In all the paladin threads I've seen about people wanting to avoid falling or to have more lax restrictions on the paladin class I've never seen someone mention the Redeemer (you'll have to scroll down a bit, my link-fu isn't very strong)
I realize that it's only for half orcs but a human or half elf could pick it up with racial heritage as a first level feat. While it's slightly inferior mechanics wise and doesn't get rid of too many restrictions it can help if you want to have an evil character in the party.
Is there any particular reason that this archetype is ignored?
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In all the paladin threads I've seen about people wanting to avoid falling or to have more lax restrictions on the paladin class I've never seen someone mention the Redeemer (you'll have to scroll down a bit, my link-fu isn't very strong)
I realize that it's only for half orcs but a human or half elf could pick it up with racial heritage as a first level feat. While it's slightly inferior mechanics wise and doesn't get rid of too many restrictions it can help if you want to have an evil character in the party.
Is there any particular reason that this archetype is ignored?
The main issue is that Paladins can already ally themselves with evil creatures if they deem such an alliance as being for the greater good, so you don't really get much leeway, so all you get is a class with some neat flavor that doesn't really do anything much better than a standard paladin.
Because its not just about being able to have an evil character in the party, though that helps a lot. It's also about being able to make my own choices as a player about what's important to my character, and what my character's diety would approve of. As long as I have a legitimate code with real repercussions, I don't feel it should have to be specifically lawful good. What if I had a paladin of balance who must maintain true neutral and do his best at all times to maintain the status quo of the region he serves? This is a perfectly viable code of conduct with many messy implications in terms of fun game play role playing questions. It is an excellent example of a paladin who might gain his powers from a neutral or lawful neutral outsider. It simply isn't as well done by most other classes as it could be by the paladin, but the paladin doesn't allow it in non-home brew games.
When our group was doing Curse of the Crimson Throne, my hubby wanted to play a Paladin of Pharasma...the true Neutral deity of birth, death, and the Path between (fate). We had to tell/remind him (he hadn't really played since 2.0) that true Pallies have to be LG and only one step removed from the deity they followed.
So, the GM and my hubby worked on what we now call Holy Warriors and Unholy Warriors, for the top six and bottom three alignments respectively. Basically, all Paladins are Holy Warriors, but not all Holy Warriors are Paladins.
If you want to play an HW (or UW, but those are mostly for either NPCs or when we all want to get our Evil on ;->) using our house rules, you'd have to (in order of emphasis):
1) choose an alignment within one step of your deity and STICK TO THAT, the way a Pally would to LG (my hubby's HW was Neutral Good);
2) focus on a specific thing, or small group of specific things, important to your deity. My hubby went with "make undead stop moving, they're an abomination" for his PC's focus;
3) be prepared for logical changes. If a Good-aligned HW would get smite evil as an ability, then maybe a Chaotic Neutral HW would have smite law instead.
Other than that, the powers and abilities are pretty much the same...
LB