Tyrant Antipaladin Orders


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion


I would like some advice on making outright orders of Tyrant-archetype Antipaladins: such as what kind of places could they be based in, what sort of missions they would embark on, what sort of internal relations they might have, etc.


Shadari-77 wrote:
I would like some advice on making outright orders of Tyrant-archetype Antipaladins: such as what kind of places could they be based in, what sort of missions they would embark on, what sort of internal relations they might have, etc.

I think the evil Champions are much harder to design for a game than the good ones. The "good" orders all have the need to cooperate and work together built in and a morality code is fairly simple to understand. There are variations but essentially it is what your mother tells you a good boy does at its core. The issue with the Good orders is to humanize them to make them more relatable so that the game with the Paladin in it does not become a Dudley DooRight cartoon.

Evil orders have the issue that betrayal and not following orders is built in so one has to work out how the order survives. Sure one could say Fear but what happens when the person in charge is taken down. Only if the person who did so is strong enough to control everyone else and has the desire to do that will the order survive this. Odds are that without some overriding philosophical belief to drive these backstabbers to work together then eventually the order falls apart. This means that passing on knowledge and tradition is limited.

This can be handled two ways. One is to assume the orders don't matter. Instead the knowledge of a tyrant or anti Paladin or Death Knight or whatever they call them is found and learned and the character can embrace the abilities of a Champion on his own. This might mean that the evil Gods have to make sure that prospective candidates are given insight or guidance. So appearing in dreams, ordering clerics to hunt for candidates and train them etc. In this fashion it does not matter that the Anti Paladins can't cooperate. This method might be the best option for Chaotic Evil.

The other method is to have orders that have philosophical goals or political goals that transcend simple morality which the evil characters probably don't care about much anyways.

So an order of Hobgoblin Tyrants may wish to bring back the Ancient Hobgoblin kingdom where the truly powerful race ruled the lands with an iron hand. In this case the leader could be betrayed but the remaining hobgoblin Tyrants are more willing to keep the order alive because it is useful in achieving this goal. This is a political goal.

A philosophical goal might be that only the church of insert your God here has the true way for the world. The precepts of this church must be applied by everyone in the land. Maybe other deities should not be worshiped or maybe the church should be the arbiter of justice or maybe this church's God is considered to be in control of designating who should rule. Whateve, it is, the members work toward this goal and so the order survives. Beyond that, betrayal itself, might have to be more carefully done so that the overall philosophical goal is not weakened by it. This is probably more suited to Lawful Evil.

Neutral Evil probably is more a cult of personality type situation.

This means that while you can just say "Oh it is an order of liberators" and the players immediately "get" how it works. It is all about freeing slaves, etc., this won't work for the evil order. Players wont know why the order works together and hey since they are evil they will just do what is evil and betray the order when they get powerful enough. The order had to be defined and essentially there requires some exposition in game where the players are shown what the tenants of that order mean to the group. This creates a code that is political or philosophical to replace the obvious moral code that all good groups will have.

This does not mean this level of nuance can't be applied to good orders. It is just that good orders don't require it to be worked out in order for the player to be part of it.

Just my two cents anyways.


Just purely on the mechanic side, I’ve been considering for a little while that playtest antipaladin had a “hit back when people crit you” reaction and it felt a bit awkward, so instead I’m thinking they could have a “trigger: an ally of yours crits an enemy” reaction.

That way paladins are good at protecting their allies, while antipaladins are good at crushing those who are already suffering.


Ediwir wrote:

Just purely on the mechanic side, I’ve been considering for a little while that playtest antipaladin had a “hit back when people crit you” reaction and it felt a bit awkward, so instead I’m thinking they could have a “trigger: an ally of yours crits an enemy” reaction.

That way paladins are good at protecting their allies, while antipaladins are good at crushing those who are already suffering.

or don't give them a reaction, take the expected DPR or debuff per round from that, and apply it to active abilities, makes them better at being 'champions' in the kind of trial by combat/klingon promotion activities you would expect in most chaotic evil orders.(I'd actually like that for all champions. But my dislike of the reaction tanking aspects of the class is fairly well documented)

For an LE order, take inspiration from both Hell Knight orders and the DnD Dragonlance settings Knights of Takhisis/Knights of Neraka.

NE orders are probably nihilistic or narcissistic cults centered on the planar power being bargained with, that gets a lot trickier. But corruption, subversion and personal gratification would probably be strong themes.

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