It's likely fair to say that you've played as many high-ish level A-Ps as I have, several of which were reasonably successful. I'm aware of that, and don't take me as making light of the insight that comes from that below:

>I think it is a safe
>assumption most APs won't bless a spear or polearm, ruining
>the ability to dual wield or use a shield. And unless APs have
>been granted the ability to dual-wield whips and flails
>finally, why would they bless one of those and be stuck with a
>bad parry weapon and shield? Now this is based on another
>assumption. Someone with say an axe for thier unholy weapon,
>is not likely to use another weapon for these skills if he has
>any decent amount of charges in his weapon, it doesn't seem
>like a good trade off. I'm sure someone will of course bless
>other weapons just to be different. I actually recall an arial
>with an unholy whip. So from about 36 on, you have four out of
>six new weapon abilities that the vast majority of APs I don't
>think will use. Maybe it's seems a little number crunching to
>you, just how I view things.

I feel like, to a large degree, you've missed the point to adding the kinds of skills that we did to the anti-paladin class. You're looking at them from the view of the archetypal fire a-p who unholyblesses an axe. You're absolutely right, for such a character, they don't add very much. (Though, Magic Missile for Power Word Despondence is a great trade-up even there.)

In our view, the anti-paladin class wasn't weak -- it just wasn't very diverse or interesting. Virtually everyone was an axe A-P, partly because of cleave, partly because there actually are some merits to going with axe, partly because there are a whole lot of nice giant-appropriate axes available at the higher levels, and partly due to the Cult of Axe mentality. Now, even if you still think axe is the uberweapon, you have to admit that there are at least angles for other weapons to use the A-P skills. There may even be (perish the thought) fights that the felar A-P using a spear or polearm can win that a fire A-P with an axe couldn't.

An aside to other would-be A-Ps: It's probably worth keeping in mind that unholy blessing a weapon isn't like picking a weapon specialization. You're far from stuck with it for the life of your character. I can think of a lot of A-P combination angles of the form, "I wouldn't normally want to bless weapon type X with this kind of A-P, but if I had this and this and that piece of gear, then it would be a good idea." Come up with that combination of gear/cabal/allies/whatever? Go ahead and leech your bless over to take advantage of it. Don't have it anymore? No reason you can't go back to axe if you really want to do it.

As a further vague aside, ignoring the weapon-specific skills and gearing considerations for the moment, my choice weapon for an A-P wouldn't be axe. You're welcome to speculate on which it would be and why if you like.

>One last thing. Saw an AP try to vault while he was on the
>ocean, missed and hurt himself, which was kind of amusing, but
>doesn't make sense for two reasons.

Without giving away all of the fun details: Yes, we did consider the case of a water vault in designing the skill.