Wow! Quite a lot of different points of view to sift through. Here's my take on Non LG Paladins. I'm all for it, but the alignment of the Paladin needs to follow the alignment of their god. I even think evil Paladins should be allowed, it's just up to the DM if that character will still be called a Paladin or Blackguard.
This is my experience with playing outside of your characters alignment. Waaay back in the 2nd Ed Dragonlance days I had a Chaotic Good Ninja. My friend had a Neutral Good Ranger who happened to be a chosen of Habakuk (he did some amazing things during the War of the Lance) which basically turned him into a Ranger/Paladin. My Ninja's deity was the Platinum Sky Serpent (basically an oriental aspect of Paladine). My friend had some type of magical weapon (can't remember the name of it) that was multiple magic weapons that combined. So 1 piece was a dagger, you can combine 2 daggers for a short short, 3 for long sword, 4 for bastard and 5 for greatsword. My friend had 4 of the pieces and we came across a LG Ranger and N Bard. One of them had the 5th magical dagger which would have given my friend the complete set. We tried bartering, pulling favors, you name it to try to get the 5th piece but we had no luck. We then had the crazy idea of breaking into their room at the inn in the middle of the night to steal the dagger from these 2 guys. Well long story short, things went wrong and I assassinated both of them. Our DM knocked my alignment to Chaotic Neutral and my friend's to True Neutral, docked us half of our current levels worth of exp and our DM said if we go down another step in alignment then he would take our character sheets away and they would become NPCs. We both had to do about 3 solo sessions each with our DM to atone and make up for our wrong doings and go back to our default alignment (and yes we got the exp back). Not only that but when my friend took the 5th dagger and combined it with the other 4, turned out the items were cursed and my friend ended up summoning demons from the abyss. So yea, our DM really screwed with us for playing out of our alignment.
Some might call it harsh but I'm glad he did it. It really put things into perspective and showed that there are real consequences for screwing around like that, especially considering we were both war heroes during the War of the Lance and my friend was a chosen of Habakuk.
So TLDR I'm cool with non LG Paladins, but please, even if it's not in the book, make sure there are real consequences for doing something morally wrong against your deity's alignment.
This is my experience with playing outside of your characters alignment. Waaay back in the 2nd Ed Dragonlance days I had a Chaotic Good Ninja. My friend had a Neutral Good Ranger who happened to be a chosen of Habakuk (he did some amazing things during the War of the Lance) which basically turned him into a Ranger/Paladin. My Ninja's deity was the Platinum Sky Serpent (basically an oriental aspect of Paladine). My friend had some type of magical weapon (can't remember the name of it) that was multiple magic weapons that combined. So 1 piece was a dagger, you can combine 2 daggers for a short short, 3 for long sword, 4 for bastard and 5 for greatsword. My friend had 4 of the pieces and we came across a LG Ranger and N Bard. One of them had the 5th magical dagger which would have given my friend the complete set. We tried bartering, pulling favors, you name it to try to get the 5th piece but we had no luck. We then had the crazy idea of breaking into their room at the inn in the middle of the night to steal the dagger from these 2 guys. Well long story short, things went wrong and I assassinated both of them. Our DM knocked my alignment to Chaotic Neutral and my friend's to True Neutral, docked us half of our current levels worth of exp and our DM said if we go down another step in alignment then he would take our character sheets away and they would become NPCs. We both had to do about 3 solo sessions each with our DM to atone and make up for our wrong doings and go back to our default alignment (and yes we got the exp back). Not only that but when my friend took the 5th dagger and combined it with the other 4, turned out the items were cursed and my friend ended up summoning demons from the abyss. So yea, our DM really screwed with us for playing out of our alignment.
Some might call it harsh but I'm glad he did it. It really put things into perspective and showed that there are real consequences for screwing around like that, especially considering we were both war heroes during the War of the Lance and my friend was a chosen of Habakuk.
So TLDR I'm cool with non LG Paladins, but please, even if it's not in the book, make sure there are real consequences for doing something morally wrong against your deity's alignment.