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When I wrote Cyric is the Helm of bad guys I meant the role he took, in the Anti-Paladin thing. Helm is one of the 3 major gods for paladins, Tyr and Torm are the other 2, and I though since Torm is the God of paladins, and there isn't a god of Anti-Paladins I thought that Cyric and Bane would share the role... my head hurts...

Oh I'm well aware of that. It's just the idea of Cyric being akin to Helm makes me giggle like a schoolgirl.

I think you're getting a bit caught up in making the 'anti-paladins' mirror the paladins. It's true that the Triad are generally thought of as the Big Three as far as paladins go, but many churches have knightly orders. Even Milil has paladins

Besides, there's no way on Toril that Bane and Cyric would work in an evil triad - you know, what with them gearing up to wage holy war on each other and all that...

I don't think it matters whether or not the groups get along... its almost better if they don't, more rp for ya. And it dosn't matter which evil god is the this or that of evil gods. What does matter is wheather or not it fits their portfolio for them to have this sort of class. And to me the only ones that fit the palidin-esk idea of a knightly order or something are Bane and Cyric. Everyone else is merely a secret sect or cabal or some dark society. I think of it this way, Mask is the Lord of Shadows so he wants the actions of his followers to be hidden, as does Shar. Talos and the rest of the gods of Fury are to unpredictable as is the nature of storms and the rest. For Drow I would say Selvetarm, Lloth might work but she is more into the female priestesses and matron mothers, Selvetarm works... now this could be a cool way to do it since I don't believe there are any other Drow deitites as of right now, correct me if im wrong, but we could have them change their deity name to Selvetarm but still be granted everything by Lloth, i.e. just under a different name. Then if we ever get Selvetarm in game it would just transfer over to him.

Oh I also wanted to say before I go to work that adding Anti-paladins would open up possibalities for every evil religion for example Talos has a special class Stormlords that technically anyone is capable of joining, if you follow Talos that is... but the problem in game, to my belief is that its too close to a paladin in that we are giving spell like powers to fighters and others. If we add this its opens up a wide variety of things that can fall under the catagory but not really be a anti-paladin order.... of course the rp factor should be mandatory for them all....

No of course it doesn't matter if they get along - I was just advising not getting too wedded to the idea of having an exact inverse of the goodly side of things - which is where it seemed to be going.

Personally I'd love to lay some evil smack down on Bane's followers. Pft. Upstart.

Oh and what about Loviatar? Surely she'd fit too...?

I must agree with Kelemvor and with Horace.

I would like to see more Paladins before we have an alternative. Call it a training period. If we can handle Paladins for an extended period of time, then maybe we can have anti paladins.

But if we cannot even handle that at the moment, then I think we should try to get that first.

Adding more classes at this time might not be the most prudent approach. I would like to see the world broadened in the terms of quests and buildings instead of classes.

Perhaps that is just me though. We have so few builders, and the ones we do have, while AWESOME! are still few in number.

Kregor wrote:Here with you...

I'M still pressing for evil rangers of Malar!

bump

Dalvyn wrote:Blackguards/anti-paladins, drow, thieves, tieflings (to a smaller extent), ... all have something in common in my opinion. That "something in common" represents, in my opinion, a potential danger for a "mature" roleplay-based mud. This "something in common" is what I would describe as a high "coolness" factor, or as a high "twink-attractiveness" potential.

I can't help but imagine a 13-year old player thinking out loud "Oh yeah, a blackguard. Now, that's a cool kick-ass character." (replace blackguard with drow/thief/tiefling/...), and I can't help but imagine the very same character being played and roleplayed extremely poorly.

Does that mean that those options are bad? Most likely not. Does that mean that those options shouldn't be opened, just because there is a high risk that most characters using that option will diminish the enjoyment of other players? I guess not. But that at least mean that those options should be carefully thought out before they are available in the game, in my opinion.

A... Paladin doesn't have a 'coolness' factor? *boggle* An Aasimar - descendant from a form of Divinity themselves does not have a 'coolness' factor? *confused* Anything has a coolness factor. Most of this is subject to personal preference and I don't think that's even something that should be discussed if we are to be fair to the idea..

****EDITED TO INCLUDE****
Also, there are plenty of players who would love to make Paladins. There were some people who waited for years IRL to be able to be a full Paladin while they watched others pass them by and become Paladins within the matter of what.. two months?

Similarly, there are players currently who are waiting to play non-existant classes. I'm urging them to continue to be patient. And, while I do agree with patience being the best answer, none can really contend that waiting over a year to become a Paladin seems all that fun?

In D&D, you don't wait to become a Paladin. You ARE a Paladin. It's no prestige and it doesn't require any special stats/feats/etc. Your DM does monitor you. You play around and you find yourself worse off than a fighter. I'm not sure the reason why the wait is so long to become a Paladin. It boggles my mind sometimes and I winced when I talked to some of the other players who had been waiting for so long to be a Paladin. All I could do is console them and suggest they continue to remain patient. One of those players got sick of waiting and decided he would destroy his own RP. To be honest I can't say that I don't blame him.

This is ultimately why I haven't commented on the rogues guild thread because I know how frustrating it is for those players who watch others just 'happen' to always meet the people needed to further their progress. I would _not_ want to play a thief at all if that meant waiting a full year for someone to hook a brotha up.

If someone wants to be a Blackguard that badly, I say more power to them. Let them be a Blackguard if they are willing to spend that much time and detail to a single specific character, more power to them.

I, myself, am not a big fan of jumping through hoops and doing backflips to placate someone else's belief that I 'may not' be able to RP my selection properly. I find it insulting and rather disrespectful and that is why I don't bother playing a Paladin and probably never will play a Blackguard.

Yes, those other options too have some coolness factor. But the difference is that playing them poorly is potentially less destructive to the mud in general than the "evil" options. What I mean by "playing them poorly" is using the archetypal description of those options to justify any in-game act whose only goal is to "win over others". More clearly, playing a thief poorly (e.g., using steal to make other people's game experience miserable), or playing a blackguard/drow poorly (like a bully with no consideration for other people's enjoyment of the game) is more damageable than playing a paladin poorly for example.

As a side comment, if we aren't allowed to discuss "personal preference", I'm not sure why we discuss at all. *boggle*

Edit: forgot the ending *boggle*

How often do you find a poorly RPed paladin? If the person doesn't RP correctly he doesn't become a paladin in the first place. I think the same should go with an Anti-Paladin... Anti-Squires anyone?

Just lay out a decent help-file. WIth the paladin help-file it describes the Paladin and the role they play in Faerun well, and the fact it takes a 'Friendly' charisma level to become a squire, etc.

With the Anti-Paladin help-file just say 'K, Anti-Paladins should behave like this, and this is what is required to become one, and these are the main Anti-Paladin gods'

The Return of Bane!

Velius wrote:How often do you find a poorly RPed paladin? If the person doesn't RP correctly he doesn't become a paladin in the first place. I think the same should go with an Anti-Paladin... Anti-Squires anyone?

Years ago it was very easy to make a paladin this led to many, many poorly rp'd paladins, who did things a paladin should never do. To make the rp worthwhile and more like a proper rp steps were set in place to make sure any character that wants to be a paladin has to work at it and learn. This does not mean there will never be bad or poorly rp'd paladins, but it at least means that there is no excuse for poor paladin behaviors.

A very recent inclusion is the ranger system of apprenticeship, this was introduced to make sure players rp rangers properly and do not just make rangers that rp like fighters or rangers that don't know how to be rangers. Though it has an ic element to it as well. There is far more to it than I am saying, what I have said goes with my observations.

So in answer to your question. You will rarely find a poorly rp'd paladin simply because someone has molded them into proper paladins and not into fighters with prayers. If it takes a bit longer though, it is well worth the wait.

I'd like to comment on this, a little bit.

Everything has a "coolness" factor, that comes and goes. I remember playing when Lord of the Rings was still a banging movie to see, and EVERYONE had blonde-haired, beautiful rangers. Harry Potter comes around, and what do we get? Influx of wizards and their Mox Pollinus or whatever spell-shooting mumbo-jumbo. And yeah, for a little while after introducing the anti-paladin, you'd probably have a surge of them, just like we did squires after we introduced squire lessons. But after seeing the game for five (almost or at least, I'm not quite sure) years, I've come to realize that the well roleplayed people generally stick around, and problem players tend to fall to the wayside. I definitely don't think the potential risk of a certain class, which in my opinion should be monitored like the paladin class, outweighs the potential rewards. Rivalries come to mind, especially with a bulging squire group, and that, if done properly, could be quite an entertaining bit of roleplay.

As for our player base - Never in my time playing have I seen 30 people on the week before school starts. I haven't seen 30 players on at 4:00AM until this summer. I think we're growing fast, and we're doing very good. The time for improvements and suggestions is at hand, so let's take advantage of that.

Just because I have never once before this thread have I ever stated an opinion on this sort of thing.... I think the way we got the paladins set up now is cool. If anything I think more parts of the game should be taught by other characters, and less by the game its self. That has always my aim when I can be around enough to burden the mud with my presence. Wizards should be more like this, as should most faith things in my opinion. And like I said before, this concept of anti-paladins, in my point of view, opens up doors for all sorts of special groups or guilds or what ever you want to call them. It gives us a way to expand the mud but still keep a close hold on the things that make us great, style and quality of rp.

I, too, think the way we have paladins set up is cool-- and that, were it working more smoothly, it would be amazing to have more parts of the game set up that way-- but as Selveem pointed out, there are players who have literally waited OOC years in hopes of becoming paladins, and still remain squires for lack of knights available to train them. Some squires are ICly middle-aged, they've been at it so long, all the while having upheld the code of knightly conduct with none of the mechanical benefits, or the IC badge of honor of being able to call themselves Knights. The paladin seems almost like an extinct species on FK-- my 650-hour Tyrran has never met a single one except for the NPC paladins, at least to my knowledge.

I'm not part of that RP directly, of course, and probably don't have all the information, but I think that un-stagnating the current paladin RP should come before any introduction of anti-paladins. Even if it's something as simple as an NPC paladin approaching the tiny handful of squires who haven't lost hope and gone the way of the fighter after so long and finishing their training with them, I really believe we need paladins before we introduce blackguards. After all, I imagine the start of a blackguard class would involve an RP that made one or two characters blackguards, and those characters would (at least for a while) be around enough to train more, whereas paladin-squires don't seem to have anyone who's able to get online and fill that capacity with any frequency.

Amalia wrote:After all, I imagine the start of a blackguard class would involve an RP that made one or two characters blackguards, and those characters would (at least for a while) be around enough to train more, whereas paladin-squires don't seem to have anyone who's able to get online and fill that capacity with any frequency.

The latter's actually not true - the one knight assigned to train the bulk of us all has been trying mightily, and has set a weekly time and place that they are generally available. But because of cross-ocean schedule differences, it's still slow going, because it all falls on that one PC, and they have many OOC responsibilities. I'm confident that as others become able to help with training, it'll work more smoothly. We had the same problem with the Watch training (and to some extent, still do) - it's hard enough to coordinate schedules for one special RP; it's much harder to do week after week! It would take a very dedicated player to "seed" a blackguard RP, but once one of these self-replicating groups takes a healthy hold, I think it's self-propagating, like the Rangers are (or seem to be, to a non-ranger?!?).

The key is that PCs have to enter into such a class faster than they drop out; unfortunately, the longer the training process, the harder that required continuity is to maintain.

(Posted from a new thread I'd made, not realizing there was a still-active thread about Antipaladins)

With the discussion about opening the Ranger class to evils taking place, I thought it might be a reasonable time to bring up the idea of an RP-intensive evil-only class balanced against Paladins. There are several avenues that such a class could take which I'll try to delve into, but I'll also lay out the good reasons for having them.

Reasons why such a class would be a good idea:

- Encouraging quality RPers to play evils would be beneficial for the game as a whole. As of right now, the most RP-intensive classes are good-only classes. Players who look for an RP challenge, for a class that requires the most work, the most responsibility and the most dedication will tend to go for Rangers and Paladins. In many ways, these are some of our best RPers, and they're naturally drawn to the most challenging classes, it would give them more reason to play evils and hence lead into the next point...

- RP intensive classes tend to produce leaders. Paladins and Rangers tend to be natural leaders when it comes to RP. They set examples, they follow their codes strictly. Good leadership promotes good RP for everyone. Someone who would rather die than betray their creed inspires others to live up to RP ideals. Which leads to...

- Good leaders influence their entire faith/class. Many evil faiths are not particularly active, or lack active leadership. The evils have no analogue to the Waterdeep City Watch. They have no analogue to the Ranger Council. They have no cooperation among their deities akin to that between Torm, Tyr and Ilmater. They have no groupings of Paladins. The Zhents are the best the evils have, and there are very few Zhent players, and by its very nature, their activities are behind the scenes. We need more evil organization, and it needs to be more open and more accessible to the average player. A class that is devoted to developing leadership skills among its players, and provides a challenging and unique RP experience will be singularly well-placed to help bring such organizations into existence and keep them going.

Possible incarnations of such a class
Blackguard type - This is the most familiar type of Anti-Paladin. Lawful evil in nature, he is a fighter who has a divine spellcasting base analagous similar to that of a Paladin. This noble warrior is familiar with heavy weapons, swords and lances, mounted combat, and serves as a divine warrior representing their faith. They adhere to a strict code of honor and work to uphold the ideals set down by their faith, guild leaders, kings, etc.

This class has obvious problems. The creed of the Paladin is extremely strict, and a lawful evil analogue doesn't exactly work. For someone who is Lawful Evil, they have no reason to adhere to the kind of code that a Paladin does, because it simply doesn't translate particularly well. The sort of deities who would sponsor orders of knights like this would be Bane, Loviatar, and perhaps to a lesser extent Shar or Beshaba. That leads to the next type...

Chaos Knight type - This is another sort of Anti-Paladin, but one that is more like a Bizarro version of a Paladin than simply an evil version. While a Paladin is Lawful Good, a Chaos Knight would be chaotic evil. While a Paladin can speak only the truth, a Chaos Knight might be required to speak lies. Where a Paladin can only do good acts, a Chaos Knight can only do evil acts. Whereas a Paladin can never associate with evil, a Chaos Knight can never knowingly associate with good. They must always try to lie, to cheat, to hurt those in need. A Chaos Knight would be like a force of nature. To follow a Chaos Knight would be to submit completely to them, in the hope that they would not turn on you. Completely unpredictable, they would be an awesome force of evil.

Problems - A class dedicated to doing horrible things would be VERY tough to RP for many, and would require a ton of restrictions in terms of RP. This would make a Paladin look like a cake-walk if you wanted to pull it off without simply being a murderer, which is obviously something we definitely don't want. But as Cyricists manage to pull it off, I don't think this is beyond the bounds of the game by any means, no matter how formidable it sounds. Think of them rather, as the ultimate embodiment of the code of deities like Cyric, Talos, Malar or perhaps Shar. They would be tasked with being embodiments of pure evil while still actively and positively contributing to the game.

Arcane Caster/Fighter Combo - This would be a third option, one that would be original to FK, as I've never seen a class very much like it in terms of skills and abilities, though I have seen 'Tyrant-like' classes or prestige classes elsewhere. In many ways it would be more akin to the first combination, and my idea would be something like this. Lawful evil in alignment, this class would be a Tyrant. A noble-born warrior who has devoted him/herself to reaching not only the pinnacle of combat, but is also highly intelligent and charismatic. They've reached beyond the mere physical prowess of a warrior and have managed to become almost a force of nature in terms of their sheer willpower and personality.

This class would have access to several arcane spells, but I would say that for the most part none of them should be stat or skill-buffing spells, no bulls strength or things of that nature. This class is already proficient in combat, they seek something far more than that, power in its most pure and raw forms. Information would be a commodity to this class. Willing servants. The ability to dominate based on reputation alone, to instill fear and subservience in others. The few spells they get would be ones devoted to information and mind-alteration. Charm, Identify, Clairvoyance, Magic Mirror. Their noble bearing, their willpower, their belief in their inevitable destiny as a person of great power and importance in the realms, as well as to an extent their paranoia, their arrogance, their domineering nature, would make them an extremely interesting class to play, as well as make them natural leaders to evil characters in the same way that paladins tend to be leaders of good characters.

Gods like Bane, Talona, Loviatar, Shar, and to a lesser extent Mask and Beshaba, would be perfectly suited to players of this ilk. They'd fit in quite well with the game world, interested in dominating and controlling, not killing or destroying unless it served some specific purpose. The Arcane/Fighter combination would balance quite well against the Divine/Fighter combination represented by Paladins and Rangers, and would offer a unique combination to evil that would be more than just an 'opposite of Paladins or Rangers' for people to get into. This class would be specifically designed not to appeal to power-players, as they'd be less adept at fighting than a normal fighter, and their arcane spells would all be geared towards roleplay.

One way that the class could actively engage one-another and ensure a consistently high quality of roleplay would be to have a council much like that the Rangers have, though there would be far more of a rivalry between the various persons within. Imagine them more like a group of squabbling, selfish medieval lords. They respect one another, and would never tolerate any disrespect to their station by an outsider, but each one is in the end, a rival for power. Several 'fiefdoms' could be established, a certain number of power bases centered around the major cities in the game, Waterdeep, Westgate, Zhentil Keep, Zazesspur, Daggerford, Darromar.

Each Tyrant could represent one city, and new Tyrants would actively train with existing ones to learn noble social customs and bearing, the proper methods of ruling (And this could get into some seriously Machiavellian politicking), methods of wielding arcane power, etc. When a Tyrant comes into his own, he would be tested by the cabal and if he passes, might be granted a fiefdom of his own, or given a subordinate station to another Tyrant if there are no open ones. Tyrants could challenge one-another for more prestigious fiefdoms, or to take over a fiefdom if they have none. These challenges would be formal declarations of war with rules, the point being to force your opponent to submit to you before your peers, to surrender and acknowledge your power, not merely to kill them, for where is the victory in that? In these conflicts, you'd use all of the resources available to you, most especially servants and allies you've gained throughout your life. The most powerful Tyrants would be constantly on the watch, securing alliances with one-another and outsiders against their rivals, but also seeking to increase their collective power.

Anyway, I'll stop talking about this because as I type, I get new ideas and I could probably go on forever. The crux of my argument is that better RP-opportunities for evil players would lure better RPers to play evil characters and would have a positive overall effect upon evil RP, which would have a net positive effect upon good RP. The success of the Ranger council and Paladin training group in improving RP within those classes, the lessons learned, could be instantly applied to a new class.

In the end I think that any class that defines itself as the 'opposite' of another class is kind of silly. Rangers are chaotic and are defined by their love of the wilderness. That doesn't really touch on alignment, so to have evil Rangers is very different from having a sort of Anti-Ranger, which would be someone who say, hates the wilderness for some reason. Similarly to have an Anti-Paladin seems less interesting and three-dimensional to me than to just have another class, whether an original one like the Tyrant or something else, which is evil and has roleplaying standards as high as what is expected of a paladin, regardless of what they do or believe. And in the end, a unique evil class which presents a fun and engaging roleplaying challenge will attract players and benefit the game overall.

How many active paladins are there in the game right now..? Depending how you strictly define active, somewhere around 0.

If we are ever going to have any anti-paladin, I don't see having more than one, which means it'd probably be done by application, amiright?

I'd like to be a paladin. But I might have made some bad choices, not knowing better.

Someone paladin-y care to drop me a PM and discuss? Lathanderite is a bonus.

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Regarding anti-paladins, I suggest this:

Allow a warrior within a religion that follows the doctrines to the letter and spirit to make a choice to become an "anti-paladin." Show through RP that they are legitimate, and not just "R0xx0r! I r teh ebul!"

Isolrem wrote:How many active paladins are there in the game right now..? Depending how you strictly define active, somewhere around 0.

Just because you don't see any paladins around does not mean they are not actively being rp'd when the players in question have the time to do so. People come and go and seasons vary availabilities. One thing is for sure, when someone is back in force it is felt and work begins again. All you need is to be patient and wait and see what happens.

If we are ever going to have any anti-paladin, I don't see having more than one, which means it'd probably be done by application, amiright?

I'd guess there would be more than one. Chances are there will be an ic method to become one and it will need to be decided by those that will admin and work within it.

The problem I am seeing right now is that with the nature of evil faiths we can't really set up a 'anti-paladin school'. Each faith that wants an anti-paladin type order would be setting up its own order. Each one would have to be strictly watched and regulated. Thats work. Now I think it would be well worth it, to me it dosn't matter the numbers of goodie paladins that are in game or active. In fact it has always been my belief that, what better way to invigorate goodie rp than to give them something to work against. That dosn't work for evils, as not all goodie rp is anti-evil or specific enough of a threat to any one evil faith or organization.

Shouldn't consider the number of good paladins currently in-game as a measure of how many evil paladins to allowed. We don't use that with priests of faiths, why restrict other faith classes in such a manner? Granted, there should be restrictions on population...just not that.