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Grey Guards are paladins whose order has trusted them to carry out services of their faith beyond what a regular paladin may be asked. Treading the line between what some consider to be good and evil in order to fully defeat the enemies of their faith, Grey Guards operate in much darker and grittier manners than their paladin associates.
Alignment: Lawful Good or Lawful Neutral. A Grey Guard is no longer bound to behave in a manner that only allows for good aligned characters, being allowed to take his faith into his own hands and pass judgment as he sees fit. A Grey Guard is never punished for staying Lawful Good, but still loses all of his paladin abilities should he commit an evil act. He must still adhere to a code of conduct, but can associate with anyone whom he can trust while on his mission. This replaces the Lawful Good Alignment restriction.
Class Skills: A Grey Guard adds Bluff, Disguise, and Intimidate as class skills.
Aura of Law: This otherwise functions as the paladin's Aura of Good ability.
Detect Evil and Chaos: The Grey Guard can use both Detect Evil and Detect Chaos at will. Only one of these abilities can be used at any one time, this ability otherwise functions as the paladin't Detect Evil ability.
Devastating Touch: A grey guard has the ability to harness healing and harmful energy into his hands, functioning as both the Paladin's Lay on Hands ability as well as the and the Antipaladin's Touch of Corruption ability. This replaces Channel Energy.
Debilitating Touch:When selecting his Mercies, a Grey Guard may select a Mercy as normal or may instead select a Cruelty from the Antipaladin list. This replaces the Mercy gained at 3rd level.
Aura of Persuasion: Starting at 4th level, a Grey Guard adds 1/2 his level to Bluff, Disguise, Diplomacy, and Intimidate checks.
Justice Blade: At 10th level, the Grey Guard's smite becomes more versatile, allowing him to smite any creature of Chaotic alignment as well as Evil alignment. The Grey Guard must select which alignment he is smiting when he declares his target for the smite. This ability replaces Aura of Justice.
Unbound Justice: At 13th level, Becoming even more versatile, the Grey Guard's smite no longer has a restriction on the Alignments he can target for the use of Smite. Smiting a good creature may still result in the Grey Guard losing his paladin abilities however. This ability replaces Aura of Faith.
Aura of Virtue: The Grey Guard gains DR 5/evil and chaotic as well as immunity to compulsion spells and spell like abilities. Each ally within 10 feet gains a +4 morale bonus on saving throws against compulsion effects. This replaces Aura of Righteousness.
Diminished Spellcasting: A Grey Guard has one less spell per day per spell level. If this reduces the number of spells per day below zero, then the Grey Guard cannot cast any spells of that level, even if he would normally be granted a bonus spell slot due to a high ability score. His caster level is treated as his level -4 as a result.
Sacrament of True Faith: At 20th level the Grey Guard has gained complete trust by his faith and may act according to his own judgment and need not atone for violating his code of conduct. If he habitually or continuously acts immorally or completely abandons his faith, he may still lose his class abilities. His DR increases to 10/evil and chaotic and whenever he uses his Lay on Hands or Devastating Touch, he always treats his rolls as the maximum amount. This replaces Holy Champion.
Ah, interesting. I liked that Prestige Class back in the day.
I could be biased, I wasn't a fan of the PrC back in the day, but it rubs me the wrong way on a few pointsIt seems a bit schizophrenic, in that it keeps the iconic paladin DR/Evil and adds chaotic - which in the original were tied to the paladin's uber-close connection with Cosmic Goodness - while ditching various aspects of the paladin's moral fortitude that to me were supposedly represented by those mechanic abilities. If you channel raw malice and miasma with your hands, how exactly are you calling on the resistance of angels? And while the PC can channel negative energy or power his blows to smite anyone, s/he still falls from an evil act... it doesn't really sound internally consistent to me. It's like you don't get power from a god or angel, but from a parliamentary committee.
If the rules on how your power can be used are weakened, I'd expect the other aspects to be a little smudged as well - for example different enhancements on the blade, auras that have to do less with undiluted good and righteousness and more with resolve and vengeance - perhaps picking a few tricks from the cavalier or the inquisitor. Speaking of which - thematically I don't see much of a point. PF already has a class that works as the dirty harry or grim avenger of the church in the inquisitor or the more martial cleric archetypes. How is that archetype different from them?
I could be biased, I wasn't a fan of the PrC back in the day, but it rubs me the wrong way on a few pointsIt seems a bit schizophrenic, in that it keeps the iconic paladin DR/Evil and adds chaotic - which in the original were tied to the paladin's uber-close connection with Cosmic Goodness - while ditching various aspects of the paladin's moral fortitude that to me were supposedly represented by those mechanic abilities. If you channel raw malice and miasma with your hands, how exactly are you calling on the resistance of angels? And while the PC can channel negative energy or power his blows to smite anyone, s/he still falls from an evil act... it doesn't really sound internally consistent to me. It's like you don't get power from a god or angel, but from a parliamentary committee.
If the rules on how your power can be used are weakened, I'd expect the other aspects to be a little smudged as well - for example different enhancements on the blade, auras that have to do less with undiluted good and righteousness and more with resolve and vengeance - perhaps picking a few tricks from the cavalier or the inquisitor. Speaking of which - thematically I don't see much of a point. PF already has a class that works as the dirty harry or grim avenger of the church in the inquisitor or the more martial cleric archetypes. How is that archetype different from them?
Must come from your disdain of the PrC because literally everything I have here came from it.
The point here is that the church or order has put enough faith in you to let you make judgments on your own, and the whole smiting any alignment thing can come from someone who is true neutral and is judged to be a problem by the Grey Guard.