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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RodneyThompson" data-source="post: 5325877" data-attributes="member: 3594">Actually, the intent is that it doesn't offer the choice. If you want to kill the guy, just kill the guy. If you use the poison, you're making a deliberate attempt to do something to the person other than kill them. Besides, things like being driven permanently insane more or less equals death in all likelihood.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. 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.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. 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. As an assassin, I'd like to be a bit more subtle.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.Probably a good idea.Probably something that should be clarified.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. 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.It's true that it relies on certain assumptions about encounter design, but there is also some utility power support, like darkness. 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.Yes, and yes.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. However, I disagree that they shouldn't be included at heroic tier. I think it's important to provide those flavor options for players at the outset, especially for a class that is part of the Essentials--designed to be the on-ramp for players.Actually, the weapon lists aren't arbitrary. They were chosen to provide a binary choice--melee tricks, or ranged tricks. As for what you'd do at your table--great! You seem like an experienced DM, and I expect that those guilds will get tweaked by lots of DMs to fit their campaign settings. I just though it would be a good chance for the article to give some inspiration to DMs that are just getting started.</blockquote>

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