The Blackguard, the death knight, the dark knightHow to make them interesting as a PC? Also what is his fucking problem? How does one reach a morality and what are his motivations beyond comically evil for evil's sake?Don't water it down to Chaotic Good
>>93165672Had a death knight PC in one game, not one played by me though. The party'd had contact with abother death knight before, and he'd left us the means to contact him and ask for his help. We were in a pretty desperate situation, and one PC madeyse of those means to ask for help, which turned out to be means to become a deathknight himself. He became pretty indifferent towards issuess of the living afterwards, but being in a situation bad enough for any source of power to seem worth it was his problem and the source of his eventual lack of morality.
>>93165672To me, the antipaladin you're describing is summed up by his rejection to morals that he once believed in, be that they were indeed inpure, or that it caused pain to him or his people, or that a better option has just showed up, in essence, look up "the destroyer archetype, car jung" you might find that this figure is more interesting than most media makes it so.>pic related
>>93165672>How to make them interesting as a PC?They're not supposed to be PCs.
>>93165751I concur with this in a way. People put the idea that the Paladin is a force of "Good" but forget good is relative. If you turn your back on your morals or oaths then that makes you bad, not the fact you burned down an orphanage of kids because they were deemed to be witches.
I like the idea of a craven antipaladin as a PC antihero, but i cant consistently play him as a jerk and he'd end up like that oath of vengeance 5e shit
>>93165672Unironically the scifi equivalent. Ignore how whiny he came off in the prequels and remember his faith in the Force even as a Sith.
>>93165914Blackadder?
>>93165672"He's the guy we send in when the villain is justified."
>>93165672Play him as the hand of judgement - the real one. Not the Paladin who comes in to restore order and bring peace to a troubled land - rather the Paladin who comes in to destroy a corrupted order and leave it smoldering. When the will of Heaven desires to rescind the divine mandate from a king and is not intending on giving it to anyone else in the land. When a city is appointed to be left as a haunt for jackals and night-owls and it's name forgotten to history. >>93165952 and >>93165985are also good interpretations. Vader particularly. "I find your lack of faith disturbing" he said while choking an unbeliever with his mind. It's almost an Elijah at the altar of Baal moment. "If your Deathstar is the ultimate power in the universe why can't it stop me from killing you with my ancient religion".
>>93165672The general field that seems richest is "Anti-Utopianism". Odious realpolitik trying to entrench the "Necessary Evils" the society needs to work in full recognition it is in fact damning them to Hell, anarchists fully aware of the suffering systemic collapse brings blindly hoping that what comes after them is better than what they tear down, sour grapes from some Saint-run commune going to shit because the literally holier-than-thou prick's ideology didn't work in practice...There's a lot of cases to examine how even in a cosmology where Pure And Objective Good exists, it's still not practical for the player's context because scarcity is a bitch and (demi)human nature is too far from that perfection.>>93165884Doesn't belong in the Ontological Cosmic Alignment context the Antipaladin/Blackguard resides in, sorry. There's an Alignment space on your sheet for a reason, that is an objective quality of your character even if the latest edition has doggedly purged the mechanics querying it.
>>93166095>>93166109>>93165985Very insightful. I'm liking the sound of this character.
>>93165672I think you need a motivation other than "I'm evil" or you'll basically just end up with hyper violent Snidely Whiplash.
>>93166109That's quite a verbose way to just say spiteful mutants will be spiteful mutants. However, the Arthas story in WoW was done not from a point of spiteful mutantism but more of a Faustian bargain to save his people. And theres always the point from Carl Schmitt which is a simple friend/enemy distinction.
>>93165672here's your Antipaladin, bro
>>93166311It's not "spiteful mutants", it's giving the Neutrality-pushers a point. When Evil is exclusively for suckers and assholes, it being the dominant side in force-on-force has rather miserable connotations.And funny you cite Arthas as "doing it right" when he's a perfect example of everything WRONG with the standard portrayals. That's not tempting, that's backstabbing the retards who buy utter bullshit. It only worked because he was a maladjusted manchild brain-fucked by maneuvering him through a gauntlet of no-win scenarios.
>>93165672>How does one reach a morality and what are his motivations beyond comically evil for evil's sake?Evil irl is mostly concerned with rather mundane things; wealth, power, sex, etc. Even if your motivation is something darker like sadism you'd fit in with adventurers and mercs. You don't need to be retarded unless your playing low int and low wis. One of my favorite Blackgaurds was basically pic related if you watched the tudors>perfectly sociable and even charming>completely concerned with status, pride and honor>commoners? Who cares lol >seems like a fine lad until he kills you for getting in his way
>>93165672>Don't water it down to Chaotic GoodNah, Fray is based.
>>93165672Paladin betrayed by their God for the greater good, but they don't see it that way. That's how I would write a blackguard.>save my wife/kid>lol no, they grow up to doom the planet >Says who? And after all I've done for you? I'll get you for this.etc.
>>93167203literally who
>>93165672It's supposed to be a fallen paladin. They allow "I'm good" to become their whole identity, and then they reach a point where that part of their identity becomes absolutely unbearable (usually because they've been tested to destruction but there's room for a variety of stories here), and must be discarded with great autistic thoroughness. So "I'm evil" becomes their new identity. You might think they could just hand in their holy avenger and retire to a life of farming (or whoring or whatever), but people don't always break that way, there's this thing you keep hearing from veterans where the more damaged they are the more likely they are to redeploy because they reach a state of mind where peaceful living seems impossible.
>>93165672Frankly just Vlad the Impaler, or Reynald de Chatillon. Holy knights who still very much believe in their God, but whose dark obsessions and proclivities for violence and sadism have put them outside of Heaven's grace and out of their Church's favor. Nevertheless, they pursue their sworn purpose, determined to see what they love preserved and the infidels slain. And perhaps when it is done, they may find redemption at the end of their bleak roads.
Played an oath of treachery paladin in 5e from level 1 - 12. Basically played like a rogue, used medium armor and snuck up on foes. Constantly challenged the party's morals in favour of profit and a more easier path. His crowning achievement is making the party complicit in the murder of hirelings we hired. He convinced the party to leave the hirelings as a sacrifice to pursuing triton cultists. We weren't even that hurt or drained of resources. As a character, it's the obsession for personal power and safety above all else that defines a blackguard.
>>93165672End justify the means type of people that have a clear view on how to make the world a better place and very little regard for the methods used to reach their utopia.Naturally this ultimately leads to atrocities if "successful" since any means necessary often spirals out of control.
>>93178464Both of them were insanely based, so I really don't see the downside.
>>93165672The way I would do it is that a man of the faith cannot reconcile all the evil in the world as their God's intention, that despite all of their high holy powers, they cannot wash away the evil seed that simply being sapient brings. Not that their god is powerless, or even uncaring, just that the world is simply too vile to be permitted to exist, and instead of having faith that they can fix it, they double down on getting as many people killed as possible so that there are measurably less souls damned to existing. The people in the world should not have to be addicted to the gamble of whether or not tomorrow will be better, the vile social order should not be suffered to exist, and every single attempt to preserve life of even a forest creature is damning generation after generation of innocent souls yet to be born to the horror and struggle that is existence.As a PC, you can just do whatever. The ideal goal is far too lofty for a single man to really pursue. So instead, they have to conspire toward it. So what you do, instead of announcing your motivations or anything, you want to make "bad" decisions, not evil ones. The decisions that you know will have consequences that will evacuate as many mortals from their coils as possible, but away from the hands of demons and the like and that which will allow you to continue doing it for as many people as you can."A true hero would kill every last bandit in that cave," you coax the aspiring adventurer, knowing full well he can't kill them all."Your son will never be a good king living like that, he needs to suffer and struggle," you say to the northman regent as his son studies foreign tomes."A desert queen would suit you well," you tell the northman usurper to goad him into waging war across thousands of miles for something incredibly petty.Be an advisor that tells everyone to kill themselves, without being so direct.
>>93178464Vlad is a kino example of an anti paladin the more I think about it
>>93179003Indeed they were, and I for one am quite happy to see that more people recognize Reynald's achievements and qualities. That said I don't think we can lionize him to the degree we can with say, Saint Louis IX. There's no doubt he was still vicious and psychotic, consumed by raging hatred, and probably thought nothing at all of spending lives to achieve an objective. A most compelling man who managed to in his last moment of life use a cup of ice to put egg on the face of Saladin, that most overrated of all medieval figures. But for that darkness in him, I see at the very least a gray paladin.>>93179047This is an interesting approach, albeit flavored with gnostism.
>>93179047Anti-natalism is always faggy and whiny no matter how hard you try to dress it up as LE HARDKORE and GRIMM
>>93165672I like them as unscrupulous individuals who prioritize one goal over everything else. Think Captain Ahab pursuing Moby Dick. They became a paladin in service of achieving that goal, and forsake their vows when it conflicts with achieving their goal. They were only a believer insomuch as it brought them closer to achieving their goals. For example, maybe a rival noble house assassinates the blackguard's entire family and leaves them as the only survivor. The blackguard initially becomes a paladin to get strong enough to bring the rival noble house to justice, but crosses a line when he begins killing not just members of the noble house but anyone who shares even a drop of blood with the nobles. The blackguard is fanatical about achieving his goal, and aligns with the party in service of accomplishing that goal.
Motivation is the easiest part. Could be serving and indebted to a master or even in love with a mistress, whom others perceive as evil. Could be like russians and live under delusion that he and his kind are oppressed and he is fighting a defensive fight.
>>93165672Black Knights are a recurring thing in medieval stories. They take a role similar to a Ronin in Japan. See basically what it is is that a Knight would usually declare what Lord they served under or what House they were a part of somewhere on their armor, usually the shield which would have their family Herald. This wasn't just a means of advertising your social status, it was also about the only way to quickly identify who was who on the battlefield when people are covered in metal plates. SO: if a knight wanted to, for whatever reason, hide their identity it was easiest to just paint the entire armor black. Now, maybe a black knight was someone who stole their armor, or maybe it's a knight who has taken to banditry. Or maybe it's a revenge plot after someone murdered their wife or something. Nobody knows, so it adds a sense of danger and mystery to the Black Knight.
>>93165672If Good and Evil (uppercase) in your setting are ontological forces, rather than just being the human concepts of good and evil (lowercase), then there could be an interesting concept.Maybe human morality has shifted to the point that Evil is considered good in some cases, and Good is considered evil.An antipaladin could be someone who firmly believes that what Evil offers is better for the people and wants to spread Evil for the greater good.
>>93182769Or maybe the knight is just black.
>>93165672i like how Everquest and how ICON does it.In Everquest its the Evil version of a paladin, so they are part of some Evil Knight order devoted to the religion of an evil god (usually inoruuk or cazic thule)Which means that while beeing evil and summoning skeletons, they do have some sort of natural attachment to some manner of order rather than just beeing random assholes.In ICON, they are exactly random assholes and i love it, called the Knave,Basically their entire "Dark Knight" schtick comes from them fighting dirty and beeing total assholes about it.I love that, just the idea of the "Evil Black Dark Knight" and hes just a jerk.Its hard to put into words but i do enjoy the theme of some Chaos Warrior favored by the Black Gods sort of Character who just got there by stealing from peasants and beating up his opponent with an armored gauntlet
>>93165672Generally speaking, severe disappointment after dedicating their life and soul to a cause they cherished, to the point of remaking their whole identity about rejecting the person they once were, until they learn through habit and experience to be the cruel antithesis of that man or woman.
>>93165672AI Art propaganda spam thread, kill yourself faggot. AI driven spam/advertising.
>>93165672A murderhobo that roleplays pretty much
>>93194041Davy Jones as an anti paladin is a good take.
>>93165672Just play as a Hellknight instead.
>>93198169>Golarion settingNah.
>>93198207Than just copy them you nigger.
>>93182769I thought Ronin were closer to knights errant.
>>93189015Better than it should have been.
