Grimoire Paladin (3.5e Alternate Class Feature)

Grimoire Paladin
Summary::You trade some of the protection of your deity to punish the enemies of your faith.

Class: ]]

Level: 2nd

Replaces: If you select this class feature, you lose the Divine Grace and Divine Health class abilities.

Benefit: At second level, your smite class feature changes to the following:

Once per day, a paladin may attempt to smite evil with one normal melee attack. Activating this is a free action which affects the next melee attack which the paladin makes. The effect depends on the alignment difference between the paladin and their target:


 * Same as paladin: The smite attack is resolved as a normal melee attack. The ability is still expended.
 * One step away from paladin: The paladin adds their Charisma modifier to the attack roll for the smite attack, and if it hits, it deals additional damage equal to one-half their paladin level.
 * More than one step away from paladin: As above, except the paladin instead deals additional damage on a hit equal to their paladin level.

If the target is an outsider with the evil subtype, an evil dragon or an undead creature, the paladin deals additional damage on a hit equal to twice their paladin level regardless of alignment differences (although for attack roll bonuses, this rule still applies, however unlikely it is to matter).

Smite damage is not multiplied on a critical hit, but is doubled if wielding a two-handed weapon.

Additionally, if the target does not possess the same alignment as the paladin, they become the paladin's chosen enemy until the end of the encounter. Each round, the paladin can add bonus damage to any attacks against their chosen enemy as if they were smiting them again (although they don't get the attack roll bonus). A paladin can do this twice per round. If a paladin gains iterative attacks from BAB, increase the number of times they can do this by two per round per iterative attack gained from BAB (4 at +6 BAB, 6 at +11 BAB, and so on).

If a paladin defeats their chosen foe (they surrender, are knocked out, etc), the paladin regains that use of smite evil for the day. Note that the paladin does not have to do this personally (although they prefer it that way).

At 5th level, and at every 5 levels after that, a paladin can smite evil one more time each day, to a maximum of 5 times per day at 20th level.

At third level, you gain the following ability:

Ranged Smite : You gain the ability to use smite evil with ranged weapons, though doing so halves the bonus damage that would be dealt from the ability (rounding up).