He kills people for money, in a good way!

[Kai-Palin]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Lord Lorac Silvanos]

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.

[Newtkeeper]

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]

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]

Poison in DnD is dumb anyway.

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

[Seffbasilisk]

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]

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 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.

[TheLogman]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Voyager_I]

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]

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]

Honestly, I suggest against the assasin PrC. It is too weak.

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

[Serpentine]

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 [/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]

Justiciar who forgot handcuffs at home?

[Devils_Advocate]

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.

Spoiler

Show

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. OK, done ranting now.

[Severus]

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]

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!

[The_Werebear]

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]

Here's your non-evil assassin: The Avenger
It's really the assassin PrC, but the requirements changed

[Fuzzy_Juan]

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]

How about the Avenger?

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

[Person_Man]

Here's your non-evil assassin: The Avenger
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, Nightsong Enforcer, or Avenging Executioner (which also has powerful Fear effects).

I'm also a fan of Fang of Lolth (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.