playing a race with light sensitivity.
As for good choices for Unsanctioned Knowledge:
(Bard/Inquisitor/Cleric 4) Freedom of Movement is so good that it's worth having multiple party members know how to cast it.
(Bard 1) Timely Inspiration can be a good use of an Immediate Action if you see an ally fail an important saving throw, fail to confirm a crit, etc. by just 1 or 2.
(Inquisitor 4) Battlemind Link is great if there's another melee character in the party.
(Bard 4) Dimension Door is very useful generally, and opens up the Dimensional Agility feat line at high levels. It is one of the few ways in which you can move and full attack in the same round, however it will not come online until level 17, and it will use up your level 13, 15, and 17 feats.
(Inquisitor 1) Litany of Weakness, as far as I know, hasn't been hit with the "Will Negates" nerfbat yet. And it's not on the Paladin list.
(Bard 2) Mirror Image is an excellent improvement to your defense.
Ehhh, the Dimensional chain of feats might be open to you sooner depending on whether or not the DM allows retraining and accepts the FAQ that allows you to retrain old feats to ones that you now qualify for, but didn't in the past.
It feels munchkinny, but it is legal within the rules.
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Rod of Lesser Extend and pearls of power help you get more out of your level 2-3 slots.
Unsanctioned Knowledge can provide buffs and abilities that a paladin can take advantage of.
Mirror image comes to mind. A personal spell that adds layered defenses to you is amazing. Hard to get other than a wand or scroll and UMD skill.
Good Hope paired with a lesser extend is very good for the entire group.
D. Door or Greater Invisibility does help a paladin stomp face in.
Ultimate mercy is good...but in combat it is 1 less feat to be using. This is where the community goes back and forth on the debate of in combat viability versus out of combat options. Pathfinder is a game that is centered heavily on combat and surviving those combats to get some more story and roleplay in. Im a player who leans towards kill them before they kill you. I shun feats like dazzling display that wastes a full round or standard actions to inflict much less damage for a ok debuff...to me the best debuff you can inflict is the dead debuff. So you can take my opinions with a grain of salt.
Both options are good but for different reasons.
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I use a rod of extend + mirror image when I'm expecting a fight...like entering a dungeon...not during a fight. Then use a pearl of power and another extend to refresh it between fights after the first wears off.
Swift actions spells are good in battle but I prefer buffs I can have up for a few fights. Especially since the whole argument is limited spells and getting the most out of your limited slots.
Another argument is...spell resistance... Some litany spells have no saving throw...some do...but almost all of them are subject to spell resistance and has a good chance of failing.
Lunge is on your turn only. It doesn't extend your reach for AoOs.
@ Aelas Morgan Do you plan to take an Archetype?
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Have you looked at the Chosen One archetype from the Familiar Folio? I'm having fun making one of those.
Basically, you get a familiar instead of a mount or other divine bond. It re-arranges what level you pick up some stuff before level 4, but once you hit level 4, you've got everything that a normal paladin gets, except for the familiar instead of divine bond, and the familiar gets knowledge: religion instead of the paladin.