Woe's of the Assassin Prestige class.... Help.

[QueenB7788]

Alright.

Let me preface this:
My husband and I have recently gotten into playing DnD (3.5 edition). We started about a month and a half ago and just made it back from Forge of Fury. I play a full elf Rogue, alignment chaotic neutral (until yesterday), and my husband is a human Paladin (lawful good, until yesterday). We're both level six. Our party also includes a full elf Drau, level 5 (chaotic evil) (sorry if I spelled that wrong) and a full elf wizard (also chaotic), level 5.

As I said, we just got back from Forge of Fury, fairly successfully and not dead. I had been planning for two weeks with our DM to join the Guild of Assassins, as a prestige class. I have all the prereqs but you have to kill an innocent to become part of the Guild of Assassins... Well, I planned with the DM to kill my husband, the paladin. My reasons for killing him other than joining this particular prestige class are... well, let's just say he's been a bit of a prat and it would be more interesting than just killing some random towns person. DM thought so too.

So I slipped sleeping potion/poison in to everyone in our party, including my target. Then I gave my target a lethal poison. He rolled one hell of a fortitude check and will save. He ended up in a coma. I told the DM I would try again this time, but with two lethal poisons.

Our DM, in order to more or less please every body, had the paladin saved from the brink of death by the Black Guard (prestige class) and he had to become chaotic evil, or lawful evil, I didn't actually check.

Once the game was done for the night, my dear husband told me if his character finds out it was me who tried to kill him, he'll probably kill me as well because he had his heart set on staying lawful good and wanted to be a different prestige class. Perhaps I didn't think that was a real possibility, him wanting revenge, especially because he didn't actually die and he got a prestige class out of it. But it was conveyed that he wanted to stay lawful good and I forced his hand.

IN ANY CASE (sorry for the ramble)...

I'd like to know what ways I could possibly protect myself as a Rogue Assassin from an attack like this down the road.
Intelligence is my highest ranked skill of all of them at a 19. Everything else is like a 10-12 or below.

 

[Dandu]

Our DM, in order to more or less please every body, had the paladin saved from the brink of death by the Black Guard (prestige class) and he had to become chaotic evil, or lawful evil, I didn't actually check.

I am unsure about how that would work, as the Blackguard prestige class has several skill and feat requirements that must be fulfilled before levels can be taken.

Anyways, the answer is clear: You must use your skills of subterfuge and deception to direct blame to an enemy, then send a letter to his former temple claiming that he has fallen to dark gods. When the inquisitors unexpectedly arrive to make him repent, you watch their battle and study the Blackguard for 3 rounds...

 

[Schmoe]

I'm going to avoid a lecture on inter-party conflict, especially when it involves someone with whom you share a bed, and just say that in my experience those things rarely turn out well. Presumably you and your hubby are totally fine with this...

At any rate, if you were planning to kill him, why didn't you just slit his throat when he was in a coma? That would have been a lot less messy and you wouldn't have this whole Blackguard thing hanging over you now. It's a real bollox of a mess now, and I doubt any respectable Assassin's Guild would want a half-hearted assassin working for them. I think the only way to save face in the eyes of the guild, as well as save your own bacon, is to orchestrate the Blackguard's untimely demise. This will preferably involve something like nudging him off a nearby ledge into a molten pool of lava, where you don't have to worry about any meddling, sentimental DMs saving him. Dandu's plan is pretty good, too.

 

[ccs]

I am unsure about how that would work, as the Blackguard prestige class has several skill and feat requirements that must be fulfilled before levels can be taken.

It works how interesting plot twists have always worked - I.E. however the DM says it does.
DM > rules.

 

[QueenB7788]

Thanks everybody for the advice I didn't do the whole throat-slitting thing because I wanted it not to be too obvious he was murdered flat-out, in the event the rest of the party turned on me. That way, he was dead and I still have good standing with the party, which is why I drugged everyone. Secondly, I don't think the Black Guard is too bad of a deal because he still gets a prestige class out of it. So it was kind of our DM's way of making everybody happy.

And if you're curious, I have a few different plans now that I've had time to think on it and talked a bit with the DM.

Idea 1) treat the paladin especially well to the point where he thinks there's a special level of camaraderie, even more so than camaraderie between us and the other party members. Like a team within a team, hopefully keeping him from wanting to kill me. (I've already kind of started doing this in telling him that we could do a lot of really cool , which has gotten him reading a lot of about black guard and death cleric class, as well as gotten him thinking perhaps this wasn't a bad thing. I'm going to continue with this strategy unless..)

Idea 2) should he find out, use deception and subterfuge to put the blame on an enemy. (Thank you Dandu) If this doesn't work...

Idea 3) have a letter/message ready to be sent or given to his former temple telling them he has fallen to dark gods and arrive to make him repent, you watch their battle and study the Blackguard for 3 rounds... and act accordingly as an assassin if necessary. (Again, thanks guys).

Idea 3 is an absolute last resort, however I may even just use this idea as a bluff something like, "Are you sure you want to kill me? Because if you follow through with this, you're going to have a much bigger problem than a Rogue.."

I'm not a half-hearted assassin, I do however want to cover my tracks.

 

[BlackSeed_Vash]

In preparation for #3, you might want to find someone who can cast Contingency, Permanency and Sending for you. The three best options for triggering the Contingency are:

[1] When you speak are particular word or phrase.
Pros - If you tell the Blackguard about it, you hold a credible threat over his head. If you don't tell the Blackguard, you can get the last laugh when he asks why you said (For example: armadillo farts).
Cons - You are killed before you can speak and/or in an area of Silence before being killed. Can be dispelled.

[2] The next time the Blackguard attacks you.
Pros - If you tell the Blackguard about it, you hold a credible threat over his head. If you don't tell the Blackguard, you can get the last laugh after he attacks... telling him that was the first step towards a life of persecution.
Cons - He can hire someone else to kill you or just allow not protect/stop another enemy from doing to deed.

[3] When you die.
Pros - If you tell the Blackguard about it, he is incentivized to keep you alive. If you don't tell the Blackguard, it will be next to impossible for him to prevent.
Cons - You're dead. Can result in player conflict. The Blackguard is not the reason you died.

Just remember that you have to "write" the message and pick the target when the spell is first cast, not at the time of the trigger. This does put some risk of the target of the Sending being dead already.

 

[QueenB7788]

Just remember that you have to "write" the message and pick the target when the spell is first cast, not at the time of the trigger. This does put some risk of the target of the Sending being dead already.

Could you explain that a little bit?

Also, I spoke with the wizard in our party to see if she could help me out with this. She's only a level 6 but she'd pretty close to leveling up in order to get contingency, and then once she levels up she'll get permanency. The good thing is that the Black Guard has no idea I tried to kill him, it's just the player that knows so I think we've got time. Currently, our party is in the Fae Woods on a side quest kind of thing. Once we get out of here and go back into town I'm thinking about asking around and finding another person who can cast these things already. It can't hurt to have more than one person doing it, right?

 

[BlackSeed_Vash]

My apologies. It's been a good while since I've dealt with 3.5 and miss remembered the rulings on the spell Contingency. The spell itself has a range of Personal so you would have to cast it yourself from a scroll. In addition, the spell Sending would not be a valid choice for the attached spell, only spells that affect your person. Last but not least, to attach a 5th level spell to Contingency you need to have a caster level 3 times higher than the attached spell level, in this case, caster level 15. Also, the spell Contingency only allows for one version of itself upon any person.

What I was thinking of was the feat Craft Contingency Spell (Complete Arcane pg 77). You will still need someone that has at least 15 caster levels to attach Sending to Contingency, but you will not need the Permanency cast any more. Expect to shell out at least 4,500gp and spending 5 days (8 hrs each day) having the spells bound to you. Any gold spent beyond the 4,500 is just the wizard's profit.

Now to answer your question: When Contingency is cast, you need to pick not only the condition that triggers the attached spell, but the parameters that the attached spell operates. In your case, you need to give the person doing the crafting the up to 25 word message that will be send to a particular individual. You may wish to send something along the lines of, "My name is _____ and with my dying breath I must tell you, ____ has betrayed his oaths to ____." That's 20 words, leaving you 5 to play around with.

If you go this route, don't forget that:
1) You do not need to be aware of the trigger for it to happen [ie being attacked by him]
2) As long as you are allowed to lie to other party members, you can tell him the trigger is something different. In this case I'd say it's upon my death, but have it triggered by a phrase/word.

 

[Grogg of the North]

Rather than creating or crafting a contingency spell, is there someone within your assassin guild that you can give the letter to along with a large purse of coins with the instructions "Should I die, deliver this to The Grand High Inquisitor."?