Opinions wanted on Paladin Variant I'm working on

I'm creating a paladin variant for my Eberron campaign that removes the Special Mount in favor of a somewhat improved spellcasting ability. Basically it adds a 5th level of paladins spells and lets you use spellcasting as early as 2nd level instead of 4th if you have a high enough wisdom score. The document below is included to keep formatting legible.

looks great, I'd use it.

A very nice mountless variant! This coming from the guy who has a slightly less front-loaded and more mount specific paladin variant of his own with bonus divine/mounted feats every 5 levels.

Only recommendations I could make are for the 5th level spell list. Perusing the Paladin Spell list we see that as a couple general rules of thumb for spells on the Paldin spell list appear:

Healing-type spells are taken from one level lower (cure serious wounds is a 4th level paldin spell but a 3rd level cleric spell) and martial/defeating evil-type spells are taken from one level higher (dispel evil is a 4th level Paladin spell but a 5th level cleric spell), and defensive/protective spells are generally of the same level (death ward is both a 4th level Paladin and Cleric spell).

Here's the 5th level spell list you've got: Banishment, Flame Strike, Hallow, Heal, Planar Ally, Raise Dead, Spell Resistance, True Seeing.

Banishment is great for fighting those evil outsiders (a 6th level cleric spell) and is well suited! Flame Strike being a martial/defeat evil-type spell looks to be a great choice! Hallow is a nice spell to add to the list, very appropriate, it sort of fits in the defensive/protection type of spells and being 5th level cleric spells fits well as a paladin 5th level spell. Planar Ally (a 6th level Cleric spell) can be potentially be described as a martial-type spell and is a reasonable choice, especially when the ally may ask instead for a quest rather than payment for their aid. Spell Resistance meets the requirment being a 5th level cleric spell and a defensive/protective type, good there too. True Seeing also fits pretty well here, seeing through the lies and deception of illusions.

Heal I'd have to recommend not including on this list being a 6th level cleric healing-type spell. A Paladin's 5th level spell should only inlcude 4th level cleric healing spells; in this case it should be Cure Critical Wounds, not Heal, unfortunately. Raise Dead is also probably inappropriate for the same reason, though less so (being a 5th level Cleric healing-type spell, lower than Heal's 6th level). Perhaps you could leave raise dead on the spell lsit and add the stipulation that a paladin may only raise those that worship their patron deity? This would lower the spells power abit and be more than appropriate for a Paladin, given the power to raise others but not just anyone, only those that serve and worship the paladin's deity in some way, that'd actually be pretty cool. For what it's worth I'd suggest a minor alteration to the 5th level spell list (changes in brown):

Paladin 5th level Spells: Banishment, Cure Critical Wounds, Flame Strike, Hallow, Planar Ally, Raise Dead (those of faith only), Spell Resistance, True Seeing.

Very minor changes. I'm now going to have to offer this mountless variant paladin to my players heh. Snag and thanks!

Actually the Paladin Spell Level tends to span 2 levels of Cleric. For example, if you check the entire 4th level Spell list, some like Restoration are 4th level Cleric Spells and a couple like Dispel Evil/Chaos are 5th level Cleric spells. I saw nothing wrong with grabbing a couple of 6th level Cleric spells for this spell list. You are right that I skipped Cure Critical Wounds in the Healing Spell progression, because I didn't want the 5th level Paladin list to span 3 Cleric Spell Levels (4th-6th). Normally I would have use Cure Critical in place of Heal

Cool, I like it. But are their no other changes?

I tend to go with the Start Small & Build approach. I personally never liked how frontloaded the Paladin is, nor the fac that a class with Wisdom and Charisma as recommended attributes has such a crappy Will Save, but the tweaks I would make would "unbalance" related to other classes. Of course, I've been tempted to revamp ALL the classes except maybe Fighter, Druid, and Rogue to a higher power level.

Essex said:

I tend to go with the Start Small & Build approach. I personally never liked how frontloaded the Paladin is, nor the fac that a class with Wisdom and Charisma as recommended attributes has such a crappy Will Save, but the tweaks I would make would "unbalance" related to other classes. Of course, I've been tempted to revamp ALL the classes except maybe Fighter, Druid, and Rogue to a higher power level.

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Re: Will save.

Divine Grace is supposed to shore up the paladin's weakness in that department. Even with a starting Charisma of 14, and assuming it increases by 1 point every other level (on average, the net effect of 5 level increases and a +6 enhancement item over 20 levels), the paladin's effective Will save only lags behind a good Will save progression in the earlier levels and eventually overtakes it. If the paladin can get a resistance bonus to his saves from some other source, e.g. a vest of resistance, from Complete Arcane, only a cleric, druid or monk would have a better chance of succeeding at a Will save.

I cannot argue about the Divine Grace boost, but I'm not talking from a Power Gamer/Number-Crunch POV. It seems to me that a Paladin would have a strong will to begin, just to BECOME a paladin. I can't envision a 1st level Paladin having a crappy Will Save. I have long felt that the "you can make up for it with "insert magic item"" to be a poor excuse for a ill-thought out weakness. Personally, I'd just take the Fort Save down a notch, and crank the Will Save up to match the lowered Fort Save (at 1st Level both Fort and Will would be +1, instead of +2/+0).

Essex said:

Actually the Paladin Spell Level tends to span 2 levels of Cleric. For example, if you check the entire 4th level Spell list, some like Restoration are 4th level Cleric Spells and a couple like Dispel Evil/Chaos are 5th level Cleric spells.

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A paladin spell list spans three Cleric spell list levels (-1 level, equal level, +1 level): Clerical healing spells usually of one level lower than the Paladin's spell level and typically clerical anti-evil spells of one level higher. So a Paladin's 4th level spell list will consist of 3rd level cleric healing spells, 5th level cleric anti-evil spells, and 4th level cleric defense/protection spells.

Essex said:

I saw nothing wrong with grabbing a couple of 6th level Cleric spells for this spell list. You are right that I skipped Cure Critical Wounds in the Healing Spell progression, because I didn't want the 5th level Paladin list to span 3 Cleric Spell Levels (4th-6th). Normally I would have use Cure Critical in place of Heal

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Why not have the 5th level spell list span three levels? All the other spell levels for the Paladin's spell list span 3 levels of cleric spells, for example:

Paladin's Spell List (3rd Level): Cure Moderate Wounds (Cleric: 2nd level), Dispel Magic (Cleric: 3rd level), and Discern Lies (Cleric: 4th level).

Though healing spells (being the cleric's territory here) are not one of those spells up for grabs when looking at adding 6th level spells to a Paladin's 5th level spell list. So a 5th level Paladin Spell couldn't be heal, they would instead get a healign spell of one level lower (a 4th level healing spell), in this case Cure Critical Wounds.

Hmm I hadn't noticed the 3 level spread, only the 2 level spread. Oh well, there went that argument...