Assassin's Home Precautions

[Varianor Abroad]

Say you're a professional killer. You live in a big city in a fantasy world. You've got a place to live right? Do you take precautions at home?

Good example: Vlad from Stephen Brust's books has lots of little non-magical tricks to tell when someone's been around his place. He frequently changes weapons so that they can't be traced to him. In a D&D game, presumably he'd have Alarm spells, etc. But what else can you (should you) do?

I'm thinking poison traps on key stuff are good. The kind of poison that drains mental stats so that you don't accidentally kill the landlord's cat?

A few strategically placed bottles of alchemist's fire, garotte's, tanglefoot bags, etc around your place for emergencies are good.

Knowledge: apartment? So you know where all the squeeky boards are. You know, the nice firm ones that you renailed so they're squeeky.

What else? What do you do when the significant other comes over.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

If I am very high level then I have two houses. One is the house I walk into and has no windows and looks like the house of a paranoid person.

Hidden in that house is a permanent teleport circle to the house I really live in. This one I have paid to have covered with lots of magic that will hide my location. Of course this house will be in another city completely.

I will also as a matter of routine have undetectable alignment and anything else I can afford that limits divination.

It is a matter of course that I will kill the wizard who cast the Teleport Circle for me.

 

[Rel]

Say you're a professional killer. You live in a big city in a fantasy world. You've got a place to live right? Do you take precautions at home?

Good example: Vlad from Stephen Brust's books has lots of little non-magical tricks to tell when someone's been around his place. He frequently changes weapons so that they can't be traced to him. In a D&D game, presumably he'd have Alarm spells, etc. But what else can you (should you) do?

Well, perhaps Vlad Taltos is not the best example . If I was going to follow in his footsteps, I'd:

1) Be part of a criminal organization that keeps a tight control over what sorts of illegal activities go on in each member's area of control. Anybody who is stupid and ignorant enough to break into my home by mistake is going to be somebody I can easily kill anyway. And a professional isn't going to hit me in my home anyway. There are rules about these things you know.

2) Be close personal friends with extremely powerful personages including the Heir to the Dragon Throne, the Lord of Castle Black, the (undead) Sorceress of Dzur Mountain, all of whom wield legendary Great Weapons that can eat your soul and any and all of whom would hunt down and kill anybody who did me in. I'd sleep better at night knowing that.

3) Have a paranoid familiar with a poison bite who likes to fly in the face of my enemies while I'm otherwise occupied.

4) Have a wife who is also a professional assassin (though this depends on which era of Vlad's life we're talking about) who can throw a dagger with even more lethal efficiency than I can. Also she's totally hot, but that's just a fringe benefit.

5) Have a chain made of gold Phoenix Stone that negates magic cast at me and is destined to one day become a Great Weapon itself.

With all that in mind, I would probably not take too many additional precautions at my home. Then again, Dragaera is not your typical D&D setting and Vlad is not your typical D&D assassin.

Sorry, I know that wasn't very helpful but I'm re-reading those books right now with an eye toward making a NWN module around Vlad's adventures.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Non-detection takes care of most scrying, I believe. Its important to remember that Scrying only works on people, not places or objects (in Core at least). Then you just have to make sure no one knows where you live. You'd probably have multiple safe houses, or stay in homes belonging to other people. Multiple houses would help throw off things like Find the Path.

The best defense is to not let anyone even know who you are, or get a good look at you. Maintain strict secrecy.

 

[CCamfield]

For precautions against intruders, you might consider Sam Vimes in Pratchett's Discworld novels. I can't remember the specifics, but one of the novels opens with him talking to an assassin who tried to take him out on her own, but slipped on one of the very carefully loosened roof tiles and fell into the outdoor (cess?)pool.

 

[RangerWickett]

In my current campaign, there's only one epic-level character, Rhuarc Knightsbane, a 300 year old half-Elf rogue 7/ranger 1/assassin 10/shadowdancer 3. (All the other high-level guys tend to get political power and stop exposing themselves to the danger needed to gain experience).

Well, the PCs are going to go track this guy down, to recover an artifact he stole from the last guy he assassinated. Right now, Rhuarc is chillin' in a haunted forest, where the ghosts disrupt most divination magic, using the artifact as a ladel to stir his dinner (he has 24 ranks in Craft (cooking)). As for his defenses, he always stays on the move, and is perfectly comfortable sleeping in trees or in tiny hollows under trees. He can shadow jump if he gets caught, and he knows the forest well enough to evade most pursuit. He's fond of poison, so I'll probably have him lay traps for the party, or send in trained animals at night to poison their food.

I'm curious as to how the PCs plan to catch him.

 

[Sejs]

Step one: you don't **** where you eat. Have potential jobs screened thru an ally who gets a percentage for performing his services. Don't perform work in the area in which you live. Have several safehouses established around the city that are maintained under false names. Have each safehouse stocked with the bare minimums - disposable weapons, disguise kit, healer's kit and/or a couple healing potions, spare clothes, a little food that keeps well. Everything but the food and clothes should be concealed under the floor boards under a dresser or the bed, in the chimney behind a brick, or something similar. The only loose boards where you stash stuff should be under furnature instead of out in the open where someone can just stumble across it.

Each safehouse should be totally and completely disposable if it's compromised. If it gets made, you just abandon it and never look back. Possibly have your associate set up the safehouse so if it's raided and the items examined magically, he's the one that shows up as the last owner, not you.


For your actual residence, it should appear totally innocuous. Just like a normal, everyday person that performs whatever your public identity is, does. Make your protections invisible - the one window into where you sleep just happens to not open due to reinforcements in the wood settings. Neither the window or the door have direct line of sight to the bed or dressing area, but you have mirrors that let you see either. Have a trapdoor to a crawl space (or just the normal crawl space under a house) under the bed. The bed should rest directly on the floor. If you need to escape from the bedroom you can go to the bed, lift it up, open the trapdoor, rest the matress on the door and lower the bed down as you close the hatch. That way your means of exit isn't immediatly obvious to someone examining the room.

Keep a guard animal, the yappier and less threatening the better. The idea being, if someone gets into your home - leave.

Keep your working equipment buried in a box probably in the crawl space under the house, or under the shed if the place has a yard. The only assassin-y things I'd say to keep in the house would be things like knives (they look like they belong), a cudgel (common enough item), a garrote (aka a necklace with a pendant on it), a sock full of coppers as a sap (if you feel like taking someone alive for whatever reason), and for the (probably) one magic item - a wand of obscuring mist. Probably concealed as a back scratcher or the like. If you need to you can poof out a cloud and .. as you know where everything is, take care of the situation.

Other protections should be rather mundane - good locks. Restricted access via doors, windows, etc. Squeaky boards on both sides of every door. Curtains that you have normally tied back that you can drape across a doorway. Deadbolts on internal doors.

 

[RangerWickett]

Ceiling panels that are not strong enough to support even the weight of a halfling. There's a normal ceiling, and then a second layer that's only loosely attached, so that spiderclimbing assassins will fall off the ceiling (most people don't think to climb along walls).

Lots of glass and breakables.

You're not a sentimentalist, but of course because you're not heartless you've got one thing you care about. Your tiny potted cactus. Your pet kitten. Your Natalie Portman.



Now, what about if you live outdoors? How does an Elvish assassin defend himself? What kind of place would he stay? Not a cave, unless it has multiple exits.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For precautions against intruders, you might consider Sam Vimes in Pratchett's Discworld novels. I can't remember the specifics, but one of the novels opens with him talking to an assassin who tried to take him out on her own, but slipped on one of the very carefully loosened roof tiles and fell into the outdoor (cess?)pool.

Just flipping through the opening chapter of most of the Sam Vimes novels after the first one or two features scenes like this, all of them rife with ideas -- bear traps in the hedges, slicked tiles atop the walls, broken glass embedded atop other walls, nasty things in "ornamental" pools, etc.

Of course, Sam has the benefit of an Assassin's Guild that will only kill him at home or at work, as anywhere else would just be the work of a common murderer. If your character lives in just such a lawful society (which is where assassins often flourish anyway), you can probably concentrate most of your efforts on areas where you're likely to be attacked.

Anti-divination spells are good, as are guards who can't be dispatched as easily as normal ones are as well. Constructs and undead are good here, especially augmented in ways that aren't immediately obvious. (If you go spellstitched, for instance, hide that fact.)

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Just flipping through the opening chapter of most of the Sam Vimes novels after the first one or two features scenes like this, all of them rife with ideas -- bear traps in the hedges, slicked tiles atop the walls, broken glass embedded atop other walls, nasty things in "ornamental" pools, etc.

Of course, Sam has the benefit of an Assassin's Guild that will only kill him at home or at work, as anywhere else would just be the work of a common murderer. If your character lives in just such a lawful society (which is where assassins often flourish anyway), you can probably concentrate most of your efforts on areas where you're likely to be attacked.

Anti-divination spells are good, as are guards who can't be dispatched as easily as normal ones are as well. Constructs and undead are good here, especially augmented in ways that aren't immediately obvious. (If you go spellstitched, for instance, hide that fact.)

Dimension door is a big problem of course. If you put drapes on your house, a magician with mage hand waves them aside. But then, if you have a magic nullification field of some sort, that makes people sit up and take notice too.

I like the idea of construct furniture though. That is really good. Everything in the house is animated and designed to protect you.

Now, the elvish assassin question, that's really interesting. Perhaps he or she uses only naturally occurring venoms, poisons, and other things. They drop a black widow spider in the bed, etc. So there's nothing to hide. Use birds and animals as couriers, hide under two feet of rock so you can't be scried, etc.

Oh, which gets back to the original point. Lead paint! Finally, a good use for the stuff. Seriously, perhaps an assassin lines the walls of their house with lead and has special lead-glass windows. If you can afford 8th level spells, screen is an absolute necessity.