Assassins Evil?

[Dannyalcatraz]

I know your pain. I've been wanting to give Danny XP for a number of posts in this thread and that one "capped" them all. I'm glad I was not drinking or eating anything when I read it.

Just as an FYI, I keep a personal metric of how funny I'm being on a particular board by counting the number of other posters' screens/keyboards ruined.

I'm in my high-20s here!

 

[Crothian]

You're really drifting here. What if the assassin specializes in sniper tactics? Then they're one and the same, aren't they?

Everyone is drifting far a field here. Remember this in the context of D&D so you'd need a sniper prestige class to compare with the Assassin prestige class or something like that.

 

[ppaladin123]

Because that's the way it was written. People are free to change things all they want but it is written as evil so it is evil. In D&D evil is defined and can be detected. It doesn't matter what the class features because the game does not define class features as evil or not evil.

Yup, that was my point. There is no compelling mechanical reason to restrict the class to evil beings; it was just written that way. I think we are actually in agreement here.

 

[WizarDru]

We do have one: the Deepwood Sniper. Who is NOT evil.

 

[Crothian]

Yup, that was my point. There is no compelling mechanical reason to restrict the class to evil beings; it was just written that way. I think we are actually in agreement here.

Evil is a mechanic like base attack bonus or skill ranks though. One has to be evil before they take the class, the class itself doesn't turn someone evil by what it is.

 

[Wolf1066]

NO - because they are weapons and weapons don't kill, people do.
YES - because they take the money and then become the weapon AND as long as they do not question the task they are performing, just actting they take on the aligment of their user. You, then get the line "I was just following orders.

The exact same could be said about assassins - they are weapons "wielded" by someone else and they, too, are "just following orders".

And that's assuming they are the Assassins Guild "Hire us to make your problems go away" type rather than the government-trained "sneak in and take out our nation's enemies while they're miles from the battlefield"* (whose motivation may well be patriotism) or religious "kill the infidel" types.

* Which to my mind is a far more important "defining characteristic" than anything else mentioned so far.

A soldier's theatre of operations is the battlefield - be (s)he sniper or mercenary or militia or Regular Force - the assassin's theatre of operations is not constrained in that manner.

A mercenary or soldier must take on the enemy in the battlefield - and if they want that battlefield to be your capital city, they have to get there in force.

An assassin - paid, government, religious zealot or whatever - is "free" to enter areas other than a war zone and "inhume" their selected targets - while they are asleep, eating dinner, speaking at a public venue, having a crap, walking the dog, shagging the missus - whatever.

It is that departure from the designated war zone (wherever that might expand to during the course of the war) that differentiates between the assassin and the soldier.

In the case of an assassin, there doesn't even have to be a declared "shooting war" in place.

An assassin may act on the battlefield but a soldier who acts outside the battlefield has just crossed the line from "combat" to "assassination".

When soldiers turn up in your Capital, they turn up in numbers and try to fight their way to your leader.

An assassin sneaks in and waits for the opportunity to kill.

 

[Stormonu]

We do have one: the Deepwood Sniper. Who is NOT evil.

And then there is the Slayer of Domiel prestige class, which sends this whole thing into a tailspin. Lawful Good - check. Sneak Attack - check. Death touch - check.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And then there is the Slayer of Domiel prestige class, which sends this whole thing into a tailspin. Lawful Good - check. Sneak Attack - check. Death touch - check.

I bet they heronate* a bunch of people.

* Thank you fanboy2000!

 

[Crothian]

And then there is the Slayer of Domiel prestige class, which sends this whole thing into a tailspin. Lawful Good - check. Sneak Attack - check. Death touch - check.

Not really. The death touch only works against evil characters and creatures. And we know that killing evil is a good thing.

 

[knightofround]

One of the most interesting PCs I've seen in my games was a Good Assassin. He was far more religious than either of the two clerics in the campaign. This character saw himself as a tool of God to judge and purge the world of evil. The reason he turned into a shadowy killer is that he *highly* regarded innocent life, and never wanted to risk hurting or killing someone innocent. This included his own, which is why he killed from the shadows. He only killed those who propagated evil, not those who merely served evil, or those who were seduced by it in order to gain power. (Unless his own life, or one of his comrades was in immediate danger, anyway) He had a strong belief that those kinds of people had inherently good souls, and they could be saved if he performed his task well.

Later on in the campaign, the character became even more self-preserving, as his interactions with others led him to believe that the world was becoming more evil by the day. The character greatly feared that if they were to die, then there would be no one else who could take up his task without being corrupted by the darkness that comes with it.

It was a most amazing character, especially how the player handled playing such a loner character so well within D&D's party framework, without becoming a silent outcast. It was a fascinating mixture of "Light" from the anime Death Note, and the "MacManus brothers" from the film Boondock Saints.