D&D 5E (2024) Assassination on a PC yay or nay?

[Paul Farquhar]

RAW the actual assassin is CR8. A bunch of them is way to high.

You don’t have to use actual assassin stat block! So long as they use hand crossbows and wear black they will do the job. Since the role of the assassins is narrrative, they shouldn’t actually pose a significant threat.

Only send in dangerous assassins if the players have been warned but neglect to take any precautions.

 

[AnotherGuy]

NPC revenge is great and makes sense in the fiction...but care must be taken.
The dice made it work for the narrative you were hoping to craft but if luck was the sole basis (as I feel it was), then the set-up of this was wrong. @Umbran and @Paul Farquhar have also added some decent points.

Narrative consequences (even through just colour) as opposed to lucky hit point loss often pack more of a memorable punch.
This scene although in a DMs mind may be cool, might seem sour to a player, as all it did was remind the player that the DM is all-powerful and can mess with their players at any time which I'm sure is not your intended goal.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

NPC revenge is great and makes sense in the fiction...but care must be taken.
The dice made it work for the narrative you were hoping to craft but if luck was the sole basis (as I feel it was), then the set-up of this was wrong. @Umbran and @Paul Farquhar have also added some decent points.

Narrative consequences (even through just colour) as opposed to lucky hit point loss often pack more of a memorable punch.
This scene although in a DMs mind may be cool, might seem sour to a player, as all it did was remind the player that the DM is all-powerful and can mess with their players at any time which I'm sure is not your intended goal.

yeah i think this really puts into words why this whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth. this wasn't an encounter, it was a set piece.

 

[Zardnaar]

yeah i think this really puts into words why this whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth. this wasn't an encounter, it was a set piece.

I didnt expect to roll an 18 on initiative or land the crit.

Last campaign they got wrecked by command and hold person.

 

[MarkB]

I didnt expect to roll an 18 on initiative or land the crit.

Both of those things were more likely due to how assassins work, though.

I think a good option would have been to give the assassin some disposable hired goons whose brief was to lock down the party's healer to prevent interference with the kill, but whose CR was too low for them to be effective in that task. That way the party has something to actually interact with during the encounter. Give the goons some very limited information that's not going to lead back to the actual assassin, but will at least confirm why the party is being targeted and where the goons were hired.

That's just hindsight though.

 

[Artamo]

My thought too. NPCs should behave in a way that makes sense, and jumping solo into the middle of a group enemies does not. A lone assassin should strike their target (who should be whatever PC the villain found most annoying, not a random choice) with a weapon bearing an exotic poison that the party will have to subquest to find an antidote for, then make their escape. Doing damage whist travelling is meaningless, as it will be instantly healed at no cost, and killing a PC outright is unfair.

If you want to attack the whole group, then you should send in a band of assassins. The party will deal with them easily, because of the law of conservation of ninja, but it will remind them that [villain name] has noticed them.

I would agree with this except that assassins as unstoppable machines is a common trope in all kinds of fiction, such as Artemis Entreri in the R.A. Salvatore novels, to John Wick to superhero comics and anime. The idea that an assassin would try to surprise a group, kill one of them and then try to escape makes sense within fantasy fiction to me because it fits that trope. But I’m not a fan of it because the players can become bystanders to the action with no real way to prevent the attack, as was pretty much the case here.

 

[Artamo]

I didnt expect to roll an 18 on initiative or land the crit.

Last campaign they got wrecked by command and hold person.

Didn’t expect to roll an 18 but you said the assassin has a +10 bonus to the roll and advantage. Which, honestly, that seems crazy high. Shouldn’t it just be one of those things for an NPC?

 

[Reynard]

Assassins in numbers = mooks
Solo assassin = OP threat

More seriously, I wouldn't actually use an assassin or thief for that role in D&D. A cleric with the right spells is probably the most deadly assassin in the game.

 

[aiouh]

 

[Paul Farquhar]

assassins as unstoppable machines is a common trope in all kinds of fiction,

That’s where the law of conservation of ninja comes in (originating in Bruce Lee movies). One assassin is an unstoppable killing machine, dozens of assassins are easily put down by a single hero.