regarding Paladins, they didn't "destroy the lore" they rather just expanded on things, prior to 5th edition Paladins where a narrowly defined holy warrior restricted via westren chivalric values. Whichw as totally fine back in the day when D&D was first created, but things have evolved a bit since then, and I'm not just talking society out of the game eaither, as settings such as forgotten realms got more and more complex, the need to address "holy warriors" of other gods etc cropped up and various editions of D&D attempted to work with this in differant ways. AD&D had various kits, third edition had the divine champion presige class, no one cares what 4th edition did, 5th edition approuches this with differant types of vows. the tradtional paladin is an oath of devotation. that is the classic pally with the classic pally rules etc.
There are however other oaths you can make, there's the Oath of the ancients which while it doesn't specificly say, sounds very much like a eleven Paladin, the oath of vengence, which might work for a more evil character. And the supplements have added other opions, including the oath of conquest which honestly works well for lawful evil characters. and the DMG includes rules for "oathbreaker paladins" which yeah.. it's the 5th edition equivilant of the blackguard and is in the DMG for a reason.
So TLDR, no paladins aren't running around serving demons. but lawful evil pallies might exist.
"Back in the day" they realized the need expand the concept of the paladin, it was why it's mirror, the anti-paladin, was created. So this idea that a Paladin must be only Lawful Good was destroyed in the very edition they introduced the paladin in, AD&D not even 2e AD&D but the 1st edition of AD&D. So i am not sure why people are freaking out.
The antithesis of a Paladin does not "destroy the idea that a paladin must be lawful good", it reinforces it. Everything that opposes the ideals of the paladin is represented by the anti-paladin, who must be chaotic evil in 1st.
And I don't even like *that* idea, though it is far more understandable. If you swear yourself to a code of conduct or a set of ideals or a god, you should be lawful. Rigid belief structures and codes are basically the definition of lawful and those are what the very idea of any paladin of any alignment is made of.
But no, 5e doesn't just break the lawful good requirement, it breaks all requirements. Why the hell should a chaotic neutral person care enough to swear themselves to a code of ideals, even ones that could be defined as chaotic neutral. It still represents a total contradiction of both the paladins nature and the alignment they represent itself. Nothing about it makes sense and it's sad to see folks excuse blatantly terrible writing and concepts.
