Assassins: Is Neutral okay?

[gamerprinter]

First of all, I'm not saying an assassin has to be evil, in game one can easily be flavored to some neutral alignment.

And I'm not going to compare my definition for murder, assassin, killing to anybody else's definition, my definition is obviously different.

That said, under normal circumstances, why is an assassin considered to be different from any other player in the game? Why does it need to be a prestige class? An assassin's class features makes it stand apart from other players - it gets to kill and bypass hit points altogether. It gets to kill an opponent, without that opponent ever being in a state of combat.

This is different than standing toe-to-toe, or even ambushing a flat-footed opponent - it's still a state of combat.

While we all kill things and take their stuff, so we do kill things in game without considering it evil. But killing isn't always a necessity - you just have to get them to give up, or knocked below 0 hp. You still win. But an assassin has failed if he hasn't ended the life of his target.

There is a difference, if only slight.

It's your game, handle it how ever fits best in your game, so everybody has fun. There's no need for a common consensus among all gamers.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

I'm playing devil's advocate for the most part here. It's true and I completely agree with you [MENTION=50895]gamerprinter[/MENTION] that stuff like this should be handled in game and that people people involved should have fun. My reasoning behind the dictionary references was to point out that if you go by how the three actions (killing, assassinating, and murdering) are defined, they are all pretty much the same in the end. The question posed in the thread was if an assassin could be neutral because according to the prestige class it was labeled as evil, but if you define the act of assassinating to be evil you need to include killing and murder to that list, which would make every character class susceptible to label of being "evil" at some point in their adventuring careers.

I'd actually counter-argue with you a bit on the failed attempt to kill someone by the assassin. Again playing devil's advocate I pose this to you: Perhaps the attempt was to sicken or weaken someone so that their opponent (political or other reason) could oust them while they were too sick to fight back. I'd claim that the assassin actually performed perfectly in this situation using his particular skill-set to sneak in, poison someone to near death, and escape w/o being noticed. This didn't result in the death of anyone and he effectively removed them from the game albeit only for a short while. Is this evil? If so, how is it different from knocking someone out, locking them up and treating them humanely until they can't do anything about a situation which they would have been critical to stopping?

Sure the absolute definition of the assassin is to stalk, plan, and kill his/her target, but not all the time is it the case especially in a campaign where they are part of a party and you can't take too much time to role-play out the specifics of assassination missions, but rather the player likes the flavor and the skills that an assassin has over a vanilla rogue.

This game is full of grey areas, so in the end it is really up to the players and their GM to decide on what is acceptable at their table. I just find this an interesting discussion

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

[MENTION=707]Lord Pendragon[/MENTION] : "an interesting discussion"....so hard to resist

Yes it is, as long as it doesn't devolve into adolescent bickering I have fun with the "what if's" and intellectual arguments that are made on both sides

 

[gamerprinter]

To me the Ninja class is better suited to the not-necessarily-murdering assassin tasks like that, than the assassin, itself. If you don't care for the Japanese fluff, drop the name and call it a spy or black operative. Assassinate becomes available at 10th level (might be too long a wait for those ninja who want to kill things), but it's a choice to be selected and not mandatory for the class. Look at ninja tricks as just specialized skillsets, not supernatural ki. It's a better assassin, unless your true concern is killing your targetted foes.

Of course, with Kaidan (Japanese horror) being my setting, I'm just fine with the fluff.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

To me the Ninja class is better suited to the not-necessarily-murdering assassin tasks like that, than the assassin, itself. If you don't care for the Japanese fluff, drop the name and call it a spy or black operative. Assassinate becomes available at 10th level (might be too long a wait for those ninja who want to kill things), but it's a choice to be selected and not mandatory for the class. Look at ninja tricks as just specialized skillsets, not supernatural ki. It's a better assassin, unless your true concern is killing your targetted foes.

Of course, with Kaidan (Japanese horror) being my setting, I'm just fine with the fluff.

Fair enough, but we were talking specifically the Assassin class. Almost any rogue (or rogue archetype) can be re-fluffed or re-skinned to do what the ninja does as far as skills go and wouldn't be called "assassin," but to me the assassin is much more than just a killer for hire if played right. Most players would just go with trying to kill with the assassin for personal gain, but others may try to utilize his specific ...lets call them 'gifts' for the removal of evil for the greater good. To me this isn't evil.

Let's go real world for a moment. Would you call Seal Team 6 members evil? They are infiltrators and highly trained killers/soldiers who went into a heavily guarded compound specifically to kill bin Ladin, they weren't going to take that guy prisoner, he was one evil SOB by our standards and needed to be killed. They would have killed him in his sleep if they had the chance and assassinated him, say if the sniper had a clear shot into his bedroom window.

The neutral or even good assassin would do stuff like this for a 'good' king, emperor, or government. The ends justify the means in some cases right?

 

[gamerprinter]

I gave an example early in the thread of an assassin religious zealot who serves a deity that considers extending one's life beyond natural means (beyond the normal lifespan) a vile condition, and those who do so need to die. The church healed the living without extending their lives. They were a lawful, mostly good church who had assassins as part. They were never killkng for money, only for breaking 'divine law', and no other agenda. These assassins aren't necessarily evil.

You can always come up with an exception to the rule, but it should still be an exception, accepting that most other 'assassination orders' are probably evil.

 

[blargney the second]

Then this comes down to definitions: What constitutes murder, assassination, and killing?

All murders are killings, but not all killings are murders.
All assassinations are murders, but not all murders are assassinations.

 

[Tovec]

All murders are killings, but not all killings are murders.
All assassinations are murders, but not all murders are assassinations.

In a broader sense you are probably right. But I would still have to think that if I could go back in time and assassinate Hitler I would. That doesn't make me evil by any stretch and it would be almost universally considered a good act.

I think murder is definitely a sub-set of killings and not the other way around, as you said. But I wouldn't say ALL assassinations are murders.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

if I could go back in time and assassinate Hitler I would. That doesn't make me evil by any stretch and it would be almost universally considered a good act.

So it's your belief that the value of the person you kill affects whether or not killing them is acceptable?

 

[Tovec]

So it's your belief that the value of the person you kill affects whether or not killing them is acceptable?

No, my only point is that assassination always implies killing a person stealthily. That it always implies KILLING too. But that just as not all killings are murders not all assassinations are murders. Assassinations are probably MOSTLY murderers but I think that it depends on the goals and motivations of the killer and the killed to see if an act is a killing or a murder.

Oh and by the way I completely understand the evil requirement on assassin class - part of the requirement is killing someone expressly for the purpose of entering the organization. That pretty much means evil to me.