I don't like how in 3.0-derived games, paladins can only be lawful good. There should certainly be exemplars of all nine aligments in PF, but there are only exemplars of LG and CE.
The standard response to that among PF players seems to be something along the lines of "just play a warpriest." I find this to be idiotic and I have a feeling that a lot of those players don't understand how the two classes work either mechanically or thematically.
The warpriest is a priest first and a warrior second. He is certainly a better front-line fighter than a the cleric, but he still can't fight as well as paladins, rangers, fighters, barbarians, or a few other classes due to having the 3/4 BAB progression when not using the capstone ability. A paladin is a warrior first and foremost. He serves whatever religion he follows as a secondary concern, primarily focusing on vanquishing the forces of evil.
A paladin's abilities focus on defeating the forces of evil. He uses divine power because that will allow him to defeat the forces of evil more effectively than a non-magical fighter would.
A warpriest's abilities focus on harnessing divine power, primarily through his weapons and armor. He has no specific enemy that he focuses on.
Thematically, a warpriest serves his deity first. A paladin focuses primarily on being a paragon of lawful good, often while also serving a deity.
I understand why the APG only added one variant class for paladin, the antipaladin, but I wish Paizo had added a few others in later books (UC would have been a great book for that). Certainly, they could at least add a few in a Player Companion the same way that they added variant heritages for aasimars, tieflings, and dhampirs.
I definitely would like to see paragons of the Benevolence, Freedom, Order, Balance, Disorder, Domination, and Malevolence in addition to paragons of Justice and Destruction. A LE paladin-type, especially, would be a good class to have, perfect for evil overlord-type characters.
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