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Message: <blockquote data-quote="airwalkrr" data-source="post: 3108699" data-attributes="member: 12460">Thanks for the feedback!What exactly is the concern about allowing a death attack at 1st level? On one hand, yes, an ability that causes death seems powerful on the surface, but in designing the class I thought long and hard about it.A) The death attack requires the assassin to study his victim for three rounds.B) The assassin cannot take other actions for three rounds if the victim either detects the assassin or recognizes the assassin as a threat (this almost entirely nullifies its utility in the middle of combat unless the assassin is somehow invisible the whole time).C) The death attack must be a sneak attack.D) The victim must fail a Fortitude save.That is a lot of conditions that have to be fulfilled. Getting a death attack done is tricky business. In fact, having used assassins numerous times over my 5 and a half years of DMing 3e, I have only seen the death attack successfully used once. I once even played in a campaign with an assassin (the green ronin class, which I don't particularly like) and he never got a successful death attack despite receiving it at 1st level.I would be interested in knowing if there are DMs who have allowed assassin PCs though. If the use of the death attack has been troublesome even at 6th level, then maybe it IS a bit much. My inclination is to think not however. The way I see it, the death attack is a highly circumstantial ability. It can only be used against opponents susceptible to sneak attack and even then only if a number of other conditions are met. It is very useful when it comes into play, but such situations are not going to be a regular occurence. Along those lines, consider that trapfinding is incredibly circumstantial as well. It requires playing with a DM who not only uses traps, but uses traps that are "findable." Traps can be made unavoidable by devious DMs even for the best rogues with max ranks, 18 Int, skill focus (search) and investigator. It all has to do with putting traps in unexpected places. Considering this, trapfinding seems a fair trade for death attack (and poison use as the two go hand-in-hand imo), especially when one considers the reduced skill points.I do not think it would be that tempting as a dip class because the DC scales with class level and there are few ways to increase it otherwise.</blockquote>

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