Assassin's and the Good Alignment

[plunoir101]

So in my games I have ruled that assassin's may be any non-good do to the sake that I view the class as an art to be perfected rather then just a cold, calculating murderer-for-hire.
This brings me to my current dilemma (work with me on this):
WARNING: Wall of Story Text
Grendel made his living serving the kingdom as a royal assassin used during the fey wars. At this time he was CE and served the royal family as long as they could make his payments and sate his appetite for improving himself.
He was sent on such a contract during the fall, which named a druid's circle as the target.
He found the circle performing a magical rite involving a nymph who was apparently unconscious and dying. As the spell reached its crescendo, Grendel struck and swiftly eliminated the druids while they recovered from the casting. Grendel considered himself fortunate of the turn of events and, after searching the dead and finding nothing of value (to him), he started to leave.
As he turned away he crossed paths with the nymph, now brought back to life and weary, and got a face full of Stunning Glance.
The nymph, angered at the man for killing her rescuers, destroyed his weapons quickly disarmed him and stopped suppressing her Blinding Beauty.
Grendel was blinded and helpless to the mercy of his attacker.
The nymph, more wrathful then most, didn't kill Grendel. She instead bound him and took him to her home on the edge of a waging battle between men and fey. It was here that Grendel was forced to listen to the screams of the fey as they were ruthlessly murdered by the destructive humans.
Time passed and the nymph, calling herself Illumae, told to Grendel the stories of her people as well as explained what truly transpired in the war of the fey. That truth being that the humans had incited the war in order to expand their borders into the prosperous feylands.
After two weeks, Illumae cured Grendel's blindness and set him free.
Grendel, however, was still to stricken with this new truth that he stayed with Illumae for many months more. Eventually, Grendel and Illumae fell in love with each other and Grendel gave up his life as an assassin to start a new life of peace with Illumae.
Now, the kingdom needed its prime assassin and sent adventuring parties out looking for Grendel. It was one such party that stumbled across the pair and, assuming the nymph had a curse over Grendel, attacked the fey on site. Grendel, fearing to lose the only thing that made sense anymore, took up his blades and killed every one of the party.
Realizing the king would never willingly give up on his assassin, Grendel retrieved his forgotten weapons and made haste to the kingdom to end it once and for all.
He entered the kingdom under the pretense that he had been captured and recently escaped. The king, ecstatic that his assassin had returned, had Grendel rushed to his private quarters immediately.
Grendel, once alone with the king, opened a barrage of questions regarding the fey wars as well as the kings part in it while entrancing the king to make him more forthcoming. The king, under the enchantment, spilled the information Grendel feared, that the king had started everything. This couldn't prepare Grendel for the following bit of info, that the king was doing the same thing in two other countries, as well as enlisting the drow to assist in killing fey!
Grendel took the last bottle of poison he had, kept just in case, and bade the king to drink. "A toast, to the death of the fey!"
Grendel left the kingdom with one less king that night, and started the month long trek back to his home and his love.
(Takes a deep breath)
Grendel arrived not to his Illumae's song, nor the sweet scent of the trees nor the sight of his true love.
The place he had called home was razed and burned. Illumae had been raped and killed, left nailed to the great tree that overlooked their home.
Grendel did the only thing he could. He buried his love that morning and, after discovering the suit of armor Illumae had crafted for him during his absence, gathered his gear and left the woods a sadder man with a mission.
To rid the world of those of like mind to his love's killers.
His first stop, the city of Solace, a corrupt jewel within a shining kingdom...

------------
END OF STORY TEXT
------------
Sorry bout that, I kind of went on a tangent.
So anyways, Grendel slowly changed alignment from CE to CN to, eventually, CG. Now, I understand that I said assassin's in my world could be non-good. So I was wondering what kind of penalties Grendel would suffer (if any) for his alignment switching? I had thought of him swearing to never use his abilities to harm the good, as well as only using poisons that immobilize, paralyze, or deal damage to stats other then Con.
Should he be allowed to continue advancing as an assassin?
Would it be better to create a new prestige class so he could trade in his assassin levels similar to the blackguard with paladin levels?


If you have read this far thanks for sticking with me and I hope you all enjoyed this little peek into my ever-changing world. Thanks for the answers in advance as always!
OH and please criticize my story. I love feedback.

Man, I'm so glad im the DM hehe.

 

[Mirror]

There's a class similar to the assasin in the I think either complete divine, exalted deeds or complete champion. Best bet at this point is to make the char into that class, give him his 20% exp penalty and be on his way.

 

[Dandu]

Really this whole thread underscores the inherent tery of the Munchkin, who wants the BROADEST definition when it serves their purposes and the NARROWEST definition when it does not.

The Assassin cannot be good. It's written, plain as day. Nothing about them changing alignments, it states as written in stone by God above "No Assassin can have a good alignment". Not "Assassins can have a change of heart". Not "Assassins can have a good alignment if they put on an alignment changing item". Not "Special exceptions can change allow my assassin to be Good and still practice his craft". Not "Magic makes me a rather polite and prim and generous and kind Assassin".

This is why there are no ex-Assassins. Because there cannot BE an ex-Assassin. If the answer to the question "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Assassin's Guild?" is "Yes" then you cannot have a good alignment. Even if by some bizarre chance you did get your alignment changed, the fact remains that it is impossible to be a good Assassin as stated by RAW.

The game allows for paladins to turn evil, for monks to turn chaotic, for any number of alignment variations. But unlike paladins, monks, bards, barbarians, what have you, there's nothing in RAW for ex-Assassins. Consequently you cannot assume there can be ex-Assassins simply because it suits your powergaming needs. It states clearly there can be no good Assassins. Game over.

Now, Avengers on the other hand...

 

[kitcik]

Really this whole thread underscores the inherent tery of the Munchkin, who wants the BROADEST definition when it serves their purposes and the NARROWEST definition when it does not.

The Assassin cannot be good. It's written, plain as day. Nothing about them changing alignments, it states as written in stone by God above "No Assassin can have a good alignment". Not "Assassins can have a change of heart". Not "Assassins can have a good alignment if they put on an alignment changing item". Not "Special exceptions can change allow my assassin to be Good and still practice his craft". Not "Magic makes me a rather polite and prim and generous and kind Assassin".

This is why there are no ex-Assassins. Because there cannot BE an ex-Assassin. If the answer to the question "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Assassin's Guild?" is "Yes" then you cannot have a good alignment. Even if by some bizarre chance you did get your alignment changed, the fact remains that it is impossible to be a good Assassin as stated by RAW.

The game allows for paladins to turn evil, for monks to turn chaotic, for any number of alignment variations. But unlike paladins, monks, bards, barbarians, what have you, there's nothing in RAW for ex-Assassins. Consequently you cannot assume there can be ex-Assassins simply because it suits your powergaming needs. It states clearly there can be no good Assassins. Game over.

[MENTION=85158]Dandu[/MENTION] where r u? I think [MENTION=6676235]Visigani[/MENTION] hacked your account...

Now, Avengers on the other hand...

err, umm, uhh "any non-chaotic" sorry NO AVENGER FOR YOU. Maybe you can have some soup instead.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Really this whole thread underscores the inherent tery of the Munchkin, who wants the BROADEST definition when it serves their purposes and the NARROWEST definition when it does not.

The Assassin cannot be good. It's written, plain as day. Nothing about them changing alignments, it states as written in stone by God above "No Assassin can have a good alignment". Not "Assassins can have a change of heart". Not "Assassins can have a good alignment if they put on an alignment changing item". Not "Special exceptions can change allow my assassin to be Good and still practice his craft". Not "Magic makes me a rather polite and prim and generous and kind Assassin".

This is why there are no ex-Assassins. Because there cannot BE an ex-Assassin. If the answer to the question "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Assassin's Guild?" is "Yes" then you cannot have a good alignment. Even if by some bizarre chance you did get your alignment changed, the fact remains that it is impossible to be a good Assassin as stated by RAW.

The game allows for paladins to turn evil, for monks to turn chaotic, for any number of alignment variations. But unlike paladins, monks, bards, barbarians, what have you, there's nothing in RAW for ex-Assassins. Consequently you cannot assume there can be ex-Assassins simply because it suits your powergaming needs. It states clearly there can be no good Assassins. Game over.

Now, Avengers on the other hand...

How about an Assassin that is on the receiving end of BoED's Sanctify the Wicked spell? would lose the Assassin spell list and Hide in Plain Sight, gains some nifty abilities.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm not sure, but Dandu may just have doubled the total number of words he's posted on ENWorld with that post.

 

[plunoir101]

Ok, thanks for the quick responses.
Now, putting aside the fact that a previous post is more or less just copied from another thread with the word assassin plugged in...
D&D is a place where, given the right circumstances and enough time, anything can happen. So I don't see why an assassin can't one day be good. There is nothing saying "oops because of that you're evil forever!!!" in the assassin block. Now, I understand he can not advance as an assassin anymore and that's fine, I'm doing ALL of this for the sake of story.

So, with that out of the way...

LOL at the avenger class, I needed a good laugh.
After thinking about it, I was probably going to create a prestige class for him based off of some of the assassin's abilities while adding a Fey feel to it. Once again, the class doesn't need to be great as it's just for story.

Serious question time!
If he were to revert to evil, say CE CN CE as per the story above, would a group of characters, some good, allow him to travel along with them if they needed to achieve the same cause? (Artemis Entreri did so with Jarlaxle in the Sellswords books.) Also, having the evil alignment doesn't prevent you from fighting for what you believe in as far as I know, and it shouldn't affect his motivation either, just the way he goes about it.
Point I'm trying to make is, if Grendel was to travel with this party for a spell, would their be alignment problems if the party found out he was evil? Even if they needed him.

Another question: What points of the assassin class make it evil? The killing isn't, adventurers of every alignment kill. The spells? Nah, most of those are on the wizards list. Death attack is just a more refined sneak attack so unless all rogues are evil that's not it. Now the poison... If only used against true threats or in self-defense, does that make it evil?

Thanks in advance!

 

[kitcik]

If he were to revert to evil, say CE CN CE as per the story above, would a group of characters, some good, allow him to travel along with them if they needed to achieve the same cause?

Depends on the characters and on how badly they need him.

Also, having the evil alignment doesn't prevent you from fighting for what you believe in as far as I know, and it shouldn't affect his motivation either, just the way he goes about it.

I agree with the first part, but it certainly would impact what you believe in and therefore your motivation, IMHO.

Point I'm trying to make is, if Grendel was to travel with this party for a spell, would their be alignment problems if the party found out he was evil? Even if they needed him.

Depends on the party and how you define "problems." I would not want to travel with a chaotic evil assassin for obvious reasons: since he's chaotic, he could change his mind and go against any agreements at any time, since he's evil, he likely wants to kill me (assuming I'm good), and since he's an assassin, he probably could (ok, I say that with an asterisk: based on a theoretical assassin not the actual moderately crappy class).

Another question: What points of the assassin class make it evil? The killing isn't, adventurers of every alignment kill. The spells? Nah, most of those are on the wizards list. Death attack is just a more refined sneak attack so unless all rogues are evil that's not it. Now the poison... If only used against true threats or in self-defense, does that make it evil?

I think it's the black cloaks.

 

[Hassassin]

Firstly, seeing assassination as "an art to be perfected" pretty much means evil alignment in my book.

By the RAW there doesn't seem to be anything about Assassins losing their abilities if they become non-evil, so I would rule that they must advance in another class thereafter, but don't lose any abilities they've already gained. Now whether they would want to keep using all those abilities is another matter...

 

[plunoir101]

wow, more great answers.

Ok, so i've been thinking. What alignment does this guy sound like at the end of the story? Could he be CN? Or , going way out there, could he have gone CE CN N?