Paladin Spell Suggestions and S&B Enhancements

[KKDragonLord]

I am very glad to see Paladins being actually decent at doing specialized things such as fighting Evil Outsiders or Undead, or even Tanking!
By decent, i mean coming close to doing those things almost as well as the more Strictly DPS oriented classes, at least theoretically.

While it is perfect to have a niche role that can make players adapt to different styles of play, allowing people the option of counting on the paladin to do what its strictly set out to do.

It feels like the class is still behind the curve and it may be the time to bring up a new spell with an improvement to attack speed.

3rd Circle Spell
Righteous Fury: "+3% sacred bonus to attack speed for every 4/CL max 15% at 20"

This could allow the class to get past the point where it only has comparable DPS when it is fully focused on fighting specific enemies (albeit common ones) or it can only Tank as long as it invests so much in doing it (generating fictional Threat values) that it turns out being less dangerous than a club wielding wizard.

While this would certainly help though, S&B still requires a bit more "punch".

To address that my suggestion is this:
Tier IV enhancement
Greater Sacred Defense alternate option: Doublestrike bonus while wielding a shield 10/20/30% (go pistachios!)


PS: I haven't checked every single class or build in detail to see where exactly is the Pally on the power curve, obviously, and i am not suggesting it should completely outshine everyone ever, these numbers are placeholder concepts that can go lower or higher as appropriate.

Ultimately, to get at least two good 2nd Lvl spells in the class list, my suggestion is:

"Shield Other"
Paladin selects one ally, every damage taken by the ally is halved and the Paladin takes half that amount.

"Aura of Glory"
Paladin (and Allies who have line of sight to the paladin having received this buff during casting) heals 1hp per second and get +paladin charisma bonus to charisma based skills, turn undead and Saves vs spells from evil aligned foes. This healing can naturally be enhanced with spell bonuses.