What is a paladin anyway? The brand image from D&D is actually fairly limited. He is a LG warrior who casts clerical spells and can smite, lay on hands and summon a mount. This is all of it and it is very specific. A paladin should be entirely replaceable with a fighter/cleric+the feat system.
Indeed I think a better option would be to name the class something other than paladin (champion, templar, cavalier, little red riding hood) and just have the paladin be one of the subclasses, with the blackguard, the anti-paladin as other options. Names matter.
Well, I agree with all of this...and, as you say, "names matter." That said, I don't think "Cavalier" as the playtest has it now really works at all. In real life, all this is is someone who fights/skilled in fighting from horseback. In D&D terms, it was a "knight" in the sense that they were from wealthy families...who fought well from horseback...and [without my 1e Unearthed Arcana before me] I believe, some standards of "chivalric code" they were expected to follow...but it involves none of the adherence or connection to religious beliefs or very strict observance of their code beyond the first few levels.
If we are looking at the Paladin, Warden and even Blackguard as examples of paragons of their respective virtues with magical "gifts" [whether flavored as divine or natural or just the result of tenacious adherence to mundane "oaths"] then "Cavelier" doesn't really strike me as the proper [i.e. most appropriate] umbrella term. "Champion" would seem to make sense.
Cavalier and Warlord would constitute a separate block of classes that is their own or "sub classes" of Fighter or neither and just become specialties.
A champion of a very specific ethos, not just a poster-boy for X alignment.
"Not just." Yes. But the "poster-boy of X alignment" is most certainly a champion of a very specific ethos. Can you be a champion of an ethos and not be a paladin? I'd agree that, yes, you can. I suppose this falls under that dictum of "All Paladins are Champions. But not all Champions are Paladins."
I don't mind the concept of "Champions of X", the Warden being the most obvious example they've presented thus far, being wrapped up with the Paladin as a "champion of X that is granted/trained/imbued with magical powers". (though the idea of the Warden as a "champion sub-class" of Druid also works for me).
...I'm not entirely sure what I'm gettign at here...or which tangent I've gone off on...but, yeah, that all seemed relevant to say...but now I'm not sure why. haha.
Anywho, back to your regularly scheduled thread.
Happy Friday all.
--SD