Have you considered divorcing the behavioral/motivational/belief/etc. aspects of alignment but otherwise keeping the mechanical effects? That keeps everything in the game running as before while getting rid of what alignment implies about morality in-universe.
To explain:
Instead of alignment, call it "soul colors". Good is blue, evil is red, neutral is gray. On the other axis, lawful is shiny, chaotic is splotchy, neutral is dull. Then just replace all instances of alignment in the game with these instead.
Paladins have to be shiny blue. Monks must be shiny. Barbarians can't be shiny. Druids must be gray or dull or both. It's Smite Red and Detect Red. Demons and Devils are always outsiders with the red subtype, and dragons can still be red.
The difference is, red/blue/splotchy/shiny has absolutely no effect on how any creature in the cosmos behaves. Red-aligned dragons MAY behave in a manner that we would call evil or they may not. Monks MAY behave in a manner we might call lawful or they may not; they'll have a shiny soul either way and effect and be effected by the game accordingly, but it's simply not contingent on how they behave.
Everything that was otherwise working a certain way (how useful Smite is) still works with exactly the effectiveness it had before.
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My 2cp
1. Keep the crunch but change the flavor, have the extra damage come when smiting outsiders/dragons/undead who are deemed enemies of the Paladins cause/ Diety.
2. Even if most normal entities aren't aligned that doesn't stop outsiders who are made of the stuff from still being made of the stuff.
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I'm considering No Alignment for a setting I'm working on, and I don't think the paladin is much of a problem. Even Smite Evil can just become Smite, with an assumption that it's intended to be used mostly without restriction because the majority of enemies should be Evil (YMMV). But if I remove Alignment then the part about "outsider with the evil subtype, an evil-aligned dragon, or an undead" doesn't work: the first two can't exist any more, while I'm making a designer decision that undead aren't inherently inimical. So what (if anything) do I replace this with?
You could change "evil outsider" to "devil, daemon, or demon subtype", and "evil dragon" to any dragon on the same assumption that the majority of dragons that you attack should be evil. You could double it against Enemies of the Faith, i.e. followers and minions of dark gods. Or you could just do away with double damage against certain enemies, because Smite is powerful enough without it.
Have you considered divorcing the behavioral/motivational/belief/etc. aspects of alignment but otherwise keeping the mechanical effects? That keeps everything in the game running as before while getting rid of what alignment implies about morality in-universe.How do you determine who's colored what?
Also I don't like cosmic forces: the idea that anything is both that scale and has leanings is scary to me. I'd rather not.
Plus it is less complicated my way. :)
In the case of anything appearing already statted up, their color is based on what alignment they were. If it's a character you're statting up (whether PC or NPC), then their color is whatever it needs to be to keep within the rules (no shiny Barbarians), or you keep it dull or gray or put whatever you feel like to keep the selection the same as it was (i.e., if 30% of all people were supposed to be evil, then 30% of all people are red) or whatever you want the selection to be moving forward.
And to clarify, none of what I'm talking about is a cosmic force. These colors exist solely and exclusively to keep the game otherwise running as it did before while excising the morality aspect of alignment. In-universe, there is no red or blue, nor any shiny or splotchy. Those things exist at the same level as the d20 roll and your selection of skill points per level. Characters in-universe are assumed to have the same chance of recognizing the existence of these colors as they would recognizing how their own saving throws work or how their movements and spellcasting seem to adhere to a grid dictated by 5-foot increments.
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The advice for games Paladins without alignment in Pathfinder Unchained is pretty good honestly.
That is, roughly, you define one or more loyalties for every character and NPC (e.g. the crown, your church, the revolution, hell, etc.) and you can smite anybody whose loyalty directly opposes yours.
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If you're removing alignment from the equation, why not just have it do the extra damage against all undead, dragons, and outsiders?
Have you considered divorcing the behavioral/motivational/belief/etc. aspects of alignment but otherwise keeping the mechanical effects? That keeps everything in the game running as before while getting rid of what alignment implies about morality in-universe.
I'm currently running this approach in my game, and it's working quite well for me. I changed Good/Evil to Holy/Unholy. Creatures with alignment subtypes, like Angels and Fiends, retain an alignment that matches their subtype. Undead are unholy, and classes that have an aligned aura (such as the Cleric) have an alignment that matches their aura. Everyone else is true neutral. Alignment has no bearing on morality, and I've ditched the code of conduct for Paladins and Antipaladins. They have a celestial/fiendish patron that they have to keep happy, but the dynamics there are quite different from the traditional code of conduct.
With almost everyone being true neutral, that opened the obvious question of how to handle smiting. I decided to just open the floodgates and make smite affect neutral targets (with the exception of mindless foes). It's a buff to Paladins, but I decided to roll with it and found that it worked quite well. The Paladin gains additional smite opportunities in that unaligned creatures are potential targets, but also loses smite opportunities since he is far more likely to come into conflict with angels, paladins, and clerics who share his alignment but oppose his cause. It's still generally more gain than loss and overall it's been working quite well.
It sounds like you're going for a very different tone than I was, but maybe my approach might be helpful in giving you ideas?
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What weirdo said.
How about you have the base state of most mortals be unaligned, not Nuetral, which would be Aligned to the Balance.
I would go with a Domain effect to be an alignment's focus. So, Goodly Smite will not harm anyone aligned with good, would do base damage against non-aligned or irrelevantly aligned characters, and double damage to apposedly Alligned characters. I would additionally allow non-divine characters to be aligned with one domain. I would mostly tie this to worship. Traditional Alignments are going to be the most common domains aligned to, but I could really see any domain working. I think worship ceremonies are going to be a form of channeling, possibly with special effects for the worshippers depending on what domain they are aligned to.
I would also revamp positive and negative energy effects. Channel healing will only fully affect beings aligned to one of the god's domains. I think I would enhance channeling to balance out this limitation. Also I would allow/give Clerics all the god's domains, only having to choose when a domain and a sub-domain are available, and for channeling, they count as the same. I would like to see channeling more tied with domains.
(Optimalists will note that Good is likely to give you the most bang for your buck)
Now, for grins, any aligned character might be able to fall, for egregious stuff anyway.
Have you considered just running alignments? I know it's not exactly what you want, but hear me out.
The main advantage is that it solves most of your problems, without creating any that I care about. You can even just let smite evil run as worded currently with no modification.
What Ciaran Barnes said.
Y'know what: never mind. I'll just ban paladins. It's faster and causes less work.
Or just let Paladins "smite" anything, but they don't get extra bonus damage on anything.
At my table, I threw out the "double damage against undead, evil dragons, evil outsiders" thing - but I also let Paladins smite any Chaos in addition to any evil, or even neutrals who are aligned with evil (that is, a neutral merc working for an evil demon is also considered evil since he's chosen to work for evil). The increased number of viable targets (and not having to scan creatures with Detect Evil beforehand) more than makes up for the lack of double smite damage - even in games that are heavy on undead, demons, or evil dragons.
But yeah, don't get rid of paladins. They're a great class and a lot of fun (if played well).
Leave in alignment as a creature subtype, just omit it as a character attribute. So, say, Know Alignment could tell you about the disguised demon, but not the ordinary human serial killer standing next to it. Alignment-based effects on creatures without an alignment subtype simply treat them as neutral.
I'm with some of the others on this, and just allow the "smite evil" to become "Smite undead, demon / devil, dragon" & / or what ever other "evil" might still be appropriate in your campaign.
Keep this in mind too: just because "evil" doesn't exist as a measurable & tangible thing doesn't mean it is not there. There are "evil" people in our own world all over the place, and well represented in games, literature, and movies. We just typically call them by other names: jerks, psychopaths, sadists, tyrants, etc.
"Evil" as a form of personality type is very easy to implement and still allow for most (if not all) of the game mechanics to stay intact. The ones I changed when I dropped alignments from my campaign were the above mentioned changes to smite, and spells like detect & conceal alignment were simply banned (because they no longer worked). Sense Motive on the other hand became a much more valuable skill.
What Ciaran Barnes said.
Its the simplest solution, although I like rainzax's suggestion as an added caveat.