Tough decision about a player.

[RavKal]

Somehow one of my players has his mind set on going into the Assassin PrC at 6th. This is rather frustrating, since it mean's he'll go evil (sadly probably chaotic), and he thinks the death attack is good (it's not).

The party also has a LG cleric of Pelor and a NG Druid.

When I reminded him of this, he said he would hide it and lie.

I feel that this could create unnecessary party issues, and end up with someone dead.

So I have a couple different options.

1) I let him do it and allow the party to sort him out given the chance.
2) I find some way of preventing him from becoming an assassin (that won't seriously piss him off).
3) I send him on a difficult solo mission and have him killed by the main boss (with plot goodies included).

What do you think I should do? His character is poorly built, so he isn't really helping the party much now anyway.

[Tengu_temp]

Let him take the PrC without having to change his alignment.

[Iku Rex]

Let him take the PrC without having to change his alignment.

/thread.
filler

[Hat-Trick]

Avenger prestige class on Wizards.com. It's an assassin that has an alignment requirement of Non-Chaotic. It's a government servant that kills the countries enemies. Reflavor for best effect.

[Studoku]

Ignore the alignment restriction and the killing prereqs. They seem a little arbitary anyway.

That's my 2 pence- I'm not going to get sucked into an argument about assassins being evil though.

[Samb]

Bah let him see how bad death attack is. Or redirect him to slayer of Domial.

[Kylarra]

Just let him go assassin. even if he does gain an evil alignment, that doesn't mean he has to be chaotic stupid about it.

[Studoku]

Bah let him see how bad death attack is. Or redirect him to slayer of Domial.

To be honest, I see the spells and the odd-levels Sneak Attack progression as the good features for assassins.

Death attack is terrible though. During combat, it's useless and even as an opening to a combat it tends to be poor as the fortitude DC is low.

[Gorbash]

Change Death Attack to 10 + 1/2 HD + Int. It's still pretty sub-par, but with Ability Focus, he might be able to actuall kill someone. Who rolls badly.

[Mystery Meep]

If the Assassin is inappropriate for your game, tell the player 'no'. Prestige classes are always at the DM's discretion. Of course, it's not a problem to cite those reasons for it at all.

[Jack_Simth]

What do you think I should do? His character is poorly built, so he isn't really helping the party much now anyway.

4) Read the header in the DMG on Prestige classes to him.

[BizzaroStormy]

Change Death Attack to 10 + 1/2 HD + Int. It's still pretty sub-par, but with Ability Focus, he might be able to actuall kill someone. Who rolls badly.

Huh? death attack can be really good if done right. I have an assasin in a game right now that is ninja 5/Assassin 5 and his Death Attack forces a DC 25 save.

Considering the average Fort save for enemies at that level, hes got roughly a 75% chance to instantly kill the target, and if that doesn't work, he can turn invisible and run away.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Huh? death attack can be really good if done right. I have an assasin in a game right now that is ninja 5/Assassin 5 and his Death Attack forces a DC 25 save.

Considering the average Fort save for enemies at that level, hes got roughly a 75% chance to instantly kill the target, and if that doesn't work, he can turn invisible and run away.

3 rounds. If you're getting 3 rounds to prepare for combat, let alone prepare in the same room, the entire encounter should be dead with one action, not just one NPC. And how is the save that high? 10+5(Assassin level)+4(overly high Int)+2(Ability Focus) still only gives you DC 21. What else does he have boosting it?

[gabado]

ooky dook, there is a very simple way to get him to stay good (as in the alignment), home brew a religious assassin who is required to be the same alignment as his/her deity.

as for the death attack, he will quickly learn that standing staring at someone for three rounds isn't the best way to go about things.

[tyckspoon]

Huh? death attack can be really good if done right. I have an assasin in a game right now that is ninja 5/Assassin 5 and his Death Attack forces a DC 25 save.

*quick estimate math* Hmm. How'd he go about achieving that? He gets DC 15 base for 5 levels in Assassin. The Ability Focus feat is good for +2, so 17. There's a couple of magic items that can boost the DC, although not very high.. assuming those are reasonable to have at level 10, I would guess that's worth another +2. That leaves +6 to be managed by raw Int modifier, requiring Int 22... that's not impossible for level 10, of course, but it does require more focus on Intelligence than I would normally think of for a Ninja.

And getting a respectable DC on it still doesn't help with the fact that watching somebody for three rounds is (a) near impossible to do during a fight and (b) probably a waste of three rounds of possible buffing/other preparation.

[lsfreak]

And getting a respectable DC on it still doesn't help with the fact that watching somebody for three rounds is (a) near impossible to do during a fight and (b) probably a waste of three rounds of possible buffing/other preparation.

...or instead of prepping, just stabbing the poor bastard for 5d6 + weapon damage 3 times.

Let him play it without the fluff restrictions, the sneak attack + the spells it plenty good for non-skillmonkey rogues. He'll quickly learn that death attack is useless when he spends 95% of every fight doing nothing only to have the death attack resisted.

[BlueWizard]

If you think you'll lose the player... let him, but give him a big warning. And then get the assassin guild involved. Any killing done without their say, well, that's a whole new adventure.

You don't need to allow anything you don't like.

[Gorbash]

Considering the average Fort save for enemies at that level, hes got roughly a 75% chance to instantly kill the target

Considering that my 11th lvl wizard has +15 Fortitude save, I kinda doubt that. And Gleemax CO boards says that the average save of a CR 12 critter is +14, so at best it's 50% of success. If you hit. And the target is not in the dark. Or has any concealment. Or is undead. Or construct. Or plant. Or ooze. Or elemental. Or its vitals are out of your reach. Or doesn't have discernable anatomy. Or has uncanny dodge. Or fortification.

And even under ideal conditions you do get your sneak attack after 3 rounds of doing nothing, it's stilll 50-50 chance. Which is sub-par, considering any other class can kill a CR 12 critter in 3 rounds with 100% of success.

[Superglucose]

He'll quickly learn that death attack is useless when he spends 95% of every fight doing nothing only to have the death attack resisted.

Actually he'll only spend about 25% of every combat having his death attack resisted, the remaining 75% of the time is going to be watching the opponent in anticipation of having his death attack resisted.

[Crow]

The assassin is partly a solo character. He doesn't sit in combat and wait for 3 rounds to use his death attack (That would be retarded, but I guess that's how some people think it should be). He observes the target unnoticed before combat even starts, and moves into position to BEGIN combat by delivering an attack that may drop the target in one hit. Once the battle is on, he gets in flanking position to get sneak attack damage and help his allies.

With some basic effort, and good target selection, death attack can be an excellent tool to have in your arsenal.

[grautry]

No offense, but I think some of you guys might be missing the point of assassin. He, you know, assassinates. He hides and is stealthy and then he goes for the throat, that's what death attack is for. I think it's only natural that open combat is not a suitable place for assassination.

How useful and viable it will be of course depends on how many opportunities for assassination there are in your campaign.

The above, of course, disregards the awful chance of success on the death attack roll.

So I think you have a couple of options:
1) Just scratch the alignment restriction.
2) Explain to him how useless this will be in open combat and how few opportunities for assassination there will be in your campaign(or just tell him to look at the campaign so far; I assume that there weren't many opportunities for that). If you want, run a mock-combat with his character(+a level of assassin) and the others vs. the last encounter you have faced(or a couple of those if you want to really drive the point home).
3) If you don't want to do 1) or 2) (for reasons I can't fathom) explain to him that the campaign is simply not suitable for Evil characters. Do this only if you have reasons to suspect disruptive play from this player.
4) Veto the PrC.

While you are perfectly within your rights to do 3 or 4, I think that will make for an unhappy player, so option 2 is probably your best bet.

[Kaiyanwang]

OP: Use the avenger from wotc site. It's an april fool, but works fine. I use it in my campaing. You can even refluff it to make it kind of protector of the Pelor Cleric, Cleric is the light, Avenger is the shadow they complete each other yadda yadda.

If the class itself is a problem for you, say no to the player. A good DM must say no when is the moment. In those istances, anyway, you must have ready something to bring to the player.

Death attack: death attack, as a general rule, is weak. Anyway, in some istances can be useful, or fun.

As an example, urban environment, you talk with the target, gather information, intimidate, something similar, and the third round you dispatch it.

In another istance, a player of mine was stalked by an Oni. He played carefully and managed to hide in a wood. The Oni was spamming Cloud of Taint to find him, (Dm randomized direction). My player was luck, 3 round of study, out of cover, DA, Oni dies. Not optimized but fun.

[Farlion]

I'm known as an evil DM, so this might no suit you but:

Warn the player, that this will never work, if he still wants to take it:

Allow him to take the PrC and let the Paladin solve the problem for you =)

Tell the Paladin, that grouping with an evil character will make him lose his paladin powers (just on a side note). And using detect evil is something any good paladin would do.

I don't understand why DMs have constraints with characters killing each other. If your players take this personally, you really have to talk to them about this. There's nothing worse than being forced to group with a character "just because he's a player character".

I could go on about this a long time... but not today.

Cheers,
Farlion

[Ayron]

I'm known as an evil DM

*hrhr* yes, that's true
but i have to say, that your games were all realy funny (ok, could just play one time with you as a DM )

back to topic:
But at this point i have to agree with Farlion's argumentation.
If your player realy want to play a assassin, so let him do it. He just should know the consequences... Let your pala-player take the problem and "solve" it... Normaly he would kill an evil char. Or vice versa . In the end, a PC is a NPC with a player in the background, who decide what his character does, and what not. Now ask yourself:"If your Paladin encounter an evil NPC, what would he do?"... The exact same answer goes for every evil PC.


have a nice day
Ayron

[RavKal]

I don't understand why DMs have constraints with characters killing each other. If your players take this personally, you really have to talk to them about this. There's nothing worse than being forced to group with a character "just because he's a player character".

It's more of the player's own personality that I worry about. Everytime he builds a character he bases it off some character he's written about or played to an extent that he not only knows the character exceedingly well, but also cares way too much about it.

Which means that if his character is built poorly and he makes bad decisions and ultimately dies, the player will be in a funk and pissed at everyone for the rest of the session.

But I don't want to get rid of the alignment issue because I can tell he going to be evil. This is based on a formidable knowledge of the player already.

I'll find other PrCs and show him but I don't think they'll work.

[Atsu333]

get the assassin guild involved. Any killing done without their say, well, that's a whole new adventure.

I like it, though that's probably because I used it for my own campaign, and only with the thieves' guild. Strangely enough, it's the same character. Plus, when the guild comes around, we'll realize he's an assassin, and we'll be able to turn against him. All because he wanted to be one.

[VelvetThunder]

When he goes into assassin, give him a person to assassinate. Just make it somebody that the party is likely to run into. That way he'll have a reason to adventure with the party, and he won't want to do chaos, doom, and ruin stuff because it would upset the party, and burn out his lead on his target. I don't know what your setting is, but you could do it like that.. and then as he unravels the clues.. make it wind up being the BBEG.

[Learnedguy]

Huh? death attack can be really good if done right. I have an assasin in a game right now that is ninja 5/Assassin 5 and his Death Attack forces a DC 25 save.

Considering the average Fort save for enemies at that level, hes got roughly a 75% chance to instantly kill the target, and if that doesn't work, he can turn invisible and run away.

Me, as opposed to the rest of the thread posters, are going to assume that the ninja scouts out rooms while hidden before the main party to assure that the first thing he does when combat is initiated is Death Attacking.

Which actually is a genuinely good tactic considering his other abilities.

[DragoonWraith]

My thought was to change the "Guild of Assassins" to matching something along the lines of the "kill one to save a thousand" thing (common assassin fluff; see Wanted or Assassin's Creed), making them... well, making their alignment extremely difficult to pin down, but definitely not evil. Well, they do sort-of evil things (killing) but for good reasons... blah blah, ends and means, more debate than you want - point is, it's a decent backstory for a non-evil Guild of Assassins that you can join.

Then change the prerequisite to require it be someone whose death will improve the conditions of society, someone abusing their position perhaps. It will make the assassination something of a quest, the choice of target is one the Paladin might be able to get behind, etc etc. Further add some kind of "Assassin's Creed" (haha.) involving who is and who is not an acceptable target for assassination (force the player to really hone up sneak/disguise/bluff/diplomacy skills to get to targets without killing innocents).

And once the player gets to be an Assassin, provide opportunities for quests where assassination may be useful - see if the party can work together to get the assassin into the same room as the target, where the assassin should be able to kill him. The assassin character is very much more about urban settings, but you could accommodate that. And in dungeons, well, Assassins get the Sneak Attacks and the Spells, which is solid-ish.

The best part (in theory) is that this leads to interesting role-playing between the Paladin and the Assassin. The Assassin is following a code of honor, which is explicitly intended to do good and prevent the Assassin from crossing the line into evil - something every Paladin has to respect. Nonetheless, the Assassin is killing - perhaps even killing those who are not responsible for the damage they, perhaps someone who is simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, who despite their best intentions would be better for society dead (or at least, so thinks the Assassins). That leads to lots of interesting interactions between the two - heavy disagreement, without true conflict.

Could be very interesting. Though, truth be told... this seems like far more accommodation than this player deserves. And I question whether or not he'll respond to the changes and step up to playing the Assassin as, well, an Assassin.

[Zincorium]

*Ahem*

"No can do, it's up to me, and there's no reason for an assassin to stay in this group, so it would really suck. But it would be kind of cool to do an all-evil campaign next time."


But that's just me. If a player is hankering for a side of evil with their steaming plate of adventure, I say invite everyone to the feast.