A number of classes have specific requirements to take or taboos that will take away almost all benefits from that class.
What I want to know, is what if someone meets a requirement for a class when they take some levels in it, but then lose that prerequisite at a later time? Particularly in a class that makes no mention of ex-members. To be more specific, I'm looking at the Assassin prestige class.
Requirements:
Alignment: Any evil
Skills: Disguise 2 ranks, Stealth 5 ranks
Special: The character must kill someone for no other reason than to become an assassin.
Special cannot be lost, and Skills require intense retraining (we're not pokemon, we don't usually forget one thing in place of another), so those aren't really going to change. However, a person's heart can change dramatically over their life, thus their Alignment can shift. Difficult, yes, but not all that rare.
If an evil assassin has a change heart and goes from evil to neutral (or even good), does he lose his assassin abilites? (Thinking of Rurouni Kenshin as an example)
You lose access to all the class features/abilities ... essentially, anything non-numerical. You keep HP, saves, skill points, but lose, for example here, sneak attack, death attack, spellcasting, etc.
Yes, this IS beyond stupid.
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The alignment is required for entry into the class, not to retain it's features.
I don't think you would lose anything you already had due to an alignment change, but you may not be able to progress any further in it.
Once you had all the levels though, you're good to go, no pun intended :)
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The assassin requires evil alignment to take the first level, but there are no penalties for becoming non-evil after that. Per the PRD: "Unlike the core classes, characters must meet specific requirements before they can take their first level of a prestige class. "
Assassins don't have an ex-assassin clause in their class description, so nothing stops them from gaining further levels or using gained abilities if they switch alignment.
As a general rule you don’t lose a classes ability if you no longer qualify for it. There are of course exceptions to this rule. The first is if a barbarian turns lawful he loses his ability to rage. The second is a divine character whose alignment changes to something the supporting deity or power has problems with. The first case is unique as far as I know, the second is pretty common. If the class is drawing power from a source that will no longer support him due to his new alignment he loses those abilities powered by said source but keeps his other abilities. This may not be RAW but it is RAI.