Is the Executioner underpowered, not a striker or both? (or am I missing something?)

[Neverfate]

Which is great. It should be possible to make both a stealthy, sneaking cutpurse type of rogue and a fast moving, daredevil, swashbuckling robber, etc ... but when the 'optimal' one is a charger, that does mean that a backstabber is "better off" being in your face than sneaking up behind you ... which does seem a bit counter intuitive. The "classic" theif is subpar compared to Leroy Rogue-ins.



Which is my complaint mostly. They do give the Executioner a few hide things (but in a clunky "you must be hidden to do this" way). There are some practical applications (suprise rounds, opportunities to cdg, making yourself hard to be attacked or hit), but really, the whole hiding thing is difficult to pull off, hard to keep when you attack (which you should be doing) and doesn't give a ton of benefit when you do it, which is a big reason why the shade is looked down upon, as the only classes that really want stealth get it auto trained anyway.

Still, it would seem that they should try and do something to make it so that, at the very least, an assassin is better of being a ninja than a pinball.

Unfortunately, when given feedback, WotC didn't seem to care very much that playing in a certain archetype mattered more than actual effectiveness at a role. That's their general mentality to keep a deformed "balance", I guess. They want the Executioner to be a sneaky killer and a poisoner. Those rules, in D&D as a whole, are not very effective in general (and charging and weapon damage are just better supported than any other option in the game). But that's what WotC wanted, regardless of whether or not it works in our games: it works in theirs.

WotC got exactly the Executioner they wanted via "play testing". And by that, I mean they got rid of the CDG loophole from the initial article. At least you can switch items as a free action now. . . ?

 

[mneme]

Neverfate: I don't think it's so much that they "don't care" as that these aren't easy problems to solve.

Actually, though, I think you've put the nail on the head of the problem -- it's not that everything else is badly done, but that charging optimization is so well supported that tends to throw things (way) out of balance.

Characters who make most of their attacks with basic attacks are simpler to design, good in a wide variety of circumstances, and simpler to play than characters who mostly use powers.

Charge support enables certain intended playstyles, and keeps combats moving rather than static, encouraging battles with a lot of movement rather than a boring clash of lines (and certain characters, like barbarians and even most defenders, are -intended- to charge a fair bit).

In combination...every damage oriented character would do more damage if they were built around charging. Sometimes including ones for which that makes no sense! (like a warlock charge build).

One solution to this would be to nerf charge optimization. This should happen.

Another, though, would be to support other conditional damage at equivalent rates to the way charging is supported. There are plenty of other conditions that one can key extra damage to -- and many of them are harder to cheese out than charging is, given badge of the berserker and the like. Stuff like:
If you were hidden at the beginning of your turn.
When bloodied.
When attacking a bloodied creature.
When no creatures are adjacent to you (or no creatures other than the target are adjacent to you).
When no ally is closer to the target than you are.
If you killed something since your last turn [great for controllers; let them switch off killing minions and hitting real monsters]
When attacking a prone target.
When attacking a target you are grabbing.
And so on.

Sure, charge opt needs to be less supported (or make most charge opt over-scaled item bonuses, so they don't stack and even compete with Iron Armbands/Radiant Weapons), but throw more support to other conditions that are interesting and fun to work for and you provide people with a choice of playstyle rather than going for charge builds in competitive situations as their only source of decent damage.

 

[Quickleaf]

So how would you fix it?

A bit of thread necromancy... I was just looking at making a backup assassin PC for our Mystara game (the DM asked everyone to). Ive got a specific character concept in mind - a bardish scoundrel MCed Druid for the wildshaping (into a black fox) - so character optimization wasn't foremost in my mind. But even then I thought the assassin's damage looked low.

I can think of two fixes that would both make sense:

First would be to give them the Draw First Blood feat (or equivalent) for free, that +5 damage vs uninjured giving a solid boost to alpha strikes.

Second would be a mechanic to encourage focusing on a single target until it was dead (akin to the Avenger's oath of enmity). I was thinking a+2 damage bonus against a target triggered on a hit, either lasting until end of your next turn OR stacking per consecutive hit (probably with a +8 max).

It would depend on whether you think of assassin as one-hit one-kill, or relentless engine of death. But this would put it's damage almost on par with the rogue while maintaining that "assassin" feel.

 

[RangerWickett]

Our party died last week, so soon I'll be busting out a 12th level gnome assassin . . . with the Student of Evard theme. With no charge shenanigans, my attack looks like:

3d8+11 (rapier and finesse)
3d6 (sneak attack)
2d12 (student of evard; also does 2d6 to me)
5d10 assassination
10 poison

Average 86.5

I'm interested to see how it turns out, since the party will be a dragonborn knight, my gnome executioner, and a pair of twin avengers multiclassed into warlord with the Twiceborn Leader paragon path. I'm going to think of my character as the leader, since my goal is to mitigate damage by killing the worst enemy before he can hit my allies.

 

[Quickleaf]

Our party died last week, so soon I'll be busting out a 12th level gnome assassin . . . with the Student of Evard theme. With no charge shenanigans, my attack looks like:

TPK? My condolences.

Dang I hadnt even read the paragon part of the executioner, +2d10 to "assassin's strike" is nasty!

Since you want to be the dealing the killing stroke to take advantage of "death attack" and lots of monsters around 12th level have 100+ hit points... How are you setting up attacks with the other party members? Will you hold until an enemy has been hit already or just go for it anyhow?

I'm interested to see how it turns out, since the party will be a dragonborn knight, my gnome executioner, and a pair of twin avengers multiclassed into warlord with the Twiceborn Leader paragon path. I'm going to think of my character as the leader, since my goal is to mitigate damage by killing the worst enemy before he can hit my allies.

Heh. That's one way to look at it... Wait, *two* avengers, both MCed into warlord?? I shudder at the hurt you could lay down on a single foe caught between double oath of enmity.