I'm playing around with an Anti-Paladin as a recurring villian for my party (actually a bow-weilding Gnome Anti-Paladin Synthesist, but that's besides the point), and I was looking over the Anti-Paladin rules for the first time... man, do they get screwed with Touch of Cruelty.
First off, a touch attack that does 1d6/2 levels of damage? He'd be better off Smiting and head-butting his foe. And the 'cruelties' aren't cumulative? AND HE CAN'T USE IT TO SELF-HEAL???
Lay on Hands is WAY better.
Aura of Despair isn't so bad I guess.
Anyway, I think I'm going to go with an 'evil Paladin' rather than an 'Anti-Paladin'... its always been my view that Paladin's were mortal vessels for their God's powers - not just Lawful Good Gods. What's th egeneral consensus on that, having Chaotic Good, Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil Paladins? All you would have to do is switch around some of the Alignment-dependant powers, correct?
See this is why he's an anti-paladin and not "a paladin but evil" -- these two things are not the same.
A paladin but evil would be a lawful evil paladin -- something that is antithetical to the paladin would be chaotic evil and not have any means to heal since that is what a paladin does.
Personally paladins are lawful good, full stop. Now if you want to have a LN justicar, or a LE tyrant, or a CG Liberator I'm alright with that (with some power changing) but paladins are lawful good.
Get him a channeling weapon and add it to his attacks.
The Conductive weapon property from the APG allows the anti-paladin to use Touch of Cruelty through a successful hit once per round at the cost of two uses of the ability. It helps a little to offset how much better Lay on Hands is.
The necromantic affinity feat from the inner sea world guide would let you use your touch of corruption ability to heal yourself, as someone said above if an antipaladin can heal himself with negative energy i would let them use it as a swift action on themselves as lay on hands.
I used an anti-paladin bbeg against my group of level 8 PC's (level 9 dhampir anti-paladin plus some babau demons) and only used touch of corruption once, but the dazed cruelty came into play nicely against one of the PC's. This will be a recurring villain, so I look forward to having some more fun playing him against the PC's as he/they level up.
power of the anti paladin is the aura of despair
Drop a lich or vampire template (hecky any undead template) on your anti-paladin. His negative energy should be able to heal himself then, plus Charisma replacing Con really synergizes well with the class.
I don't really have any particular problem with ToC given that healing is not a particularly powerful force in PF. Honestly, the Cruelties are very powerful as is and there's no good reason to say that LoH is superior given the options available. They are very different, but have rough parity.
I have a problem with the more limited spell list of the Anti-Paladin, but not the core abilities of the class.
I'm playing around with an Anti-Paladin as a recurring villian for my party (actually a bow-weilding Gnome Anti-Paladin Synthesist, but that's besides the point), and I was looking over the Anti-Paladin rules for the first time... man, do they get screwed with Touch of Cruelty.
First off, a touch attack that does 1d6/2 levels of damage? He'd be better off Smiting and head-butting his foe. And the 'cruelties' aren't cumulative? AND HE CAN'T USE IT TO SELF-HEAL???
Lay on Hands is WAY better.
Aura of Despair isn't so bad I guess.
You forgot about Fiendish Boon -- the fiendish servant version is way, way better than the paladin's mount, at least at higher levels. For instance, a 13th level antipaladin gets a 12 HD advanced bebelith or a 16 HD advanced fiendish roc and a 13th level paladin gets an 11 HD....horse. Oh wait, a celestial horse.
On a more humorous note... http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=3518.0
