D&D 5E Assassins, Alignment, and Archetypes

[doctorbadwolf]

To be clear, I have no interest in or intention of designing a class that has to sit on its hands for a round in order to do its cool thing. That is, IMO, inherently bad design.

edit: what I will do is look at creating more incentive to plan ahead, use stealth, and play smart. But I won’t make a class that forces an exact turn by turn process every time, every character. There has to be playstyle fluidity or it isn’t worth making the class. Full stop.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I don't see any incentive not to invoke whenever you hit.

Also, to this point. It’s a limited resource. IME, monks don’t Flurry or Stun every turn, simply because Ki is limited.

Now, an interesting thing for a subclass might be to have an ability that speaks to training to fight as part of a team, as an assassin. Something like making a minor attack that only does 1d4+Int mod damage and force a BItC save, and make it so that an enemy suffering from that feature takes extra damage when hit, or is more vulnerable to saves, etc.

if this attack doesn’t break stealth, and contributes to the “nova strike” next round, it might be enough to keep the assassin engaged but careful until it’s time to strike.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

To be clear, I have no interest in or intention of designing a class that has to sit on its hands for a round in order to do its cool thing. That is, IMO, inherently bad design.

edit: what I will do is look at creating more incentive to plan ahead, use stealth, and play smart. But I won’t make a class that forces an exact turn by turn process every time, every character. There has to be playstyle fluidity or it isn’t worth making the class. Full stop.

My worry is you're ending up with a class that does the same process within a turn every turn: shroud, strike, back off. Think about casters. They can't cast their most powerful spell every round. They have to pick their moment. Whether that means they aren't doing their "cool thing" in other rounds depends on one's definition of "cool thing" -- they are certainly casting other spells, which may be support effects or control effects that can help set up the moment for the big spell.

Now, to me, "pick your moment" sounds like a great phrase to sum up the playstyle of an assassin character. So, you're right, literally spending a turn in the middle of combat doing nothing but staring at an enemy is probably a bad idea. But doing other, lesser "cool things" like dodging and skirmishing before setting up for a big strike -- that's very much in the realm of possibility.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

My worry is you're ending up with a class that does the same process within a turn every turn: shroud, strike, back off. Think about casters. They can't cast their most powerful spell every round. They have to pick their moment. Whether that means they aren't doing their "cool thing" in other rounds depends on one's definition of "cool thing" -- they are certainly casting other spells, which may be support effects or control effects that can help set up the moment for the big spell.

Now, to me, "pick your moment" sounds like a great phrase to sum up the playstyle of an assassin character. So, you're right, literally spending a turn in the middle of combat doing nothing but staring at an enemy is probably a bad idea. But doing other, lesser "cool things" like dodging and skirmishing before setting up for a big strike -- that's very much in the realm of possibility.

Again...limited resource. The assassin literally cannot do their big spike damage every turn. They have as many shrouds as a monk has ki.

Beyond that, I already suggested a setup strike, but even without that, the normal setup is going to be attacking and then returning to stealth, and either leaving the enemy to bleed out while the next turn is spent on the real target, or stacking up that bleed with a spike hit.

The Assassin isn’t a caster. It’s perfectly okay if they can move in and out of the shadows every round, with some rounds featuring a big spike damage hit with a higher crit chance.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I didn't realize until just now you limited shrouds to X per day instead of X per target (which you also limited.

My balancing thought was just based on shrouds per Target and unlimited per day.

This probably explains why we are world's apart in balance....I think your design limited to X shrouds per day is SUPER underpowered throughout a day but still tweaked towards the max for damage per round.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I didn't realize until just now you limited shrouds to X per day instead of X per target (which you also limited.

My balancing thought was just based on shrouds per Target and unlimited per day.

This probably explains why we are world's apart in balance....I think your design limited to X shrouds per day is SUPER underpowered throughout a day but still tweaked towards the max for damage per round.

The intention is to regain shrouds per short rest, which I think puts it pretty close to right. You can max out damage a couple times per short rest at most, generally 1-2/combat unless you're blowing it all on one fight. Which may actually be too little, still, but you also get conditional extra attacks and a damage over time feature after level 5, and some control. The subclasses should bring the rest of the heat needed to keep an assassin character in the same damage tier as other damage focused characters.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I have added to the assassin's shroud;
"With maximum shrouds on a target, you reroll shroud damage dice results of 2 or lower, until the result is higher than 2.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Maybe that could require that your attack be from stealth or against a vulnerable target, so that you are incentivized to plan to get full shrouds, and to use tactics to max the potential of your actual big shroud strike?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Executioner

No description.

homebrewery.naturalcrit.com

Update. I made later levels a bit more weird and wild, like other classes are. Also made the specialized tool choices more impactful, so they don't end up like favored terrain for the ranger.
cleaned up some wording issues.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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homebrewery.naturalcrit.com

Necromantic update! Simplified some features, working on cleaning up the whole thing.