So in the group I am currently playing I have had a few players call me a power gamer.  When I asked the opinions of others at the table I was told I do optimize for what I want my characters to do.  Currently I am playing a Aasamir Paladin Protector (Oath of Redemption) at 7th level in the game.  After a comment was made I asked the DM if I was upsetting balance for the other Characters and he basically said yes, he is having to up CR because of my paladin.  The group is 8 characters and am trying to figure out what to replace him with, because there is no way I can not use his full abilities as a player, but don’t want to disrupt the fun for the other players.  I have been playing D&D since 2nd AD&D so there isn’t much I haven’t played.  Any suggestions for something new and creative as a replacement?

a redemption paladin is not a power game character. it is a wannabe life cleric. if you want a fun creative suggestion artificer is amazing. but honestly I would not change because your character is "too powerful". if a paladin is dominating combat, your dm just needs to add some hordes and then you are next to useless. if after that they still complain, then either change,  or better yet, build a sorcadin. they absolutely dominate in combat when built right, and it will show your group what "power gaming" actually is. then when they complain, offer to switch back to your comparatively weak redemption paladin. my advice with a paladin, is to not focus on damage all the time. they can make great emergency healers, and can buff really nicely (especially redemption paladins)

just my 2 cents tho

a redemption paladin is not a power game character. it is a wannabe life cleric. if you want a fun creative suggestion artificer is amazing. but honestly I would not change because your character is "too powerful". if a paladin is dominating combat, your dm just needs to add some hordes and then you are next to useless. if after that they still complain, then either change,  or better yet, build a sorcadin. they absolutely dominate in combat when built right, and it will show your group what "power gaming" actually is. then when they complain, offer to switch back to your comparatively weak redemption paladin. my advice with a paladin, is to not focus on damage all the time. they can make great emergency healers, and can buff really nicely (especially redemption paladins)

just my 2 cents tho

My opinion, which is worth exactly what you’re paying me for it which is nothing.....

Your DM is building every combat encounter to play into your paladin’s strengths, which means he’s building every encounter more or less the same way. Suggest to him that he bring in a large group of opponents who are weaker individually but outnumber the party and see what happens. Also put you up against opponents who fly or do something else to stay out of melee, which is something that your Paladin isn’t optimized to fight. 

The challenge with optimized characters is it’s impossible to optimize them to do everything well. There are some areas where they’ll be weak and if your DM switches things up enough he’ll hit your weaknesses sometimes too.

Quote from Arsenal6258 >>

So in the group I am currently playing I have had a few players call me a power gamer.  When I asked the opinions of others at the table I was told I do optimize for what I want my characters to do.  Currently I am playing a Aasamir Paladin Protector (Oath of Redemption) at 7th level in the game.  After a comment was made I asked the DM if I was upsetting balance for the other Characters and he basically said yes, he is having to up CR because of my paladin.  

They told you that you optimize your characters. The question I have is, do you? And if so, why? Is there some reason why you feel the need to optimize? And do the rest of the players at the table not optimize, or does everyone optimize but your character, just by its nature, happens to have more abilities that act as "I win" buttons than the rest of the party?

Some players just love being efficient and optimizing. One of my best friends growing up was like this. He just liked optimal characters. The also optimized enemies when he was a GM and man, he was the best Champions GM we ever had because of his optimizing ability.

However, I will say this -- when he saw that his optimized effects were OP, he immediately offered to make changes so that his character wasn't outshining the rest of the team. Now to be fair, he didn't see it when HE did it. But I put a villain into the battle that did his exact suite of attacks BACK to him, and after he got one-shotted, he said what was that, and I said, "It was a 14D6 Find Weakness Kick" (which was what HE did), and he said, "Oh, crap. I didn't realize how powerful that was. Maybe I should re-think this."

So the question is -- forget what the DM thinks. What do you think? Do you see yourself as always being the guy who wins every fight for the party? Do you find that no one else gets to share the spotlight in combat? Are you "owning" the battlefield?

If so... then the question is, do you think that is because you have "optimized" your character? Or is it just because you are using your abilities as written in the rules, and any Redemption paladin would be the same?

And if you think it is because you are optimized -- why do you feel the need to optimize? Is it just a mathematical hobby, like it was to that one friend of mine? (He ended up majoring in math and economics in college, so you can see where his heart lies.) Or do you think that if you don't optimize, somehow your character will die or the party will wipe?

I often find people trying to optimize for this 2nd reason. They think the character has to be optimized to just "survive" the game. But if the other characters aren't optimized, and survive, this proves that is not true. And if the DM is upping the CR to account for your optimization, then the optimizing isn't doing you any good, because the higher CR is offsetting it.

So, if you are optimizing (and I can't tell from your post whether you are or not), and you feel that they are right, you are throwing off the balance of the campaign, the question is, are you willing to make the sacrifice to be a little sub-optimal here and there, like my friend did, for the good of the game? Or do you just have to be optimal? In which case it sounds like you are going to need to have some long OOC conversations with the rest of you friends about how to handle this.

Finally, yes, the DM should be able to deal with your character in the ways suggested above. However, the question then becomes, does it make sense that only one member of the party (as described) requires the DM to "deal with" him and not the others?

This happens to me a lot even though I use point buy, rarely multiclass, and use vanilla classes. I attribute the disparity in power from me to the rest of the groups I play with to experience. I have played pretty much every class through tiers 1 and 2, a few into tier 3, and a Wizard to 20 which is arguably the hardest to play well. I have also DM'd all tiers of play with groups of noobs to decades of playing so I have seen it from both sides of the screen. The guy who knows his class is the one who will shine and is why you should ALWAYS start a campaign not higher than level 3 with experienced players (ones who have gone at least to tier 3 with one class from level one) or level 1 for anyone new. One thing you may try is to ask you DM if you or he can make suggestions during of after encounters as to how the other players could have done something better.

you could just play your character differently I suppose? But if you’re going to switch, halfling college of swords bard would be my recommendation to you. Certainly no shortage of fun there, bolster your own attacks and inspire your party. Or just switch to a completely utility bard or wizard and focus on buffing the party, debuffing enemies and controlling the battlefield, they should only be happy about that and maybe you’ll find a new style of play fun.

I'd really like to hear what your DM is using for encounters before I offer too much advice. 8 players is a pretty good sized party and is pretty tricky to balance for in a fight. Is your DM mostly putting you in battles against single large opponents if only to keep from having to manage so many figures on the board? In a head-on battle on flat terrain against a single large opponent a Paladin is probably one of the best damage dealers a party could have. But something broken up with more variety... say something that requires some climbing, or where the party really needs to rely on stealth before things go down, or even something with larger groups of enemies would give the whole party more to do.

8 Players and your Redemption Paladin(wich is basically more of a tank subclass) is the "Optimized" one...

Yeah i call BS on that one personally, either the Dm is doing a really bad job with his encounters, even if he has to Over CR it "because" of you, wich is really unneccesary if you can play the Monsters right,off course if he just play thems as stupid raving HP backs that charge headlong at the party..., no wonders...

Or the Other players really do their job wrong, wich would make your character shine more if he is somewhat efficient at what he does.

Now there is a difference between Powergaming and be efficient.

Power gaming is basically searching and using ANY and ALL mechanical advantage , Shenanigans and combo you can think off to make a character Powerfull, the Minmaxer approach if you will.

Been efficient, is working with the character's strengths and what he is supposed to do and do it well, as a Redemtpion paladin you'd be supposed to be good at covering for your comrades, helping them and take the brunt of the hits for them, so yeah if you do that, you'd be good at it, thats whats expected of the subclass.

You should ask in DETAILS what they mean by you been "optimized" in their eyes, and if they give a random or blanket answer, you can dismiss it as them not having a clue of what they're talking about...

Along the lines of Biowizard's advice, I have always been an optimizer but I have made efforts not to outshine anyone.

I've found it can often be fun to optimize within constraints - start with something that is objectively weaker than most class options. An example would be using a whip (not as a monk...) or being a beastmaster ranger. Disallowing feats - or the flipside where you can only take feats and no stat bumping. Playing a race without a bonus in your primary stat.

Basically, give the other players a head start. Then work to catch up. It can still scratch the optimization itch and you can end up exploring some pretty fun character concepts that you otherwise never might have considered.

One other variable here is tactics. For instance, ideal tactics for a Paladin with PM/Sentinel includes smart positioning and thoughtfully managing your Reaction. You can play a character that is optimally built, but doesn't always do the right thing in battle. Maybe the Paladin always seeks out the strongest enemy on the battlefield or something and ignores all other tactics.

A final thing you can do is optimize for support. Make yourself really awesome at making the rest of the party awesome. I have not yet tried this in 5e and not sure how much you can do with it, but this worked wonders in previous editions.

To Biowizard’s comment yes I am a bit of an optimizer in I come up with the idea of what I want the character to do so that is what I focus on. Earlier I played a Gloomstalker Ranger with specialization in the long bow. So I built him as an ambush archer and focused on that with feats. Was a variant Human so only had his base ASI. We all use heroic rolling not point buy, and I feel that the majority of the group doesn’t really play the character to their full usage. But that’s a different thread topic. 

Honestly the thing that bothers me is that 8 players all of 7 or 8 level with casters throwing fireball of 8d6 but my Paladin is OP because of how hard I hit. 
Great sword of 2d6 + 3d8(Divine Smite 2nd level slot)+11(4 ability +7 Pal lvl)if I activate the Aasimar protector aura is somehow a harder hit then 8d6 from a fireball or lightening bolt arcane casters.

As far as the CR goes and creatures it’s a module so there is no real input other then what the book says

I run 10 players. Tell your DM that you don't balance encounters by muckin' about with monsters. You do it by focusing on the environment. Exhaustion, fire, difficult terrain, fall damage, sudden flight/gravity issues, conditions out of nowhere, timers that restrain you, shifting terrain that puts bad guys 100ft. away from you suddenly, a spawn portal that creates swarms of 4E minion types that die when hit, frost, thunder, water, drowning, suffocation..you get it. Has nothing to do with the monster.

Quote from Arsenal6258 >>

To Biowizard’s comment yes I am a bit of an optimizer in I come up with the idea of what I want the character to do so that is what I focus on. Earlier I played a Gloomstalker Ranger with specialization in the long bow. So I built him as an ambush archer and focused on that with feats. Was a variant Human so only had his base ASI.

Focusing on what you want the character to do is not necessarily optimizing it, unless one means optimizing it for what you want it to do. It's also not related in any direct way to powergaming. For example, one of my players is a naturalist sort of person in real life who likes small animals such as birds and squirrels, and she decided to play a Forest Gnome who can talk to those animals. She has a pet squirrel and she is going Beastmaster Ranger. Now, most people will just see that choice and decide it is not optimized, because Beasmasters are considered underpowered. She also put a higher stat score into her INT rather than CON. This is not a standard way to do it but she wanted the character to be smart.

This suite of choices optimizes her character for "what she wants it to be like" (a smart, animal-loving, nature-protecting Forest Gnome), but the character is not optimized to do max damage in combat. So when you say "what you want it to do" -- which type of optimization are we talking about? From the rest of your text, I assume "what you want your character to do" is to be maxed out in combat. And to your OP question, yes, that is what people often mean when they say "powergamer."

I feel that the majority of the group doesn’t really play the character to their full usage. 

So, the way I read this, you think the rest of the players are not maxing out their characters for brutal combat effectiveness the way you are. I'm sure you'd think that of the gnome character I described above. Your ranger at the same level could probably put out a lot more "DPS" (to use an MMO term) than hers and would be more effective in combat. But I run a roleplay-heavy game, and her character has been effective at that. For example just last session, a group of 4 wolves tried to attack and eat the party and she (with Speak With Animals spell -- probably another one most min-maxers would not take) and an Animal Handling check, she convinced the wolves that the party was not good to eat and they turned away and hunted somewhere else. Thus she took down 4 enemies without firing a shot. The party got full XP for this encounter, as well, btw. I suspect your gloom stalker would still be shooting at them... ahem.

The other thing to remember, from a roleplay perspective, is that always being optimal in every way (stats, skills, equipment, and tactics in combat) may be "effective" for winning battles, but it is not very realistic in character. Real people (and the characters are supposed to represent realistic people) are not fully "optimized" for their profession. Indeed, most people overcome major disadvantages to become successful anyway. You as an optimizer would probably not have made up a deaf Bard, but in the real world, Beethoven composed the most famous music of all time, and could not hear a single note. Beethoven was not "optimized." 

Or, to put it another way, and paraphrase Matt Colville -- sub-optimal characters, and especially sub-optimal play, are far more realistic than characters that are always optimal, all the time. So maybe your friends who seem so inefficient to you, are just RPing and making realistic, rather than cartoonishly over-optimized, characters.

Great sword of 2d6 + 3d8(Divine Smite 2nd level slot)+11(4 ability +7 Pal lvl)if I activate the Aasimar protector aura is somehow a harder hit then 8d6 from a fireball or lightening bolt arcane casters.

You write this as if you were not present in the battles. You are telling us what THEY say. What do you see on the battlefield? Is your character actually putting out more damage more effectively than the 8D6 fireball? Only you can say, since you are actually there to see it.

As far as the CR goes and creatures it’s a module so there is no real input other then what the book says

Right, so the DM's issue is, the book is telling him that this encounter is appropriate for your group of a certain level, he runs it, and you guys own it, and it seems to be because of you. My guess is, it's not just because of you. The books usually assume 5 or so players, not 8, so if your DM is not adjusting upward significantly for the larger team, he'd have a problem no matter what.

But that's kind of beside the point, because the question on the table is whether you should make a new character so you don't disrupt the fun of the group (your OP). And although I applaud the generosity of volunteering to do this, what I'm reading in your other statements it that you are going to max-out and optimize any character you make, and if the rest of the party is more like my Forest Gnome character and not like your uber-gloom-stalker or uber-paladin, you are going to have the same problem no matter what you make up. If you want to optimize and they do not, you are going to outshine them in straight-up, "smashmouth football" style combat every time. If that's the type of adventures you are playing, then this same thing will keep happening.

Quote from Jacked_Goblin >>

I run 10 players. Tell your DM that you don't balance encounters by muckin' about with monsters. You do it by focusing on the environment. Exhaustion, fire, difficult terrain, fall damage, sudden flight/gravity issues, conditions out of nowhere, timers that restrain you, shifting terrain that puts bad guys 100ft. away from you suddenly, a spawn portal that creates swarms of 4E minion types that die when hit, frost, thunder, water, drowning, suffocation..you get it. Has nothing to do with the monster.

 This

Our DM is always making quite the extensive use of terrain or unnatural events.

In our exploration of a Necropolis , we found a Large crypt with a ship in it (Drakkar style) that was floating above the ground with mist surrounding it and 6 12" iron poles on each side with impaled corpses of mummified elfes.

Some kind of Banshee queen appeared on the deck and throwed Spells at us, with the Elf Kebobs springing to life while the Poles where discharging lightning at us, then we saw that the ceiling was actually an Open gigantic Maw that gave view into the Shadowlands and the Banshee fleeing through it with Spectral griffons minions following...

When half of us managed to climb on the ship, we saw the body of One of our Sidekicks NPC's that where lost in the Necropolis and that we where looking for.

So we now had to try to get him off this thing, when 2 Undead Commanders appeared on the bridge, one with heavy armor and enchanted bow firing at us and the other like the Marauder from Doom( barbarian looking with an amrmor that reflected half the damage we dealt to him in combat), before the ship started to lift up into the Portal, with us on it...

So we start fighting Ghosts and those Undeads, while taking Necrotic damahe at the start of each round, cause we where in the Shadowlands.

Managed to take control of the ship and turn it back through the portal, just before it closed...,and it was not easy and it was nerve wracking, but exciting...