An antipaladin who kicks puppies, takes candy from babies, and sews political discord in lawful good kingdoms. He slaps his own mother for making him a pie. Murderhobo's have nothing on this guy.
But occasionally he helps an old lady across the street or tosses his unfinished hunk if bread at a starving orphan instead of peeing on him while crumbling the bread up and making a paste with the crumbs and orphan tears to feed his hell hounds. (Which he totally also does, but not all the time cause, you know, he's busy and stuff.)
So what do y'all think? Certainly he would fall. Probably also alignment shift to neutral?
So what do y'all think? Certainly he would fall. Probably also alignment shift to neutral?
I need more details. Why is he helping the old lady across the street. Is he leading her to the dark alley to mug here? Out to steal her kidney? Or does it just make him feel good? Its really the worst if its that last one, then he's the worst kind of selfish jerk. The one who pretends to be a good guy while serving his own dark interest with no care for law or the better of mankind...
I'd say that it is harder to accidentally fall into goodness than it is to fall into evil (although Antipaladins, like paladins, are special cases since their abilities are tied to being a very particular and intense type of chaotic evil; you might have problems with that instead, but that would be more a class thing than a straight alignment thing).
Just because he occasionally treats someone kindly does not mean that he doesn't usually eviscerate them. And the fact is that he is not trying to be a better person. He is not even trying to be a normal person. If anything, this is more a sign of being chaotic, since he doesn't always have to do the most evil thing since it is, quite honestly, tiring.
And the listed acts are hardly even that good, since you could easily see a vapid and selfish person doing them in order to give himself an ego boost for being such a 'good person.' Volunteering for the soup kitchen once to impress a girl is different from doing it every weekend.
Now, if he put himself in an environment where he only had little old ladies to help and orphans to feed, and he had some personal code to help in those circumstances, then it would be easier for him to slip.
He definitely does these acts to make himself feel awesome about himself. So motives do matter?
Won't somebody please think of the true neutral characters?
It takes more than one or two acts of an opposing alignment to make you switch, unless they're really massive and important actions. Of which, it's hard to think of a "good" version that doesn't involve self-sacrifice, at which point the evil person is dead, so who's team he's on is kind of moot.
In any case, it's fine if a villain does some good things. Few people are 100% 24/7 evil (and in a game where Evil is an actual subtype for outsiders, who are literally made of evil, you could argue it's impossible for other creatures like humanoids to ever quite reach that level...maybe ones with an alignment aura as a class feature like cleric and anti-paladin...). And even if he is, he could be doing the good acts solely as a cover so others don't suspect him of being the villain.
Or it could be accidental / reflexive, to his consternation and annoyance. "Damnit, I didn't mean to stick my arms out and catch that kid falling out the window! It just...happened... I was so in shock and disgust I didn't even have the wherewithal to spike the kid's head into the pavement before he jumped down and ran off 'thanking me'..." *shudders in horror* "I'm not like that! That's not who I am!"
I appreciate the ironic mirroring of that other thread. Characters can be friendly, helpful and charming and still be evil because of, I dunno, all the murders/torture/puppy punting or something.
However the Antipaladin code does state that he loses all class features except proficiencies if he "willingly and altruistically commits good acts". This seems a bit daft really, putting a any sort of rigid moral code onto a Chaotic Evil character. So RAW they could still be full-on scenery-chewing laughing-maniacally EVIL but if they do anything moderately good without an alterior motive they fall. This is at least as silly as some interpretations of Paladinhood.
So he does it to make himself feel better, and possibly you make himself to look better since both of these acts seemed fairly public. Yeah, that seems to be in line with an antipaladin's generally selfish nature.
This is particularly true since this is only occasional acts on an individual level. Helping kids save the local community center and help a school of underprivileged youths start a chorus might be pushing it though.
An antipaladin can also totally save an orphanage from being burned down by bandits if he thinks they looked at him funny and feels that the cries of the burning orphans might be too noisy for him to get to sleep. He can also do it if he has a nice, large audience, and he thinks it might help him be elected to the role of mayor (which he would later use to construct a series of buildings that form a summoning circle for a demon lord).
In the end, your goal is to cause death and destruction. Another interesting aspect of that though is that you could also target that death and destruction. Racism makes a fine model for an evil individual to show favoritism towards certain groups (human orphans, human grannies) while wrecking everything else (elf orphans, halfing grannies). It does stink a bit of lawful evil though. So these things can be rather flexible, even when it is defined as...not.
Although... admittedly, the dwarves are still considered 'lawful good' despite their general belief in racism and genocide(they are the ones that drove the orcs to the surface, and they also completely decimated the previous orc society and slaughtered all the kind and wise members who stayed behind to stop the bearded hoard while the young and weak fled)
I appreciate the ironic mirroring of that other thread. Characters can be friendly, helpful and charming and still be evil because of, I dunno, all the murders/torture/puppy punting or something.
However the Antipaladin code does state that he loses all class features except proficiencies if he "willingly and altruistically commits good acts". This seems a bit daft really, putting a any sort of rigid moral code onto a Chaotic Evil character. So RAW they could still be full-on scenery-chewing laughing-maniacally EVIL but if they do anything moderately good without an alterior motive they fall. This is at least as silly as some interpretations of Paladinhood.
This is an antipaladin. They are the one class that is literally "evil for the evulz".
Note that assassins and other "must be evil" classes don't have this restriction. Antipaladins are a special case. it takes a special sort of deranged monster to fully embrace evil the way an antipaladin does.
In the words of Meatloaf: Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.
He says the same thing about boys, which makes it slightly less misogynistic ;)
But absolutely, it is much easier for evil people to commit good acts and remain evil than the reverse. Committing a good act with evil motives is much less "tainting" to evil than doing evil with the intent to do good. Because evil is already tainted. Doing something good for the wrong reasons is still wrong on a certain level, particularly if it leads to more evil in the end.
This is why it's harder to be good and follow the narrow path than it is to be evil. Being good requires being good all of the time; being evil is as easy as taking a short cut, or even stumbling too hard.
But on a more practical level, evil can be cooperative and even helpful, even Chaotic Evil. Helping other people is not an inherently good act, especially if it's done for selfish reasons. To act from a position of absolute selfishness and misanthropy at all times would be insanely suicidal. While Lawful Evil may best exemplify the position of cynical manipulation, even Chaotic characters can interact productively with other creatures.
So I think then, by strict reading of antipaladin code, that he does fall. He probably stays evil though. Is there an evil version of atonement?
Is there an evil version of atonement?
Atonement. You can atone to change to any alignment to. Did I mention alignment rules are dumb lately? Also, its really hard to get an antipaladin to fall because of this bit below. They can pretty much do whatever they want as long as its 'service of his own ends'.
This does not mean that an antipaladin cannot take actions someone else might qualify as good, only that such actions must always be in service of his own dark ends.
Is there an evil version of atonement?Atonement. You can atone to change to any alignment to. Did I mention alignment rules are dumb lately? Also, its really hard to get an antipaladin to fall because of this bit below. They can pretty much do whatever they want as long as its 'service of his own ends'.
This does not mean that an antipaladin cannot take actions someone else might qualify as good, only that such actions must always be in service of his own dark ends.
It would seem that the alignment rules are pretty dumb. It would also seem to be compounded by players understanding of the words "good" and "evil" in a general sense instead of the game definitions. Oh well.
I think alignment rules are fine. Antipaladin code by the other hand is silly.
It would seem that the alignment rules are pretty dumb. It would also seem to be compounded by players understanding of the words "good" and "evil" in a general sense instead of the game definitions. Oh well.Is there an evil version of atonement?Atonement. You can atone to change to any alignment to. Did I mention alignment rules are dumb lately? Also, its really hard to get an antipaladin to fall because of this bit below. They can pretty much do whatever they want as long as its 'service of his own ends'.
This does not mean that an antipaladin cannot take actions someone else might qualify as good, only that such actions must always be in service of his own dark ends.
Meh, that is a problem along every axis. I mean, can one be lawful by being a fanatic over the River Freedoms? Can a lawful character not like freedom and democracy? Does a lawful person fall if they jay walk?
I do like the system though, since you have to negotiate around these things. Morality is never easy, and placing an arbitrary system there can help to make you think about these thing.
I do like the system though, since you have to negotiate around these things. Morality is never easy, and placing an arbitrary system there can help to make you think about these thing.
I love having conversations about subjective morality with other human beings who might disagree and argue with me and applying them objectively too! Especially when they could've been entirely avoided and I could've just been playing the game and enjoying myself.[/sarcasm]
An antipaladin who kicks puppies, takes candy from babies, and sews political discord in lawful good kingdoms. He slaps his own mother for making him a pie. Murderhobo's have nothing on this guy.
But occasionally he helps an old lady across the street or tosses his unfinished hunk if bread at a starving orphan instead of peeing on him while crumbling the bread up and making a paste with the crumbs and orphan tears to feed his hell hounds. (Which he totally also does, but not all the time cause, you know, he's busy and stuff.)
So what do y'all think? Certainly he would fall. Probably also alignment shift to neutral?
Certainly an evil person can commit good acts and remain evil, especially if those good acts are used to cover greater evil.
Isn't following a code willfully performing a lawful act, and thus something atonement worthy for an anti-paladin?
Anti-paladins are just a big ole bag of dumb. Quite possibly my least favorite thing about the entire game.
A paladin can fall by breaking his code and remain lawful good.
I'd say the same thing is possible for an AP, and remain CE.
An antipaladin who kicks puppies, takes candy from babies, and sews political discord in lawful good kingdoms. He slaps his own mother for making him a pie. Murderhobo's have nothing on this guy.
But occasionally he helps an old lady across the street or tosses his unfinished hunk if bread at a starving orphan instead of peeing on him while crumbling the bread up and making a paste with the crumbs and orphan tears to feed his hell hounds. (Which he totally also does, but not all the time cause, you know, he's busy and stuff.)
So what do y'all think? Certainly he would fall. Probably also alignment shift to neutral?
Why in the world he should fall? Evil characters have loves and affects. Or just a personal view that impose them to be gallant with ladies, this doesn't mean he's a better person in an instant.
Do antipaladins "fall" or do they "rise"?
Well, I don't see overland flight on their spell list so I think they fall like everyone else when tripped.
In before Zhayne declares that any use or mention of alignment is badwrongfun.
Ninja beat him to it.
Atonement. You can atone to change to any alignment to. Did I mention alignment rules are dumb lately?
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You can find a system in This Sourcebook which covers exactly these kinds of issues, if you're into that kind of thing.