Assassin and the death attack

[Shadow Assassin]

I am very new to the whole forum thing, but I have a suggestion for the assassin. I enjoy playing assassins very much and have an idea on making the death attack a little more potent.
What if having knowledge of anatomy could increase the death attack DC. Maybe for every 5 ranks in Knowledge anatomy would increase the death attack DC by +1. I am open to all opinions

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Welcome to ENWorld!

That wouldn't be too overpowered, I don't think. It would keep things roughly on par with say 'finger of death' at the top end. It would max at an additional +4 to the DC at 20th level, and considering that casters are more likely to have their casting stat maxxed than an assassin, it probably evens out. It might be a little much a 10th, but not too bad.

 

[Sejs]

I am very new to the whole forum thing, but I have a suggestion for the assassin. I enjoy playing assassins very much and have an idea on making the death attack a little more potent.
What if having knowledge of anatomy could increase the death attack DC. Maybe for every 5 ranks in Knowledge anatomy would increase the death attack DC by +1. I am open to all opinions

What about basing it on Heal ranks? Seems that would cover a functioning knowledge of anatomy pretty well. And it works well in dealing with poisons, also.

 

[Darklone]

I am not up to date with all possibilities to raise the DC of the death attack by the rules... so it might be too strong.

 

[Felix]

Welcome to the Boards!

I would allow a +1 DC for the Death Attack for 5 ranks in Knowledge (anatomy) or Heal. But I would only allow skill ranks gained from levels of assassin or after the PrC is completed to count towards this total.

I would allow this because both Heal and Knowledge (anatomy) are cross-class skills for the Assassin, and 10 ranks (5 in either skill) represents a 20 skill point investment; a heafty sacrifice.

I would not allow ranks in those skills gained from other classes to count on the flavor basis that while a cleric may learn anatomy to heal, the assassin will study a specific curriculum for harming. There will be similarities, but enough of a difference for me to enforce it.

That hefty skill-point sacrifice will mechanically balance the assassin's synergy bonuses to the DC.

The DC is: DC 10 + the assassin’s class level + the assassin’s Int modifier

The only other ways of increasing the DC I know of are Ability Focus, which will add 2 to the DC, increasing the assassin's Int, and a magic item or two that might do the same. I don't think a total +2 synergy bonus from two skills is out of line.

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Shadow Assassin,

You weren't wrong for posting in the General Discussion forum, but there are forums for specific topics; The House Rules forum is good for discussion on how to change the game the way you like it; the Rules forum is good for sounding out the mechanics of the game as they are written; the Off Topic forum is good for hanging out with other posters and talking about things other than D&D; and the Meta forum is a great place to learn more about how ENWorld works.

Happy posting!

 

[Nyaricus]

I am not up to date with all possibilities to raise the DC of the death attack by the rules... so it might be too strong.

Well, there's that feat Ability Focus in Savage Species, which I beleive you can aply to a Death Attack, but to my knowledge that's about it.

Shadow Assassin, that sounds like a decent suggestion, but indeed Sejs has it right in that you shouldd base it off of heal ranks, since that more closely ties in with anatomy knowledge, and doesn't require the creation of another skill (which can be a bit much). Also, since heal does allow you to do a number of other things, it makes you character more useful (and, overall, a bit more powerful) in the long-run.

In any case, welcome to EN World! Hope you like it here. Also, we do have a House Rules forum, where your own personal (and others!) changes to the rules can be talked about. I'll tell a mod to slide this thread over to that forum after I post this.

Also, as a point of interest, there was a poster here who created an updated Assassin base class, based upon the Frist Edition class of the same name. You can find it here. Enjoy!

cheers,
--N

 

[Shadow Assassin]

thank you all for the positive feedback but i think i need a little more before i go about this

 

[Kae'Yoss]

It's already quite nice as it is:

10 + Asn lvl + Int

At level 15 (assuming rogue 5/ assassin 1), you'll get 20+int. A wizard's best spells at that level will be 18+int. The wizard can increase some of his spells's DCs by another +2 with 2 feats, and you can increase it by +2 with a single feat (Ability Focus).

So, at level 15, we're looking at 22+int versus 20+int. Even at level 20, the wizard will only get as high as 21+int.

Of course, the wizard will have a better int score, as he has less things to focus on, but still, at those levels, the assassin can get the DC to 27 without breaking a sweat.


I don't think that the assassin needs a boost beyond what he can already get.

 

[Imagicka]

Greetings...

Well, I don't know if I would reengineer the Heal skill to include such things. Maybe make it a feat with some sort of a synergy thing though... but also combine it with a Favoured Enemy kinda deal as well. Where you have to choose type Type (Subtype) of the enemy that your studying the anatomy of.

ASSASSIN'S FAVOURED ENEMY [GENERAL]:
Prerequisite: Assassin level 1st.
Benefit: An assassin my select a type of creature among those given on Ranger Favoured Enemies. This feat effectively allows the assassin to study the anatomy and weaknesses of a particular type of creature The assassin gains a +1 bonus to their Death Attack for every 5 ranks in Heal that they have, only pertaining to the type (subtype) creature that they have selected to study.
Special: This feat can be taken multiple times choosing a new type (subtype) each time.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Make it work off of Heal. Creating new knowledge types is essentially asking characters to spend skill ranks on a skill that will only work in a single narrow application instead of in an across the board manner. It's not like Heal is a super skill on its own anyway, so the player ought to get at least as much out of their skill point expenditure as that grants.

(Third party publishers, please stop making up new knowledges, especially when most of them just duplicate the existing ones with a different name.)