Some questions about the Executioner Assassin

[Jhaelen]

Yesterday I started reading 'Heroes of Shadow' and to my surprise found I really like the Executioner class. I understand I'm a bit late to the party since it's just a reprint of Dragon material.

Does anyone know if anything about the class was changed compared to the version presented in Dragon?

Since this is my first post-Essentials book I'm a bit unsure about a couple of things (apparently I should be since the back says 'For use with HotFL, HotFK, RC', none of which I own!):

1) On page 19 it introduces three new weapons. In the table under the heading of 'Props.' it gives a bunch of abbreviations that aren't explained anywhere: HC, S, LT, LM.
I assume these are 'high crit', 'small', 'light thrown', and 'load minor' respectively?

(It beats me why they felt they couldn't spend the space to write the properties out, given that they used a whopping nine pages to describe everything an Executioner gets at level 1!)

2) I understand you cannot swap out any powers that don't have a level in their heading (like 'Precision Dart' or 'Assassin's Strike' on page 21), but what about powers that do, like 'Untraceable Step', which is a Level 16 Utility power described on page 29?

The accompanying text doesn't say 'You gain a new assassin utility power of your level or lower' like it did at all the previous levels where you receive a Utility power.

(I'd really, really, really, like pick another one of the level 10 Utility powers: Having both 'Eyes Unseen' and 'Walk Through Shadow' strikes me as being essential)

3) Is there any way to get around these restrictions by Retraining? E.g. could I use retraining to replace 'Bola Takedown' (p.21) with 'Poisoned Dagger' (p.20)?
Or could I at least use Retraining to get rid of 'Untracable Step' for something more to my liking?

Some of the Executioner's powers make my monk go green with envy, e.g. 'Ghost of the Rooftops' (p.25) or 'Daring Escape' (p.28).

And what is it about those 'Death Attack' class features you get at level 3, 13, and 23?
They seem to replace the Encounter powers 'classic' classes would get,but this ability strikes me as being _a lot_ more powerful. It equates to dealing 2, 4, or 6 additional dice of damage whenever it is triggered. Encounter powers typically add one or two dice at most.

Why would I ever play another striker again?!

 

[shamsael]

Changes from Dragon: I don't know the specific changes, but I head that there were some. If they're so subtle that I didn't notice them, then maybe you won't either.

Properties: I hadn't noticed the abbreviations. I think you're correct on them, though.

Utilities: When you gain a utility, you can take the one for your level, or swap it for one of your level or lower. I think this is stated in another part of the rules and not included with each character class. It was specifically mentioned that Assassins that want to be more Shadowy can take utilities from the non-essentials assassin that was also in dragon.

Death Attack: It's significantly better than any other encounter power, but keep in mind that you never actually gain additional uses of it. It's just one encounter power that gets used once per encounter for a ton of damage. Once you use it, you spend the rest of the fight relying on your highly situational at-wills and basic attacks.

 

[WalterKovacs]

The one change I've noticed from the original article is the wording on quick swap, which gives you the ability to either draw two weapons, or stow a weapon and draw a new one, as a single free action (before it only let you draw or stow one weapon). This is useful if you have something you want to do as a minor action (like applying a poison, or drawing/stowing one more weapon ... like going from two weapons to a two hander or vice versa).

The properties you listed are correct.

Retraining: You only have the option to retrain stuff that has a level, so you can only pick one guild and get those 3 at-wills, no mixing and matching.

Death Attack is the class feature that kills an opponent if you deal damage and it's close to death anyway. Assassin's Strike is the 'drop this guy now' power which increases in dice whenever you would normally get an encounter power. Based soley on my own experience as a DM/playing, the ammount of times you nearly, but don't quite, kill someone, where death attack would come up, seems like less than once per encounter, especially since you may not be the one to get them that close to death. Assassin's Strike is amazing, but Death Attack is just a little extra insurance against doing a ton of damage to drop someone to "next hit kills" range.

 

[The Little Raven]

Death Attack: It's significantly better than any other encounter power, but keep in mind that you never actually gain additional uses of it. It's just one encounter power that gets used once per encounter for a ton of damage. Once you use it, you spend the rest of the fight relying on your highly situational at-wills and basic attacks.

I think you're confusing Death Attack for Assassin's Strike.

Assassin's Strike is the +d10 damage encounter power. While you don't gain new uses at 3rd level and so forth like other Striker damage features, it scales in damage faster.

Death Attack is the feature that allows you to choose to reduce an enemy to 0 hit points if you hit with a melee or ranged attack that leaves them at 10 hp or lower (20 at level 13, 30 at level 23).

 

[shamsael]

I think you're confusing Death Attack for Assassin's Strike.

Assassin's Strike is the +d10 damage encounter power. While you don't gain new uses at 3rd level and so forth like other Striker damage features, it scales in damage faster.

Death Attack is the feature that allows you to choose to reduce an enemy to 0 hit points if you hit with a melee or ranged attack that leaves them at 10 hp or lower (20 at level 13, 30 at level 23).

Fair enough, but the original post appears to make the same mistake.

 

[Neverfate]

Technically speaking an Executioner can take any utility from it's "parent" class the Assassin. Some powers are near duplicates "Vanish" is nearly the same as "Slayer's Escape".

From the short time I owned the book, not much has changed other than what WalterKovacs already noted.

You're better of choosing a Monk or Rogue/Thief and multi-class into Assassin to pick up Ghost of the Rooftops (which is fun if you don't favor a strength build for those classes)

 

[Jhaelen]

Based soley on my own experience as a DM/playing, the ammount of times you nearly, but don't quite, kill someone, where death attack would come up, seems like less than once per encounter, especially since you may not be the one to get them that close to death.

Ah, thanks, that's precisely what I've been wondering: How often can you expect the ability to actually trigger?

In my game the character that currently scores the most kills is our wizard using magic missile, because it seems to happen incredibly often that foes are left with single digit hit points. So I'd have guessed it would happen quite a lot.

I'd like to give you some xp, but apparently you've received them too recently!

You're better of choosing a Monk or Rogue/Thief and multi-class into Assassin to pick up Ghost of the Rooftops (which is fun if you don't favor a strength build for those classes)

Ah, right, the DDI assassin article did have a multiclassing feat, didn't it?
My Iron Soul (Dex/Con) monk's currently multi-classed into rogue but I guess retraining that would work. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Yesterday I started reading 'Heroes of Shadow' and to my surprise found I really like the Executioner class. I understand I'm a bit late to the party since it's just a reprint of Dragon material.

Does anyone know if anything about the class was changed compared to the version presented in Dragon?

They primarily just cleaned up the playtest version for the final--making things read more easily and consistantly.

A few "dead" levels (7th, 17th, and maybe one more) were filled in with something new. (In the playtest version they got an additional use of Assassin's Strike but nothing else.)

A couple of the at-wills were removed. If I remember correctly one did extra damage (2[W]) with a kukri, maybe on a charge. And there was one that used a spear and grab that if sustained would render the target helpless. And the "Poisoned Dagger" at-will was added.

Precision Dart made the target auto-fail its first saving throw instead of taking a penalty to it.

 

[MrMyth]

Fair enough, but the original post appears to make the same mistake.

I don't think he did. He's saying that reducing an enemy from 10 hp to 0 (or 20 hp to 0, or 30 hp to 0) is equivalent to gaining 2/4/6 extra dice of damage whenever that condition triggers, which could be several times a combat.

Thing is... could be several times a combat, could be not at all. It's a very neat feature, but also not all that reliable. Maybe you'll drop the opponent to 10 hp and get 10 free damage out of it - maybe you'll drop them to 2 hp and only get 2 free damage out of it. Maybe you'll drop them to 0 hp, and not get any bonus at all.

I like it, personally, since even a few points of damage makes sure that opponent doesn't get to act again, or that an ally doesn't need to waste an attack on a few final points of damage.

On the other hand, other striker's encounter powers can add plenty of damage, as well as inflict conditions or grant bonuses - and they have a lot more control over when they use them. And remain useful against, say, an Elite or Solo enemy.

I think the Executioner is a cool build, myself. I like the idea of bursting out of the shadows to deal catastrophic damage at the very start of a fight, and then spending the rest of the battle using tricks to control the environment or focusing on hunting down the wounded to finish them off with ease.

But I don't think it is necessarily more potent than other strikers. Many other strikers - Rogues, Rangers, Sorcerers - will consistently out-damage the Executioner over the course of a combat, and only in very odd corner-cases will Death Attack result in that not being the case.

 

[RangerWickett]

Hm. Now I kinda want to make a assassin who paragon multiclasses into wizard so I can get magic missile, then take that "magic missile as a minor action" power so I can plink anyone who gets close to death.