And yet there it was. "Hey guys, here's Paul, the Paladin, who is really annoying and has a Holy Avenger." Putting "Holy Avenger" on your character sheet was basically the same as writing "Kick Me" on your plate mail and then walking around a d4 factory in bare feet.
So on one hand, I love paladins, possibly almost as much as you hate them. My current main PC is Boris the Green, the Oath of Ancients Paladin (Green Knight) and Archfey Warlock who's also a green-scaled dragonborn. I mean, if I'm gonna play a character with aspirations other than "get rich, as safely as possible", I might as well go all the way.
On another hand, I DMed for a while, and a player joined the group playing a Vengeance Paladin, with high stats that he totally rolled (after, I dunno, rolling many times?). He gave me a few vague hints for loose ends, hoping that I might create story arcs. One of them was his missing wife, possibly captured by red mages of Thay. Well, I dropped hints involving refugees from Thay among the cultists of Tiamat, and he never followed those hints.
The other "loose end" was the Holy Avenger, "Ashbringer" which was a family heirloom and had somehow been lost. He didn't give me more than that - like, did his grandmother wield it when she was an Adventurer? is she still around or did she go missing while carrying the sword? I think he just hoped that at some point I would give him a side quest, "Someone Tells You Where You Can Find Ashbringer", and then he'd have a Holy Avenger.
Yeah, he was that guy who matches LowKey13s expectations of people who play paladins.
So if I had a DM who would give my PC a quest for whatever magic item I named as "missing heirloom", so that I was guaranteed to find one....
...then I'd probably choose a Helm of Telepathy. Goodbye, most language barriers. Hello, moving forward cautiously while spamming Detect Minds to scan for language-using minds, and finding bandits within 30' regardless of how well they hide. Hello, going to the back alley of a tavern, and reading the mind of *everyone* at the bar before entering. (Some may make the saving throw, which tells them that *someone somewhere* tried to read their mind.) Learn from surface thoughts, what motivations of the target dovetail most closely with a well-phrased Suggestion! It's Munchkin Time 24/7, on the interaction and exploration pillars rather than the combat pillar!
For for exotic wacky hijinks, though, the Ring of Spell Storing. Wizard attunes it and casts "Find Familiar" into it, five times. The next five people to attune the ring - the other party members, that is - each get to cast Find Familiar from the ring! Follow up with Find Steed. Some spells should really be class features instead. After everyone has a steed, the warlock can then charge the ring with Hex, so that the sword-and-board fighter gets five uses of a Bonus Action combat spell, and the process only takes the warlock two or maybe three Short Rests.
. I was willing to allow him to have a holy avenger. But he was gonna work for it. So I tied in a few adventure modules to tie in that particular quest reward. He prayed to his god and got his instruction. Acquire Blackrazor from White Plume Mountain, have the white dragon from G1-3 breath on it, and while it was frozen, smash it with whelm. Take the shards, and reforge it in a high temple of his god.
