Are assassins evil?

[Darth Ultron]

In D&D 3.5 one of the requirements for the Assassin prestige class is an evil alignment. Other editions have bounced around with ''the assassin can't be good'' or ''can't be lawful'' . In 1E it was ''any evil''. The Assassin kit from 2E had no alignment restriction. It would seem clear that in the black and white morality of D&D, that assassins are always evil.

I've always had a problem with this. To me, being an assassin is not necessarily evil. Now there is little doubt that the Assassin prestige class in the DMG was made to be the worst possible evil assassin type. Just the line where the D&D prestige class says ,is a hired killer, solely devoted to the practice of murder, who is willing to kill someone for no purpose other than to be accepted for assassin training is enough to make them evil.



What do you guys think? Are Assassins necessarily evil?

[Knaight]

It depends on what is meant by assassins. If the term is being used very broadly to cover anyone who extra-judicially murders an important figure, I'd say that they aren't necessarily evil. Hitler was the subject of a lot of assassination attempts, I have absolutely no issue with people trying to carry those out. With that said, even with that broad definition the vast majority are pretty horrible people.

If the term is being used to cover professional contract killers, then it's an even dimmer prospect.

[Chronos]

I think it's partly a disconnect in just what a prestige class is supposed to represent. In 3rd edition, most players treated prestige classes as just a set of capabilities, but many designers treated them as membership in particular organizations or the like. Joining a guild of people who will kill anyone just because someone put out a contract on them is evil. Killing for other purposes might or might not be.

The fact that Blizzard recognized this is part of the reason for the existence of the Avenger class, identical to the Assassin except for the entry requirements. The message is "this particular class might be evil-only, but it's also a precedent that a class with those capabilities isn't overpowered, so you can make a non-evil version too".

[BootStrapTommy]

In D&D 3.5 one of the requirements for the Assassin prestige class is an evil alignment. Other editions have bounced around with ''the assassin can't be good'' or ''can't be lawful'' . In 1E it was ''any evil''. The Assassin kit from 2E had no alignment restriction. It would seem clear that in the black and white morality of D&D, that assassins are always evil.

3.5 Avenger is the 3.5 Assassin, but with all references to Evil replaced with Lawful, all references to Good replaced with Chaotic, and the "accept a contract hit" roleplaying requirement replace with sort of "patriotic duty" thing.

Basically it's government assassin the class. And restricted to Lawful alignment.

[goto124]

I see no point in alignment restrictments on (prestige) classes. It restricts RP, IMHO.

Lawful Barbarians are perfectly possible. Lawful Bards are e.g. court jesters, or diplomancers working for a king, etc. Asasssins could be working for a government, or be vigiliantes, and they could be killing Evil or Good people.

There could be a Chaotic Good assassin trying to take down the tyranny of the queen. There could be Lawful Evil assassins looking to 'silence' transgressors, such as that CG guy mentioned just now. And there's also the Lawful(?) Evil assassin who kills what she's paid for.

Why not let players come up with their own interpretations?

[Karl Aegis]

You understand very well that killing people is wrong. And yet, you can't escape the fate that you've stumbled into. Giving up on your lifestyle and turning your back on your master is out of the question. Plus, there's that special reason that you need the money...

You are asked to kill, and thus you kill. But it is leaving an empty space within you which grows with every assassination.

Fate: Emotion: Emptiness

Description: You only know how to live as an assassin. However, recently you have begun to hate that piece inside of you that only knows the ways of killing.

Depending on the setting, an assassin doesn't have to be evil. Most people wouldn't find doing your job to be that socially deviant.

[Jay R]

We routinely get confused when we use words as D&D technical jargon that have related but not identical English meanings.

I once played a very successful 2E Thief who never stole anything. He was therefore not a thief, he was merely a Thief.

An assassin is a person hired to kill somebody. Depending on the situation, such a person doesn't have to be Evil.

But such a person doesn't have to be an Assassin either, in the sense of the D&D class. If a Fighter, Ranger, Barbarian, Paladin, Rogue, Wizard or person of any other class is hired to kill somebody, then she is an assassin.

The character class Assassin has the requirements set down in the book you are using, unless the DM houserules it. If you want your character to take pay for killing people, but not be Evil when the book requires it, then don't play an Assassin. Play a Fighter or Thief who takes pay for killing somebody.

The next problem is that Evil is also D&D jargon, and doesn't mean the same thing as the English word evil. An Evil character might not be evil, and an evil character might not be Evil. But the rules of the forum won't let us debate that one,

[goto124]

Where's the OotS strip about Miko and her samurai class confusion...

[BootStrapTommy]

But such a person doesn't have to be an Assassin either, in the sense of the D&D class. If a Fighter, Ranger, Barbarian, Paladin, Rogue, Wizard or person of any other class is hired to kill somebody, then she is an assassin.

The character class Assassin has the requirements set down in the book you are using, unless the DM houserules it. If you want your character to take pay for killing people, but not be Evil when the book requires it, then don't play an Assassin. Play a Fighter or Thief who takes pay for killing somebody.

The problem is the 3.5 class Assassin has features which lend to the classes purpose, features that those other classes do not possess. Like Death Attack. Why can't a good guy learn how to observe and swiftly exploit weaknesses?

[Mastikator]

Murdering people for money? Yeah seems pretty evil.

Being an "Assassin" as a game class isn't the same as being an assassin as a profession. Then again, the game class can also be defined as "evil".

[Grek]

The alignment restriction on Assassin should be Chaotic, not Evil. Murder is always illegal (that's what murder means, "an unlawful killing, with malice aforethought") but in the D&D-verse, sometimes murder can be Good. If you stealthily assassinate a demon general, nobody is going to say that makes you Evil, even if they might say that it was dishonorable or lawless.

[hamishspence]

BoVD gets around it by saying that killing of some creatures - creatures of "consummate, irredeemable evil" never counts as murder - not even when done purely with the motive of profit.

And defines Murder as "killing for nefarious reasons"

[goto124]

The alignment restriction on Assassin should be Chaotic, not Evil. Murder is always illegal

What of assassins who are hired by the king?

[Obak]

Reasonably, no. But it depends on motivation and target.
An assassin that kills for money could still have standards (no women and children), as mentioned above you could still have a vigilante type assassin that targets opressors of all kinds.
And of course we have to violate Godwins law, what if someone had killed Hitler/Stalin/Sauron before they could start their wars and kill millions of people?
But then again, the alignment system is mostly B.S.

[Deophaun]

Murdering people for money? Yeah seems pretty evil.

Interesting how you underlined "for money," and not "murder," which is a word that is both a verb and a moral judgement all in one.

Killing for money, on the other hand, is not necessarily evil. A hit man who only took contracts on dangerous criminals about to be released from prison could well be Neutral or even Good in D&D's alignment system.

[hamishspence]

A Good person generally subscribes to ideas like mercy and forgiveness. Once someone's been punished - a Good person doesn't really have a call to keep punishing them.

If they had evidence that was (to them) overwhelming, that the "dangerous criminal" will keep on harming the innocent until stopped - that prison simply isn't reforming them - then a Good person might start invoking the argument of

"Killing an evildoer to prevent them committing further acts of evil, doesn't count as Evil in itself"

[Killer Angel]

Interesting how you underlined "for money," and not "murder," which is a word that is both a verb and a moral judgement all in one.

Because that's how the class is portrayed. The assassin kills because of the payment, and doesn't question if the target is Mr. Eviltyrant or Lady Mercythecharitable

Killing for money, on the other hand, is not necessarily evil. A hit man who only took contracts on dangerous criminals about to be released from prison could well be Neutral or even Good in D&D's alignment system.

Then it could be a variant class. As Paladin and Paladin of freedom. Assassin and Punisher.

[hamishspence]

Because that's how the class is portrayed. The assassin kills because of the payment, and doesn't question if the target is Mr. Eviltyrant or Lady Mercythecharitable

True - OP question seems to be -

is it possible for a "practitioner of the profession of assassination" (as opposed to a Character With That PRC) to be nonevil, if they are extremely choosy about what contracts they accept?

[Killer Angel]

True - OP question seems to be -

is it possible for a "practitioner of the profession of assassination" (as opposed to a Character With That PRC) to be nonevil, if they are extremely choosy about what contracts they accept?

Ah, I thought it was more "can I be an assassin (PrC) without being evil"?

Then probably the answer is yes, you can be a killer for hire, with a strong sense of morale.

[Jay R]

What do you guys think? Are Assassins necessarily evil?

When played by somebody who calls himself "Darth Ultron"? Probably.

The problem is the 3.5 class Assassin has features which lend to the classes purpose, features that those other classes do not possess. Like Death Attack. Why can't a good guy learn how to observe and swiftly exploit weaknesses?

I had a similar question in original D&D: why can't somebody Lawful learn to climb? [It was a Thief skill.]

The answer is that D&D is a simulation, and simulations are always intentionally simplistic. As one of my simulations professors said, "If we wanted to observe reality, we'd observe reality."

Dividing people into specific classes, or defining a mere nine specific alignments, or even dividing the probability of doing something into 5% intervals, is a way to reduce all of human experience, real or imagined, into a playable system. The answer to all such questions is, "Because reality is a much more complex system than the writers were willing to mess with."

[endur]

True - OP question seems to be -

is it possible for a "practitioner of the profession of assassination" (as opposed to a Character With That PRC) to be nonevil, if they are extremely choosy about what contracts they accept?

.

depends on your defn of good ... If The Man With No Name qualifies as good, then you can be good. If he is neutral, then you can be neutral

[Knaight]

Depending on the setting, an assassin doesn't have to be evil. Most people wouldn't find doing your job to be that socially deviant.

When the job in question is killing people for money, this doesn't really apply. There are a lot of jobs less bad than that which are still pretty socially deviant; that one is almost cartoonishly so.

I had a similar question in original D&D: why can't somebody Lawful learn to climb? [It was a Thief skill.]

The answer is that D&D is a simulation, and simulations are always intentionally simplistic. As one of my simulations professors said, "If we wanted to observe reality, we'd observe reality."

In this particular case though, there's a good argument to be made that it's not because D&D is a simulation, but because it was a fairly sloppy simulation. At the time there was way less in the way of reference material for said simulation, so it's a very understandable sloppiness, but it's a weird restriction that emerged from a pretty bizarre handling of skills. It's similar to the cross-class skills in D&D 3.5, which introduce a bunch of restrictions that wouldn't otherwise be there and actually increase the complexity of the game by doing so.

[Broken Twin]

I just wanted to point out that the semantic differences between murdering people for money and killing people for money are more important than some people seem to be implying. To say that everyone that kills people for money are Evil is not recognizing that there ARE socially acceptable jobs wherein you are being paid to end other people's lives. Primary example, the military.
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Spoiler: Relevant Firefly Quote

Show

The Operative: I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: So me and mine gotta lay down and die so you can live in your better world?
The Operative: I'm not going to live there. There's no place for me there, any more than there is for you. Malcolm... I'm a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.

Assassins may not be Evil, but they're never Good. Even heroic ones (ala Altair) are still killing unsuspecting people for their personal idealism. Doing bad things for good reasons doesn't make you a good person.

[Kalmageddon]

I think it's partly a disconnect in just what a prestige class is supposed to represent. In 3rd edition, most players treated prestige classes as just a set of capabilities, but many designers treated them as membership in particular organizations or the like. Joining a guild of people who will kill anyone just because someone put out a contract on them is evil. Killing for other purposes might or might not be.

The fact that Blizzard recognized this is part of the reason for the existence of the Avenger class, identical to the Assassin except for the entry requirements. The message is "this particular class might be evil-only, but it's also a precedent that a class with those capabilities isn't overpowered, so you can make a non-evil version too".

I think this is pretty much it. If the Assassin prestige class was called "Assassin of the Evilbad Guild of Puppykickers" no one would question the entry requirement because it would be grounded in a far more defined context. Just saying "Assassin", especially after a certain series of video games became popular, isn't enough to justify an "Evil" entry requirement in the mind of most people.

[endur]

in 3.0, it was the assassins guild of greyhawk. 3.5 removed the reference to Greyhawk

[Deophaun]

Because that's how the class is portrayed. The assassin kills because of the payment...

No, the Assassin (PrC) murders because of the payment. The entire "because of the payment" clause is inconsequential when it comes to the Good or Evil of the class. Mercenaries kill because of payment. Executioners kill because of payment. The adventurers that are paid 100 gp to clear out a kobold den? Killing because of payment.

[JeenLeen]

Although it's been said in other ways already, in summation:

The Assassin PrC is evil because, per the fluff, they are a member of an assassin's organization, and they were willing to kill someone solely to join said organization, which is based on killing people just for money. It might be possible to do that evil act for a good reason (one evil act doesn't make you fall, though that one might be a biggy), but it seems reasonable to say that to be that PrC you must be evil.

However, it makes sense to say not all assassins (not the PrC) are evil just because they kill folk. Likewise, it's reasonable to allow that PrC as a bundle of powers available to non-evil PCs, either ignoring the fluff or inventing other fluff.
Assassins (PrC or not) who kill just for money probably are evil, but there are many ways in which an assassin could do good (or neutral) acts. I could see similar for lawful, chaotic, or neutral, but that's a side issue.

[Galen]

In D&D 3.5 one of the requirements for the Assassin prestige class is an evil alignment.

Another requirement was "The character must kill someone for no other reason than to join the assassins". Now, I think it goes without saying that killing someone for no reason other than enhance your career is unequivocally evil. So the 3.5 assassin is definitely Evil with a capital E. Other editions, not so sure.

[Mastikator]

Interesting how you underlined "for money," and not "murder," which is a word that is both a verb and a moral judgement all in one.

Killing for money, on the other hand, is not necessarily evil. A hit man who only took contracts on dangerous criminals about to be released from prison could well be Neutral or even Good in D&D's alignment system.

I've looked into it and it turns out I was defining assassination way too broadly.
Assassination is the deliberate killing of a prominent person or political figure, usually for payment or political reasons. That means if you are a hitman who kills low level gangsters of a competing criminal organization then you're not an assassin, but you are a paid murderer, a hit man.

Under that definition, I'd say assassins aren't necessarily evil people, killing a tyrant for example is assassination, but it could arguably be a good thing.

Which makes the name of the D&D class "Assassin" a bad name, since it's really just a hitman and not an assassin, it would be like inventing a class named "Paladin" and have it be about "religious warrior" when it historically was something extremely specific (Charlemagne's peers) and only slightly overlapped.

This comes down to the confusion about game mechanical class and in game social class, which use the same nomenclature but aren't necessarily (or even often) related. For example Miko Miyazaki, who was a Monk and Paladin, but actually was a Samurai. Based on that sentence alone you literally can't deduce which was her game class and which was her social class. Monk, Paladin and Samurai have different meanings in each case. Same with Assassin and Assassin and the game doesn't even bother to clarify what it means yet it puts "Always Evil" restrictions on it.

Basically, it comes down to bad game design.

[Duke of URRL]

Another requirement was "The character must kill someone for no other reason than to join the assassins". Now, I think it goes without saying that killing someone for no reason other than enhance your career is unequivocally evil. So the 3.5 assassin is definitely Evil with a capital E. Other editions, not so sure.

I kinda think ''advancing ones career'' is a good reason.

Make me wonder: A person in the D&D world does advance their career by killing. Killing is the best way to get the most experience points and go up a level and.....advance their career.

Take Farmer Bob. He can farm things for a year....and hardly get any XP. But if he was to go out and kill, he could get hundreds of XP points a month. He could be a 10th level commoner in no time....

So is every character in D&D evil then?