DM HELP! Assassins in SC \ Last Laugh questions. Opinions Needed!

[ROCKSTEaDY]

Hiya Guys,
I’ve just started flood season with my guys and would like your opinion on some issues. Firstly I’ve got one of my players wanting to follow the assassin path. Now I don’t agree that someone should be able to just kill a random person and then go up in assassin levels, nor be able to level up without a mentor\guild. I was thinking whether or not to use the Alley bashers \ last laugh or make a new guild but decided on the last laugh.

I noticed that there were a few notes that Jill could develop a relationship with one of the characters and that further along the path there is a final confrontation with Jill where it notes that she doesn’t like her boss and that she may listen to one of the characters she has a relationship with if they role a diplomacy check.

What I have done is made Jill locate my PC and offer to teach him levels in assassin but each level requires him to complete a specific hit. Before she even made this agreement she made him do an 'initiation' test which I made him assassinate the last remaining leader of the Alley bashers just because there more of an inconvenience (to the last laugh) than anything and a good test of the PC's skills.

Am I going to come up against any issues by having Jill as his mentor? I made the specific comment to the PC that Jill has made it clear that he is working for HER and NOT the LAST LAUGH just because I was worried that if he has to kill Last Laugh members it wouldn’t be such an issue and also this way Jill and my PC could become allies towards the end of the campaign.

I also want to be a little bit of a mongrel and have my PC have a mark that the rest of the group needs to either keep alive or extract information from just so that it’s not a walk in the park for him. Is there anyone in mind that I could have him kill that wouldn’t completely ruin the story line?

Does anyone have any assassin missions that they have given their pcs before? I just don’t think I want to make 10 stand alone missions but rather either use other pre-written material or just pick NPC’s out of SC that aren’t that important.

Thanks for reading such a huge post :)

[Valegrim]

Well, assassins have a few characteristic that make them more than just your everyday killer. Assassins kill for a specific reason, be it cause or money. They are hired to stalk, harass, intimidate, or kill by some person or agency. Sometimes they are part of an agency; sometimes they are loners; (see the movie Shogun Assassin sometimes called Lone Wolf and Son)hence, a pc can't just go out and kill someone for class experience to be or practice being an assassin. In my opinion assassins do not have to be inherently evil, as all pc really bust into peoples homes and kill things, and can be useful in the aspect as say eliminating a group of villians that are running a protection racket on shop owners; said shop owners pool there resources and hire an assassin to clandestinly rid themselves of the mobsters without any ties back to them as the source. The watchword for an assassin is discression, closed mouthness, and fullfilling the contract. As such, it is difficult to advertise without attactracting the notice of those who would eliminate you or your group as a threat. It often takes an intermediary to handle negotiations; as such, you can create churches or other agencies to offer pc contracts; keep in mind; assassins are often hired on the sly with dissavowment if they botch; groups of pcs hired to handle a problem above board usually dont have that problem if they botch. If there are any specific things your looking for, I would be glad to offer something as I have been running pc assassins in my game for many years.

Also, years ago Dragon magazine released a dragon about assassins; check it out; I dont remember the number offhand; but there is a dungeon/scenario in it called "The Assassin's Run" used to train assassins and possibly house an assassins guild; you would just have to update a few things for version 3.5. I used this issue quite a bit to train assassins.

[christian mazel]

All good ideas but you're not in the good sub-forum;)

[Grimcleaver]

Was in an assassination game recently--though I think this better serves as a warning than an example.

Oriental Adventures type game, set in a Samurai-Punk style version of historical Japan (Edo period, I believe).

My character was a ninja, his cover a traveling court acrobat named Leaping Firecracker. My first job was to find one of the PC's, a ronin, find out if he was loyal to an organization my clan supported. If he was not, then kill him.

The setup was a good one. He couldn't escape it. I got him to a quiet locale, found out he had no alligience to the group, blew paralyzing powder in his face and snapped his neck.

Now from having read your post, it sounds like you've been careful not to set the characters up to do things that will mess up your story. Actually it sounds like everything you're doing is going to be very interesting and cool.

I guess the moral of OUR game was this: don't pit PCs against each other unless you expect it to genuinely come to PK bloodshed--because that's the most likely outcome.

[Oliver von Spreckelsen]

"Assassin's Run" was in Dragon #67, and I have run it too as an initiation test to the Last Laugh membership. This was done in a One-on-One-session between regular dates and we had a really good time. I introduced another challenge to the Run, a zone of Darkness following the character with a constant velocity. If the darkness reaches the player, he's out. This led to really hectic decisions.... *evil DM grin*