keterys
First Post
Depends a lot on the length of the combat - in my play experience, it was between a thief and a warlock, say. And a lot closer to the thief than the warlock.
It also had more poison uses than the one posted in December - ie, 5 uses at 4th level instead of... 1?
Most combats lasted 3 rounds - during those rounds, I started hidden to start a garotte, and used drow darkness to get off another 2 rounds of garrote. Ie, I never lacked the hidden requirement for the good attack. The sustain standard didn't come up too often - the monster usually died before it needed to - but it was autohit, so that's an extra edge.
2d10 once per encounter instead of 1d6 twice per encounter (backstab) is a slight nudge for the assassin.
Attacking Reflex & autohit sustain vs. backstab's +3 and thief weapon talent can roughly cancel out.
Which brings it to 3d8+2 (thief w/ better finesse, sneak attack and backstabber feat, all other bonuses equal) vs. 2d4+1d8 base damage (and an extra feat, since there's no analog for backstabber), which has the thief 5.5 damage in the lead per attack.
Which is a tough hill for death attack (+10 damage whenever that would drop an enemy) and five poisons per day to climb, but... let's see, the poisons dealt say 10 damage. So, spread over 12 attacks that's more than 4 damage each, from the poison.
And the 10 damage kicker from death attack is harder to predict - came up twice for me in that run, so that'd be enough to actually bump the executioner up over the thief, though by less than .5 a point of damage per attack.
Obviously, things get wackier at different level spreads, but it did just fine in that particular game.
