Eclipse and the Pathfinder Assassin

And it’s time for another attempt to get started posting again. Being in the medical field in the midst of a pandemic has pretty much eliminated my writing time since last year – but it’s loosening up a bit now. To get back into the swing of things, questions are welcome; they give me a place to start. And for today we have Alzrius, asking about a breakdown for the Pathfinder Assassin Prestige Class.

We can probably assume the use of the Pathfinder Package Deal, but it doesn’t have any actual effect. The class basics are fully compatible with the vast majority of d20 settings anyway.

For the basics of this ten-level class we have…

• d8 Hit Dice (40 CP), 4 Skill Points per Level (40 CP), a Base Attack Bonus of +7 (42 CP), total Saves of +11 (33 CP), and Augment Attack (Sneak Attack option, +5d6, 15 CP).
• Assassins are also Proficient with Light Armor (3 CP) and a Limited Group of Weapons (3 CP).

That’s 176 CP out of the 240 CP available to a ten-level prestige class. In actual play they probably wouldn’t need to pay for the proficiencies since any would-be assassin really should have most of them already.

The items in the Pathfinder Assassin that improve the Death Attack trick include True Death (a sort of curse on those slain by the user’s Death Attack that makes them slightly more difficult to raise from the dead), Quiet Death (allowing the user to conceal the fact that he or she has used a Death Attack to kill a target during a surprise round), Swift Death (allowing the user to use Death Attack once per day without the normally-required study time), and Angel Of Death (Once per day can destroy a body, preventing the use of Raise Dead or Resurrection – albeit not the use of Wish or True Resurrection.

OK then:

• True Death simply annoys PC’s and really doesn’t affect NPC’s since they rely more on plot effects than wealth.
• Quiet Death… is pretty specialized. It’s neat when it comes up, but it’s not going to come up all that often.
• Swift Death lets the character make a quick save-or-die strike once per day. That’s really not that impressive; spellcasters can usually do this more often and better.
• Angel Of Death saves the bother of destroying a body some other way – perhaps by dropping a capsule of green slime on it. Handy, but but it’s not as if people in the real world, with no magic at all and a lot less motivation, haven’t disposed of quite a lot of bodies. Disposing of a body is not actually all that hard.

So to buy those items, take…

• Trick (Death Attack, normally requires three rounds of study and use shortly after the study period) Specialized and Corrupted for increased Effect (offers a choice of Death or Short-Term Paralysis, Only requires two rounds of study) / Requires a successful sneak attack, fails if the target is aware of the user or recognizes the user as an enemy*, must be used within three rounds (6 CP).

*OK, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. If I know that a particular assassin is after me, I’m immune to his or he death attack? After all, I know that he or she is an enemy even if I don’t know that they’re nearby – and therefore am protected? I recommend dropping the “or recognizes the user as an enemy” since any reasonable interpretation of that already falls under “if the target is aware of the user”.

Given that it’s not really that hard to get rid of a body lets go straight to a drastically upgraded version of Angel Of Death. Buy…

• Presence / Aura of Corruption (An improved, level one, version of Putrefy Food And Drink), Specialized and Corrupted for Reduced Cost / Only affects corpses, only of creatures that the user has slain with Death Attack (2 CP). There. That will cause the bodies of those you slay to be consumed by insects, fungi, and various microorganisms in a few moments – with the resulting compost being of no more use for bringing back the victim than a chunk of flesh from a wolf is useful for bringing back the deer it ate last week. Once a body has been consumed by other organisms and digested… it’s now a part of them and the relationship with the original creature is broken.

Even better… That works all day, every day, as often as you like. It will take a Wish or True Resurrection (or perhaps Returning) to bring back ANYTHING you kill.

If you want to do something else with your 2 CP… invest in an Injecting Weapon or look in The Complete Scoundrel, or any of dozens of other equipment books and go with the Green Slime again. Or any of several other oozes. There are quite a few of them which will eat a body, bones and all.

We’ve already got the Death Attack down to two rounds of study, and we want to eliminate the study at least once per day.

• Buy Reflex Training (four actions per day variant), Specialized and Corrupted for Increased Effect (accomplishes two rounds of study as a free action) / only for use with studying targets to allow the use of a Death Attack (6 CP). That’s four times a day, which is at least competitive with the local druid when it comes to save-or-die effects.

Quiet Death? For that you want

• Traceless (Murder), Specialized and Corrupted for Reduced Cost / Only keeps it from being noticeable when you kill someone with your Death Attack for a brief period (2 CP).

Again, that’s an improvement on the original ability which had much more limited applications since it only worked during a surprise round.

OK, that pretty much covers the Pathfinder Assassins signature techniques with some upgrades for… 16 CP. That’s actually pretty cheap.

So what else does the Pathfinder Assassin get?

• Poison Use (6 CP). This might be overpriced, but that’s back-compatibility again. Still, it lets you both make and safely use poisons.
• +5 on Saves Versus Poison. This could be bought with Resistance, or Augmented Bonus, either of which might be better in the long run – but I’m going to match the edge and buy Luck just to get a second chance against poisons (6 CP) – basically, letting the user roll twice and keep the best result when saving against poisons. An actual character might well be better served with Luck with +4 Bonus Uses, Specialized / only for Saves – but that has the same cost and so could be easily swapped in.
• Improved Uncanny Dodge. That’s Awareness (6 CP) with Flankless (Specialized, does not work against opponents with a four-level advantage over you, 3 CP).
• Hidden Weapons: You could duplicate this by buying Professional (Sleight Of Hand), Specialized for Increased Effect (+1 per level) and Corrupted for Reduced Cost / Only to use Sleight Of Hand to Conceal Weapons (4 CP) – but personally I would buy either Innate Enchantment / Handy Haversack (+2 CP worth of Innate Enchantment) or take Shaping in the Use of Charms and Talismans variant – thus getting the use of ten minor bits of magic – such as a making a weapon invisible when not in use, concealed pockets, a few moments of invisiblity, instant makeover capsules, and so on.
• Hide In Plain Sight could be an immunity, or smoke pellets, or some other trick – but the simplest way to get it is to take Opportunist (gets to roll to hide even when under observation and without cover, 6 CP).

That’s about 47 CP in total (possibly varying a bit of you take some of the Eclipse-style options instead of the attempts at duplication), giving the Pathfinder Assassin a net cost of 223 CP out of the 240 CP available – although it’s not a particularly efficient build, which kind of explains why the Pathfinder Assassin generally isn’t considered worth taking except – sometimes – as a dip. This being Eclipse, of course, you could start as an Assassin instead of taking it as a prestige class and have a lot of the special tricks within the first few levels. Throw in Duties (likely to whoever trained you), Adept or Fast Learner to cut down on the SP Cost (6 CP each, either worth 20 CP worth of skills (and continuing to offer benefits later) for a net savings of 14 CP – or take both to upgrade at a reduced cost) and cut the Hit Dice to d4’s in favor of Agile Combat [Advanced Augmented Bonus (Add (Dex Mod) to (Con Mod) for HP Purposes through level 10, 12 CP)] to save 28 CP and you’ll have 79 CP available – enough for, say:

• The full original Assassin Spellcasting Package (56 CP). This isn’t especially impressive, but does include some handy tricks and is rather tightly focused on stuff assassins are likely to need.
• The 32 CP Pirate Template and a bunch of other stuff – perhaps some of the C’hi Power packages from this article on Ninja or some nice Martial Stances or even something like a Birthright.
• The Bokor (“Binder”) Package (60 CP). This one will continue to pay dividends throughout your entire career and is very nice when you want to put together a package of powers that’s just right for taking out a particular target.
• The Entreaty Magic package (87 CP, so you’ll need to throw in a couple of your feats – but well worth it if you have a decent Charisma score) is another one that will continue to pay off throughout your entire career.
• Perhaps a good chunk of Witchcraft. That’s not overwhelmingly powerful, but it is very sneaky and versatile.
• Perhaps a Martial Discipline at (48 CP)? Or you could invest three Feats to either buy a second one or to triple your uses-per-fight on your first set of maneuvers.
• Or go with the Skill-Based Partial Casters (Type I or Type II) (Variable Cost).
• How about the Pulp Hero templates? At 32 (Basic) or 64 (Advanced) CP that would certainly be different!

Any of those options will make our revamped Eclipse Assassin considerably more effective – as it should be. The Assassin is a strong and popular archetype. It shouldn’t be crippling to want to play one.