I am not at all a fan of the faithful steed base paladin feature. I feel like I'm being forced into 1 build option regardless of subclass. And that's not even mounted combat. The spell doesn't specify that it's a horse, and I can usebit in relatively the same way a Beast master Ranger uses their beast or Artificer uses their steel defender (minus the class specific bits) 

So to be viable every Paladin I build will have to have a summon celestial dire cougar with that stat block to fught alongside with. 

Whatnif I don't want an animal companion to fight with? Am I just stuck with a 5th lvl base feature that's empty and useless? We can have Rangers that aren't forced into animal companion in every build. Wizards who are forced onto familiars. But the paladin class, to get full utility of its base class must always have an animal companion? What a bad decision.

Give me a new 5th lvl base feature and creste the Oath of the faithful traveler that highlights the find steed feature. 

Paladins have always had a warhorse companion. 
And if you don’t like it, and don’t summon it, you’ll be plenty strong. It’s a tough sell arguing that a paladin is underpowered if it’s not using its horse.

Also, they tried making it just a regular spell, but then every divine caster got access to it, and got it before the paladin did. 

And what are you talking about with a celestial cougar? You get the stat block shown by the spell. If you want it to look like a cougar, that’s cool, but it doesn’t change the stats. 

You get Faithful Steed at 5th level. You know what else you get at 5th level? Extra Attack. And 2nd level spell slots. So, quite frankly, I think that your Paladin is going to be just fine without a mount.

Quote from Xalthu >>

Paladins have always had a warhorse companion. 
And if you don’t like it, and don’t summon it, you’ll be plenty strong. It’s a tough sell arguing that a paladin is underpowered if it’s not using its horse.

Also, they tried making it just a regular spell, but then every divine caster got access to it, and got it before the paladin did. 

And what are you talking about with a celestial cougar? You get the stat block shown by the spell. If you want it to look like a cougar, that’s cool, but it doesn’t change the stats. 

 They haven't always had a companion. Just look at the 5e Paladin. Even Tasha's updates didn't include a mount as an optional feature. Leaving it as a spell is fine. If anything it should just be a Paladin exclusive spell than can be opted out of in favor of other spells.

Paladin doesn't need another level 5 feature baked in. If anything they're already getting too many. I don't like the idea that the most optimal way to play Paladin is by having a mount out that was forced on you. "Just don't use it" is silly advice. If you want a mount "just get a spell that gives you a mount" or "just buy one". A dedicated class feature for something that should not be class-defining is just dumb especially since Paladin gets no other features that compliment it. A mount-focused subclass like the Cavalier would be a much better design choice.

Paladins have gotten a warhorse since 1e. It’s always been part of the class. And 1e paladins were still very good, arguably the strongest warrior class, even with a mount as a non-optional class feature. This edition made it a spell, but it’s always been there.

But the big flaw in your logic is in thinking that if there was no mount, they’d get some other ability. This wasn’t an either/or situation. They were going to have a mount, they’ve always had a mount. The question was how to give it to them.

And it’s not forcing you to do anything. Just don’t summon it if you don’t want it. You’ll still be plenty optimized, whatever that means.

Paladins change their spells out on a long rest, which means that any 2014 Paladin with two days of downtime that decides not to take and cast find steed is being just as wasteful with their features as any 1D&D Paladin who decides not to use Faithful Steed. Would you say that said 2014 Paladin is being especially wasteful? No. So a steed isn't any more forced on you in the UA than it was in all of 5e, and nobody seemed to complain about it then.

The feature is fine on the most part, it comes in at the same level as extra attack and 2nd level spell casting, so getting any extra feature at this level is already more, Ranger gets nothing but 2nd level spell casting and extra attack, Barbarian gets 10 foot of extra movement for not wearing heavy armour on top of extra attack and fighter gets an extra feat (which was moved from 6th level to 5th) on top of extra attack.

The only issue I have with the feature, faithful steed, is the same issue I have with a lot of features that grant you the cast of a specific spell, they do not scale with caster level. The casting should scale to your paladin level, so at level 9 it casts as a 3rd level spell, level 13 as a 4th level spell and level 17 as a 5th level spell. At level 17 when you get flying mounts with higher stats, you don't want a free cast of a 2nd level mount, you want a 5th level mount and there really isn't a good reason as to why it should not scale this way.

Quote from CaptainArch >>

Quote from Xalthu >>

Paladins have always had a warhorse companion. 
And if you don’t like it, and don’t summon it, you’ll be plenty strong. It’s a tough sell arguing that a paladin is underpowered if it’s not using its horse.

Also, they tried making it just a regular spell, but then every divine caster got access to it, and got it before the paladin did. 

And what are you talking about with a celestial cougar? You get the stat block shown by the spell. If you want it to look like a cougar, that’s cool, but it doesn’t change the stats. 

 They haven't always had a companion. Just look at the 5e Paladin. Even Tasha's updates didn't include a mount as an optional feature. Leaving it as a spell is fine. If anything it should just be a Paladin exclusive spell than can be opted out of in favor of other spells.

Paladin doesn't need another level 5 feature baked in. If anything they're already getting too many. I don't like the idea that the most optimal way to play Paladin is by having a mount out that was forced on you. "Just don't use it" is silly advice. If you want a mount "just get a spell that gives you a mount" or "just buy one". A dedicated class feature for something that should not be class-defining is just dumb especially since Paladin gets no other features that compliment it. A mount-focused subclass like the Cavalier would be a much better design choice.

 What are you talking about? If the argument is Paladin doesn't have viable power without a mount then that is already the case because 5e Paladins get a steed that costs 0 actions to have attack in battle and can be summoned the day before so doesn't cost a spell slot either. 

There is no requirement for you to use any particular class feature. You can ignore the new 5th level feature - just scratch it out on your character sheet, and be just as good as a 5e Paladin that doesn't use Find Steed.

Quote from Quar1on >>

You get Faithful Steed at 5th level. You know what else you get at 5th level? Extra Attack. And 2nd level spell slots. So, quite frankly, I think that your Paladin is going to be just fine without a mount.

 This is a pretty good argument for dropping it altogether, really. Paladins just don't need Find Steed as a freebie, it works well as a spell they can cast if they want a mount.

Quote from scatterbraind >>

Quote from Quar1on >>

You get Faithful Steed at 5th level. You know what else you get at 5th level? Extra Attack. And 2nd level spell slots. So, quite frankly, I think that your Paladin is going to be just fine without a mount.

 This is a pretty good argument for dropping it altogether, really. Paladins just don't need Find Steed as a freebie, it works well as a spell they can cast if they want a mount.

Yeah, I guess. I don't really care if they can cast it for free or not, so long as it's a Paladin exclusive.