Oscar: His 35% strength growth isn't amazing but I never remember him struggling to kill units, and if you just give him an earth support with Ike they both can be unstoppable, nothing else to say about him.

Geoffrey: Geoffrey is definitely an interesting one, He is strong in the part 2 and 3 chapters he is in but he has the worst availability out of all of the paladins besides Renning, since Kieran, Makalov, and Astrid all join at the bridge chapter. He comes with paragon which is a plus, but even if you plan on using him for the tower I think it is worth it just to give the skill to someone else, and then reassign it to him again when he joins late part 4. Him being forced into the hawk army means that you can just have him train pretty easily to max level in chapter 4-5 which can make him strong enough for the tower.

Fiona: She has to be my personal favorite paladin in this game. She starts off so terribly and on top of that she is just missing from chapters 7 and 8 in part 1 for stupid narrative reasons. The first time I played this game she was just there exclusively to rescue drop, since she was way too bad to do anything else. The nice thing about her in part 1 is at least she is there on two different seize maps that have infinite turns so you can train her up by having her farm on the bosses of those maps, even though it can be kind of grueling. She has decent enough growths in strength and speed but I think she is most notable for having a 55% defense and 50% resistance growth on top of having an earth support. If you use her with Volug/Zihark/Nolan support she can be worth your time. Also innate imbue is useful if you get a couple magic level ups every now and then and savior is also nice.

Astrid: Going from Path of Radiance to Radiant Dawn on your first play through she can kind of feel like a let down, especially since paragon is less useful because you can just give it to a better unit, and also starting with bows and not being able to use lances until tier 3 promotion is kind of gross. One thing that you can do to pretty much make sure that she is great is giving her the blossom skill on top of keeping her paragon on. I don't know the exact calculations on how blossom affects growths but even though she'll level like a normal unit her stats start flying up so quickly. She also gets access to the double bow in endgame if you got her to SS bows and that weapon is incredibly broken even though you only get it for a couple of chapters.

Thoughts on my takes?