Sorry for multiquoting you, but I kinda felt like I needed to. From what I see, Paladins are a quite specific thing, archetypal, with tons of baggage and many necessary tropes. Just like the D&D wizard. I think -and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, sorry if it comes that way- you don't want to play a paladin, you want to play a holy warrior of an specific deity with features that reinforce that, and then you want to call that a paladin. But -from where I'm coming from- that isn't a paladin, that is a holy warrior. A paladin is a virtuous knightly defender of justice or a noble cause. Can a paladin be a holy warrior of a deity? of course, as long as that deity is aligned with good and justice. Does every deity have paladins? I don't think so. Can all deities have dedicated holy warriors? yes. Are all of them paladins? no, they aren't.
The solution is not to remold the paladin into something it isn't, the solution is to have a separate class (Call it Champion or Holy Warrior) to embody that diversity you seek while leaving the paladin be what it is meant to be. Just like with wizards, I don't like them, they are quite specific and reduced into what they do and what kind of characters you can make with them. But I'm happy because I have the sorcerer, the warlock, the druid, the bard and the witch to fill those spaces instead of a watered down class that wouldn't ring true to a wizard fan because it was repurposed for my ends. Why remake something for people who don't like it at the expense of people who like it as it is?
Okay, first of all you
are putting words in my mouth. What makes your super-narrow definition for paladin more valid than my more broadly applicable one? What makes you think all those "necessary tropes", which include among them being a stick in the mud, or "the party babysitter", are a
positive thing?
You are defining the paladin as you think it should be, and make the distinction between a holy warrior and a paladin. Now, I'm not a historian or anything, but I think that's a misleading distinction.
In our reality, Paladins, from what I could tell, are a very specific brand of warriors, they are these big-shot Elite knights that were originally Charlemagne's closest people. They were (again, from what I could tell,) religious, but at their time, almost everyone —especially if they were anybody important in Europe — were also religious. that distinction doesn't speak much to me as a foundation that paladins have to be Lawful Good and serve a Lawful Good deity, at least not any more than if we were discussing those limitations on a Cleric.
What the historical Version
did have, from what I could tell from reading a bit, was similar to what we are referring to as "The code of conduct". Which basically said what Charlemagne thought were the ideal qualities of his warriors. But who's to say that in a fantasy world there wouldn't be someone else to give different qualities of what a paladin is? they aren't the first or the last "rank of elite warriors", not historically and not in fantasy.
I really don't mind if players who want to play the paladin of Valor and Justice have their thing, either. But, like it or not, paladins in RPGs are the default name to the actual representatives of "holy warriors" in the core rulebook. That's why they have features like "Lay on Hands" and divine spells ingrained in them. That is how I see it, and that's how a lot of people happen to (and will) see it, too. If you're already planning on representing the paladin as THE holy warrior, you may as well get it right the first time and not patch it up later.
If you want play a holy warrior, it makes sense to be a paladin, because of this very misrepresentation issue. If the class gives the feel and diversity it should have, normal players shouldn't have to resort to brewing up a "cleric/fighter/bard" combo or something else crazy
just because you don't want to deal with the code of conduct, or
just because you don't want to serve a Lawful Good deity and be Lawful Good++. Can you agree that it's a lot of wasted effort to not be that one type of paladin, that you envision should be "the only one?"
On a final note, making the class more accessible to others, and offering the players more than one way to play it, is not "remolding the class to what it isn't"; rather, it's expanding the concept to a more inclusive perspective, that appeals to a broader audience. Anyone can add almost any impositions on their character if they really wanted to enough, it's messing with those impositions once they are official that is a LOT more work, or require you to have the right group who just doesn't care enough about those limitations to uphold them, and both of those are privileges not every paladin wannabee has.
Because paizo has such a narrowminded view of what a paladin is, it means I can't play the paladin I want with their system. To appeal to their own interests, i'll also discuss the factor of probability - the more specific the requirements you impose, the less odds you have of finding someone who can meet those requirements, which means less people are going to meet those requirements and thus simply not pay a pally.
I agree with you that you should be able to play the paladin the way you envision it, as a devout knight of order and good, divine or otherwise, but not at the cost of everyone else who wants to play it even slightly differently.
To say that not every kind of holy warrior can be a paladin class in an RPG is an old-fashioned bias, because if it's in the core rules, it sets the standard - it
represents the holy warriors, and, until something else comes along to meet the more specific needs of the people, that means it represents
all of the holy warriors. Not just yours or mine. all of them.
Now then, even if you told me that the paladins didn't have to be LG, but must be
either Lawful
or Good, that would speak volumes and expand what you can do with the class - instead of 1 way of being a paladin, Now you have 5, and you can play with what it means to have different codes of conduct, and even be able to make alternative ones for those alignments in the long run as you introduce archetypes, and all of this can make sense intuitively.
In Pathfinder1, the design philosophy I perceived for most class/race options as the game evolved was "let's do anything and everything we could get away with." Except for the paladin, who remained very conservative to it's core concept (with archetypes being "different shapes of sprinkles" that, if they made any change to the code of conduct, were merely "more rules to follow", and not "different rules to follow").
(EDIT: If you think about it, the same company that's trying to sell you
goblins as a new core player race, can't conceive the thought of the paladin acting any different than their hard and fast personality limitations demand you to. And if you adhere to those taboos, the deity you choose gives you even more limitations. It's a step forward but also a slap in the face. All the Different paladins will have to obey these universal laws of the same code of conduct. That is simply absurd.)
Why do other classes get expanded roles and broader applications (i.e. rogue, alchemist) when paladins only get stricter and narrower? Even if they have a deity to customize them, they dress the anathema on top of their "1 size fits all" restrictions. I'm sorry, but I just don't think that's an intelligent way for paizo to go about it. It's a step Backwards more than anything else.
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