I love seeing someone else pick up on that comparison of the 4e encounter healing (whether Cleric or Warlord) to Gandalf keeping up the spirits of the defenders of Minas Tirith. For me it's one of the really strong thematic aspects of 4e. We don't have to just pretend that these characters are interacting and supporting each other during the fight - we actually see it happening in front of us, through the action declarations and resolutions!my character was all over the battlefield, throwing down the daily right off the bat (because it gave his companions a bonus to all defenses), then handing out saving throws and pulling people from the brink of death. It was almost like Gandalf racing back and forth, keeping the team working. You know, like a boss.
Well in practice I think one of STR or CHA gets dumped. The CHA paladin in my game that went to 30th ended up with STR 14. And my STR paladin I played at low Heroic and then at low-to-mid Paragon had middling CHA.An advantage of the essentials classes is that their ability scores were more focused. A Cavalier just had to worry about STR and CHA (and really, just STR), while a core paladin had to worry about STR, CHA, and WIS.
In the PHB there are some levels where there are no suitable powers for a STR paladin, but DIvine Power fixed that, and I think before it came out I fixed it for my STR paladin by multi-classing into Warlord.