(Rules Cyclopedia) Homebrew Assassin Class

This is a homebrew assassin class I made for Rules Cyclopedia/BECMI/BX.
I wanted it to have 36 levels, while still following the balance shown in 1e and Advanced Edition Companion. I also wanted to distance it from the thief class- I mainly wanted to REPLACE the thief, which is essentially useless without deciding that no other characters are able to pick pockets, open locks, etc., which isn't the kind of thing I want. In my game, if you want to be a Thief, steal something. Don't pick a class.

The Assassin
Armor: Leather only, Shield permitted
Weapons: No Two-Handed or Bastard Sword
Hit Dice: 1d4 every level
Prime Requisite: None. The Assassin gains no experience bonus for high stats.

Assassins advance at the same rate as Fighters, and use the Fighter attack roll and saving throw tables. At 9th level (Master Assassin) the Assassin gains the 'disarm', 'parry', and 'multiple attacks' Fighter Combat Options.

Assassins gain the following special abilities:
Backstab: when the assassin attacks unnoticed, he gets +4 to his attack roll and deals double the damage. At 5th level, he begins instead to deal triple damage, at 9th level, quadruple, and from 13th onwards quintuple.
An Assassin with the Multiple Attacks Combat Option gains this bonus and multiplier on all his attacks (the +4 bonus is not factored in when determining whether he can hit his opponent on a roll of 2)

Assassination: if the assassin gains surprise, he may assassinate the target of his attack. This has a base 50% chance of success, increased by 5% for each of the assassin's levels (to a maximum of +75% at 15th level) decreased 5% for every two hit dice of the target. if the attempt is
successful, the target is instantly killed.

Subterfuge: It is assumed that as part of an assassin's training, he learned many skills that might be useful to one of this trade; skills such as manipulating small mechanisms (locks, clockwork), handling delicate or dangerous items without incident (poisoned blades), moving stealthily and unseen, and so on. The Assassin will always know how to use such skills, and will very likely have a much higher chance of success than other characters of the same level (DM's discretion).

Many Faces: An Assassin may disguise himself, changing his appearance and stature, with extreme skill- the base chance of anyone seeing through the disguise is 2%, with other modifiers added if the assassin is disguised as some one of radically different stature, a different race or gender, etc. (if the assassin is trying to disguise himself as a specific person, there will be a large modifier if the observer is personally familiar with the person in question).

Scale Walls: An Assassin is specially trained to scale sheer surfaces without much heavy, noisy equipment. the base chance of success every 100' is 85%, increasing by 1% every level. Other modifiers will be added at DM discretion, and may be numerous or few.

Learn Languages: An Assassin will learn more languages, typically, than his companions. An Assassin starts the game knowing one additional language. An Assassin may learn one additional language for each point of intelligence score over 14- these additional languages may be archaic, secret, or even alignment tongues (if they are used). However, only one such language can be learned per level above 8th, and though the Assassin is skilled at learning such, to find an appropriate text for especially rare languages may require questing.

Read Scrolls: At 12th level, an Assassin may read existing arcane scrolls- albeit with a 10% chance of backfiring and creating an unexpected effect.


I need some feedback on this. Possible problems that I see: Backstab/Multiple Attacks is overpowered, Learn Languages pulls too hard towards 'Bond'-style archetype and reduces thematic flexibility.

1. Notice that a fighter gains multiple attacks at level 12, not 9.
2. Subterfuge is not clear enough to assess accurately.
3. Assassination chances are way too high. A 10th level assassin would have at least 80% chance to assassinate any other character - and it'll only get worse, given OD&D characters never transcend 9HD - and given the ones doing the adventuring are usually the ones getting the majority of surprise chances, your assassin would badly outshine the fighter in the party, starting many encounters with instant-kills.

Multiple Attacks: my mistake, thanks.

Subterfuge: I intended it to be vague- I feel that the chances for use of Thief skills are basically ad-hoc anyway, so making your own chances using 2d6, d20 or whatever gets you more involved in the game. I also didn't want to either
(Use or invent a skill system
or (Single out the assassin, intentionally or not, as the only one who can do cool stuff. Besides, Find Traps and Remove Traps are infuriatingly vague and there are many other things that one DM might and another might not think the class should know how to do- prepare explosives, for example.

Assassination: I see the problem here. The original assassin rules said 'level, or hit dice for monsters', which I simplified to hit dice. With this, chances against a character of equal level rise until 15th (final chance 90%), but then fall as chances stop increasing on the giving end until finally, 36th level, the chance is only 35%.
This could still be overpowered (playtesting definitely needed), but also bear in mind that if a little monster dies, it doesn't make much difference, and high-level monsters will frequently have high AC, lower surprise chance, and maybe even a retinue of low-levels. And if roleplayed correctly, insta-kill could almost be a positive thing (cited cases Sigurd vs. Fafnir, Perseus vs. Medusa, and Theseus vs. Minotaur).

imurphy943 said:

Subterfuge: I intended it to be vague- I feel that the chances for use of Thief skills are basically ad-hoc anyway, so making your own chances using 2d6, d20 or whatever gets you more involved in the game. I also didn't want to either
(Use or invent a skill system
or (Single out the assassin, intentionally or not, as the only one who can do cool stuff. Besides, Find Traps and Remove Traps are infuriatingly vague and there are many other things that one DM might and another might not think the class should know how to do- prepare explosives, for example.

Click to expand...

Vague rules promote arguments around the gaming table.

You can reference the 3.5e skills list to get a pretty accurate picture of the possible scenarios.
You can also reference my modifications to the 3e skills system. Even though it's a part of my grand 3.5e changes codex, this part is very much a completely stand-alone section. It was meant to fill all those blind-spots (at least the one's I've encountered in my many years around the gaming table) that the 3e skills system didn't cover.

All of OD&D/BECMI is vague. Rules Cyclopedia has an incredibly vestigial skill system which is, of course, optional. Arguments don't happen at my gaming table because the players are playing against the environment, not me. If someone wants to pick a lock, then I'll give them a probability, they might try to sway be by pointing out little bits of their character's backstory, it might work. If they can't pick the lock, it doesn't ruin their plans completely, because they can go around the door, break it down, smash the lock, make a noise and try to lure the people in the room out into an ambush.

And if my interpretation does ruin some grand, coordinated infiltration plan, then there are many ways to rationalize the failure within the context of the game world (stiff lock, unexpectedly high-quality lock, wrong size of thieves' tools), in which case it just makes the game more interesting. Can you imagine a Bond movie if nothing ever went wrong with the plan? Can you lose an open-ended game anyway? Many characters actually write up a last will and testament willing their posessions to a favorite hireling, nephew, or drinking buddy, which they can then start playing as.

Vagueness means that any scenario that common sense says should be covered WILL be (hopefully your DM has common sense), without long lists of scenarios and base DCs for each.