Evil player in a good campaign... Smite Good useless?

[Quasnoflaut]

Is this a common problem, or did I stumble into a pretty obvious mistake?
I'm pretty rules-free when it comes to alignment, and usually play pretty rules-light anyway, but on of my players decided to play an antipaladin, and gave him very evil-oriented goals.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/alternate-classes/antipaladin

While it's easy to keep him on-track in this "saving the civilized world" campaign, I'm a little concerned that his class features are all focused on killing "good" creatures when that's honestly not what anyone's ever going to be up against in this campaign...

TLDR: Antipaladin has "smite good" and there's no good to smite.

Would it be fair to just give him "smite anything that's not part of my antipaladin cult?"

[Jaunt]

If he has evil-oriented goals, and nobody good is trying to stop him, uh, maybe that's where you went wrong.

[Duiker]

No it's not fair. Choice have consequences. This is like playing a paladin in Way of the Wicked and then complaining that you are only fighting good guys.

[JohnHawkins]

It is an easily anticipated problem and so one he chose. Smite good is likely to be useless if your allies are good and your objective is to fight evil.
His choice , his problem.
He can always multiclass to fighter to upgrade, or he could have played a warpriest with the same backstory any of these choices would have been more sensible. Presuming you told the player that this was a good vs evil campaign in advance then its his own decision and his problem

[137ben]

Contrary to what Duiker and JohnHawkins have stated, it's not just his problem. You are all in a group together. It is the 'problem' of everyone in your group.

Both Paladin and Antipaladin should have "smite foe". Both are 'balanced' around the assumption that all or almost all of their enemies are vulnerable to their smite. If that assumption is false, then you need to change things to keep the paladin and antipaladin at their intended power level. The simplest way to accomplish that is to just make smite work against everyone. Plus, it makes it much easier for you, because you don't need to decide the alignments of NPCs if it's not important:)

[Pepe, Murderhobo Professionnel]

You're an Antipaladin, why do you even care if you can Smite, stab for the sheer joy of stabbing, eventually if you stab enough something will end up being good.

Patience friend, patience.

[Luthorne]

In the one campaign I've played an antipaladin in, despite being an evil campaign, I've found this crops up a lot. However, unlike paladins, antipaladins have other offensive options such as their touch of corruption and accompanying cruelties, as well as some of their spells, which is one reason Charisma tends, in my experience, to be more important to an antipaladin than a paladin. It can certainly be possible to find it frustrating to have a class feature that isn't used as much, but I do think it's part of the difference between the two classes...even an evil campaign may have you dealing with rival evils as well as neutrals, while good characters are more likely to primarily fight evil with a little neutral here and there.

Edit: In short, evil often winds up fighting everyone, while good mostly fights evil.

[Zhangar]

Short version is, he chose poorly. Did you warn him ahead of time?

Perhaps he could trade out his smite good for smite law? Smite's crazy powerful, so granting him smite with no restrictions probably isn't the best idea.

[Melkiador]

Not all classes work well with all APs. Being a paladin in Hell's Rebels can also be rough, despite the assumption that all of the players are good-leaning, and most of the enemies are evil.

[Cevah]

There are magic items powered by smites. Any flavor. Have one drop.

There are feats that modify smite to let it do other stuff. The antipaladin can choose them.

Not all the "good" guys are willing to let this "EVIL" guy help. If they cause too much problem, well, oops, accidental smite.

/cevah

[LazarX]

Quasnoflaut wrote:

Is this a common problem, or did I stumble into a pretty obvious mistake?

I'm pretty rules-free when it comes to alignment, and usually play pretty rules-light anyway, but on of my players decided to play an antipaladin, and gave him very evil-oriented goals.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/alternate-classes/antipaladin

While it's easy to keep him on-track in this "saving the civilized world" campaign, I'm a little concerned that his class features are all focused on killing "good" creatures when that's honestly not what anyone's ever going to be up against in this campaign...

TLDR: Antipaladin has "smite good" and there's no good to smite.

Would it be fair to just give him "smite anything that's not part of my antipaladin cult?"

Player chose to make an Anti-Paladin... let him live with the consequences. I wouldn't be surprised at one point that since you probably have Good characters in your party he'll be making good use of the ability at a particuarlarly appropriate moment.

[Quasnoflaut]

Wow, I didn't expect this topic to get so much attention. Thanks everyone!

I did tell them ahead of time that he's walking into a good campaign, and it hasn't seemed to cause too much trouble so far as goals go. (the character's current "evil" goal is to search for treasure for his god, so tagging along with good guys is no particular trouble.)

My only concern with balance is that this person also didn't roll particularly well on ability scores (or at least not as well as anyone else) and so mostly hits things with swords till they die. That's not to say it doesn't work, but we also have a fighter who is twice the antipaladin's size and strength score, so I'm worried he feels a tad left out.

My original thought was "nobody likes alignment restrictions," so if we got rid of that altogether, an evil paladin could heal his evil allies, and a good anti paladin could smite his evil foes. However, I see the risk of a "smite anything" so I may offer them a chaos/law smite instead.

Until now, I've almost never considered alignment, but now I have a number of options if the player ever complains about low damage output.

Thanks all very much!

[Quasnoflaut]

I do think however that i will offer feats/multiclassing/smite-specific-drops before I go and change the nature of the ability. Thanks again!

[DM_Blake]

Quasnoflaut wrote:

My only concern with balance is that this person also didn't roll particularly well on ability scores (or at least not as well as anyone else) and so mostly hits things with swords till they die. That's not to say it doesn't work, but we also have a fighter who is twice the antipaladin's size and strength score, so I'm worried he feels a tad left out.

This right here is a whole new problem that has nothing to do with which class a player selects.

Rolling ability scores has created problems since Gygax published Chainmail.

Now you have a big brawny fighter who rolled well and a paladin who didn't and, by your own admission, he feels "a tad left out". He will feel that way for your WHOLE campaign.

Point-buy is the solution. Or else make sure to allow frequent re-rolls for anyone who ""didn't roll particularly well on ability scores" to ensure that everyone ends up being big and brawny.

Then this guy went and chose a character that needs MANY good ability scores. He could have played a sorcerer and survived with only one good score, but he chose a class that needs many. The other guy might have gotten away with it because he rolled well, but this player did not, so he rolled badly and chose his class badly.

Now he's screwed. Let him smite everything. He'll still be screwed and feel left out.

Or let him roll a new character, and make sure he re-rolls if his averages are below the typical averages of other PCs in this group.