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Kai-Palin
2008-01-28, 04:55 PM
My friend is playing a ninja, and he wants to take an assassin-type class. Only problem is that he's chaotic good and our DM insists on banning evil characters. So, in all the homebrew that this board has done, is there a non-evil assassin-type PrC to be found anywhere? I really need suggestions.

Miles Invictus
2008-01-28, 05:02 PM
Ask your DM to wave the alignment and roleplaying requirements for the Assassin PrC. As an April Fools "joke", last year Wizards released a PrC that had the exact same mechanics as the Assassin, but changed the fluff (alignment included) so that they were a secret society of enforcers working for the government.

TheLogman
2008-01-28, 05:02 PM
Well, there is a class in the Book of Exalted Deeds that is basically a Good assassin, and they even get sneak attack progression (Which you could turn into Sudden Strike no problem), and even some cool abilities to book. I am AFB right now, but I will edit this post when I find the name.

Craig1f
2008-01-28, 05:03 PM
My friend is playing a ninja, and he wants to take an assassin-type class. Only problem is that he's chaotic good and our DM insists on banning evil characters. So, in all the homebrew that this board has done, is there a non-evil assassin-type PrC to be found anywhere? I really need suggestions.

If you're sufficiently high-enough level, you could RP it that when he became an assassin, he was evil, but had a change of heart. Then ask the DM if he can continue to level in the class, dispite the fact that he's no longer evil.

kamikasei
2008-01-28, 05:05 PM
If you have a good explanation for how he is an assassin despite being Good, then just waive the "any evil" requirement for the Assassin PrC. And let us know what your reasoning is. ...And why he needs a prestige class just so he can take payment for killing people. :smalltongue:

Lord Lorac Silvanos
2008-01-28, 05:06 PM
ASSASSIN

...

Alignment: Any evil.

...

If you feel that poison use should be considered evil, I would suggest that you remove that class ability and perhaps exchange the bonus to poison saves with something else. (Maybe a +1 skill bonus to any class skill each time a new poison save increase would be gained)

EDIT: Ninjas, so many ninjas. :smalleek:

Newtkeeper
2008-01-28, 05:12 PM
Add a vote for the "Play an Assassin, waive the evil part". Call him a hunter, if you will. And, not to start an alignment debate, I personally don't see poison use as evil. Dishonorable? Very. Evil? No.

Craig1f
2008-01-28, 05:15 PM
Poison in DnD is dumb anyway.

The DCs are too low. They shouldn't even have DCs. They should do damage over time.

If you get poisoned, you don't get a "save" in real life. It always hurts you, and it always does so over a period of time. That's the way they should work in the game.

Anyway, I digress.

Lord Lorac Silvanos
2008-01-28, 05:20 PM
Poison in DnD is dumb anyway.

Considering that the Poison spell does not have an alignment descriptor it is not very consistent.

Seffbasilisk
2008-01-28, 05:43 PM
Poison in DnD is dumb anyway.

The DCs are too low. They shouldn't even have DCs. They should do damage over time.

If you get poisoned, you don't get a "save" in real life. It always hurts you, and it always does so over a period of time. That's the way they should work in the game.

Anyway, I digress.

I'd call that 'no-save' to poison into question, as I've ingested many things over my life that would cripple or kill many people.

Just because you're not conscious of the save doesn't mean you don't get one.

But that's off-topic.

I'd also go with the reworked Assassin, or the previously mentioned 'joke' of WotC. Poison use is 'evil' in D&D, so that might be what has to go.

mostlyharmful
2008-01-28, 05:47 PM
Don't even bother with the Assassin class, it's a bit sub par anyway. Just kill stuff that gets in your way sneakily. Bingo. You're now an assassin:smallcool: and so long as the randoms you gank ping as evil the gods love you and want you to have nice fluffy rabbit dreams in heaven after you die.

If that doesn't work just set things on fire until the DM caves and lets you run a Lawful Evil psycho because it's just plain easier on the scenery.:smallwink:

TheLogman
2008-01-28, 05:51 PM
Found it, Slayer of Domiel, Book of Exalted Deeds, page 73. They get a Death Touch attack, Sneak Attack Progression, some Paladin abilities too. The only problem is that is they have to be Lawful Good, which I think is stupid, and you may be able to convince your DM to waive, the fluff suggests Chaotic stuff anyway.

Severus
2008-01-28, 06:10 PM
Roleplay > Alignment restrictions

I always found the "evil" limitation of the class stupid.

I could imagine a corrupt society where people were convicted of crimes, but beyond the reach of justice.

The 'enforcers' of justice could be the lawful good assassins.

Classes should be a set of abilities. How those abilities are used is campaign specific, and alignment should be part of that.

lord_khaine
2008-01-28, 06:12 PM
another option is to just advance in ninja until you are able to take levels in shadowdancer, that would make a great assasin type char, that are able enter allmost any place unseen.

ok you might not have a death attack, but a full attack with 2 weapons and the "sneak attack" dice should have allmost the same result, just without a save.

Lady Tialait
2008-01-28, 06:12 PM
Found it, Slayer of Domiel, Book of Exalted Deeds, page 73. They get a Death Touch attack, Sneak Attack Progression, some Paladin abilities too. The only problem is that is they have to be Lawful Good, which I think is stupid, and you may be able to convince your DM to waive, the fluff suggests Chaotic stuff anyway.

Yeah, the fluff was poorly made, but the Fact that your of Domiel means, you serve an ArchAngel. a being of pure LG. being Chaotic seems odd. Any Non-Chaotic, Non-Evil. Sounds better for that particular PrC....that is how I fixed it in my Game.

VanBuren
2008-01-28, 06:19 PM
Roleplay > Alignment restrictions

I always found the "evil" limitation of the class stupid.

Because it's part of the fluff. You don't have to be evil to be an assassin, but you do have to be evil to be an Assassin, and there is a difference. That's in part because to become an Assassin, the fluff states that you have to kill someone just to get in the organization.

Easy enough to drop certain aspects of the fluff and thus the alignment restriction.

Dumbledore lives
2008-01-28, 06:21 PM
He could always be like the Assassins from Assassin's Creed. They try to bring peace to the holy land plus they have three tenents which basically boil down to: don't kill innocents, always be sneaky, and don't endanger the organization. You could make an awesome assassin from that, plus you could get the hidden blade.:smallbiggrin:

Voyager_I
2008-01-28, 07:26 PM
Ask your DM to wave the alignment and roleplaying requirements for the Assassin PrC. As an April Fools "joke", last year Wizards released a PrC that had the exact same mechanics as the Assassin, but changed the fluff (alignment included) so that they were a secret society of enforcers working for the government.

Seconded. Removing semi-silly alignment restrictions is a very easy form of houseruling.

Curmudgeon
2008-01-28, 07:47 PM
My friend is playing a ninja, and he wants to take an assassin-type class. Only problem is that he's chaotic good and our DM insists on banning evil characters. It sounds like the DM has a serious dislike of certain D&D alignments and what they represent. Asking this DM to waive the evil requirement to become an Assassin is pretty much the same as asking the DM to waive the ban on evil characters.

If your friend doesn't want to annoy the DM: learn to live with the restrictions. So your friend's best bet is to transition from Ninja to Rogue, which is a character with a great deal of versatility anyway, and try to keep roleplaying the "good" part of the PC's alignment.

Yami
2008-01-29, 01:27 AM
Honestly, I suggest against the assasin PrC. It is too weak.

Look elsewhere for the awesomeness, and just call yourself an assasin.

Serpentine
2008-01-29, 01:40 AM
If you feel that poison use should be considered evil, I would suggest that you remove that class ability and perhaps exchange the bonus to poison saves with something else.Because it's so much more Evil to knock someone out with opiates than to slaughter them unnecessarily 9.9 :smallsigh: [/minor gripe]

Really, a Rogue can make a perfectly good assassin-type character as is. Assassin (capital "A") annoys me anyway, because of the arbitrary use of magic ("I can cast spells!" "Why?" "I'm magic!" "...Why?" "...because?"), but as mentioned it should be easy enough to get rid of the alignment restriction. If the DM just thinks that assassination and assassin-type characters have to be evil, put this to him/her:
Wouldn't it be better for one single person to put themselves at risk to get into somewhere and eliminate one single important figure than for that figure to go on and start a war that will decimate entire nations and in which horrible atrocities will be commited? If a horrible criminal is out of the reach of authority and the courts, wouldn't it be better for justice to quietly be done than for him to continue to do harm?
To bring up Godwin's Law or whatever it's called: What about all those people who tried to assassinate Hitler?

Talic
2008-01-29, 02:37 AM
Justiciar who forgot handcuffs at home?

Devils_Advocate
2008-01-29, 02:36 PM
My friend is playing a ninja, and he wants to take an assassin-type class. Only problem is that he's chaotic good and our DM insists on banning evil characters. So, in all the homebrew that this board has done, is there a non-evil assassin-type PrC to be found anywhere? I really need suggestions.
What do you mean by "assassin-type class"? What sort of abilities is he looking for?

As mentioned, there's really nothing inherently Evil about the Assassin class itself. It's just part of its fluff that you learn its special abilities from an Evil group of assassins who don't have any compunctions against killing perfectly nice people if they can do so reasonably safely and receive a lot of money in compensation. In fact, if you go along with this fluff, the group should come to the PC with jobs occasionally.

This sort of unnecessarily specific flavor is often attached to prestige classes. Some people like that, and in some cases the idea behind it does indeed make sense: You can only get certain special, unique abilities though specific training which isn't widely available. But since that sort of thing is a campaign setting element, there's no reason for a DM not to make changes to adapt PrCs to his campaign. For example, there could easily be an organization of Good assassins in the service of a benevolent king. Of course, such an organization will also have jobs for a PC that joins it, and the PC may now be expected to do this work for free, but hey, if it's not one thing, it's another.

As to the poison issue: The justification for poison being Evil is that poison that does ability damage causes a lot of pain. The obvious objection to that is that stabbing someone with a sword or setting him on fire is gonna hurt him too. But the thing is, while those things may hurt a hell of a lot for a brief period while they're being done to you, they're actually not significantly painful afterwards. Really! If someone interrupts something you're doing with a melee attack or a fireball, you have to make one Concentration check when you take the damage, and that's it. Your hit points go down, but all that does is reduce the amount of additional damage needed to kill or disable you. Maybe the reason that such injuries aren't debilitating is because D&D characters even have hit points, whereas real-life people really don't. But whatever the cause, a symbol of pain is just way, way more unpleasant than being wounded. There's a reason that spell has the [Evil] descriptor.

But just because poison, unlike mundane injuries, actually does impose penalties doesn't mean that it has to do so through pain. A Dex-reducing poison could quite conceivably impair someone's motor functions in a way that is completely painless. So the only reason to declare that an ability-damaging poisoning always feels really, really bad is that you want to make it Evil, much like saying "every time you cast deathwatch, it kills a puppy." Pulling the whole "______ is Evil, but here's some special, non-Evil ______!" thing just makes it lamer, because that makes anything lamer. Seriously, every time you fill in that blank, be it with "poison", "undeath", whatever, you produce a new variety of stupidity. It's not that the result doesn't make sense, it's that you cannot divide basically identical things up by alignment for no damn reason and not have it come off as needless contrived, because it is needlessly contrived. They went and did this with the robes of the archmagi, despite the fact that not being restricted by alignment is one of the things that distinguishes arcane spellcasting from divine spellcasting. Maybe that's different in Dragonlance, but that's a reason to put an item like that in a Dragonlance book, not a core book.

Ugh. :smallyuk: OK, done ranting now.

Severus
2008-01-29, 02:43 PM
Honestly, I suggest against the assasin PrC. It is too weak.

Look elsewhere for the awesomeness, and just call yourself an assasin.

I tend to agree with this.

The insta-death ability is kinda weak, and the spell selection is all low-level stuff that can be better mimic'd with items.

I think you're better off even as just a base rogue, power-wise.

mostlyharmful
2008-01-29, 02:46 PM
I have a similar problem with paralysis, see Ghouls and Liches, whenever someone homebrews them they instantly take out the EEEVIL non-leathel takedown and replace it with mind-affecting effects which for some reason are neutral or even good, see Geas or Calm Emotions the saintly way to mind-rape your enemies. Now while WotC to my knowledge haven't expressly stated that paralysis is evil the fluff is pretty one way on the issue. The only reason I can think of is that both poison and paralysis (and many other status effects) are in some way "cheating" where just bashing stuff with a two by four is somehow "sporting" or "honourable". Bah! :smallfurious:

The_Werebear
2008-01-29, 03:57 PM
If he is willing to drop to neutral on the Good/Evil axis, and claim being tragically wronged by some organization, Avenging Executioner might be interesting. Basically, pop up, stab someone, and everyone else is to terrified to do anything. Also, you can treat any creature suffering from fear as flat footed, thus allowing more sudden strikes.

nonsens
2008-01-29, 04:10 PM
Here's your non-evil assassin: The Avenger (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20070401a)
It's really the assassin PrC, but the requirements changed

Fuzzy_Juan
2008-01-29, 04:24 PM
If you want an idea of an assassin that is 'good'...just pick up a copy of the Serenity DVD and check out 'the operative'.

A simple thief, CG, maybe with some other levels of whatever doing the dirty work to protect the state and thus promote the general welfare of the people. He knows that what he must do isn't very 'good', but it is necessary to bring about a better world...to protect the establishment, that if allowed to crumble, would throw everything into chaos and bring great harm to millions or more.

The 'good assassin' is niether cruel, nor malicious...he is simply an efficient man who will do what he must to protect the 'greater good'. The lives of the few mean nothing to the lives of the millions that stand to be harmed otherwise...the operative is willing to risk and if necessary give his life that others might have a better world...if those he must kill had his vision...they would gladly give their life too...or so his reasoning goes.

He would be NG or CG...honorable, and good without being bound by laws...breaking whatever laws he must with the sanction of the state (or at least his lord/god/whatever)

#Raptor
2008-01-29, 04:46 PM
How about the Avenger (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20070401a)?

/edit: Uhm. Ok. Didn't notice nonsens post. NVM me.

Person_Man
2008-01-29, 05:26 PM
Here's your non-evil assassin: The Avenger (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20070401a)
It's really the assassin PrC, but the requirements changed

The Avenger was an April Fool's Day joke. But yeah, most DMs I know will either house rule that an Assassin can be non-Evil, or will let you play the Avenger.

Also, Death Attack is a an even bigger joke. It's a Fort Save, and most enemies have a high Fort Save. Most enemies without a Con (undead, constructs) are immune to Fort Save effects. And it scales poorly, especially above ECL 15. And the Assassin's spells, while nifty, also don't scale past ECL 15.

If you want an Assassin-like PrC, I suggest that you just stick with Ninja or any full Sneak Attack or Sudden Strike progression PrC, like Dread Commando (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20050407b&page=6), Nightsong Enforcer, or Avenging Executioner (which also has powerful Fear effects).

I'm also a fan of Fang of Lolth (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20011207) (warning, 3.0 material) for an Assassin/Ninja themed character. It gives you Sneak Attack, a bite attack, a Climb Speed, extra arms (giving you access to Multiweapon Fighting), and immunity to Mind Affecting Effects. Plus it sorta reminds me of that Sound Ninja from Naruto, whose episodes I really liked.

Serpentine
2008-01-29, 09:40 PM
As to the poison issue: The justification for poison being Evil is that poison that does ability damage causes a lot of pain. The obvious objection to that is that stabbing someone with a sword or setting him on fire is gonna hurt him too... But just because poison, unlike mundane injuries, actually does impose penalties doesn't mean that it has to do so through pain. A Dex-reducing poison could quite conceivably impair someone's motor functions in a way that is completely painless...I would say, then - and if anyone in my game decides to use poison I'll be bringing this to bear, I think - that causing unnecessary or excessive pain, whether through poison or some other means, is evil. A dagger can be used to cut little pieces off of a person until they tell you something, but it's not Evil to use one (at least for other purposes). Technically, alcohol is a poison. There aren't that many Evil barkeeps around... Those paralysing poison darts? They sting a bit, I'm sure, but they just mess with motor skills without hurting all that much. There are plenty of poisons that will bring someone low without putting them through agony, and even the ones that could be argued to do so - just from the DMG, Dark Reaver Powder, for example - could just as easily be argued not to - in this case, the victim just wastes away.
edit: just wanted to point out that I think I am pretty much just agreeing with DA.
Hm. Interesting note... In the DMG under the Poison section, I can't see anything about it being Evil.


The only reason I can think of is that both poison and paralysis (and many other status effects) are in some way "cheating" where just bashing stuff with a two by four is somehow "sporting" or "honourable". Bah! :smallfurious:I did a class once called "The Origins of Modern Warfare". Basically, human (or at least European) military history boils down to this, but replace "poison and paralysis" with "guerrilla tactics and bows".

Kai-Palin
2008-01-30, 09:35 AM
The only reason I can think of is that both poison and paralysis (and many other status effects) are in some way "cheating" where just bashing stuff with a two by four is somehow "sporting" or "honourable". Bah! :smallfurious:

Yes, after all, anything approaching a fair fight is something somebody could lose.

Thank you all for your help. I really do appreciate it. The one thing that yet remains for me to find is an assassin-type class (i.e. Sudden strike/sneak attack, stealth focused) that was made on this board. I just wanted to know if anyone knew of something made here that fit that description. Because I trust you all way more than Wizards.

As for the just-change-the-alignment-of-the-assassin, the Slayer of Domiel, and the Avenger tactics, I did try to use those. Only after I exhausted the easy, quick attempts did I come for aid. :smallbiggrin:

Starbuck_II
2008-01-30, 12:34 PM
Hm. Interesting note... In the DMG under the Poison section, I can't see anything about it being Evil.


That is because according to Sage they are not evil. Thus, the Ninja base class in Complete Adventurer is any alignment though he gets poison use.


Now, the splatbook created in 3.5, Exalted Deeds says poisom is wrong, unless you use poison that only harms evil. Sure, each of these ravages cause lots of pain, but not evil.

Basically, they wanted to say poison bad, but contradict themselves. Plus, it is hard to say, when BoED means exalted don't do that and that isn't good.
A Paladin is only required to be good.
An exalted Paladin is rarer because it is more restrictions.

Newtkeeper
2008-01-30, 04:14 PM
Note also that some poisons can *reduce* pain caused. A dab of drow knockout poison, for instance, can save a lot of pain on both sides, especially if you want captives. And, in the novels, I don't recall it being described as painful or after-effect causing.

Conclusion- even evil species can produce things usable for good.

loopy
2008-01-30, 08:15 PM
My character is a TN (leaning towards NG) Rogue/Assassin/Fortune's Friend, in the service of good dragons, fighting to destroy important Talons of Tiamat leaders. My DM tweaked the Assassin PrC by removing the evil alignment and the poison resistance. He replaced the poison resist with increased saves against dragon effects.

Instead to become an 'assassin', I had to slay a juvenile chromatic dragon with no assistance. That is harder than it sounds, with my party. They seem to intentionally go for any target that I tell them to stay away from.