I'd probably roll with a mix of monk fighter and rogue for the class abilities. I think the best way 5e has to replicate the assassin's melee ability is probably a crit fishing build. If you borrowed the champions extended crit range and maybe dropped in an ability like elven accuracy you'd have solid crit fishing based on manufacturing advantage rather than surprise, which sounds closer to what you want. Toss in two weapon fighting, a second attack, unarmored defense, uncanny dodge, and some kind of death touch capstone and I think the base class would look about the way you want. Sneak attack would be nice, but it depends on design room. Three skills plus thieves tools, expertise in stealth, a bespoke weapon list, and a d8 HD and you're rolling.
I do think that the assassin needs a clearly defined unique ability that no one else has, in order to stave of the “why it ain’t a rogue, y’all!?” Squad. Shrouds could be that, and one function of them could be to decrease the crit threshold. Combine that with 4e’s Lethal (drop to 0 any critter you drop to 5 or fewer hp) quality of life ribbon, and you’ve got a solid defining gameplay style. More on how I’d do shrouds at the end of the post.
But I agree on using monk fight rogue, is just also look to the ranger.
There's a whole range of alignments that could fit a stealth based ambush attacker who hunts weak spots. The class name Assassin, much like Warlord, is just a cool name, let's not get too tied up about loaded terms.
Damn right. Ezio Auditore is, I’d say, Neutral Good. Altair probably starts Lawful Evil, ends up more neutral. I’m playing a rogue right now who used to be a warlock, who is definitely Good. We started this campaign in 4e, so he was just Good.
Assassination as an archetype is a skill set, not a job. A hit man can be any class, and is probably evil barring some kind of “no innocents” code.
An Assassin (capital A is important here) is a person trained to kill for a cause, more likely than an indiscriminate hired killer.
Also, it’s a PC class. The PC might be a trained assassin who has escaped or is trying to escape that life.
While the Assassin (rogue) is the infiltrator, the Executioneer is the Half-rogue class like the paladin is to the cleric.
- Light, medium, shield, martial weapons
- Less skills, no (or less) expertise
- Extra attack at 5
- Light Sneak attack against hobbled target (poisoned, prone, surprised, stunned or restrained).
- Ability to dispatch lower CR humanoid in one shot ala cleric on a surprised hit.
The urban ''ranger'' go there. There's to much wilderness in the base ranger to make it pertinent in a City. Put the ''cant get lost in a city'' ''ignore difficult terrain in a city'' and double prof in Stealth, Investigation and tracking task in city'' in this class.
Archetypes:
Poisoner: Create poison, maybe bonus in social interaction
Vigilante: Assassin Creed style
Bounty Hunter: trap specialist, gain bonus with net and such.
Wraith: Shroud-Using assassin with 1/3 casting
Avenger: 1/3 Cleric caster
I’m good with this. Executioner or Avenger would be good names, since they then wouldn’t have the same name as a PHB subclass. I’d probably put shrouds in the base class, but make them less explicitly magical, and then the wraith makes shrouds more weird and mystical.
I think you need abandon any thoughts of one-shot one-kill in 5e, it just isn't designed to support it, save maybe as a save or die capstone. Critical hits is probably the best we can do, possibly with additional damage dice to sexy them up.
I think we can look to the cleric for this. Perhaps a situation where if you deal more than half the target’s HP in damage, and their CR XYZ or lower, they must succeed on a con save or be dropped to 0. At say...5th level at the earliest, maybe it’s the level 11 damage buff.
At lvl 5, a cleric can one-shot CR 1/2 (up to CR 4) undeads in AoE if they fail a saving throw 2 (up to 3) time per day. Having an Executioner do it on humanoid of the same CR (1/2 to 4) on a single Suprised Humanoid target on a (lets say) Con save its that much.
Can we really pretend that you successfully surprise as many humanoids in 1 day than a cleric can destroy/frightened undead in the same day (assuming a campaign playing to their strength)?
This. The assassin doing it to 1 creature at a time, with a damage threshold requirement, at a somewhat higher level, would be fine.
About Shrouds, and Lethal.
*Shrouds would be a mark of sorts that you apply a scaling number of (as a bonus action?).
*If you are hidden or surprised, you apply more, and if the target is surprised and you’re hidden, you apply full shrouds.
*Each shroud is a d10, and you get fewer than the rogue gets SA dice, and use them less often.
*at full shrouds/half total shrouds, your crit range goes down to 19, eventually 18, maybe capping off at 17.
*Shrouded targets grant you advantage if they are Frighthened, Charmed by you or an ally of yours, or below half their HP maximum.
*When you hit with an attack, you can choose to invoke your Shrouds (no action). You add your Shroud dice as a damage bonus to the attack, and all shrouds are removed.
*If you crit a Shrouded target, you gain a bonus to damage equal to your assassin level.
Lethal is: When you reduce a target of an attack to 5hp of fewer, you instead reduce them to 0hp. This would scale with tiers, but the idea isn’t for it to ever be super high. It’s there to make the assassin the guy who never leaves someone just barely still alive with an attack.
