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Behold_the_Void
2009-10-09, 11:30 AM
I've heard the Assassin from the DDI exclusive content is overpowered. A player of mine is asking to play one, I've initially nixed it based on my own review but I admit my system mastery isn't huge as far as 4e goes and I literally looked over it while he was looking over my shoulder waiting for a judgment so I'm asking for a bit of a second opinion since I'm not entirely convinced that it is overpowered, but I can see why some consider it to be.

So. Is Assassin actually overpowered, and if so, how much?

Mando Knight
2009-10-09, 11:32 AM
I don't think it is overpowered. If you force characters to camp out for half a minute between each attack, then yes, it is overpowered. Remember that all of the accumulated shades drop after dealing the bonus damage.

Grynning
2009-10-09, 11:33 AM
It's not overpowered. Certainly won't overshadow any rogues or rangers, both of which are better striker classes.

However, if you don't have DDI and your player does, you are within your rights to restrict material you don't have access too. That said, if you're DM'ing 4th, I highly recommend a DDI subscription, it's very useful.

Behold_the_Void
2009-10-09, 11:36 AM
I have the subscription, it was just happening right after a game and the player really wanted to play an Assassin and was bugging me about it. I'll probably review it more in-depth later, but Playgrounders usually have a good idea of what is and is not overpowering.

Artanis
2009-10-09, 12:09 PM
*looks up Assassin's Shroud*

Meh, it just looks like Hunter's Quarry, only more versatile and more likely to be wasted.

Not Five
2009-10-09, 12:43 PM
It's really not overpowered, and I honestly can't see how someone could even arrive at that conclusion.

Kurald Galain
2009-10-09, 12:47 PM
It's really not overpowered, and I honestly can't see how someone could even arrive at that conclusion.

I can. The top damage for an assassin is obviously higher than for, say, a rogue, because that means expending all your shrouds in one round (and hitting). What the people who arrive at that conclusion are missing is that to get to this top damage, you need to work for a few rounds, thus your average damage ends up being lower.

Meek
2009-10-09, 12:50 PM
If an Assassin gets only one shroud on a guy, he/she keeps up with a Ranger or Warlock through the heroic tier. By paragon and epic, however, it begins falling behind as it has to place more shrouds to keep up with the other guys, so it has to wait more turns to deal the big damage. So it's not overpowered. It uses control elements and movement capability to make up for the long waits by being able to spread damage and crippling around the battlefield, while it waits for the shrouds to add up.

A Barbarian can just walk up to a guy and put a mordenkrad or something right between its eyes every round, which deals more damage than that.

Artanis
2009-10-09, 01:14 PM
If an Assassin gets only one shroud on a guy, he/she keeps up with a Ranger or Warlock through the heroic tier. By paragon and epic, however, it begins falling behind as it has to place more shrouds to keep up with the other guys, so it has to wait more turns to deal the big damage. So it's not overpowered. It uses control elements and movement capability to make up for the long waits by being able to spread damage and crippling around the battlefield, while it waits for the shrouds to add up.

A Barbarian can just walk up to a guy and put a mordenkrad or something right between its eyes for more damage than that.

AS's damage scales almost identically to that of HQ and Curse. In fact, you can shroud->attack every turn to wind up with an almost identical bonus-damage output as HQ and Curse.

AS's big disadvantage is its nontrivial action cost compared to HQ and Curse, as well as the two having advantages of their own (you can Curse multiple targets and HQ WILL go off due to the absurd number of attacks Rangers get). Its big advantages are that you can Shroud anything, instead of just the nearest target, and that can get that average damage without attacking your Shroud target every turn (as opposed to other ones, which totally waste a turn's worth of potential damage if they stab a minion or something).

I'd say it works out pretty even in the end :smallbiggrin:

Thajocoth
2009-10-09, 04:29 PM
They only cast one shroud per round.

How this will generally play out (Case A):

Turn 1:
Assassin puts shroud on target.
Assassin invokes shroud and attacks the target, dealing an extra 1d6 if he hits with his/her attack.
Enemy no longer has any shrouds on them.

Turn 2:
See Turn 1.

-----

Against a really hard-to-hit enemy (Case B):

Turns 1-3:
Assassin puts shroud on target.
Assassin attacks target without invoking his/her shrouds, dealing no bonus damage if he/she hits.

Turn 4:
Assassin puts shroud on target.
Assassin attacks target, invoking his/her shrouds, dealing 4d6 bonus damage if they hit and 3d6 bonus damage if they miss.
Enemy no longer has any shrouds on them.

Turn 5:
See Turn 1.

-----

So, in case A, the Assassin is dealing an extra 1d6 damage per round if they hit. In case B, the Assassin is dealing an extra 3d6-4d6 damage over 4 rounds with their shrouds, with the last 1d6 being contingent on hitting.

Tiki Snakes
2009-10-09, 05:27 PM
Plus they aren't exactly tough. If they get caught out, things are going to get horizontal quite quickly.

Mando Knight
2009-10-09, 05:54 PM
They only cast one shroud per round.

How this will generally play out (Case A):

Turn 1:
Assassin puts shroud on target.
Assassin invokes shroud and attacks the target, dealing an extra 1d6 if he hits with his/her attack.
Enemy no longer has any shrouds on them.

Turn 2:
See Turn 1.

-----

Against a really hard-to-hit enemy (Case B):

Turns 1-3:
Assassin puts shroud on target.
Assassin attacks target without invoking his/her shrouds, dealing no bonus damage if he/she hits.

Turn 4:
Assassin puts shroud on target.
Assassin attacks target, invoking his/her shrouds, dealing 4d6 bonus damage if they hit and 3d6 bonus damage if they miss.
Enemy no longer has any shrouds on them.

Turn 5:
See Turn 1.

-----

So, in case A, the Assassin is dealing an extra 1d6 damage per round if they hit. In case B, the Assassin is dealing an extra 3d6-4d6 damage over 4 rounds with their shrouds, with the last 1d6 being contingent on hitting.

Or, case C:
Turns 1-3:
Assassin places shrouds on the clod of meat, teleports around to attack minions and things that can be flanked.

Turn 4:
With some help from Defender-Man, flanks and attacks Meat-Monster for MASSIVE DAMAGE.

Thajocoth
2009-10-09, 06:14 PM
Or, case C:
Turns 1-3:
Assassin places shrouds on the clod of meat, teleports around to attack minions and things that can be flanked.

Turn 4:
With some help from Defender-Man, flanks and attacks Meat-Monster for MASSIVE DAMAGE.

Case C still deals the same level of bonus damage and still takes 4 turns, so it's really just as good as Cases A & B. But yeah, it's a 3rd case.

Not Five
2009-10-09, 11:37 PM
Or, case C:
Turns 1-3:
Assassin places shrouds on the clod of meat, teleports around to attack minions and things that can be flanked.

Turn 4:
With some help from Defender-Man, flanks and attacks Meat-Monster for MASSIVE DAMAGE.

Yes. You can choose between doing okay damage all the time, or doing sub-par damage most of the time and great damage a little bit of the time.

If you go for that sort of damage-spike routine, you will still deal some damage on your fourth-turn misses. As a result, your case C does deal slightly more damage on average than if you had invoked your shroud each turn...

...but doing so requires considerably greater planning and forethought to use optimally, and if you don't have that level of tactical acumen you'll end up being less effective all told than if you'd just invoked one or two shrouds at a time.

Mando Knight
2009-10-10, 01:14 AM
If you go for that sort of damage-spike routine, you will still deal some damage on your fourth-turn misses. As a result, your case C does deal slightly more damage on average than if you had invoked your shroud each turn...

Case C is (mostly) in case there's a bunch of minions or targets you can get easy flanking bonuses on. By skipping about the battlefield while racking up shrouds on the primary target, you're helping to wear down the enemy faster, especially if the primary is a harder target to take down (like an Elite or Solo, or even a standard Soldier...). By helping your allies clear out the field before unleashing your full damage potential, you help yourself in that it'll be easier for them to get to a position where you can teleport over and flank the big guy.

Thajocoth
2009-10-10, 01:48 AM
Case C is (mostly) in case there's a bunch of minions or targets you can get easy flanking bonuses on. By skipping about the battlefield while racking up shrouds on the primary target, you're helping to wear down the enemy faster, especially if the primary is a harder target to take down (like an Elite or Solo, or even a standard Soldier...). By helping your allies clear out the field before unleashing your full damage potential, you help yourself in that it'll be easier for them to get to a position where you can teleport over and flank the big guy.

The PCs usually don't know what an enemy's rank is. Occasionally someone will roll knowledge checks, but usually not. They'll realize a minion is a minion when it dies in one hit. They'll realize a monster is at minimum Elite when it spends an action point, and that it's solo when it spends a second one. Most of the time, that is. This level of planning, really, is not plausible, as the players will usually only make guesses. Yeah, they CAN roll DC 15 + 5/tier knowledge checks on everyone in the field... It's just, after 3 or 4 battles of that, PCs tend to stop doing it... And the Assassin's relying mostly on their allies for this knowledge.

quillbreaker
2009-10-10, 02:31 AM
The PCs usually don't know what an enemy's rank is. Occasionally someone will roll knowledge checks, but usually not. They'll realize a minion is a minion when it dies in one hit. They'll realize a monster is at minimum Elite when it spends an action point, and that it's solo when it spends a second one. Most of the time, that is. This level of planning, really, is not plausible, as the players will usually only make guesses. Yeah, they CAN roll DC 15 + 5/tier knowledge checks on everyone in the field... It's just, after 3 or 4 battles of that, PCs tend to stop doing it... And the Assassin's relying mostly on their allies for this knowledge.

4th being a miniatures game, it really depends on how you represent your minions as to how visually indistinct they are. In the games I've run and the games I've seen, your chances of guessing right were pretty good. If you're fighting an in-level encounter and there's more than 2 or 3 of the same miniature, and there's also other stuff in the encounter, then the odds are good that they are minions.

Plus, there arn't that many MMs published yet, are there?

Kurald Galain
2009-10-10, 03:27 AM
The PCs usually don't know what an enemy's rank is. Occasionally someone will roll knowledge checks, but usually not. They'll realize a minion is a minion when it dies in one hit.

We usually realize something is a minion because it is being represented by candy instead of by an actual figure. Most DMs in my area (myself excepted) believe that the game is unbalanced if you don't tell the players whether a monster is a minion or not.

Artanis
2009-10-10, 11:04 AM
Plus, if something dies when you look at it funny, it's probably a minion :smallcool:

quillbreaker
2009-10-10, 01:40 PM
Plus, if something dies when you look at it funny, it's probably a minion :smallcool:

And that's what I was just thinking, although this topic probably deserves a separate thread. If you're an experienced combatant, and you turn a corner and see a foe, and if his defense is so crappy that he'll go down in a hit, you should be able to tell pretty quickly. And if there's a large group of foes, and a couple of them are young, weak, subordinate, frail, or of low rank, you should probably be able to tell that too, if only because the others boss them around.

Yakk
2009-10-10, 02:08 PM
The "one shroud, one attack" pattern deals 3.5 at heroic, 6.5 at paragon, and 9.5 at epic per turn you hit. This increases to 4/7.5/11 if you take the damage-increasing feat.

Rangers deal 3.5/7/10.5, and often make two attacks (and can apply the damage to either). This increases to 4.5/9/13.5 once they take the damage-increasing feat.

Warlock damage is similar to Ranger damage, but they instead attack multiple targets and deal the curse two whichever is hit.

Rogue special is 7/10.5/17.5 (increased to 9/13.5/22.5 with the damage-increasing feat), but requires your weapon be a light blade, and they lack multiple-hit powers.

Assassin special damage keeps up by miss damage; if you have a 50% hit chance, the average special damage of the Ranger is:
2.6/6.8/10.1
Rogue (65% hit chance):
4.6/8.8/14.6
Assassin (4 shrouds):
3.1/6.6/9.7
All assuming you take the damage-increasing feat by paragon (but not for the heroic numbers).

Assassins get lots of magic tricks, but lack the multi-tap features of the Ranger.