It's an over-complication to niggle on and on about the tiniest of circumstances--the vanishingly small split-second when one button might be pressed instead of another in that hardly ever circumstance of an attempted assassination on a PC who happens to be resting and has a bad amulet equipped--versus all the almost infinitely more common times when that same PC is walking around with extra buffing.
I'd like to point out that I am responding to the idea that there is nothing to talk about with the amulet's penalty; that this penalty is meaningless or trivial. That is what some of you are trying to assert.
Ours is the much lighter task of simply finding meaningful scenarios where the penalty matters, and if we find these, we've disproved your assertion. These "niggles" are counter-points over blanket assertions.
It is an adage on the server that the fight you lose is when you fight on the other person's terms. Hence, in this narrow circumstance that the attacker has watched and learned the paladin's pattern down to the second when her wards are down, when she swaps her equipment, and catches her right as she is about to nap...odds are she was going to lose any way. No matter what button she pressed.
And yet a -3 AC and -3 saves could make a difference. For one it might be the difference between an Assassin succeeding or failing his Death Attack. It may make the difference with secondary or tertiary attacks in a flurry.
I've had a Wizard survive a Time Stop gank, back when Time Stop victims could still be damaged, while she was unbuffed. She was lucky: secondary and tertiary flurry attacks missed. If she had been suffering -3 AC and -3 saves, the gank might have killed her. If I'd had to remember to press one more button to get rid of -3 AC and -3 saves, the gank might have killed her.
The
real argument here should be about whether the penalty is proportionate to the advantage gained... and I've already pointed out, it is easy to exaggerate how useful this amulet actually is. The most powerful spells that a Paladin gets at level 3 is Righteous Fury, but you only ever need one spell slot for that, since you can only cast it on yourself. After that, further spell slots merely cast spells that can be matched by potion or alchemy buffs, or enchantments.
When she is prepared, however, and fighting on her own terms, both PvP and PvE, you have succeeded in making a class (paladin) that is already over-whelming in that circumstance, even more powerful.
This is mere vague hyperbole. This argument could be made against adding any item for any strong class.
The facts of the matter are, if you don't trivialise the gank scenario or overstate the advantage of a level 3 Paladin spell slot, the item is not that big of a deal. If my level 20 Paladin had it, the only real use he'd have for it is to give someone else a Greater Magic Weapon buff, which is what a Wizard or Cleric can do -- and I doubt we'd be having this level of exaggeration and hullabaloo about an item granting a Wizard one level 3 slot.
If anything, this item is great for low/mid levels but not that useful for high levels, so precisely the kind of content some people have been clamouring for.