Whispers of Death: A Sourcebook for Assassin Characters

[Messageboard Golem]

Murderous whispers heard in the dead of night, a poisoned arrow fired upon it's target through the busy streets of the city, a dark figure that seems to emerge from the shadows behind it's prey, the unannounced guest that slips poison into his host's wine, and the warrior who uses deception to deal death blows upon his enemies. These are the many faces of the assassin. Within the pages of this book you will find:

• 
  *Five new prestige classes for assassins covering mastery in the different assassin styles.
  *New feats designed for assassin characters.
  *New assassin and shadowblade spells.
  *New paths: Class combinations that outline career paths for assassin characters to take.
  *Four detailed assassin guilds.
  *New equipment, weapons, and armor for assassin characters.
  *Assassin-specific magical items.
  *Assassin Styles: techniques assassins can learn without taking levels in additional prestige classes.
  *Guidelines for compensating assassin characters who complete jobs.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

"Whispers of Death" is the first offering by Sundered Blade Games. Not counting table of contents, d20 license, and sample character sheets for assassins (one blank, several filled out for NPCs), this PDF has about 26 pages devoted to new rules about the assassin. This includes a page and a half appendix which is simply the assassin prestige class reprinted from the DMG.

5 prestige classes are given, all of which could deservedly be called an assassin- but they are very different kinds of assassins. All are evil, all have the death attack ability, and all have sneak attack damage, but besides that they vary a good deal. Unless stated otherwise, they do not have spell-casting ability.

The Mask could be a beggar, serving girl or passerby who strikes without warning. Fewer skill points, but this is made up for with bonuses to disguise checks, and diplomacy and bluff checks used against the target. They can also slip poison into food or drink with a successful pick pocket check.

The Shadowstalker is the over-the-walls and in-the-shadows kind of assassin, the black-clad figure who can penetrate a well-guarded fortress, eliminate their target, and disappear as if by magic. They get fewer skill points, but gain bonuses to stealth related activities. They also acquire the ability to hide in plain sight.

The Slayer has a commando's directness rather than a rogue's sneakiness- it is a hit man kind of assassin, suited for fighters as well as rogues. It makes ample use of the feint ability to get sneak attacks in regular melee combat.

The Sniper, as may be inferred from the name, is a specialist with missile weapons. Sneak attacks and death attacks can both be done at range. Not at a very great range, though- the ranged death attack caps out at only 30 ft., and the ranged sneak attack is at a maximum of 75 ft.. Of all the versions of the assassin, this is the blandest.

The Shadowblade struck me as being a little too strong. Only d6 hit dice, but a fighter's BAB progression. He can meld with shadows up to 3 times a day, can hide in plain sight, can use a few spells (up to 4th level), and has the sneak attack progression of a standard rogue. Quite likely to be useful as a super-elite kind of assassin.

With the possible exception of the Shadowblade, all the prestige classes seem mechanically sound. They can be used to create very distinct types of assassin, or can be combined to customize a particular character. The Mask and Shadowstalker classes (which have only 5 levels each) are especially good for adding a degree of specialization to an existing character.

Next comes a number of good, balanced feats like Blink of an Eye (reduces the hide penalty after a diversion to only -5 instead of -10), or Flat-Bladed Strike (can do subdual damage with sneak attacks). Disruptive Strike is an interesting one- by forgoing 3d6 of sneak attack damage it allows one to make a sneak attack against an undead creature.

The section on New Equipment includes silenced armor (quieter, but stiffer- increases the armor penalty for balance, tumble and escape artist checks), footpads (padded footware, gives a penalty to climb checks). Reservoir rings, needle crossbows, and weapon black. They are good, balanced, well-priced items.

The session on Assassin "Styles" introduces a new mechanic. A style requires time and xp to learn, and has level pre-requisites. No costs are given, but it would seem reasonable to price a style like a magic item or like spell research. Like a new magic item or unique spell, they provide a little extra flexibility or power at the cost of time, gold and experience.

One style (the Shadows of Light) allow chaotic good or neutral good characters to ignore the alignment requirements for the various assassin prestige classes. Not all campaigns will have individuals who use their assassin skills for the greater good, but some DM's may choose otherwise.

The Mercykiller style focusses on death attacks used to paralyze victims, and on dealing subdual damage with sneak attacks. Regular death attacks are penalized. The Spirit Hunter style focusses on the difficult task of fighting the undead. Increasing ranks of this style diminish the cost of using Disruptive Strike.

Finally, the Venom Shadow style focusses on poison use. It bumps up the save DC's a little, gives a small bonus to one's pick pocket check when slipping poison into someone's food or drink, and gives immunity to one type of poison.

How much should an assassin expect to be paid for a job? Whispers of Death gives a chart which is very much like the experience award chart in the DMG, only with gold pieces instead of experience points. While this makes sense from one point of view, it leads to some strange results: hiring an 8th level assassin to kill a CR 5 target is worth 400 gp. But an 11th level assassin will get only 200 gp for the same job. Huh?

4 assassin guilds are set out. Each sample organization is detailed with a particular "path"- the order in which a character multiclasses and acquires feats in a particular organization. This is very valuable both for DM's who design NPC's, and for players who wish their characters to join such organizations, and want to know what classes and feats to take.

A few assasin spells and magic items are given. Minor Invisibility is a first level spell that lasts 10 minutes per level, and allows the caster to remain invisible as long as you don't move. The shadow weapon quality causes the weapon to ignore armor and enhancement bonuses to AC, but such a weapon cannot harm constructs or undead. There is even an assassin artifact- a +5 shadow longsword with a 20 intelligence and a 36 ego, plus a number of nifty special abilities: invisibility for half an hour, 3 times per day, a +4 enchantment bonus to dexterity (this might be a typo for enhancement), a +10 bonus to hide and move silently, and a few other bonuses of about this magnitude.

Special character sheets for assassin characters conclude Whispers of Death, including filled out sheets for sample NPCs.

Conclusion
It's a great book, and well worth its $5 cost.

 

[Voadam]

When you say fewer skill points is that fewer than a rogue (8) or fewer than the DMG assassin(4)?

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Sorry. Fewer skill points than a rogue. They do in fact get 4 skill points. But if the bonuses are considered "virtual" skill points, then it pretty much works out to be the same as a rogue.

 

[GameWyrd]

If there was a catchiness test for roleplaying supplements then Whispers of Death would do well. I think that’s a pretty catchy title. I think Sundered Blade is an equally catchy for the company. Whispers of Death is source book for assassin characters in the d20 system. As with every other class source book there’s a bunch of new feats, spells and prestige classes.

Oh yeah. Wait a sec. Assassin is a prestige class. The new prestige classes aren’t uber-prestige classes that stack even higher. The prestige classes represent different styles and flavours of assassin. They’re an extra set of choices for that rogue, bard or whichever class of character is looking to become a specialised killer.

That’s a good start. Some readers will roll their eyes at yet-another class book but there is new stuff in Whispers and I don’t just mean new feats, spells and prestige classes.

The prestige classes are largely detailed through 10 levels but a few just 5. You’ll have to look down the page and into feats section to find the Sniper’s advancement table but it’s there. There is just over a page of new feats and only a small number fall into the well-scraped barrel of "Improved-Advanced-Enhanced-Extended". The assassin equipment section is of a similar size and rather refreshingly isn’t dominated by high-fantasy zap-pow items and weapons. You’ll find rules for footpads in here – as in the pads you wear on your feet in order to assist your attempts to sneak around.

Assassin styles offer something new but yet assassin styles aren’t new. At least the idea of assassins using different styles isn’t new but I’ve rarely seen them used outside house rules in roleplaying games. Compare the ninja to the suicide bomber; two very different styles but they’re both assassins. That particular example leaves little wonder to why most games and supplements take the route of simply developing entirely different classes. The assassin styles in Whispers of Death directly influence game mechanics, they should inspire roleplaying as well as rollplaying and they cost XP. Each style has five ranks and each rank as a character level requirement, a training time and experience cost. Low level style ranks might turn specific skills into class skills for the assassin and high level style ranks bring bigger and bolder advantages such as dramatic reductions to Difficulty Checks or spell like abilities. It would be reassuring to see the spell like abilities officially labelled as a "spell like ability" just to save the DM from debating that call. The styles are fairly varied. I like the ones with impressive names (this must be a Sundered Blade shtick – catchy titles) such as the Shadows of Light and Venom Shadow style. Mind you; I’m still not won over with the "assassins can be good people" idea that one of those two styles subscribe too.

There’s a small section titled "Compensation". It’s actually a chart of appropriate payment for assassins. I don’t know if compensation and payment are synonyms elsewhere in the world but it made me blink. Perhaps "Blood Money" would have been a better title. I didn’t get the payment table at first either. It’s based on the way XPs are handed out. The tougher the critter you kill then the more money you’ll get paid/can charge. That makes sense. It also makes sense to reduce the amount of XP you get for the job as you increase in level. The amount of money you get decreases as you increase in level. Okay. It might be done for balancing game mechanics but it doesn’t make sense to me. Hiring a 10th level assassin should always be more expensive than hiring a 6th level assassin. It’s also kind of weird to suggest that the assassin magically knows the challenge rating of his target or the assassin’s employer knows or even that there is such a concept in the game world. It is just a small section in a packed PDF though and not worth too much of a grumble.

Much of the product is taken up with details on different assassin guilds. Each guild has its own flavour, history, typical leaders and members. Some of this is flavour - I’m a fan of flavour, some of this is splat (the NPC stats) and some of this is crunch. Each assassin guild has an associated Path. Paths represent the typical career choices made by members of the guild, in other words, they state which character class a first level member of the guild begins with (since it can’t be the assassin prestige class) and then when and where they multi-class to. The table of paths is kind enough to print what the various bonuses, feats and class feats available at each level will be so for doing that. Paths seem innocent enough but they push forward the idea that your Character Class isn’t "what you do" but "how you do it".

The download finishes off with a couple pages of new spells and magical items.

Kinda. You’re only on page 28 of 42 at this point. There’s an appendix of course. The first thing the appendix does is re-print the assassin prestige class for you. I didn’t know you could do that. Whispers of Death doesn’t actually have the d20 logo on the virtual front cover. It does carry the license text though.

After the license text there’s an preview of a bow master prestige class from Sundered Blade’s Legends of Chaos campaign sourcebook. (Which is ‘upcoming’ at the point this review was written and marked as so on the PDF. Describing a product as ‘upcoming’ probably isn’t too bad a move for a PDF but it would raise my heckles if it appeared in a book – what if I was re-reading the book in 2010?).

There’s a whole collection of character sheets. One’s blank and that’s for you. It’s a character sheet especially targeted towards assassin players. Blank character sheets are good things to put in an easy to print PDF product. There’s a bunch of filled in character sheets to go with the important NPCs described in the Guilds previously. You can see that author Steven Gilman goes with the "few skills but each at high levels" approach of character design. One of the NPCs has the Hide skill at 44. 44! You should shine an assassin-spotting searchlight directly onto him while he danced around with in a t-shirt with the words "I’m a hiding assassin" emblazed on it in neon pink – and still not see him.

There are a few assassin class products in the market place. Whispers of Death is better than some and not as good as others. Whispers of Death beats the average mark on GameWyrd’s 1-10 scale but will fall in there on less extensive scaled ratings. It’s worth noting that this is a 001 product and I think it bodes better than "average" for Sundered Blade and the future product line. I like the direction they seem to be going in. If you’re more of a game mechanics fan than me I suspect you’ll rate the product more highly than me. Whatever the case I’m sure you’ll find the assassin styles useful and easy to incorporate into your game. If you’re looking to expand the range of assassins and related characters then Whispers of Death is a safe bet. It’s PDF and that means it’s a particularly cheap and easy to get hold off safe bet. The preview of Shadowstalker Prestige Class should also make the whether to purchase a copy or not decision easier.

* This GameWyrd review was first published here.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Steve from Sundered Blade Games here. Just wanted to let everyone know that an errata has been released for this book that fixes a few errors, including the shadowblade prestige class getting the fighter base attack bonus when they should be using the rogue base attack bonus. You can find the errata at
http://www.sunderedblade.com/d20/resources/woderrata.htm

Also, we have just released a free web enhancement for Whispers of Death, which includes new poison rules, a sample encounter, and also an alternate table for compensating assassins (since the table in Whispers of Death has confused more than just this reviewer). You can get your free copy here:
http://www.sunderedblade.com/d20/supplements.htm

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Steve from Sundered Blade Games here. Just wanted to let everyone know that an errata has been released for this book that fixes a few errors, including the shadowblade prestige class getting the fighter base attack bonus when they should be using the rogue base attack bonus. You can find the errata at
http://www.sunderedblade.com/d20/resources/woderrata.htm

Also, we have just released a free web enhancement for Whispers of Death, which includes new poison rules, a sample encounter, and also an alternate table for compensating assassins (since the table in Whispers of Death has confused more than just this reviewer). You can get your free copy here:
http://www.sunderedblade.com/d20/supplements.htm

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By Morgan {TempesT} Grover, Executive Director d20 Magazine Rack

Sizing Up the Target
Whispers of Death, by Steven Gilman, is a 32-page electronic file (PDF) from Sundered Blade Games and sells for $5. The Web Enhancement for this product is also available for free.

First Blood
Whispers of Death: A guidebook for Assassin Characters is a just what it states. This sourcebook starts right out with a quick recap of the assassin PrC abilities, which you will need to know to use the book fully. After this it details 5 new prestige classes. A mask is a master of disguise and diplomacy, the slayer is more of a brute warrior, and the sniper excels at long distance assassinations.

The next section has 11 new feats for your use. Most of these look pretty balanced, but I can see instances where shadow mastery or stealth mastery may become a bit "over-usefull". These feats allow you to always take 10 on hide or move silently. Even when circumstances would not allow it. These are not over balanced, but can find "over usefulness".

The next section describes new equipment. This includes 1 new armor type, 2 new crossbows, and several new misc. gear equipment, such as footpads and darksuits.

Assassin Styles is next. This is a really interesting idea. I have seen other things like it before, but not exactly the same. In total there are 6 different assassin styles. These styles allow a character to learn bits of other class styles, while not actually multiclassing, or taking a PrC. Each style has 5 ranks of learning, and each ranks costs a certain amount of XP, time to learn, and a required class level.

Every assassin charges for his services, and the next section take this into account. A table is setup showing how much an assassin of a certain level would charge to take out an individual based on the individuals CR. This can be useful at times, and saves the work for the DM.

Assassin guilds are fairly common, bet seldom known. 4 such guilds are described. Each guild has a character path that can be followed, describing what to take at each level to fit within their ranks. The shadowblade guild also describes a gauntlet that any would-be members must defeat before being considered.

Assassin magic always helps the killers in need, and 8 new spells are described. 5 new magical properties / items are also described, to help in their quests.

Sundered Games also added in the assassin PrC from the DMG to help make things easier and convenient. This gets rid of the need for that book at the table in this case.

Added benefits? How about a character sheet designed for assassin characters? Or 4 basic NPC's? You got it.

They end off by giving an exclusive preview to the bow master PrC, from an upcoming sourcebook. This was really great, since the class is mentioned in WoD several times, and use in one of the paths.

Critical Hits
Flavor. This book changes the simple "assassin" into one full of flavor. With 5 prestige classes, 6 styles, and 4 character paths, nearly any type of assassin you can think of can be achieved. Political, disguised, divine, ninjas, snipers, thugs, and more.

Critical Misses
The only thing that seems to be a miss is the artwork. And that is because there is none. Well, let me rephrase that, there is one small picture of a bottle spilling out smoke. Artwork really enhances a products feel, and helps to get a feeling across. But this is minor, considering SBG added plenty of crunchy bits in place of the artwork. And since it is a PDF, I would rather have crunchy bits instead of artwork taking up ink anyway.

Coup de Grace
This is a solid product, and has me wanting more. There is now a web enhancement available with a bit of new stuff and errata that if fairly useful as well. If your any fan of assassins, as a player or NPC this book can give them some great feel, and get away from the basic stereotypes. In turn this can be implemented with GR's Assassin Handbook for some really great ideas.

To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to Fast Tracks at www.d20zines.com.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Whispers of Death is a 30 page electronic sourcebook for assassins. The emphasis seems to be for playing assassins as PCs, since the subtitle of the book is "A Sourcebook for Assassin Characters", and a few of the elements help DMs with assassin PCs. The book should appeal to both players and DMs though, since most of the material is usable by both. The book sells for $5 even on RPGNow.com, and there is a print version available for twice that price.

This PDF is jammed with good stuff. Within the total of 40 pages, you'll find 28 pages of content, 2 pages for gaming licenses, and a few filled out assassin character sheets.

The book starts with a chapter of prestige classes. Included are the Mask, Shadowblade, Shadowstalker, Slayer, and Sniper. The Mask is a master of disguise and gets bonuses when doing so. The Shadowblade is a guild-specific prestige class that gets the ability to meld into the shadow plane. The shadowstalker is the master of stealth and hiding. The Sniper can make ranged sneak attacks and death attacks. Other than the Shadowblade prestige class, these classes are modular and can be used to add flavor to any character, especially those classes that are only 5 levels.

The next chapter details a few assassin related feats, ranging from creating diversions to hide and sneak attacking undead to increasing death attack DCs and mastery of stealth. Only one of these feats is an Improved Something feat, and all of them are useful and some are just plain cool.

Next we have a selection of equipment, such as silenced armor, a few new crossbows for poison delivery, and other miscellaneous items such as darksuits, footpads, and weaponblack. All are balanced and well priced.

The next section presents an odd idea. I've seen something similar in another book, but there are "assassin styles" which add flavor and abilities to a character without spending levels in a prestige class or wasting feats. Each of these styles takes XP to earn, and have 5 ranks for each granting different abilities for each rank. Styles include the Divine Assassin, Master Assassin, Mercykiller, Shadows of Light (which allows good aligned characters to become assassins?), Spirit Hunter, and Venom Shadow. These styles can help seperate different assassins from being just a plain assassin.

The next section gives the DM a table for determining the payment for assassin characters. Results are sometimes odd, but I think it was done this way to preserve balance. The web enhancement for this product, titled Whispers of Death Companion, provides an alternate table that makes a lot more sense.

Next we have descriptions of 4 assassin guilds, complete with a description, acceptance policy, leader stats, and a character path. These paths present the classes, prestige classes, and feats a typical character belonging to the guild would take.

The book continues with some new assassin spells and some shadowblade specific spells, all of which are useful and balanced.

The book then concludes with a recap of the assassin class out of the DMG, so you don't have to go look it up when you've got your printout (or print version) of Whispers open in front of you.

In conclusion, this is a great book. It's more than worth it's $5 cost, and will see a lot of use in my campaigns for both my assassin characters and for assassins that will horribly kill the PCs.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Four assassin product hit shelves at nearly the same time. So what is one to do? Buy them all and sort the chaff.

Whispers of Death, unfortunately, fell by the wayside fairly early in the comparisons.

Whispers of Death arrives in your email box as a 42 page PDF including cover, blank page & OGL.

$3 = 8 page equivalent for Mongoose's Power Class book
$5 = 40 pages for Whispers of Death (PDF)
$7.50 = 128 pages for Crimson Contracts (PDF)
$19.95 = 64 pages for The Assassin's Handbook

While better price-wise than the two printed products, it can't stand up to Crimson Contracts.

Formatting is an issue - while generally good, it lacks artwork, has a non-descript cover, and the indents before each paragraph are HUGE.

There is a distinct lack of flavor to this PDF. It launches straight off into rules text, with a selection of Prestige Classes. The prestige classes are all fairly generic - they are a collection of abilities (albeit interesting ones) but with no real background. When they DO introduce minor flavor elements, these are left very bland such as:

"All shadowblades are members of the Order of the Shadowblade. The Order is a structured organization, which may be found at the heart of any major city. The main headquarters is rumored to be in the massive city of Griffon, which serves as the capitol city of Kandor (See the Legends of Chaos Campaign Sourcebook for more information)."

It doesn't actually describe anything about the organization, and refers to a non-existant product. This is partially rectified in the end chapters, but not enough. The prestige class could have at least refered to the fact that the guild is detailed lightly in the Guilds chapter instead of refering to a non-existant book. In addition, some of the special abilities of the classes are not all that ... special. Like the ability of the Mask PrC to slip poison into someone's drink with a Pick Pocket check - which is something Pick Pocket already handles without this ability.

The Mask - 5 level class can be accessed at level 4, is good at "slipping poison" but does NOT get the poison use special ability, so has a 5% chance every time of slipping it to himself in the process.

Shadowblade - 10 level class can be accessed at level 6, and is a "best of" combination of the Shadowdancer and Assassin prestige classes, again without the poison use ability. Combining the abilities of these two different prestige classes is deadly, but I can see it, although I would certainly make this a much harder class to join.

Shadowstalker - 5 level class can be accessed at level 4... basically a poor-man's Shadowblade.

Slayer - 10 level class can be accessed at level 6. At level 6 it gains the ability to feint AS A FREE ACTION. "I feint" "It doesn't work" "I feint again" "It doesn't work", ad nauseum until finally the feint check succeeds... effectively this character gets to deal Sneak Attack damage with every attack. EVERY attack.

Sniper - 10 level class accessed at level 7 (although creative use of PrCs can reduce this to level 6) - only powers are increased sneak attack range and death attack range. Death attack up to 30 ft at level 10, and sneak attack up to 75 feet. Honestly, just make it a pair of feats.

The biggest problem however, is not the rules, but the complete lack of flavor.

The feats are interesting, but aren't very well explained. How does an assassin learn to deal sneak attack damage to undead? What part of an undead ooze is subject to sneak attacks, no matter HOW good your training? Also one feat has an ability requirement that is an even number instead of odd... but that's just lack of experience with the system, it would seem. None of the feats are particularly exciting, with two of the 11 being "take 10" feats.

The point where the book picks up is the Assassin Styles. These are a nice re-build of the Fighting Styles from Quintessential Fighter, but with XP costs associated to them, and of course, they are assassin-related instead of fighting styles. Again, they lack flavour, but these are useful tools that can be added to any campaign... having specific guilds that teach these styles can add a lot of personality to a guild. This is the chapter that I have used in my own games. Unfortunately there are only 6... but it isn't too hard to make new ones using the template.

The compensation section of the book (pay rates) has a table that handles the pay-rates for an assassin based on the target's CR... This is reminiscent of the old 1e AD&D assassin, but the table itself makes little sense... Why a level 8 assassin is paid LESS to assassinate a level 1 target than a level 1 assassin is beyond me.

The guilds are next. Each of the four guilds has a short description, and a standard multi-class advancement path for typical members. This is a nice touch, adding a unique edge to each guild. The guilds are not as flavorful as the ones in Crimson Contracts, nor nearly as detailed as the ones in The Assassin's Handbook.

The spell selection is limited, with the first spell being a level 3 spell that turns a weapon into a shadow version of a +1 brilliant energy weapon (a wee bit on the powerful side for a level 3 spell)

The last two pages are the Assassin prestige class from the DMG.

After the OGL, we have a preview of a class from an upcoming book, and then 10 pages of character sheets (one blank sheet, and four filled out sheets of sample characters, all COMPLETELY under-equipped for characters of their level. For example, the first character, at level 16, has a +2 long sword, a +2 silenced chain shirt and "Standard Adventuring Gear". The last character is level 25, and has a +5 shadowblade, Bracers of Armor +8 and a Ring of Protection +5. He also must have SOMETHING that grants a +4 Dex, since his temp Dex score is 4 higher than his normal Dex score, but it doesn't indicate what this might be. In addition, the character's "build" makes little sense, as his only core class is Fighter, yet he managed to pick up the Assassin prestige class after 5 levels of fighter.

Overall, I felt the book could have been VERY well served with more flavor, elevating the assassin, the guilds and the styles instead of reducing them to yet more numbers. While it did this better than Power Class: Assassin, it fails to have the flavor of either Crimson Contracts or The Assassin's Handbook. A few items within the book are easily added to either of the other books, but if you are only buying one assassin book, this isn't the one. With only 24 pages of actual material not counting the cover, blank page, ToC & credits, OGL and the character sheets, it barely measures up at all.