What spells to pick as a wizard 20 assassin type character?

[gooddragon1]

If I were going to play as a wizard 20 and be an assassin, what spells would I pick. I figure since I don't want to be an assassin because it requires evil alignment and the april fools version is not taken seriously some times that a wizard should be able to do it.

[Forrestfire]

Scry, Greater Teleport, and some of the myriad instant-kill or disable spells, most likely. If you dip into Unseen Seer, or take the Spontaneous Divination ACF and get a custom Runestaff, the Hunter's Eye spell is useful for granting you sneak attack, for stealthy gish combat.

[Eloel]

Ice Assassin, because the name is so tempting, and the spell is stupidly good, even for the very steep xp cost.

[Karl Aegis]

Love's Pain and Mind Rape.

[Kraken]

You'll want all day shapechange. To get the most out of shapechange you'll need to hit caster level 25, which is expensive if you only have access to the core rulebooks, or pretty easy if you have access to more books. Once you're at CL 25, you'll want a method to cast and extend shapechange twice, so you've got it running all day. In core, a pearl of power and greater extend rod suffice for this, giving you shapechange for over 16 hours of the day. Because wizards need to spend 9 hours doing nothing to get their spells (8 to rest, 1 to prepare), 16 hours is more than enough to cover your whole adventuring day. Once all day shapechange is achieved, shapechange into a nightmare and astrally project yourself. Scry on your mark. Once youre ready to move, shapechange into one of the various monsters with plane shift to go to the plane you want, then shapechange into something that can teleport at will, buff yourself as needed, and drop in on your mark. Remember, you're doing all this with an entirely expendable astrally projected copy of yourself, so as long as you've properly secured your astrally projected body while going after your mark, you can take as many attempts as you need.

[gooddragon1]

Love's Pain and Mind Rape.

Not unless I want to get banned from the game...

I want a sort of hands on approach in combat that an assassin would have. Kind of like altair from assassin's creed?
Shapechange gives me an idea though. Shapechanging into something that can use death effects over and over. Problem is that I don't want to raise charisma to bump the DCs... Regrettable that it doesn't have the feel of the skyrim-esque killcam with a dagger sneak kill from behind (slitting throat), but at least I don't have to be evil to do it.

[Forrestfire]

Overall, to play an assassin in the sense of Altair, I would skip Wizard 20, and build a gish. In this case, Wizard 5/Incantatrix 4/Spellsword 4/Abjurant Champion 5/Unseen Seer 2 (note: this build is assuming a level 20 start, since that's all I've got to go on. In a lower-level game, I'd build something entirely different). 18th-level Wizard casting and BAB +16 exactly (assuming fractional BAB; +14 without it; still decent enough).

Get the Spontaneous Divination ACF off of Wizard, and eventually grab the Hunter's Eye spell off of Unseen Seer's Advanced Learning ability. With Practiced Spellcaster, an Orange Ioun Stone, and a UMD'd Prayer Bead of Karma, your caster level for the spell will be 25, getting you Sneak Attack +8d6 (which Unseen Seer buffs to +9d6). You can persist the spell with Incantatrix, becoming a roguish gish.

Important spells to have are Mind Blank, Greater/Superior Invisibility (persistable with Incantatrix), and Foresight. These will let you sneak around super-stealthily, while avoiding being ambushed yourself. The next important spell, here, is Finger of Death. Normally it wouldn't be a super-amazing spell, but in this case, we've taken Spellsword levels for the purposes of Channel Spell. 3 times per day, you can stick a spell in a weapon as a move action, and it remains charged for 8 hours. The next enemy you hit with it is affected by the spell for free, as if you'd cast it. So, you can invisibly sneak up on someone, and stab them with a full attack of your hidden blade, opening with a Finger of Death on top of your sneak attack damage.

Overall, it uses a lot of cheese potential, but the Incantatrix part of the build could easily be dropped and replaced with something else; overall, the only thing you lose from this concept itself is all-day sneak attack, instead having to burn a spell slot and a swift action for +7d6 (upped to 8d6 by Unseen Seer) sneak attack on the round you attack. Not the end of the world... And you're still a wizard on top of that.

EDIT: I just realized that if you use a hidden blade like Altair's, which "replaces" his finger visually, you channel Finger of Death through your finger of death. :smallbiggrin:

[sideswipe]

Overall, to play an assassin in the sense of Altair, I would skip Wizard 20, and build a gish. In this case, Wizard 5/Incantatrix 4/Spellsword 4/Abjurant Champion 5/Unseen Seer 2 (note: this build is assuming a level 20 start, since that's all I've got to go on. In a lower-level game, I'd build something entirely different). 18th-level Wizard casting and BAB +16 exactly (assuming fractional BAB; +14 without it; still decent enough).

Get the Spontaneous Divination ACF off of Wizard, and eventually grab the Hunter's Eye spell off of Unseen Seer's Advanced Learning ability. With Practiced Spellcaster, an Orange Ioun Stone, and a UMD'd Prayer Bead of Karma, your caster level for the spell will be 25, getting you Sneak Attack +8d6 (which Unseen Seer buffs to +9d6). You can persist the spell with Incantatrix, becoming a roguish gish.

Important spells to have are Mind Blank, Greater/Superior Invisibility (persistable with Incantatrix), and Foresight. These will let you sneak around super-stealthily, while avoiding being ambushed yourself. The next important spell, here, is Finger of Death. Normally it wouldn't be a super-amazing spell, but in this case, we've taken Spellsword levels for the purposes of Channel Spell. 3 times per day, you can stick a spell in a weapon as a move action, and it remains charged for 8 hours. The next enemy you hit with it is affected by the spell for free, as if you'd cast it. So, you can invisibly sneak up on someone, and stab them with a full attack of your hidden blade, opening with a Finger of Death on top of your sneak attack damage.

Overall, it uses a lot of cheese potential, but the Incantatrix part of the build could easily be dropped and replaced with something else; overall, the only thing you lose from this concept itself is all-day sneak attack, instead having to burn a spell slot and a swift action for +7d6 (upped to 8d6 by Unseen Seer) sneak attack on the round you attack. Not the end of the world... And you're still a wizard on top of that.

EDIT: I just realized that if you use a hidden blade like Altair's, which "replaces" his finger visually, you channel Finger of Death through your finger of death. :smallbiggrin:

well actually your first build you did give you BAB 20 and +6 str as long as you took 1 feat.....

[Forrestfire]

Yeah, I guess that does work. Arcane Disciple (War) -> Persisted Divine Power. When incantatrix is around, things get silly.