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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Darth Shoju" data-source="post: 3074119" data-attributes="member: 11397">I work with someone who is a former military sniper and someone who was applying to be a SWAT team sniper (failed the test). While I often question how they could manage to do that for a living, I would not hesitate to call them good people. Your assertations otherwise come across as naive IMO. Soldiers do have the ability to disobey a direct order and they have the ability to feel remorse. Following your logic, I have a hard time seeing how snipers could be evil while regular soldiers would not be. They are both killing people, the snipers just do it from farther away. I think the problem with the premise of the original post is that the assassin PRC has too generic a name. It should really refer to a specific group of assassins. Really, anyone who accepts a contract to kill someone else is an assassin, regardless of their "class". The other problem is that the D&D alignment system is supposed to be an abstract concept as far as character morality. It fills more of a game-mechanic need than of arbiter of right-and-wrong. Situations like this tend to break the alignment system into little pieces. In a D&D world where a person's alignment can be detected and there are creatures of pure evil in existance, I can see a church "hit-man" being good. I don't know if that would fall specifically into the category of assassination or what; I suppose it would depend on their targets and methods. However, I find the idea of a lone-wolf assassin with a noble code, who only takes the contracts he deems honorable to be somewhat unlikely. How many organizations would approach someone to kill someone and then let them live after they refused? Presumably if their are too honorable to take the contract they may be moral enough to go to the authorities or even kill the shunned potential employer themselves. From what I have heard and read, in the real world most assasins have been part of a group and deemed trustworthy by that group. I doubt the mafia would use someone they couldn't control to perform a "hit". At the very least if they did, it would be someone with a reputation for not being discriminating about who they kill.Really, if people want to play a class with the assassin's abilities and still be good, just make a PRC with said abilities but without the evil pre-reqs. I'd suggest they not be called assassins however. If all the players are looking to do is kill for money, they don't have to take a prestige class for that. I'd have to agree that the difference between adventurers, mercenaries, crusaders and assassins lies mainly in intent, methods and motives.</blockquote>

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