Thoughts on the alignment of Assassins

[Storyteller01]

Or, to quote Jane...


"I'd kill a man in a fair fight... or if I thought he was going to start a fair fight."

 

[silentspace]

I think its meant to be campaign-specific. The entrance requirement seems evil, and also requires the PC to join an organization called "the assassins". So this organization is evil, and only allows evil creatures to join.

Perhaps elsewhere in the campaign world is a similar organization with different purposes/alignment tendencies...

 

[Squire James]

My argument is that most non-evil assassins in literature are not advancing in the assassin class anymore. Some perhaps because they maxxed out the class, but most because they find their previous "work" distasteful for some reason.

The most famous literary assassin I know, Vlad Taltos, has clearly abandoned the assassin class. His application of Ranger and/or Fighter levels has not hurt his combat ability, and he's certainly still killing things, but he's not an assassin anymore. There are things more important than money. Besides, his Grandpa told him in no uncertain terms that killing people for money is evil - and one should always listen to one's Grandpa (whether you actually follow his advice is a different issue).

 

[IcyCool]

"Professional assassination is the highest form of public service." - Chiun, Remo Willams the Adventure Begins.

 

[Yalius]

You may want to look into Milgram's study on obedience.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment



Especially this quote:

Before the experiment was conducted Milgram polled fellow psychologists as to what the results would be. They unanimously believed that only a sadistic few (0.1%), would be prepared to give the maximum voltage.

In Milgram's first set of experiments, 67.5 percent (27 out of 40) of experimental participants administered the experiment's final 450-volt shock, though many were quite uncomfortable in doing so; everyone paused at some point and questioned the experiment, some even saying they would return the check for the money they were paid. No participant steadfastly refused to give further shocks before the 300-volt level. Variants of the experiment were later performed by Milgram himself and other psychologists around the world with similar results. Apart from confirming the original results the variations have tested variables in the experimental setup.

Dr. Thomas Blass of the University of Maryland Baltimore County (who is also the author of a biography of Milgram, called The Man who Shocked the World) performed a meta-analysis on the results of repeated performances of the experiment. He found that the percentage of participants who are prepared to inflict fatal voltages remains remarkably constant, between 61% and 66%, regardless of time or location (a popular account of Blass' results was published in Psychology Today, March/April 2002). The full results were published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology (Blass, 1999).


Emphasis mine.


Please note that the subjects came from varied levels of education; several of them would have known they were 'applying' potentially lethal voltage to the the subject.


Also, as far as the subjects of the experiment were concerned they were consciously applying increasing amounts of pain on another 'subject'. This is torture, something worse than assassination by D&D standards.

And that pretty clearly illustrates that out of 100 people, roughly 2/3 would be non-good. What's your point?

 

[Storyteller01]

And that pretty clearly illustrates that out of 100 people, roughly 2/3 would be non-good. What's your point?

None of the participants, including those who didn't complete the exercise, stopped before 300 volts...

No participant steadfastly refused to give further shocks before the 300-volt level.


They believed they started at 45 volts...

The "teacher" was given a 45-volt electric shock from the electro-shock generator as a sample of the shock that the "learner" would supposedly receive...


Most continued after the 'learner' stopped responding...

After a number of voltage level increases, the actor started to bang on the wall that separated him from the subject. After several times banging on the wall and complaining about his heart condition, the learner gave no further responses to questions and no further complaints

Most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. A few subjects began to laugh nervously or exhibit other signs of extreme stress once they heard the screams of pain coming from the learner.


But through all this, many participants showed concern for the 'learner'...

At this point, many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the learner. Some test subjects paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment.

... which non-good people would not do.


If we applied those statistic to the population in the same manner you did earlier, we have 100 out of 100 people willing to engage in prolonged torture because they were told to do so, even as they show concern for the tortured's welfare.

We can't say that there are no good people in the world, so what else is left?

 

[MerricB]

Honestly, it seems to me it's just leftover 2e squeamishness.

Except they were evil in 1e as well. To quote Gygax in the PHB: "Assassins are evil in alignment (perforce, as the killing of humans and other intelligent life forms for the
purpose of profit is basically held to be the antithesis of weal)."

Cheers!

 

[pawsplay]

I think it's reasonable to suppose that someone who is not evil is a paid killer only as a sideline. That said, I think a finicky assassin could be Neutral, but they could not be a member of the Assassin class and organization as presented in the DMG. Those guys require their candidates to blood in, and are presumably willing to do anyone, any time. Also, you have to think about what kind of practice is required to develop a really good sneak attack, and who are used for subjects.

For a neutral small A assassin, straight up rogue works well. As far as the PrC, the main abilities are sneak attack, sneaky spells, death attack, and poison. Of those, only poison and death attack are reasonably specific. A couple of other PrC's, including Dark Hunter, get Death Attack. Poison is largely limited to evil PrCs and some "primitive" types.

Indiscriminate use of poison is evil, but poison itself does not seem to be evil. Some Always Good monsters have poison, and there is a poison spell.

I think the question is, What non-evil organization would train someone in the manner that produces the Assassin PrC abilities? If you can answer that question, you have yourself a non-evil assassin.

As it is, there are feats that reduce the potential risks of self-poisoning to nearly nothing.

 

[Darth Shoju]

True. And Neutral or Evil people can do good acts. The very mentality that would cause someone to become a sniper precludes good alignment, not good acts. A good person would object to the necessities of being a sniper, and would not accept the job so long as he knew what might be required of him.

Too much of this discussion is involving how a good person could be an assassin, not whether or not an inherently good person would ever consider it. A good person would, based on his or her moral compass, refuse to perform some of the tasks that would be required of a sniper. It thus follows, that a person who is a sniper (or assassin) would not be good.

I work with someone who is a former military sniper and someone who was applying to be a SWAT team sniper (failed the test). While I often question how they could manage to do that for a living, I would not hesitate to call them good people. Your assertations otherwise come across as naive IMO. Soldiers do have the ability to disobey a direct order and they have the ability to feel remorse. Following your logic, I have a hard time seeing how snipers could be evil while regular soldiers would not be. They are both killing people, the snipers just do it from farther away.

I think the problem with the premise of the original post is that the assassin PRC has too generic a name. It should really refer to a specific group of assassins. Really, anyone who accepts a contract to kill someone else is an assassin, regardless of their "class".

The other problem is that the D&D alignment system is supposed to be an abstract concept as far as character morality. It fills more of a game-mechanic need than of arbiter of right-and-wrong. Situations like this tend to break the alignment system into little pieces. In a D&D world where a person's alignment can be detected and there are creatures of pure evil in existance, I can see a church "hit-man" being good. I don't know if that would fall specifically into the category of assassination or what; I suppose it would depend on their targets and methods. However, I find the idea of a lone-wolf assassin with a noble code, who only takes the contracts he deems honorable to be somewhat unlikely. How many organizations would approach someone to kill someone and then let them live after they refused? Presumably if their are too honorable to take the contract they may be moral enough to go to the authorities or even kill the shunned potential employer themselves. From what I have heard and read, in the real world most assasins have been part of a group and deemed trustworthy by that group. I doubt the mafia would use someone they couldn't control to perform a "hit". At the very least if they did, it would be someone with a reputation for not being discriminating about who they kill.

Really, if people want to play a class with the assassin's abilities and still be good, just make a PRC with said abilities but without the evil pre-reqs. I'd suggest they not be called assassins however. If all the players are looking to do is kill for money, they don't have to take a prestige class for that. I'd have to agree that the difference between adventurers, mercenaries, crusaders and assassins lies mainly in intent, methods and motives.

 

[Yalius]

I work with someone who is a former military sniper and someone who was applying to be a SWAT team sniper (failed the test). While I often question how they could manage to do that for a living, I would not hesitate to call them good people. Your assertations otherwise come across as naive IMO.

Naive? I have seen and done more with my life than you could imagine, kid. I'm sorry your worldview does not seem to admit that, just perhaps, the very concept of killing someone who may or may not deserve to be killed, just on the orders of a superior officer, might possibly be an immoral act? Think about it just for a second, before you let your ideas of the nobility of killing someone go to your head. A military sniper, no matter how "good" he might be in normal life, has made the conscious decision that he will, at a moment's notice, kill another person with no more opinion of that person than a "target." That is part of his job and that is what he is expected to do. If he refuses, trust me, he would no longer be a sniper. He might be tasked with putting a bullet into the head of a father, a husband, someone's friend. But because of the need for military expediency, he's a dead man, because his continued life might be problematic. How the heck do you reconcile that sort of performance with someone you want to call good?

Yes, at times, a sniper or assassin might perform a "good" assassination. But don't fool yourself, a sniper in service to any government is not going to be given the luxury of only taking assignments that are morally upstanding. And any person who takes that responsibility upon himself is, by his very acquiescence to the demands of the job, surrendering any moral high ground he might like to think he enjoys. Don't let romanticized, action-movie cliches cloud your thinking. A person who accepts it upon himself to kill someone in a manner such as that is not, and can not be, "good" in the objective moral standard. Neutral, at best.