Help me balance an alternate paladin

Greetings. I'm prepping a homebrew campaign set in Magnamund, the world of the Lone Wolf game books. (Also soon to be a d20 conversion from Mongoose publishing; see their announcement.

One of my ideas is to create alternate paladin classes, slightly modified from the core D&D version, that add a bit of Magnamund flavor to my game. My first go is at the Knights of the White Mountain, who are dedicated to truth. (For LW fans, these guys appear in Fire on the Water. Please note that I am not attempting to mimic them exactly.)

Here's the idea. Knights of the White Mountain are similar to the core paladin, but they have truth-related abilities in place of some of the normal paladin abilities.

• Class Skills: remove Ride (Dex), add Sense Motive (Wis). Knights of the White Mountain aren't horsemen, but they are keen judges of character.
• Saves: swap Fort Save and Will Save. Knights of the White Mountain have strong personalities and an unwavering devotion to Truth.
• Special Abilities: Level 1: remove detect evil and replace it with discern lies (Clr4, Pal3), usable at will as a spell-like ability. (Please note the following from the discern lies spell description : first, there target is allowed a Will save to negate it. Second, the Knight of the White Mountain can only detect if the target “deliberately and knowingly speaks a lie” and cannot “uncover unintentional inaccuracies, or necessarily reveal evasions.”)
• Special Abilities: Level 2: remove Aura of Courage and replace it with Aura of Truth. Beginning at 2nd level, a Knight of the White Mountain projects a zone of truth as the spell (Clr2) in a 5 foot radius. Allies within 10 feet gain a +4 competency bonus on Sense Motive checks to determine if someone is lying to them. Granting the competency bonus to allies is a supernatural ability. (Again, note the limitations of zone of truth : it allows a Will save to negate, and affected creatures are aware of the emanation and “may avoid answering questions to which they would normally respond with a lie, or they may be evasive as long as they remain within the boundaries of the truth.”)
• Special Abilities: Level 5: remove Special Mount.

So what do you think? Is the Knight of the White Mountain fairly balanced? Or is discern lies too powerful to give to a first level character? Is zone of truth a gamebreaker at second level? Are there other nifty truth-related abilities that could be swapped in for the normal paladin abilities?

Thanks for reading!

I'd just mention that the normal paladin fearlessness is quite a powerful ability, and although my first thought is that zone of truth is too powerful, they are losing a more significant combat-related ability in order to get it.

I'd be inclined to put a "uses per day" limitation though - swap out the cure disease for zone of truth - thus they get it at about 3rd level, and can use it once per week per 5 levels or whatever it works out as. Considering the power doesn't normally appear until characters are level 9-13 or so, it seems reasonable to restrict its access somewhat.

Cheers

Very interesting. I had a similar idea not long ago, but instead of modifying the Paladin, I thought of using the Sensate prestige class from Call of Duty. Call of Duty is a great Paladin sourcebook (PDF by Chainmail Bikini), and the Sensate is a psionic Paladin. I haven't played it, but it seems like a fun character.

Anyway, what you've done seems fairly balanced. The character should probably get something to replace the Special Mount. Call of Duty suggests allowing an extra Smite or improved Lay on Hands for Paladins who don't want Special Mount, but that doesn't seem like a good trade-off to me. Some Paladin knock-offs, like the Holy Liberator, get a celestial animal companion, instead. Not a bad idea, but terribly appropriate to the truthseeker concept, either. So, I don't have any other suggestions about that ability.

But how about Remove Blindness instead of Remove Disease? Blindness can be seen as an analog for deception, so your Knights would be able to help people "see the light of truth" again.