The executioner assassin is meant to get up close and personal with people--meaning that though there is a little bit of an option to go ranged, there's also a pretty strong motivation to be good with a melee weapon. The "ranged" option is pretty limited; Assassin's Strike already keeps you within 5 of the target. The executioner is not supposed to be a full ranged striker, but to have the option for some ranged tricks.
Of course
What I'd say I'll do is make sure the poisons are reworded so that you apply them to one melee weapon or one/five pieces of ammunition, just to avoid the kind of insane confusion derived from an extremely literal reading of the way our weapon rules work. I can tell you that the intent is that you have to poison a weapon's ammunition, not the weapon itself. Really, I think it's tough to argue that applying poison to a blowgun makes the darts poisonous.
Pedant: Poison resevoir in the blowgun.
One thing I intentionally did was try and make it so that the size of your weapon die wasn't that important. That's why assassin's strike does d10s with damage instead of [W]s. So, you could spend a feat to go from, say, d6 to d12, which is a difference of ~2.5 points of damage at heroic tier, going up to ~5 points of damage at epic tier.
d6 -> 3.5 on average. d12 -> 6.5. ~3 rather than 2.5. (Rapier and longsword are both d8, meaning 2 for each of them - still nice for a feat). To me the part that matters is that they make the Kukri attack irrelevant. Either you can charge for a [2*d6] attack with a kukri having gone to the trouble to use one of your scarce At Wills, or you can charge for a [d12, Brutal 2] with an executioner's axe with the same to hit score, more average damage, and a much better melee basic attack the rest of the time.
Fullblade does have the nice high crit property, but the kukri is an off-hand weapon, which has some good feat and multiclassing support. I'd call one feat for 2.5 damage a fair, but not great, trade, and I think most of the time I'd rather spend my feats on other things and use a smaller weapon that I can hide on myself.
Depends. Because the first strike without warning matters...
As an assassin, I'd like to be a bit more subtle.
My
Bravura Warlord carries his dynamic longsword round his wrist as a garrote most of the time (and his summoned scale armour ... elsewhere). And once steel is drawn and the fight is on, subtlety loses to speed of assassination. People are already alerted by the clash of sword on sword, and the best way you can alert as few people as possible is to make it as fast as possible.
Also as an adventurer I expect to walk around with people armed to the teeth. There's a running joke in one of my groups where my Monk takes the focus fire because he looks suspicious because he's not heavily armed or armoured. (Which suits me - he's got the best defences in the party and is planning to learn to snatch arrows out of the air). To blend in you want beaten looking armour and some sort of decent weapon - not having obvious ones in that sort of group is, of itself, suspicious. Missions where the sort of stealth that requires no obvious weapons are the exception rather than the rule.
The point is that the executioner assassin tends to use his "weirder" weapons for more situational things. The dagger is still a great choice for the executioner, as it can be used as a thrown weapon, can benefit from encounter-long poisons, and can be hidden easily.
Encounter long first level poisons can be applied to e.g. rapiers which are already doing an average of 2 more damage (meaning that even if you lose the thrown attacks but mostly use melee you're ahead). Or applied to a magic shuriken that returns and can be used with a highly mobile [2w] attack if you're a ranged assassin. And slow in melee won't matter half as much as slow at range. A dagger
is a weird weapon for a primary weapon. With good real world reason (it's too short to be effective normally) and in game mathematical support (d4). And therefore should be treated as such.
And as I said, one of the best things an assassin can do is not look like an assassin. Someone walking round with a group of people in scale armour with large shields and carrying only daggers? Rogue or assassin. Or Warlock. Either way,
watch him. He's an unknown quantity. Someone wearing battered leather armour and carrying a great big weapon? He's what you expect. Yes, he needs watching. But not special attention. (And if he's hiding, who cares anyway? - if necessary he can also ask the fighter to hold his fullblade for him before going into a situation where he needs to not look like an adventurer.)
To use an analogy, your approach to assassin weapons for adventurers appears to resemble trying to use desert camoflague in the jungle.
Thanks.
Having a helpless opponent is really good--an automatic critical hit. I think your math is a bit off on a crit, as you also get all the crit riders--magic weapon dice, feat bonuses, etc.
My math is off because I'd missed that you got the d6+weapon bonus to a spear grab.
But with the garrote
First attack: 2d4 + d6 + stat + item
Sustain: 2d4 + d6 + stat + item
With the spear:
First attack: d6+item
Sustain: 6 [W] + 6 [bonus] + stat + item + item *d6
Assuming level 3, +1 item, stat 18:
Garrote: 5 + 3.5 + 4 + 1 = 14.5 dpr
Javelin: 4.5 damage round 1, 20.5 damage round 2. = 25 vs 29
Throw in 2d10 vs 20 for the encounter powers and yes, it becomes 45 vs 40 and the spear does take the lead. Slightly. (I gave it 4.5 less damage in my previous simulation because I didn't realise you got the weapon talent bonus).
On the other hand, the way to get maximum mileage out of the attack is to assume the Executioner's Axe is well named.
Sustain: 12 [W] + 7.5 (high crit d12 Brutal 2) + 6 (bonus) + 4 (stat) + 1 (item) + 3.5 (high crit if you aren't going e.g. Vicious) = 34 (54 with the encounter power.) I'd still rather have the garrote I think.
Not to mention that you can maximize your assassin's strike damage on a crit, effectively the same as maximizing the damage of three encounter powers of other creatures. Sure, it's tougher to make this one work, but I think if you can pull it off (especially in conjunction with an ally dazing/stunning the target) then there's a big payoff.
If. There's a pretty high payoff to it, granted. But honestly until you hit level 7 even on a successful attempt it's doing no better than the garrote unless you unleash something like a fullblade to help. And the edge at level 7 is only changed by 4.5 (Assassins Strike change) + 3.5 (crit weapon) - 1 (stat bump) = 7
It's true that it relies on certain assumptions about encounter design, but there is also some utility power support, like darkness.
Some, granted.
Well, if you hide again on that same turn, you don't become un-hidden automatically. The duration of that "being hidden" has superseded your earlier duration. The silent stalker power just lets you get around the whole "becoming unhidden as soon as you leave cover" thing.
That's what I thought, thanks. It just could be read that it delays you being unhidden rather than prevents you being unhidden as long as you go back into cover by the end of the turn. Slingshotting round guard posts is useful for an assassin. As is move - silent stalker to noble. Minor - apply poison to food, drink, or jewelry in front of them. Move - back into cover having never become unhidden.
I'm sorry that you find them lame--I thought they were appropriate, and I think you're being a bit dismissive of their flavor. These aren't super fleshed out organizations, but instead are designed to inspire players and DMs to expand them out how they see fit while giving them a few tenets to lean on.
I liked them for that reason. I would, however, include a note in the final version saying that this isn't essential and that many assassins are self-taught but even in these cases they normally follow one of the regular paths. Just make a little more explicit what you are doing.
Edit: If that seemed overly critical, sorry. I just have a very mathematical mind at times - and a sneaky one at others. I love the core of the class (my favourite assassin in pretty much any RPG and really want to play one). I'm just trying to help polish it a little.
