Last night, I replaced a villain from CoT: Mother of Flies with a ninja. The following playtest contains spoilers for one encounter in PA#29. Players of that campaign, or potential players, are discouraged from reading it if you have not yet gone passed that book. I'd also request that my players not read this, just in case. ;-)
In this encounter, I made relatively minor modifications of Maglin, Council Hushman, to convert him from Rog7/Asn3 to Nin10. In the interest of space saving, I'll assume our beloved designers have access to Maglin's stat block unless requested otherwise. ;-) In brief, these changes were as follows:
Swapped Cha and Str, giving him 10/17/12/13/8/10. Corrected Sneak attack to 5d6. Converted class abilities from rogue to ninja (No Trace, Light steps, lost Evasion and Trapfinding). For the 4 ninja tricks, I modeled them largely after the character as listed, leaving the 4 tricks as Bleeding 5, Combat Trick, Shadow Clone, Vanishing Trick. Master Trick Assassinate (DC = 10+5+2=17). The original weapon was a rapier; for flavor (and because of the picture and an awesome mini I had) I changed it to an adamantine claw, and treated it as a shortsword with a +5CMD to disarm (didn't come up during the fight).
Initial observations: This isn't how I'd have built the ninja myself, perhaps, but I wanted to keep his skillset similar to the original character to provide a better benchmark for behavior/utility/power.
Encounter Modifications:
Rather than have Maglin wait inside, I had him wait with the rogues outside on the rooftops. Kruthe had actually dies earlier in the campaign; I played his character as a zombie, with the added defenses and weaknesses.
Party: Level 9.
Human Fighter (Sword-and-board)
Human Cleric of Desna
Human Rog7/ShD2
Tiefling Sorcerer
Accompanied by Alberten, Src7.
I had collected the party's perceptions the day prior, and rolled scores for them secretly as they entered the alley. The rogue also actively requested a perception roll, which I allowed (yay, natural 2--they ambushers remained hidden).
Alberten, the rogue, and the cleric enter the shop. Maglin, meanwhile, quietly and invisibly approached, and death attacks the sorcerer. Sorcerer fails the fort save, and dies on the spot. Zombie Kruthe busts from the back room of the shop. All six rogues fire their crossbow bolts to round out the surprise round.
The Fighter rolls a high initiative, and (taking the initiative) runs into the shop and closes the door, leaving the tiefling's body outside. (The player gets Alberten for the remainder of the encounter). Alberten casts Arcane lock on the door.
The ninja gets two of his buddies to assist in inserting quieting needles in the body (I spot-ruled that this meant it took three rounds total, and delayed the last rogue by an additional round. Judge me if you will.) Three rogues moved above the shop as the party battled ZombiKruthe; one cut a hole in the roof, the other two dropped fireball beads in. BOOM.
The rest of the rogues move to the back door. Party Rogue tumbles past Kruthe into the back room. The cleric saw the rogue appear from invisibility, so she casts invisibility purge. Foes bust in the back room, throw their beads of fireball, and start trying to work in sneak attacks (fat chance, plus the party Rogue evasions the heck out of the DC14 beads). Kruthe is finished off as the ninja arrives (and is disgruntled to find his invisibility purged) with his assistants in tow. The remaining beads are lobbed in, dealing damage to a few party members.
The ninja was now visible, preventing trivial death attack. Ninja Through tumbles on the part of the ninja (two failed, two passed) and a reposition on the part of one of the rogues, the ninja flanked the cleric for sneak attack+bleed 5 three times; two of them, the fighter was in range to use In Harm's Way to take the damage, poison, and bleed (saved vs fort 14) The travel domain's teleportation effect allowed the cleric to escape when cornered.
An attempt was made on the rogue and the fighter, both failing with very high rolls (both had actively sought AC-building items) making the cleric the prime target. This meant that the ninja had a hard time getting full attacks with the extra attacks, though. The ninja survived primarily by using his thief buddies to soak attacks; he went down a mere two rounds after the party fighter members turned on him, since he lacked access to vanishing trick.
Final notes and observations:
The power level in this circumstance was probably similar to the original. Standard Action Death-Attack study, though, seems like it might still be a little on the crazy side--had the ninja not stopped to Quieting-needle the body, he would have gotten at least one free DA on the rogue before the cleric even had the chance to Invis-purge, much less thought of it.
Hope this is helpful!
Last night, I replaced a villain from CoT: Mother of Flies with a ninja. The following playtest contains spoilers for one encounter in PA#29. Players of that campaign, or potential players, are discouraged from reading it if you have not yet gone passed that book. I'd also request that my players not read this, just in case. ;-)
** spoiler omitted **...
Good write up, i enjoyed it. It does seem to be a pattern with the ninja which I'm liking. Absolutely deadly when he is in control, but when exposed. It's like a wizard in melee all advantage gone(Of course he as other stuff up his sleeve, literally)
I liked this example also as it seems to show what happens when the ninja encounters a prepared group with invisibility purge.