Giving Paladins Planar Banishment instead of Turn Undead

[Grayhawk]

For flavor reasons, and to further differentiate the Paladin from the Cleric, I was thinking about giving them Planar Banishment from UA p.67 instead of Turn Undead at level 4.

Planar Banishment works as Turn Undead, but it affects Evil Outsiders instead of undead. On a successful check the outsider is returned to its home plane. I would propably call it 'Banish Hellspawn', as the UA name is a bit bland, IMO.

To me, this fits the image of a Cleric being the go-to guy when it comes to undead and the Paladin being the nemesis of Devils and Demons.

My questions:

What do you think of this?

Would it be balanced to let the Paladin use his level (not level-3) to determine success?

How would you feel about it, if it used this mechanic?

 

[Terwox]

That mechanic, on a brief look, looks like it might be a little wacky compared to the normal mechanic -- a cleric could level a large room chock full of skeletons and zombies with a single attempt, if they were all in range. You address this -- I think it's just better off w/ a max HD, otherwise it gets weird fast. (Don't change it if it isn't broken and doesn't really add anything, I guess?)

That being said, the idea of paladins banishing outsiders and clerics turning undead sounds darn cool to me. Might be a little funny in play -- generally the paladin or the cleric is the anti-undead person, this adds a little bit of a new role to the paladin and the paladin loses some of her/his anti-undead effectiveness.

I think it's a good flavor shift, though, for sure, although I'm not sure about the mechanic swap being necessary for the flavor shift at all. It seems very unnecessary.

But, if you and your players like the mechanics change, cool!