How do you handle Rogue (Assassins)?

[FrogReaver]

I think stealth issues may still separate the rogue from the group. Stealthing as a group is nearly impossible.

 

[pogre]

I think stealth issues may still separate the rogue from the group. Stealthing as a group is nearly impossible.

Very true.

It's the reason why rogues like to operate alone or at least with others who are sneaky.

I guess it's not a huge issue - it probably comes up once every other game or so. The rogue player is a great person and player - he's just latest to choose the Assassin route. He will be very understanding if I ask him not to separate from the party as SOP, but I wanted to throw him a bone for doing so.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

Very true.

It's the reason why rogues like to operate alone or at least with others who are sneaky.

I guess it's not a huge issue - it probably comes up once every other game or so. The rogue player is a great person and player - he's just latest to choose the Assassin route. He will be very understanding if I ask him not to separate from the party as SOP, but I wanted to throw him a bone for doing so.

As a quick aside, I have a 19th level Assassin/Fighter in AL that has gotten off less than 10 surprise attacks in his career. Most of this is due to the nature of AL, with a heavy emphasis on player inclusion and keeping solo adventures down due to time constraints. That said, as a DM I've had many Assassin PCs in my games and have had no issue with them finding methods to surprise when the opportunity appears.

 

[pogre]

As a quick aside, I have a 19th level Assassin/Fighter in AL that has gotten off less than 10 surprise attacks in his career. Most of this is due to the nature of AL, with a heavy emphasis on player inclusion and keeping solo adventures down due to time constraints.

Impressive that you have a 19th level character - that's a lot of game time.

Are you frustrated with the lack of surprise opportunities or did you figure that would be the case when you chose assassin?

 

[iserith]

Something else to look at is the handling time in the assassin-scouting-ahead tactic. How much time does it take to resolve? Maybe that can be shaved down to an amount of time that the rest of the party doesn't mind being idle. Or perhaps while the assassin is doing the scouting ahead, there's some kind of interaction you can set up with the idle players, such as asking them about what their characters think about some recent campaign development or the like. That way you're getting some kind of input from them that is useful to fleshing out the PCs instead of having them sit quietly while the scouting is resolved. This avoids changing the assassin's class feature or the surprise rules.

My regular players would probably count on supporting the assassin's class feature in about 50% of the fights. They'd take some spells to help boost the heavy armor wearers' stealthiness. And heavy armor wearers would likely spend their Inspiration to offset their disadvantage.

 

[Sleepy Walker]

If you include more player interactions where an opponent is talking to the PCs first, like a fair amount of the intelligent potential enemies in Tomb of Annihilation, then all the assassin needs to do is decide at some moment to stick a dagger in someone or make a convenient excuse and do the stealthy killer routine to slowly pick opponents off while the other PCs keep everybody talking. Additionally, if you have the PCs come across opponents that are otherwise occupied (digging a ditch, ogre eating a tree, Harpy's fighting over some shinny trinket, etc) then a surprise round is not that difficult to justify.

I'm also going to put out their that an illusionist magic user and an assassin work really really well together.

 

[Fast_Jimmy]

OP, forget tweaking the Surprise rules. They don't need to be tweaked - Surprising enemies is very powerful and can completely decimate an encounter. If you accommodate your Surprise rules to help the Assassin, you will effectively empower the rest of the party with additional action economy and penalize enemies.

In addition, you run the risk of relegating the entire exploration task to the Rogue, which robs the players of the feeling they are doing anything more than acting as Monster Janitors.

Fix the problem - Assassinate is terrible. Its a terrible ability. The rest of the Assassin's abilities are also terrible (Spend a day to dress up like an NPC! Spend hours to fake writing! Oh boy!), but Assassinate being terrible just makes the whole class nonredeemable. Death Strike, if the poor, misguided soul actually manages to drag their sorry Assassin character across the 17th level threshold, basically requires a successful Assassinate for the Deathstrike to kick off as well, which means every ability in the entire Assassin's bag of tricks is just... the worst.


Fix Assassinate and it all becomes better.


Bonus Action, gives Advantage to one attack. If you already have Advantage, the hit becomes a Crit. You can use this ability again once you have completed a Long Rest. As a sidenote, have Deathstrike key off a successful Assassinate (instead of Surpirse) as well.

There you go - I turned a totally useless ability and subclass into one that is functionally now able to mix it up with the rest of the party without changing the entire experience, balance or mechanics of the game and without making them so ridiculously powerful that you need to ban them. Its more important to fix the thing that needs fixing rather than try to rebuild the entire game.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

Impressive that you have a 19th level character - that's a lot of game time.

Are you frustrated with the lack of surprise opportunities or did you figure that would be the case when you chose assassin?

Three-plus years has meant a lot of gaming! I'm not particularly frustrated as the issue with setting up a good ambush often detracts from what the rest of the party wants to do, and that's okay with me. Frankly, getting surprises off these days often means he takes out a major threat in one go (especially with Action Surge), which is no fun. He's got a lot of other tricks in his bag, too. If I was choosing a Rogue subclass today for this PC I'd probably stick with Assassin because he's a sniper, so it still fits the character thematically.

 

[AriochQ]

The simple fix is to allow assassinate if the rogue is stealthed (the rest of the party need not be stealthed) and acts before an opponent on the first turn. In the big scheme of things an auto-crit on a high level rogue does 38.5 extra damage (11d6*3.5) which is easily accounted for by buffing boss hit points or adding an extra monster if you want to keep the encounters challenging without making major changes. Assassins assassinate, the rule of fun says we should let them do it!

 

[Fast_Jimmy]

If you include more player interactions where an opponent is talking to the PCs first, like a fair amount of the intelligent potential enemies in Tomb of Annihilation, then all the assassin needs to do is decide at some moment to stick a dagger in someone or make a convenient excuse and do the stealthy killer routine to slowly pick opponents off while the other PCs keep everybody talking.

Except that is not a Surprised enemy.

The party is not making Stealth rolls and the two groups spot each other. No one is Surprised.

Even if your DM rules that the Rogue is being Stealthy and that is enough, once the first decision to attack is made, the rules state you must begin rolling Initiative. After all, if the target rolls high enough in Initiative, they can go first and, even though they cannot do anything their first round, they are no longer Surprised. This means that the Assassinate doesn't happen with the first enemy, but it also means that Assassinate cannot happen with any other creature - the Surprised condition can only be conferred on the first round of Initiative.

Now, keep in mind... I'm not a rules lawyer, nor would i try and absolutely shut down the kind of idea you are suggesting at my table. But here's the problem - the only people I know who actively say the Assassin isn't terrible are people who either don't abide by or don't understand Surprised rules as they exist in 5e. There are such rare circumstances that this would ever come up that it makes the ability nearly worthless, even when you have the entire party switching their playstyle to try and make it work for the PC.



Also, your entire concept suggests scenarios where enemies would be okay with engaging in conversation with the party before being murdered. That's not going to happen very often, considering the vast majority of creatures in the MM, as an example, don't speak Common.