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Message: <blockquote data-quote="trancejeremy" data-source="post: 2009656" data-attributes="member: 924">The Assassin's Handbook is a 64 page softcover (priced at $14.95 - I traded for my copy) from Green Ronin, semi-famous for the city of Freeport. It's part of their "Master Class" series, each volume of which introduces a new 'core' class for d20/D&D. It's written by longtime TSR authors Zeb Cook and Wolfgang Baur. Unfortunately, this book is rather disappointing. Primarily because the new core assassin class in the book simply isn't very good. The back cover says "Brings back the tradition of the first edition assassin core class.". Well, no, not really. The 1st edition assassin was essentially a thief, but one with some abilities useful for an assassin. This assassin (the Green Ronin Assassin) is vaguely like the D&D rogue, but is generally much less useful and much less powerful. There are some superficial resemblances to the 1st edition Assassin. This assassin has the ability to perform a 'killing blow' a number of times per day. This is essentially a coup de grace style attack only when the target is denied his AC bonus, not completely helpless like a coup de grace. Essentially, the assassin makes the attack, then the target must make a fortitude save against a DC of 10+damage taken or die.Not bad you might say. Well, maybe. In practice, though, it's not so great, because they largely give up a Rogue's (or normal d20/3E Prestige Class Assassin) sneak attack damage bonus, and most other special powers. This assassin get at most a maximum of +3d6 sneak attack damge. A Rogue or Rogue/Prestige Assassin gets a maximum of +10d6. The latter will do an extra 35 pts on a sneak attack, this Assassin only does 11.  The Prestige Assassin (what I'll call the one in the DMG) also has a chance to assassinate someone. Not as good as the killing blow ability of this assassin (Green Ronin one), but it's close, and overall seems more balance. It's essentially the same, only the DC is 10 + the Assassin's Class Level + Intelligence Modifier. (It also takes 3 round of preparation to use). This gives the Prestige Assassin a chance of assassinating a high level character, but not a great chance. The Green Ronin Assassin has a somewhat slightly higher chance of assassinating high level characters, though it largely depends on the roll of the dice for damage. It's probably a matter of taste, but I think the way the Prestige Assassin's ability works is much better (and better balanced). The Green Ronin Assassin also gets spells more or less like a Paladin or Ranger (same progression). This is again, pretty much unlike the 1st Edition Assassin, but sort of imitates the Prestige Assassin. This book contains several new assassin spells (which could also presumably be used for the Prestige Assassin). The spell list for the Green Ronin Assassin also includes a few new spells which are not found in this book but in another Green Ronin product. Given they could have easily included them here, I found this to be a bit tacky. The Green Ronin also gets bonus feats, much like a fighter does. There are a number of new assassin feats in this book, but most seem less useful than the abilities a Rogue or Prestige Assassin gets.Besides the new core assassin class, there are 3 new prestige classes: The Fida'i, which is like the real world Assassin or Ismali; The Houri, which is like a prostitute/spy; and the Shadow Mage, which is essentially a wizard who likes shadow spells (why it's in here, I dunno. Filler, I guess). None are that great, the Houri has some special abilities which seem more apropriate for feats.There's a really short chapter of Assassin equipment. While I often thought assassins's might have lots of really interesting gear, like Ninjas or spies, apparently this is not the case, as there are only 2 pages devoted to this, and most of that is on magic items.There's a brief chapter on using Craft to make poison. There's also about 15 new feats or so, which mostly seem okay. Probably the best part of the book is about 6 pages on poisons, including many real world ones. There are also several new fantasy poisons.Most of the books (about 35 pages) is actually on weird source material that doesn't seem particularly useful for anyone. Most useless is about an organization of Assassins, the "Vultur". It drones on and on about them, which is stupid, since it's likely most DMs won't be able to integrate them into their worlds. It would have been far, far, far, far better to go into the workings of a generic fantasy assasin's guild, something that you know, might have been useful to most people, or at least someone.Physically, the book is okay. You get a decent amount of text, and the binding seems sturdy enough. There's a lot of artwork, but the artwork is generally pretty awful. For some reason, the artists in this seem to not under the concept of proportion. There are pictures of people that are seemingly malformed. I mean, they're 1 inch wide (in the drawing) and about 9 inches tall (again, in the drawing). People don't have a 9:1 height to width ratio like that. The end result is somewhat ugly. Not all are like that, but most of the artwork is below average. Which is surprising, usually Green Ronin has top-notch artwork.All in all though, I can't recommend this book. It's really quite awful. Spend $3 to get the Mongoose Assassin mini-book, which I don't have, but even if it's as bad, it will be $12 less.</blockquote>

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