oliver@unc.UUCP (Bill Oliver) (05/14/85)
There was an article posted a while back asking for input from folk who had played and DM`d assassins. I can`t find the article now that I have finally found time to reply, so I am resorting to the net. I have been priviledged to both play and DM a number of excellent groups in the past seven years or so, and have found that playing an assassin is one of the most fun of the classes for me, both as a player and as a DM. First, a couple of caveats: I have never played nor DM'd a true, unmodified DND system, and the way I play an assassin just won't float with the punctillious players out there. Also, allowing an assassin in your campaign requires a certain committment on the part of the DM to do a little extra work, if the assassin isn't just going to be a thief with poison. When choosing assassin as a class, I invariably make it part of a multiclassed character, and hence usually non-human. I do this because it has always seemed to me that thieves and assassins are relatively limited in abilities, and this discrepancy for the single classed thief or assasin becomes worse as the group matures. For instance, the first assassin I played was a Drow assassin/m-u, neutral-evil. I had been cast into the surface world by my mercantile clan because I had preferred the service of Lucifer to that of Lolth, and heretics find little tolerance in the Drow society. Upon deciding to leave the undergroud world, I sold my soul to Lucifer (meaning basically that I gave up all claim to resurrection, raise, etc. - my character gets to die once), in exchange for an ability to stand the light without problems and an imp familiar. The group I was playing with was for the most part chaotic good and neutral. Playing an assassin, for me, is generally easier than playing a thief primarily because being an assassin implies a certain discipline that is not necessarily present in the thief. A professional assassin is generally as good as his word (as long as you are not the victim), or at least is not fond of capricious lying, and can usually be trusted more than other evil types. An assassin will not tend to kill unnecessarily (remember from the movie Godfather - "tell him it was just business - nothing personal"), thus making him less likely to be a liability to the party (none of the frenzied mayhem of the chaotic evil cleric types). He is not a thief, so will be less likely to run off with other party member's items. On the other hand, getting on the bad side of an assassin can be lethal. I have killed a number of PC's (and have been killed, myself). Once, a paladin made the mistake of joining our group (even though the player who made the character knew beforehand that I was an assassin). Needless to say, even though I never admitted my profession, we two never hit it off, and the paladin eventually found himself in rather dire straits. Now on to specifics: 1) When DM'ing an assassin, you should probably set up small scenarios just for the assassin, or the assassin and an accomplice. I have found that I enjoy gaming with just one or two players as much if not more than trying to keep a horde of people interested and entertained. The small scenario, being tailor-made, is frequently more conductive to true role playing and less bookeeping. In most of the campaigns I have been involved with, the assassin was not the only one to get the individual treatment. Indeed, just about everyone had some small, personal, plot line going, regardless of the class. Logistically, this made things much easier for everyone, since we frequently had conflicting schedules and a full group turnout was not common. As a DM I also enjoyed small scenarios, since they are much easier to put together, and are often more coherent than a scenario for six or seven players. Small scenarios also provide nice lead-ins and sub-plots for the larger scenarios. Basically, however, if you are not willing to provide "jobs" for the assassin, and to provide a believable streetlife for the assassin to exist in, then it is hardly worth bothering with. 2) Remember that if an assassin's disguise is blown, that does not necessarily mean that everyone knows who he is, just that someone has noticed that something is not right. For instance, in the Drow I played, I obviously needed to wear a disguise at all times. I was not long at all before just about everyone in the group had noticed that I was not all I seemed (I presented myself to the group as an eldrich fighter/mu). The DM revealed this, however by telling the other group members that they noticed that I seemed to be wearing makeup or that my ears seemed to be a different shape than yesterday or somesuch. He never told the other elves in the group, "Oh, by the way, that guy next to you is a Drow." When confronted, I told the players that I had been horribly disfigured in a fight and wore makeup to hide my disfigurement. Since I had given the group no real reason to distrust me, they let it slide (for a while). 3) I would throw out the rules for the green slime method of poisoning, and the associated saving throw every time you pull out a poisoned blade. Since most of the people I played with were fairly sophisticated in biochemistry, we rewrote the poison system and set up different chances for discovery with different poisons. We also had poisons with different effects, ie poisons which paralyzed or caused sleep, poisons which killed via heart attack as opposed to poisons which caused hemorrhage, poisons which caused damage or pain but not death. We had different poisons for different vectors (blade, pin, food, touch, gas, etc). We generally had the assassin make a choice at the time he or she rolled up the character: The assassin could choose to specialize in weapons, and pick up weapons as a fighter would (in one variant, the assassin with a weapons specialty picked up weapons even faster than a fighter), though always fighting on the thieves/assassins combat matrix, and not gaining any of the other fighter-type benefits (multiple hits, special fighter-type bonuses in a couple of variants). This specialty would allow the assassin to use poisons, but never know how to make them. The other possibility was for the assasssin to learn all about poisons, and gain the knowledge of making and employing various substances and vectors much as the fighter picked up weapons. This specialty would allow the assassin to pick up weapon proficiencies as a thief. 4) Allow the assassin to use all weapons (with appropriate proficiency bonuses and handicaps) and wear all armor. I once played an assassin under a DM who allowed me to wear plate armor only as a disguise, but would not allow me to fight in it. Thus, I was disguised as a member of the royal guard (all of whom wore plate), but when we were attacked by critters, I had to run behind bushes an put on leather armor to fight. It was silly. It also blew my disguise. I quickly confessed, was executed, and began playing a Druid. 5) Spend a fair amount of time setting up the assassin`s guild, the guild`s relationships with out of town guilds, and the guild`s stance in community politics, order, etc. Make the guild as demanding on the behavior, attitudes, and resources of the assssin as the church is of a cleric, or at least more than the thieves guild is of the thief. How much fun it is to play an assassin depends a great deal on social context. It is very different to play in a campaign where membership in the guild carries with it the death penalty as opposed to having the guild a semi-underground or even accepted (though generally disapproved of) publicly acknowledged organization. Oh well, this has gotten too long. I apologize. If anyone needs ideas for "jobs", send me e-mail, and I will reply if I figure out how the net works. Good gaming, Bill Oliver