No Gift, quite right. If there was the gift spell, anyone could do a no-loss victory really easy by simply gifting the paladins over and over. However,, you can master the summoning skill, which, together with Phatom, nets you 3/4 of your paladins stack as a phantom with resurrect ready to use at the cost of 25 mana. So don't worry
Things are not as grim as they seem
Timeback compensates to an extent. It acts the same way as in KBTL, so if you had already used the skill in this round, you can return the unit to the previous one and it will have it. However, the next round, it won't have it if you time back it again, pretty much as it was in KBTL. Besides, Time Back costs 30 mana to return a unit to a previous state, while Phantom is only 25, so Time Back is only useful to recover huge losses on a single stack.
Quite right about the runic stone... no more runic stone. However, there is a new rune giveaway system. In this system there are 4 lines of rune giveaways. The game starts at a random line,and after the game hits the last line, it goes back to the first one it picked. As such, in each 4 levels, each char gains:
Warrior: 24 Might, 16 Spirit and 8 Magic runes - total is 48 (12 per level)
Paladin: 12 Might, 24 Spirit and 12 magic runes - total is 48
Mage: 8 Might, 16 Spirit and 24 magic runes - total 48 again
As for the ress scroll... The Pally doesn't have it anymore. It is replaced by a seemingly worthless peacefulness scroll. Still, the paladin can do a lot of no-loss battles with the skill Resurrection lvl 3 (when only 1 stack suffered casualties) - they just won't count as no-loss in the end result
As for the learning, you're right. The Pally can level up pretty quickly this way. There is a guaranteed Shark Tooth item that gives 5% XP and 5% more gold in battle on the second island when you take your first Sword Bearer as a companion (or whatever they'll call it, like the wives in KBTL) with you, you just need to pay him some courtesy and get amazed by his feat of saving a girl from a shark. You can also restart a few times to get the DEGosh's manual (+5% XP, can spawn in the first area) and start off with a decent +XP per battle. That means 20% + 5% +5% = 30% more xp per battle which is really nice. There are other items that give XP as well, but they're not that easily accessible as these 2.
EDIT: So... I made a small calculation concerning the max +XP per battle (something I really like as well)
Marshal's Memoirs - +5% XP per battle
The Hand of Necropolis - +10% XP per battle, +2 Attack, + 2 Defense, Living (Morale falling by 1 after each battle, rising by 1 if there were Humans or Elves in the opponent's army)
Shark Tooth - +5% XP per battle, +5% gold per battle
Learning skill - 20% XP per battle
So, maximum is +40% XP per battle. That's a really nice boost, there is no doubt about that
Holy anger no longer gives +XP when fighting undead or demons though. It gives a fixed amount of rage and mana each time your unit hits a demon or an undead instead.