Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2009539" data-attributes="member: 172">The Assassin's HandbookThe Assassin's Handbook is the second in Green Ronin's Master Class series of books, each presenting a new core class and supporting material for the d20 system game. The Assassin's Handbook presents the assassin as a core class, as well as spells, prestige classes, feats, historical notes, and campaign background material. The book is written by Dave "Zeb" Cook and Wolfgang Baur, who also did Green Ronin's Secret College of Necromancy.A First LookThe Assassin's Handbook is a 64 page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $14.95. This is a typical price for a Green Ronin product of this size, and is comparable to similar sized book from Mongoose Publishing and Wizards of the Coast.The cover by Michael Sutfin depicts an assassin with an exotic dagger in a grapple with a victim in front of a macabre bone-encrusted pillar.The interior is black and white and features artists Anthony Waters, Marcio Fiorito, and Michael Phillippi.. The lavishly detailed and stylish depictions of masked assassins by Phillippi herein resembles those he did for AEG in Evil and Mercenaries. The character depictions by Fiorito are nice, as they are in most of the numerous d20 products they have appeared in. Waters has a sketchier, darker style that lends the book a darker feel.The body text font is conservative, but the line and paragraph spacing is a little loose. A stylish header font is used, but it is more readable than the one used for Secret College of Necromancy. The layout is pleasant and readable, and there are no major layout gaffes that I noticed.A Deeper LookThe first and central element of the book is the assassin presented as a 20-level base class. The book spells out that this class is not intended to be used side-by-side with the assassin prestige class as presented in the core rules. The core assassin presented here differs from the prestige class in several important ways.The first way that the assassin differs is that they are allowed to be morally neutral; good alignments are prohibited. This may make the assassin more accessible as a PC for a GM who is willing to accept such characters into a campaign but still has a problem with evil characters. But then, there is no reason you couldn't run the core assassin in this manner. Assassins who become good lose their killing blow ability and can no longer progress as assassins.The assassin herein does not use the death attack ability given the assassin prestige class. Instead they gain the killing blow ability. This ability allows the assassin to make a coup-de-grace attack (per the DMG) against a non-helpless target provided that the character meets the same conditions to make a sneak attack, and prompts an attack of opportunity. Further, the killing blow can only be used a limited number of times per day. This seems limited, but is prone to abuse for one primary reason: unlike the death attack of the assassin in the DMG, the coup-de-grace is based on the damage inflicted vice level. A canny powergamer can take steps to maximize the damage of the killing blow so as to make the saving throw impossible.In addition to this ability, the assassin receives a sneak attack ability, bonus feats, spells (up to 4th level), and a bonus languages ability that allows the assassin to take any language, even secret languages, as bonus languages. Except for the spells, this gives the assassin a feel somewhat similar to that of the AD&D 1st edition assassin.After the assassin base class, three prestige classes are presented. None of these prestige classes rely on the use of the assassin core class. This allows you to use the classes if you (as I) don't intend to use the assassin base class presented herein. The classes are:- Fida'i: The fida'i is a zealous holy warrior. The fida'i has many stealth skills common to assassin types, but the class abilities let him enter a state of divine ecstacy providing moral bonuses to combat rolls, as well as spell-like abilities relating to their religion's lawful bent.- Houri: The houri is an assassin and spy that rely on seduction to ply their trade. The houri has more social skills than the typical assassin type and has class abilities to enhance those skills, as well as spell like abilities to help them influence others.- Shadow Mage: The shadow mage is a class for spellcasters who hope to use their magical arts in assassination. The class continues advancing in spellcasting ability as normal, and has class abilities related to darkness and shadow.Overall the prestige classes are well conceived and useful. If there is any flaw, perhaps it is that some classes give out spell-like abilities generously. I would probably trim down the number of uses per day of the spell like abilities.The book introduces a number of new spells for assassins as well. Fortunately, the spells are sorted into four level, so even if you intend to use the DMG assassin instead of the one presented in this book, you can take advantage of the spells herein. Some of the more notable spells are:- Forget: Similar to a classic 1e & 2e spell, forget makes the target forget the last minute of time.- Part crowd: This mind affecting spell causes a crowd to part to make way for the assassin and then close ranks behind him, useful to throw off pursuers.- Martyr's Death: This extremely powerful spell permanently destroys the caster, but has a very good chance of killing everyone within 30 feet.- Steal Identity: This spell renders the target unconscious, and temporarily disguises the caster to appear as the target.The equipment chapter includes a small selection of nonmagical items of concern to assassins, such as opium, poison-containing false teeth, or a belt that can be unfurled into a rope ladder. Magic items include such interesting items as safe conduct papers, magical documents that help pass the bearer off as an official, and the cauldron of poison which provides bonuses to the creation of poison and antidotes.The feats and skills chapter introduces several new feats. Many of them are useful to any character, but some are based on class skills of the book's assassin.A few of the feats deal with poisons in much the same way that metamagic feats modify spells. For example, empower poison increased the random numeric effects of a poison by one-half. (Maximize poison has the exact same text; this is probably a cut-and-paste gaffe.) These feats operate by the assassin expending additional time preparing the poison. It might seem unreasonable that a poison can be so altered after they are already brewed.Other feats include poison use (as the class ability of the DMG assassin), quick change (allows you to quickly change disguises), stone cold killer (allows a coup-de-grace as a standard action), and weapon panache (similar to weapon finesse, except you may substitute your charisma bonus for strength bonus.)The sixth chapter covers poisons. As other books like Traps & Treachery and the Quintessential Rogue, many new fantasy poisons are introduced for use in the campaign. However, the book also contains statistics for several real-world poisons like black widow venom, belladonna, arsenic, curare, cyanide, and hemlock. To facilitate properly simulating real world toxins, the book imposes different onset times for the initial and secondary damage for each poison.The seventh chapter briefly discusses a few real assassin groups of the ancient world, such as the assassins of Persia and Syria and the ninja of Japan. The remainder (and bulk) of the book details two fictional assassin groups: the Vultur and the Sirat. The Vultur are a group of professional assassins divided into a number of "kingdoms" and each kingdom into families with specific specialties. The Sirat are a zealous religious group that follow a discipline called the straight path. The chapters include details on the organizations, maps, a new clerical domains, and a few complete characters.ConclusionThe new base class assassin may be useful if you are in the market for such a thing. The class depicted here is better than the core assassin class depicted in Swashbuckling Adventures. However, as stated, the killing blow ability appears vulnerable to abuse. Further, those who want to return the days of the 1e assassin may be disgruntled to see that (like the 3e assassin prestige class) the assassin herein is a magic-using assassin.Even if you aren't in the market for an assassin base class, much of the rest of the book can be useful to you. Most of the prestige classes, poisons, feats, items, and spells are useful without using the book's assassin. The Vultur and the Sirat are potentially interesting additions to the campaign and except for the NPCs statistics blocks can be easily used without using the book's assassin.-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

Verification