I'm putting this here because it's not a full on suggestion so much as something I'm interested in having a discussion on, which may or may not lead to a suggestion. In any case...

I was thinking of Banner of Truce the other day. It's a spell, but I think it could easily qualify as an ability. Anyway, it got me to thinking about banners, symbols. For example, flags have been used through the ages for any number of reasons, including but not limited to rallying people to a cause, inspiring people, raising morale, frightening and intimidating attackers. What if lead were something like this?

Let's say a paladin could align to some ideal or purpose, what she's fighting for or whom she's fighting to protect. It might give rise to a set of tenets that could be represented by a single ideal and thus a single banner. That banner could be used to rally people to the same cause, inspire them and so raise a particular set of their abilities. It may also be used to intimidate opponents, reducing a particular set of their abilities. What's more, we all know paladins are capable of enhancing those effects with a little soul juice even if the notion of how that happens is foreign to them.

If we step back, this could be something that raises stealth/perception/stealing of a group while lowering everyone else's in support of a naturalistic ideal that prizes survival. It could be used to ease casting for a group and hurt others'. It could be used to buff weapon and armor skill or debuff opponents'. It could be used to provide a vitality barrier when someone drops below a certain threshold (useful for triage). These are just examples, and probably not great ones, but I think they help conceptualize.

The benefits of something like this:
* Lead gets solo use because anyone can attest to gaining sometimes almost divine inspiration from objects or symbols
* Lead gains multiple-paladin group use because paladins can align to different ideals
* Lead suddenly does way more than boost offense and defense
* Lead gains non-combat benefits

The negative is lead is awesome in big groups right now, which will likely be nerfed if the effect is normalized to solo/small groups.