RTGoodman
2009-03-09, 01:13 PM
Today Dragon released a pretty big and much-anticipated article, the one all about assassins. Here's a link (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20090309) for those that have D&DI accounts. I haven't had time to read EVERYTHING in it, but overall it seems pretty neat. Here's a little review:
We start off with some standard flavor text, and then just right into a couple of paragraphs about assassins in D&D history and in-game. The coolest part, of course, is the side-bar that suggests DMs and players add in "new" secret languages like Thieves' Cant and Beggars' Cant and stuff, which I've always liked anyway. We also get a BUNCH of new Backgrounds that you can take to add training in a certain skill, get a bonus to a skill, or learn a new language. Pretty standard fare. We also get, since we can't have a D&D without it (:smallsigh:), a nice little section telling how we can play Good, Lawful Good, or Unaligned assassins, and that Evil and Chaotic Evil assassins are villains to defeat.
The real meat of the article is next - the feats. There are something like 14 new standard feats (6 Heroic, 5 Paragon, and 3 Epic), most of which are decent to good, but not overpowered. There are also six [Guild] feats which give you skill bonuses AND give you some synergy with other PCs that have the same feat. (With Grasping Magpies, for instance, you get a +4 bonus on Thievery checks from an ally with the sme feat Aiding Another, rather than just +2.) We further get a whopping TWENTY [Multiclass] feats - five sets of four feats each. Two are weapon-specific (Garrote and Blowgun), like the Spiked Chain one in the Shadar-Kai article, while the other three let you mutliclass into "multiclass-only" classes (like the Spellscarred in FR) - Poisoner, Bravo, and Cutthroat. Bravo seems pretty cool and lets you designate your prey, against which you deal more damage and stuff, and its attack powers let you choose an at-will to use with them and just up the damage and effects. I haven't read the others to see if they do the same, but I like that idea.
After that we, of course, have thirteen MORE feats - martial-only "technique" feats like we've seen before that just augment. After that we get a couple of new Paragon Paths (one for Druids, one for Warlocks), and THEN a section on new equipment (two weapons, a handful of mundane equipment), and a few new Alchemical Items, too,
Basically, this article introduces a TON of new options. It's definitely worth a look if you can access it. And to boot, I don't see, on a cursory glance, anything that looks terribly broken, either. Thoughts on "Art of the Kill."
We start off with some standard flavor text, and then just right into a couple of paragraphs about assassins in D&D history and in-game. The coolest part, of course, is the side-bar that suggests DMs and players add in "new" secret languages like Thieves' Cant and Beggars' Cant and stuff, which I've always liked anyway. We also get a BUNCH of new Backgrounds that you can take to add training in a certain skill, get a bonus to a skill, or learn a new language. Pretty standard fare. We also get, since we can't have a D&D without it (:smallsigh:), a nice little section telling how we can play Good, Lawful Good, or Unaligned assassins, and that Evil and Chaotic Evil assassins are villains to defeat.
The real meat of the article is next - the feats. There are something like 14 new standard feats (6 Heroic, 5 Paragon, and 3 Epic), most of which are decent to good, but not overpowered. There are also six [Guild] feats which give you skill bonuses AND give you some synergy with other PCs that have the same feat. (With Grasping Magpies, for instance, you get a +4 bonus on Thievery checks from an ally with the sme feat Aiding Another, rather than just +2.) We further get a whopping TWENTY [Multiclass] feats - five sets of four feats each. Two are weapon-specific (Garrote and Blowgun), like the Spiked Chain one in the Shadar-Kai article, while the other three let you mutliclass into "multiclass-only" classes (like the Spellscarred in FR) - Poisoner, Bravo, and Cutthroat. Bravo seems pretty cool and lets you designate your prey, against which you deal more damage and stuff, and its attack powers let you choose an at-will to use with them and just up the damage and effects. I haven't read the others to see if they do the same, but I like that idea.
After that we, of course, have thirteen MORE feats - martial-only "technique" feats like we've seen before that just augment. After that we get a couple of new Paragon Paths (one for Druids, one for Warlocks), and THEN a section on new equipment (two weapons, a handful of mundane equipment), and a few new Alchemical Items, too,
Basically, this article introduces a TON of new options. It's definitely worth a look if you can access it. And to boot, I don't see, on a cursory glance, anything that looks terribly broken, either. Thoughts on "Art of the Kill."