Why are these evil?!?

[I'm A Banana]

No powers of the assassin are evil.

But few powers of the Paladin are nessecarily Lawful or Good, either.

No powers of the Barbarian are chaotic.

It's flavor. That's why I don't feel bad taking away that limititaion....it's a flavor thing. Killing for your own benefit is evil.

I view classes as just a package of abilities. But the default assumption is that they are achetypes with related abilities, not just packages. That's why barbarians are chaotic and monks are lawful and Paladins are lawful good and evil clerics can command undead but good can't, and why Assassins are EVIL.

Just to explain why they did it in the first place....not that I really agree, but it's valid and easy enough to turn.

 

[Left-handed Hummingbird]

They lose the power when they turn good.

But, why? What EVIL makes up the ability to know where to hit someone to kill them? Or a knowledge of poison? Or hightened Sneak Attacks?

Sure, the spells, but I see no reason why an assassin should have them in the First place. They are *assassins*.

My idea of an Assassin is a rogue who specializes in this sort've thing. So everything is skill based. Why is it that simply because they are 'Eeevil', they can do this?

Our's is not to reason why.

Seriously, I understand your position completely, but I think this heralds back to my point a couple of posts ago: That Alignment is cosmological forces as well as it is personal philosophies, and if you don't see that, it becomes a mess real quick.

If you want a why that isn't just a "because of the typical narrative of fantasy" or "game balance issues" (which is probably the proper answer), I suggest that the reason there is cosmological forces (I'm sorry I keep babbling about these "cosmological" this and that, I just haven't found a better word for it, yet) involved in this particular class is that the Assassin choses to serve Evil and through Evil he accelerates and augments his skill. He makes a pact with the Devil, so to speak, and gains greater power to kill and destroy than if he had stayed a rogue. It's like athletes using performance enhancing drugs.

If she decides to break this "pact"; cut the power chord of Evil; go "cold turkey" - she loses the powers that were available to her. I agree in principle that a fallen Assassin shouldn't lose ALL her powers, it would be reasonable to let her convert at least some of them into Rogue Levels, but that's another discussion, I think.

 

[I'm A Banana]

This has it's origins in the "if you loose a prereq, should you loose the class" question, even when those prereqs are flavor?

 

[Oni]

This has it's origins in the "if you loose a prereq, should you loose the class" question, even when those prereqs are flavor?

Ideally, to me anyway, this should be handled on a case by case basis. PrC's should include a little segment about no longer qualifying for them, like the monk or the paladin do.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Good idea, Oni. Yoink.

 

[Left-handed Hummingbird]

Kamikaze Midget, That Paladins prerequisite is Lawful Good and not Chaotic Good, is flavor, I agree. But the way the Paladin is bound to this Alignment - whatever it is - is NOT flavor, IMHO.

Alignment has a direct effect on the D&D World. It matters whether you're Chaotic or Lawful. Not just in the way you behave, but how the powers of D&D affect you.

Thus, you might create a class similar to the Paladin but for the fact that you need to be Chaotic Good, but it doesn't change the fact that the powers you wield are Chaotic Good in themselves, and that they are granted to you only as long as you stay in that Alignment.

You may houserule Alignment prerequisites out of D&D, but if you consider Alignment a question of flavor and nothing else, you have to houserule quite a lot out of D&D, IMHO.

And remember, even though the rules are clear on the fact that you lose your Paladin powers when you stray from the path of Lawful Good, the rules concerning the Blackguard prestige class is a great example of how you can create rules that allow you to keep/change your powers when you change alignment by converting your Fallen Paladin-levels for special powers. There is no reason why we don't see more of this type of conversions: How about a Noble Savage-prestige class for Lawful ex-Barbarians that convert the defunct rage-powers to - I dunno - expertise bonusses or something.

And I, too, agree completely with Oni. I think it would be reasonable if all the prestige classes you are able to leave also provided better rules for where such an exit would leave the character. As I suggested in my reply to Xarlen, perhaps a former Assassin should be allowed to convert some - if not all - of his Ex-Assassin levels to Rogue levels.

 

[DM_Matt]

Saying that assassinating someone for your country is inherantly evil is not a great road to travel on. you owuld necessarily have to consider all armed conflict involving nations to be carried out strictly by evil people.

Are soldiers involved in combat situations inherantly evil? Were the GIs storming Normany evil? If they finally find bin Ladin, and send some Rangers or Seals to take him out, are they evil?

Is it more evil if they are seeking out specific individuals to kill as opposed to enemy military units in general? Or even, would it be so bad for a small team of soldiers to, for instance, take out a rogue leader if it would avert a larger war?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I think it depends on how you look at things. Assassins could be said to be neutral because they don't have to look forward to the next kill, just as I don't look forward to the next to the next block of forms dumped on my desk for me to type up. Even though I don't enjoy doing my job, I do it because I'm good at it, and I get paid for it. You could argue that an Assassin is just doing a job. and getting paid for it.

You could argue this but it wouldn't get you anywhere with most people. The point is that the assassins represented by the prestige class kill people for money. Period. Whether they enjoy it or not is immaterial. According to the D&D understanding of good and evil and my understanding of good and evil, anyone who would kill an innocent for money is evil.

Similarly, one could argue that a criminal defense attorney who lies in order to ensure that guilty criminals aren't punished for their crimes is just doing a job and getting paid for it. He might not even particularly like his job although he's good at it. The problem, however, is that his "job" is evil.

Even if an individual only killed the guilty--for instance, a bounty hunter who kills bandits for the bounty on their head or the perennial favorite of dark fiction: the assassin who only accepts contracts on really bad guys (which seems pretty unrealistic to me--almost as unrealistic as the clean living assassin in films like Leon--but that's beside the point)--and they could therefore arguably be neutral rather than evil, that's clearly not what the D&D assassin class represents. It represents members of an organization of hired killers who kill for money and only for money (or maybe pleasure) without any restricting factors.

Another comparison would be of the sort the NRA uses. If you use a gun to kill someone, the use of the gun may have resulted in the person's death, but it is you that is evil, the gun is neutral. Just replace gun with assassin.

This is ridiculous. That particular defense of guns works because guns are not moral agents. They don't make decisions about who to shoot and who not to shoot. If someone pulls the trigger, they shoot. And that's what they're supposed to do. Humans, by contrast, are moral agents. They're not supposed to be (and can't be, even if they try) simple automotons. Thus the key portion of the argument--that guns are not moral agents--is different in the case of the assassin. Assassins are moral agents. And that's why they're evil.

The other difference is that guns have uses other than murder. Guns can be used for sport (the biathalon or skeet shooting, for instance), or for hunting. Those guns are just as much guns as military guns that are used to shoot people. An assassin who didn't kill people, however, wouldn't be an assassin.

Similarly, guns can also be used to defend the innocent (without killing or even being fired; most confrontations involving a gun end without anyone being killed). An assassin could theoretically defend the innocent, but would not be acting as an assassin when doing so--the "assassin" would be acting as a bodyguard in that case. (An assassin could theoretically also be used to defend the innocent as an assassin by killing someone who threatened the innocent however that is much more indirectly defending an innocent than the gun in question).

So, really there is no significant similarity whatsoever between the moral status of guns and assassins.

 

[I'm A Banana]

See, I think Alignment is useful and instrumental in the D&D universe, and that the forces are great...

....but I don't think Alignment was used to "balance" anything. A paladin isn't a better class than the rest because of the limited alignment...mechanically, they aren't any more powerful than any other class.

So, in this respect, alignment is a flavor -- you can remove it, and not have any impact for the worse on your world. You'll have to house rule a lot of things that alignment affects, but your game wouldn't become unbalanced if you remove it, because alignment isn't a mechanical consideration, it's a role playing one -- it's flavor, not mechanics. So removing or altering it's importance isn't going to hurt your mechanics at all, but it will alter the flavor of your world.

So...yeah...I don't think alignments are used for balance, so much as they are used to reinforce archetypes and heroics (a campaign-specific consideration)...if a paladin had no alignment requirement, I don't think it would become unbalanced.

But I fully support alignment in the core rules. I just have no problem with those who choose not to use it because they don't like the absolutes.

So, I *like* that the paladin is Lawful Good Heroic Archetype. I just don't think it has to be that way.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Precisely. Death Knell is basically sucking the soul out of your victim's body and consuming it in order to gain power. The process doesn't just damage the victim's body, it damages their soul as well--damages it to such an extent that Raise Dead is no longer sufficient to bring them back. That's why it's evil.

Note that this is, in fact, different from Vampiric Touch which is not a [Death] effect and inflicts no damage upon the victim's soul but only on their physical body.

Also note that Death Knell is a spell with the [Death] descriptor, and thus entails "permanently" killing the target - a mere Raise Dead doesn't work, you need stronger stuff like Resurrection. Another factor is that you can only cast the spell on already dying victims - it's not a means toward the possibly good (or at least non-evil) end of stopping a bad guy, it's about draining the life out of someone for your own power gain.