
The Crusader |

I played a Dhampir Knight of the Sepulcher through the first three books of Carrion Crown. (Party wiped in book four, and we dropped the AP.)
As far as making the most of my abilities... Yeah, Smite Good doesn't see a lot of use, unless you go very extracurricular. But, aside from that, I felt like I was able to use everything that comes with the class to good effect.
Roleplaying wasn't an issue. That is most certainly contingent on the player, the DM, and the group. I had a "long term goal" of claiming the power of The Whispering Way for myself (a backstory written with too little information on the the WW and the CC). Through the game, I really played up the chaotic aspect, with the evil being more incidental.
I switched the recovered heart of the the former werewolf chieftain (don't remember any names) with the diseased heart of the werewolf anti-paladin. The diseased heart went to the leader of the "good-guy" werewolves, while the true leader's heart was used to feed a clipping I took from the hangman's tree earlier in the AP.
(Actually, I didn't switch them. I just collected them both. My "too-clever" friends assumed I switched them and decided to "switch them back". My little shell game payed out ENORMOUS entertainment dividends for the DM and myself... especially when I revealed the truth out of character!)

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I played a slightly tweaked Antipaladin in Carrion Crown; using a Lawful Evil alignment, and switching out Smite Good with Smite Chaos. It worked out quite well, for roleplaying. I managed to convince most of the party to sort of help the Whispering Way at the end, for the greater good of course. There were some minor conflicts with the party along the way, but playing 'the big dumb guy' got me far.

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I played a slightly tweaked Antipaladin in Carrion Crown; using a Lawful Evil alignment, and switching out Smite Good with Smite Chaos.
That's a great idea! I've always had a think for for LE 'dark knight' style characters.
Likewise, giving the standard CE antipaladin the choice to smite law would probably see fair use.

Tinkergoth |

@LichLoved
Why didn't you play a hellknight?
Given that Hellknight is a PrC, he may not have wanted to multiclass into one. Additionally they do have somewhat different abilities, if you're looking for something specifically like a Lawful Evil Paladin, then it honestly may be easier to just tweak the Anti-paladin.
While I don't have the Hellknight PrC in front of me, I suspect that there'd be some pretty significant differences in abilities and so on.

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Hellknight does have the same 'Smite Law' deal, but the flavour didn't work for the character, who was quite literally a fallen paladin. He fell during the campaign, like a total loser. He -was- trying to do the right thing, admittedly. But it backfired. However, I found the LE/Smite Chaos/Antipaladin very useful in the campaign, and since its main class ability (smite) wasn't totally useless, since there's actually chaotic monsters to fight, I stayed pretty much on par with my neutral and good aligned party members. I think that's the main reason my DM allowed me to go the Smite Law route -- so I didn't feel TOTALLY useless against a majority of foes that were evil aligned.
As an OOC aside, I find Hellknight a fun and flavourful class, but I generally like antipaladin more. I think it was BECAUSE of the whole Carrion Crown campaign that I ended up liking it so much as a class. I considered playing one in the Way of the Wicked campaign my DM ran as well, but I ended up playing a weird cleric instead. Alas!

leo1925 |

The thing is that in Golarion antipaladins aren't meant and are very incopatible fluff wise with being LE and having smite chaos.
Don't get me wrong, if it works for your group it's super. But for those like me, that are at least somewhat involved in Golarion, the antipaladins simply can't be anything other than CE.
@Tinkergoth
The biggest difference is the divane grace, hellknights don't get it.
Other than that they pretty much are the paladin version of Law.
Yes i know that in Golarion come with prepackaged fluff (although it's a wonderful fluff) and that may drive away some players.

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The thing is that in Golarion antipaladins aren't meant and are very incopatible fluff wise with being LE and having smite chaos.
Don't get me wrong, if it works for your group it's super. But for those like me, that are at least somewhat involved in Golarion, the antipaladins simply can't be anything other than CE.
Our group was very involved in Golarrion. The justification for my character having Smite Chaos, was that, even as an evil son of a b#$#&, he cared more about Law than he did about Evil. However, he still cut a deal with a devil in the process, causing him to fall - which ended up fitting antipaladin a lot more than a hellknight.