Need suggestions about assassin ACF

[redking]

If an assassins guild prohibited poison use on religious, cultural or other grounds, what feature could I give player character that is approximately the same strength of the assassin Poison Use and save bonuses to poison? Something that I can just give in exchange for the lost ability.

[Gorthawar]

A rogue can get poison use for trapfinding. A ranger can get trapfinding instead of track. So perhaps track or if more appropriate urban tracking?

[Analytica]

Some sort of sniper feat or Track? Or a scaling bonus (+1/level?) to Disguise?

[Saintheart]

Craven plus free skill tricks?

[Biggus]

A +1 bonus to a skill in place of the +1 bonus against poison would be balanced, skill feats generally give a total of +3 to +5 points (Skill Focus, Alertness, Open Minded) and the feat Resist Poison (PGtF) gives +4 to saves against poison, so they're about the same strength.

[Doctor Despair]

The ability to craft/administer ravages?

[Telonius]

Allow Death Attack to apply to ranged weapons.

[Doctor Despair]

Allow Death Attack to apply to ranged weapons.

Technically, you can still use thrown weapons even with standard death attack, but allowing it on crossbows and bows would be a huge boon for sure -- for those with sufficient spot checks to take advantage of that.

[redking]

Allow Death Attack to apply to ranged weapons.

I found a Pathfinder feat that allows ranged death attacks (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/3rd-party-feats/louis-porter-jr-design/combat-feats-3rd-party-louis-porter-jr/ranged-death-attack-combat/) but I'm left wondering what the implications of such an ability might be. It seems like a cool capstone ability, but the death attack class feature goes out of its way to exclude ranged attacks, so I wonder if it is considered too powerful or too destabilizing for gameplay. Any thoughts?

[Doctor Despair]

I found a Pathfinder feat that allows ranged death attacks (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/3rd-party-feats/louis-porter-jr-design/combat-feats-3rd-party-louis-porter-jr/ranged-death-attack-combat/) but I'm left wondering what the implications of such an ability might be. It seems like a cool capstone ability, but the death attack class feature goes out of its way to exclude ranged attacks, so I wonder if it is considered too powerful or too destabilizing for gameplay. Any thoughts?

It was probably a decision made for a few reasons

1. It's unfun to die to a SoD during a surprise round, and that becomes infinitely more likely when DA can be made from hundreds of feet away

2. It's unfun for the rest of the party to watch the Assassin wipe the entire enemy group from stealth, which can definitely happen with ranged DA. That's an issue for long ranged sniper builds in general, but they may have wanted to not incentivize that play style

[redking]

It was probably a decision made for a few reasons

1. It's unfun to die to a SoD during a surprise round, and that becomes infinitely more likely when DA can be made from hundreds of feet away

2. It's unfun for the rest of the party to watch the Assassin wipe the entire enemy group from stealth, which can definitely happen with ranged DA. That's an issue for long ranged sniper builds in general, but they may have wanted to not incentivize that play style

Yes - that would suck pretty bad. This feat puts some restrictions on it, for example, maintains the 30 feet rule and also doubles the time before the DA can take place.


Ranged Death Attack (Combat)
By studying your opponent twice as long as normal, you are able to make a death attack with a ranged weapon.

Prerequisite(s): Perception 11 ranks, death attack class feature

Benefit: If you study a potential death attack victim for 6 rounds, you are able to make a death attack against the victim using a sneak attack with a ranged weapon that successfully deals damage. As normal, the target must be within 30 ft. in order for the attack to be a sneak attack.

Special: You may not use this ability in conjunction with abilities which reduce the number of rounds that you must spend studying your victim.

Normal: Normally you must use a melee weapon to make a death attack.

Given this, do you think this might not be too disruptive as a capstone? And if the PCs faced an NPC like this, would it cause any howling?