Challenge: To kill the King


Advice


A re-read of GOT got me thinking: could a single PC duplicate the assassination of Renly Baratheon? I don't mean with the shadowbaby*, I mean through spells and strength of arms.

So here's the challenge: A single 10th level character needs to be able to sneak into a king's pavilion, kill him** in one round and then escape afterwards.

My current build is a 4/6 Half Elf Magus/Ninja using invisibility. Burst damage seems to be there and ninja vanishing trick should get him out of the area after the kill. Skill focus on stealth and the ninja trick 'fast stealth' should do well avoiding even talented guards.

My buddy is thinking about going full Slayer, possibly with archtypes.

How would you kill the king under these constraints?

* though I suppose a phantasmal killer spell might do that
**(consider him a lvl 6 Aristocrat with Con 14 and ave hit points), wearing +1 half-plate, for being partially dressed

Liberty's Edge

TaigaKirdApe wrote:

A re-read of GOT got me thinking: could a single PC duplicate the assassination of Renly Baratheon? I don't mean with the shadowbaby*, I mean through spells and strength of arms.

So here's the challenge: A single 10th level character needs to be able to sneak into a king's pavilion, kill him** in one round and then escape afterwards.

My current build is a 4/6 Half Elf Magus/Ninja using invisibility. Burst damage seems to be there and ninja vanishing trick should get him out of the area after the kill. Skill focus on stealth and the ninja trick 'fast stealth' should do well avoiding even talented guards.

My buddy is thinking about going full Slayer, possibly with archtypes.

How would you kill the king under these constraints?

* though I suppose a phantasmal killer spell might do that
**(consider him a lvl 6 Aristocrat with Con 14 and ave hit points), wearing +1 half-plate, for being partially dressed

Wait till he is asleep and Coup' him?


The hardest part is "kill him in one round."

The second-hardest part is making sure that as a character being targeted by level 10 people he doesn't have access to raise dead.


This wouldn't be done in one round, but I think it's doable. Two ideas:

Summoner. My eidolon would be some kind of winged critter. I would have plenty of potions of invisibility and a Wand of Summon Monster IV or Summon Monster V. I would sneak to the edge of camp, pop my invisibility potions, and get to work with the wand. I'd summon up a mess of creatures to create distractions around the camp. While guards are busy with the distraction, I'd sneak closer to Renly's position. I'd use one of the pit spells to trap him, then (once again) use the wand to whistle up a few critters to keep him company in the pit. Once this is done, I pop a couple more invisbility potions and whistle up my eidolon to lift me out of camp.

Second idea is to a bit more subtle. I'd play an enchanter, a witch, or an alchemist. Either in person or through proxies, I'd poison Renly's peaches.


Uh, does this really need anything fancy? With an archer at level ten you're looking at four attacks (manyshot and rapidshot) at 1d8+bow+Str+6 (deadly aim). A level 6 aristocrat with average HP and 14 Con has 27+12 HP for a total of 39. So if every arrow hits and you roll as terrible as possible on damage you need bow+str>2 and the arrows will knock him out, bow+str>6 to kill him.

If you want to crank it up a notch grab a ranger with Favored Enemy (Human) for +6 Attack and Damage versus humans to... well, autokill him if all attacks hit, even if you're using a non-composite non-magical bow. And the bonus to attack completely negates the penalty for rapid shot and deadly aim (with a +1 left over).


10th level Wizard/Sorcerer just flies overhead while invisible and drops a powerful spell on top of the king's tent. Heck, even the much-maligned fireball is save-or-die for the king if you use a metamagic reducer to maximize it. If you don't care about finishing things in exactly one round, a create pit spell followed by a cloudkill spell followed by a wall of some sort (preferably stone, but force or ice would suffice) would be a very reliable way of ensuring anything in that tent is thoroughly dead.

If you want to be subtle, I guess you can go for a phantasmal killer like you suggest, but where's the fun and collateral damage in that?


A 10th level ranger with two weapon fighting and maxed out favored enemy could easily kill him in a single round. Figure an 18 STR with two +1 kukri and weapon focus. He is +20/+20/+15/+15 to hit and doing 1d4+11 (with double slice). A ring of invisibility or a couple of potions of invisibility and a good stealth roll should get him in and out. Attacking from ambush he should be able to get a full attack before anyone realizes he is there. He will need to roll a 2 to miss and do a minimum of 12 points of damage per hit for a total of 48 points of damage. If he takes improved critical he needs to roll a 15 or better for a critical hit.

The Exchange

Why would you want to kill the King?

Suggestion:
10th Level wizard. Send a letter impersonating one of his barons, in which there is a gem (with your soul in it via magic jar). Your real body is 100 ft away from the scene. Your imp familiar shapechanges into a rat, and uses his uber sneaky skillz to hide among the carpets. He directs you via shared language with master who to magic jar into the right person (the King).

You are now the King :)

If you really want to do away with him, dimension door yourself (in the King's body), 200 ft into the air. 20d6 falling damage (avg 60 dmg). Dimension door is verbal only, so no worries bout somatics/lack of spell component pouch. In the confusion of landing back the place you started, right on the guards, that should be sufficient for your imp familiar to steal the soul gem back out, while in rat form.

And yes raise dead and all that.

Alternative version: Dimension door yourself 200 ft in the air, but make sure the point the body hits the ground is not more then 100ft from your soul gem. Get your imp to steal your soulgem in the confusion that the king is missing. Then quickly magic jar from the soulgem into your imp, dimension door to the spot that the King's body is, cut out his heart with an icicle dagger and keep it. No raising of the King!


At 10th level? A crossblooded orc/shadow sorcerer with a rod of empower spell (or a trait to reduce the cost) can throw down an empowered, maximised magic missile for enough damage to likely kill him, follow it up with a quickened magic missile if that doesn't finish him, then next round teleport out (or hide or turn invisible if teleport isn't an option.) No saves or attack rolls necessary which avoids failing by unlucky rolls.

If you might need to deal with traps the seeker archetype is compatible.

Got a hard challenge?


Making sure he stays dead is easy. Wizard with a scroll of Disintegrate.

Teleport in, pop the scroll, Teleport out.

If you're worried about him saving, hand your (Improved) Familiar a scythe. Teleport in -> Familiar Coup de Graces him -> Disintegrate the corpse -> Teleport out.

If you really want to make absolutely sure he stays dead (or you just need a macabre paperweight), collect the ashes from Disintegrate before you go.

Sczarni

Killing the king isn't a problem. Going against his army of helpers is.
Killing the king also might not solve the problems at all. It might make them worse. People don't kill aristocrats and politicians because it's pointless. Another figure will step in and take control simply, so instead of killing him, think again if it's really gonna help at all besides putting you on the Wanted lists.

Adam


Malag wrote:

Killing the king isn't a problem. Going against his army of helpers is.

Killing the king also might not solve the problems at all. It might make them worse. People don't kill aristocrats and politicians because it's pointless. Another figure will step in and take control simply, so instead of killing him, think again if it's really gonna help at all besides putting you on the Wanted lists.

Adam

It's nowhere near that black and white.

What if there's no clear line of succession? Better-- what if there is, but you can take advantage of that line? That's an incredibly popular trope and happened more than a few times in reality as well.

What if there is a clear line of succession that you have no control over, but you know that the next in line isn't inclined to support some strategy or policy that the current head of state is? Again, this is common in history and fiction both-- it was practically a specialty of the Praetorian Guard in Rome.

What if you know that the line of succession is muddled, enough that there will be infighting-- possibly an all-out civil war? If you're an enemy of the state itself, that's a godsend. Or maybe you just like chaos.

What if you're an idealist who actually believes that the world would be a better place without leaders and are willing to assassinate a king or twelve to see that come about?

There are a lot of reasons to try to kill a king or other ruler. It's usually just hard.

Of course, "usually" Scry-and-Fry tactics aren't an option.

Sczarni

@kestral287

You are absolutely correct. It's nowhere near black and white as I explained but you have a lot of "what if" in those sentences. Attempt to kill the king might be rewarding, but it might not. The entire thing is gamble on your own.


Malag wrote:

@kestral287

You are absolutely correct. It's nowhere near black and white as I explained but you have a lot of "what if" in those sentences. Attempt to kill the king might be rewarding, but it might not. The entire thing is gamble on your own.

Not... really?

It's not a gamble to say "what if you're the heir to the throne?" You either are or you are not. If you are not, that option is eliminated. If you are, it's a viable motive. There's certainly no random chance there.

Now, that might come with its own set of issues and opportunities. If you're the heir to throne, you should be very careful to ensure that the whole thing can't be traced back to you, and would do well to establish an alibi (which is honestly rather easy, for a Wizard-- the whole Teleport-kill-Teleport thing can be accomplished during a bathroom break from your party). But you have much easier access to things like his schedule, his defenses, his guards' wallets for bribery, etc. These are issues and opportunities that other variants might not have to deal with.

If you dislike one of the king's policies, you should do your best to make sure that you either don't get recognized or haven't popularized your dislike, and you should be sure that you know the viewpoint of the next in line. You don't want to hit the JFK-LBJ scenario where assassinating the leader lets his replacement to ram the policy through in the wave of his death. But that's a matter of research and planning, not gambling.

The only one that's really a gamble in terms of results regardless of your actions is the idealist one. But, if you're pulling it once, there's no real reason to not do it again if somebody competent does step up. It may just prove your point better. Zaheer (of Legend of Korra), the example in my mind when I wrote that, would have certainly had the whole 'futility of government' point well-established by killing off a successor or two. And, in point of fact, he suffered by making himself an obvious target and getting taken down-- if that hadn't happened, he could have repeated the process on the two major successors and firmly cemented his goal.

The what ifs do say that it's not an option that everybody would take (which is, I would hope, rather obvious-- if you don't have a dog in the fight, you have no reason to get involved at all), but it's certainly not a gamble insofar as your motivation is concerned. And a gamble in rewards... well, you'd better do a good job cleaning up your mess. If you botch the operation that has its own results, but those aren't really tied to the actual result of the killing, just you getting caught. See the above example with Zaheer here: his initial goal (kill the Earth Queen, create anarchy in her kingdom) was a success. However, he made it very clear who had killed the Earth Queen and proceeded to go after targets he couldn't handle and get captured. Thus he wasn't around to finish the job with her successor-- but we're explicitly told that he would have.

So the short version:

1. My last post was ultimately an establishment of motives. Don't kill the king without some form of motive.
2. Do your research to make sure that killing the king will have the results you want (JFK scenario, possibility that there's a Cleric with Raise Dead or better, etc.). If it won't, figure out who else needs to be taken out to make your result come about.
3. Don't be an idiot and get caught.

Liberty's Edge

Wizard(Necromancer) with a familiar.
Use invisibility and shadow projection.
Staff of the Master, Quicken spell and Maximize spell and Persistent spell.
Use the two metamagic reduction traits(magical lineage and Wayang spellhunter).

So you start by casting a quicken maximized persistent Ray of enfeeblement and follow up with a Maximized Persistent Ray of Enfeeblement.
Then your shadow kills him in his comatose state.

His chances of surviving this combo is VERY slim if everythin goes according to plan. You can even Haste your familiar if you think that 20 penalty + 1d6 damage is not enough. Though if he has about 30 strength you are unlikely to be able to succeed on the surprise round and will need an additional round to finish him off.

Oh and this has the added benefit of having a shadow actually killing the king ;)


Some pretty interesting ideas, though it seems folks prefer the caster as the killer. Wasn't what I was thinking of but I didn't want to restrict peoples ideas.

The setting is to kill the king as he's arming with a minimum of his minions and court followers around. It has to be a one round kill or powerful help/healing will come. Waiting for a better time/place is a non-starter. It's got to be that night in this window of opportunity.

AND...the killer needs to be able to escape. That leaves out archers or brute force attacks by a single fighter-y types.

Liberty's Edge

TaigaKirdApe wrote:

Some pretty interesting ideas, though it seems folks prefer the caster as the killer. Wasn't what I was thinking of but I didn't want to restrict peoples ideas.

The setting is to kill the king as he's arming with a minimum of his minions and court followers around. It has to be a one round kill or powerful help/healing will come. Waiting for a better time/place is a non-starter. It's got to be that night in this window of opportunity.

AND...the killer needs to be able to escape. That leaves out archers or brute force attacks by a single fighter-y types.

What is his Strength score? If it is at about 16 and he has a 14 Con my idea has a 90-95% success rate.

Because you would have to cast teleport after the first Ray of enfeeblement. Your shadow simply disappear into the ground after dealing the killing blow.


TaigaKirdApe wrote:

Some pretty interesting ideas, though it seems folks prefer the caster as the killer. Wasn't what I was thinking of but I didn't want to restrict peoples ideas.

The setting is to kill the king as he's arming with a minimum of his minions and court followers around. It has to be a one round kill or powerful help/healing will come. Waiting for a better time/place is a non-starter. It's got to be that night in this window of opportunity.

AND...the killer needs to be able to escape. That leaves out archers or brute force attacks by a single fighter-y types.

How does escape preclude archers? They can hit him from 110 feet out normally, -2 for every 110 feet beyond that. -1 if they take Far Shot. And for every full range increment, minions add 11 to the perception DC to find them. At only one range increment out it's a DC 22 perception check to notice them. At two range increments it's a 33, more than I'd expect regular human minions (especially to a level 6) to be capable of.


TaigaKirdApe wrote:

Some pretty interesting ideas, though it seems folks prefer the caster as the killer. Wasn't what I was thinking of but I didn't want to restrict peoples ideas.

The setting is to kill the king as he's arming with a minimum of his minions and court followers around. It has to be a one round kill or powerful help/healing will come. Waiting for a better time/place is a non-starter. It's got to be that night in this window of opportunity.

AND...the killer needs to be able to escape. That leaves out archers or brute force attacks by a single fighter-y types.

The thing is casters are faster.

At level 10, you're talking fifth-level spells. A Flesh to Stone is a pretty efficient murder-machine, and a Wizard can have that DC up around 23 without particularly trying. With a +4 on his Fort save, that alone is a 90% kill rate. Getting that to 95% is easy, and FtS isn't necessarily the best way to kill him. So a Wizard can land the kill reliably, just as well as any martial. And getting in/out is far easier for a Wizard than anyone else. Even if the Slayer or what have you only has to make one Stealth check... odds are great the Wizard makes zero.

If you're okay to leave the body, the Wizard can pull off this sequence easily:

One hour before zero hour: Scrying on the target.
Two-three minutes before zero hour: Contingent Action on self [After saying "Go", readied action to cast Teleport]
Two-three rounds before zero hour: Buff Improved Familiar (Earth Elemental, for the sake of discussion) as needed. Call it Haste and Heroism here-- just in case.
Zero Hour/Round one:

1. Wizard says "go" to trigger his Contingent Action.
2. Wizard delays until after Familiar
3. Familiar coup de graces or full attacks the king (if necessary, hand him a scythe beforehand)
4. Wizard casts Teleport to escape

One round, easy, including getting in and out. And that's without significant prep time. If the Wizard had time to prepare, he could buy a Staff of the Master to add in a Quickened spell for a bit of insurance (probably to eliminate the corpse or some such). But as-is, all he expended was a second-level spell, a pair of third level spells (for insurance; they're not likely to be necessary), a fourth-level spell, and a pair of fifth level spells.

The fifth-level spells are a major expense, the others... not really. Feat-wise we took Improved Familiar and that's it-- and even then, a Mauler Fox might be able to pull it off. And he pulled this off from a base camp ~900 miles away from the king's location, and his entire period of exposure was six seconds.

If we needed to dispose of the body, then we could take it with us (the easiest way is to use Contingent Action on the Earth Elemental, granting a readied action to pick up the king's corpse), or we could bring along a scroll of Disintegrate-- though that means that we either need the Staff of the Master or we gain another six seconds of vulnerability. Realistically, go for Contingent Action then use the Scroll of Disintegrate back at the base camp.

This is why we lean caster here. There isn't a martial around who's half as good of an assassin as a Wizard who puts his mind to it. If somebody can correct me with a martial who can get in, kill his target, and get out in six seconds, while making Raise Dead impossible, I'd love to see it. Oh, and the Wizard pulled that off by spending one feat and 18 gp and some of his daily resources.


Bob Bob Bob wrote:
TaigaKirdApe wrote:

Some pretty interesting ideas, though it seems folks prefer the caster as the killer. Wasn't what I was thinking of but I didn't want to restrict peoples ideas.

The setting is to kill the king as he's arming with a minimum of his minions and court followers around. It has to be a one round kill or powerful help/healing will come. Waiting for a better time/place is a non-starter. It's got to be that night in this window of opportunity.

AND...the killer needs to be able to escape. That leaves out archers or brute force attacks by a single fighter-y types.

How does escape preclude archers? They can hit him from 110 feet out normally, -2 for every 110 feet beyond that. -1 if they take Far Shot. And for every full range increment, minions add 11 to the perception DC to find them. At only one range increment out it's a DC 22 perception check to notice them. At two range increments it's a 33, more than I'd expect regular human minions (especially to a level 6) to be capable of.

Logistics. There isn't going to be that much free and open space available, even if you can see the king (and he'd be inside, arming...in a tent, if I recall the book). You'd be surrounded by an army outside, the only privacy for the kill is inside with the king.


kestral287 wrote:
TaigaKirdApe wrote:

Some pretty interesting ideas, though it seems folks prefer the caster as the killer. Wasn't what I was thinking of but I didn't want to restrict peoples ideas.

The setting is to kill the king as he's arming with a minimum of his minions and court followers around. It has to be a one round kill or powerful help/healing will come. Waiting for a better time/place is a non-starter. It's got to be that night in this window of opportunity.

AND...the killer needs to be able to escape. That leaves out archers or brute force attacks by a single fighter-y types.

The thing is casters are faster.

At level 10, you're talking fifth-level spells. A Flesh to Stone is a pretty efficient murder-machine, and a Wizard can have that DC up around 23 without particularly trying. With a +4 on his Fort save, that alone is a 90% kill rate. Getting that to 95% is easy, and FtS isn't necessarily the best way to kill him. So a Wizard can land the kill reliably, just as well as any martial. And getting in/out is far easier for a Wizard than anyone else. Even if the Slayer or what have you only has to make one Stealth check... odds are great the Wizard makes zero.

If you're okay to leave the body, the Wizard can pull off this sequence easily:

One hour before zero hour: Scrying on the target.
Two-three minutes before zero hour: Contingent Action on self [After saying "Go", readied action to cast Teleport]
Two-three rounds before zero hour: Buff Improved Familiar (Earth Elemental, for the sake of discussion) as needed. Call it Haste and Heroism here-- just in case.
Zero Hour/Round one:

1. Wizard says "go" to trigger his Contingent Action.
2. Wizard delays until after Familiar
3. Familiar coup de graces or full attacks the king (if necessary, hand him a scythe beforehand)
4. Wizard casts Teleport to escape

One round, easy, including getting in and out. And that's without significant prep time. If the Wizard had time to prepare, he could buy a Staff of the Master to...

Thanks Kestral,

You make a good case. Of course the Game of Thrones world is fairly low magic, if I were to restart the challenge, I'd probably want to make it a bit more specific for setting. More looking for stealth and combat classes rather than just 'a wizard did it'.

Can you cast Contingent Spell at 10th level? I thought that was a lvl 6 spell?


Contingent Action is a separate spell from Contingency, and is really, really awesome. It gives you a free readied action on some trigger or another, so if you can use your readied action to cast Teleport, it works fine for that purpose.

The big downside is that it only lasts minutes/lvl. But hey, it's a second-level spell.


@ TaigaKirdApe: AGoT is low magic ... but the specific example given in the OP was a caster by any reasonable definition. If you want to know how Bron might do it that's a different question!

@ Kestral:

Contingent Action wrote:
The readied action must be a standard, move, or swift action—it cannot be used to cast a spell or use a supernatural ability.

Contingent Action doesn't do what you think it does. Contingent Scroll would work though.


Oh, oops. I'd missed that one.

Contingent Scroll actually doesn't work here, because it has a level limit-- the spell level can't be more than 1/4th your CL.

So, plan B. Staff of the Master, Rod of Quicken, a Metamagic Gem of Quicken, or some other way to Quicken Teleport without using a 9th level slot. Same result, just more expensive (with items that the Wizard really wants anyway). Keep one Contingent Action around for the familiar though, if you need to snag the body.


True, I did miss the CL limit. Tho' actually CA could help my sorcerer above - ready a move action to hide (Shadow sorcerers get to hide in plain sight at level 9, & unlike invisibility hiding is hard to beat with low-level magic) and they can be largely undetectable until the next round, when they can teleport away.

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