Concerned about paladins.

[The Human Target]

If Lay on Hands is retro-active defending then clerics are the best defenders of all I guess. Because they can heal way better and don't usually have to burn vital healing surges.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If Lay on Hands is retro-active defending then clerics are the best defenders of all I guess. Because they can heal way better and don't usually have to burn vital healing surges.

The point is the paladin can effectively redirect damage to himself, just after the fact. This is not really all that different from a fighter pulling in an enemy and marking them so that the enemy will go for the fighter. The difference being the paladin can do it retroactively and even well after the fact and thus effectively defend characters that aren't even nearby at the time the enemy attacks them.

The cleric is different. He's allowing a PC to use his own surges to recover hit points, or giving a character tempHP or surgeless healing. The difference may seem subtle but it is a different effect. Still, the paladin is a defender with a side of leader and the cleric is a straight leader with perhaps a side of striker/defender depending on the exact build.

In any case its kind of irrelevant what the cleric is or isn't when talking about the paladin. Compare the paladin to the fighter or the warden, which are doing the same job. Fighter and warden pin down the enemy and degrade his ability to move away and attack others. The paladin defends by punishing the enemy for attacking others in a more direct way and redirecting damage to himself retroactively. If you look at swordmages they can defend in either mode depending on build essentially. Which defender performs better will depend on the situation and the party they are in. Different players will prefer one or another based on their play style. Fighter and paladin were both effective out of PHB and both have greater options with the splat books.

So essentially if you found PHB paladin to be weak, then it was weak for you and your group and that's a perfectly fair assessment but not everyone found it to be the case.