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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5831534" data-attributes="member: 2067">Sure. The idea is that in an encounter-based game like 3e or 4e, action denial is very powerful, because it swings the odds dramatically in favor of the party with more actions. More actions = more attacks = much faster victory. This is bad news, since it makes encounters -- the basic challenge of the game -- much easier.But in a game with the focus zoomed out the adventure level, individual encounters matter significantly less individually. It matters more what the sum of them accomplish. Action denial might swing the calculus of a single encounter, but over the course of 10 encounters, it's not that big of a deal (assuming it doesn't happen in every encounter, which, requiring surprise, this hypothetical assassin death attack wouldn't). The challenge can remain consistent even if one encounter becomes easier.  I don't think the Assassin should be limited to killing things that anyone can one-shot. That's kind of saying "We shouldn't have an Assassin, they should all just be rogues!" But the archetype is pretty different. IMO, A 1st-level assassin might be killing kings and barons. A 20th-level assassin might be killing pit fiends and planetars. And the way most of us are talking about SoD, and translating it into damage, actually works well with solos and elites and the like. The assassin or the disintegrate spell deals enough damage to kill a normal enemy. Solos and elites have more HP, so they will just take large buckets of damage.Like, the ghoul's paralyze. I personally wouldn't make that SoD at all (it's a good candidate for the save-every-round or end-of-next-turn design of many 4e effects), but if you DID, you'd make it so that it didn't bypass HP: only a character reduced to 0 hp by a ghoul's attack becomes paralyzed.</blockquote>

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