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Sounds a lot like Erevis Cale from Paul Kemp's books based in the D&D FR setting.
Cale is more a cleric made out of an assassin. (Though no actual assassin levels) loved the books and like the stats by Tom Costa better...
As always with assassins it comes down to differentiating between assassin as a job description and the assassin prestige class (which IMHO is just one kind of assassin)
Yep, he was a fun character to read about. The OP just reminded me of him and I did a quick search and found Kemp's stats of his character.
It will depend as @Thanael said, whether the OP wants an actual assassin class & cleric or the flavor of an assassin with the multi-class using other types of classes such as a ninja.
I would presume any cleric that is proficient with a heavy Pick and who memorizes 'hold person' makes an extremely effective assassin.
I presume "Sanctuary" would be an effective means of ex-filtrating an area after a successful assassination.
Cale= rogue/ cleric. Speaking of rogue/ cleric, why not go inquisitor? A base class that brings all the flavor of multiclassing.
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Aha! I think only half-orcs were allowed to be cleric/assassins in ye olde dayes...
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Hmm I bet you can make a great cleric that functions as a casty assassin.
Excerpt from trickery domain.
Master's Illusion (Sp): At 8th level, you can create an illusion that hides the appearance of yourself and any number of allies within 30 feet for 1 round per cleric level. This ability otherwise functions like the spell veil. The save DC to disbelieve this effect is equal to 10 + 1/2 your cleric level + your Wisdom modifier. The rounds do not need to be consecutive.
Replacement Domain Spells: 1st—disguise self, 2nd—invisibility, 3rd—nondetection, 4th—confusion, 5th—false vision, 6th—mislead, 7th—screen, 8th—mass invisibility, 9th—time stop.
Murder domain:
Killing Blow (Su): At 8th level, weapons you use become infused with the power of death. Whenever you confirm a critical hit with a melee or ranged weapon, your attack deals an additional amount of bleed damage equal to half your cleric level. You can use this ability once per day at 8th level, plus one additional time per day for every four levels beyond 8th.
And suffocation looks good.
Neat Cleric spell choices:
Decompose corpse, divine favor, murdous command, command, obscuring mist, forbid action, animate dead, darkness, effortless armor, grace, hold person, make whole,pilfering hand, bestow curse, blindness/deafness, chain of perdition, contagion, dispel magic, vision of hell, dimensional anchor, dismissal, divine power, freedom of movement, planar ally, poison, terrible remorse... And the good choices go on and on, pick a theme and run with it.
ohhh this topic just makes me want to start working on another Red Mantis Assassin , last time I got annoyed at how MAD they were , but I think I'll give it another go
If you insist on using the cleric class I'd recommend avoiding the assassin prestige class. You'll already want a high wisdom for your spells and to pump up the DC. Adding dex and int, both possible dump stats for a cleric, will soak up any points you've got left. Str, con and charisma are valuable stats to a cleric.
So what I'll recommend is a little different: pick a weapon with a high crit modifier (x3 or x4 works), go spell focus / great spell focus enchantment and load up on Hold Person and the likes. Quicken Spell and Persistent Spell both are great pick-ups, but will require you to be at least lvl9 and 5 respectively before you can use them. Feats that improve your melee prowess (power attack), feats that improve your stealthy/subterfuge capabilities and perhaps feats that buff your saves are also good.
I'd always pick the Trickery domain. You get stealth, bluff and disguise - three useful skills when you want to play an assassin. The domain powers are also good and the domain spells are fantastic. You can now get scrolls/wands of invisibility from your church. Law domain gives Hold Monster, but probably interferes with being an assassin. Darkness, especially the Night subdomain, is a good second choice. You get sleep as a domain spell, so you should be able to get it on scroll/wand as well. This also ties in nicely with your buffed DC for enchantment spells. Plus you get a cool flavorful invisibility power.
Traits are a bit trickier. I'd recommend whatever gives you disable device as a class skill plus magical lineage: hold person. This lets you memorize persistent hold person as a lvl3 spell. This lets you put it in a spell storing weapon.
So you got your two traits, you got two domains, you know what 3 feats to pick and you know you'll want stealth, disable device and perception. Bluff and disguise are also fun, but the first three will be used a lot. At lvl1 you get Sleep with a pumped up DC and with a decent str, you can still swing a weapon for okay damage. At lvl3 you get Hold Person and things get more fun. At lvl5 you can start casting Persistent Hold Persons, which will even give wizards and clerics a hard time.
Assuming 25 pnt buy I'd go for this:
STR 14
DEX 14
CON 13
INT 12
WIS 16 -> 18
CHA 10
This will give you 4 skill points a level, 5 if you take the skill point from the favored class bonus. You'll ALWAYS be short on skill points as a cleric and int 12 of 14 is a necessity. Spells can only hide your flaws so much. Find Traps is fantastic, but you'll need a stack of pearls of powers (get one or two ASAP for sleep at low levels! and then find traps) for that. Silence is also a great tool for subterfuge and killing casters. Get an adamantine tool and you can silently carve a path through a place. You're getting the idea by now right?
As for gear, a chain shirt and later on a mithril shirt or breastplate will keep your AC where it should be. A buckler fits the theme of an infiltrator better while still putting your shield proficiency to use. Items that give you bonusses on skills are also great. Perception, disable device, stealth - they're easy to come by. Wands, scrolls and pearls of power will see you through any situation.
One last thing - variable channeling could give you some neat tricks, but regular channeling is also good.
I hope this helped you out. Your post gave me an idea for an NPC in my game and I'll be using this build basis for him at the very least so it wasn't wasted time regardless of you liking it :D
Does it necessarily have to be the Assassin prestige class? Could you go, say, Rogue (Sanctified Rogue)/Dark Tapestry Oracle?
This sounds interesting. More details please?
So which deities have assassins? Achaekek is a given of course. Also Norgorber. Calistria? Who else? Rovagug? Llamashtu?
A Tiefling cleric of Apollyon with the fiendish vessel archetype and a cacodaemon familiar makes quite an assassin (the cacodaemon's soul gem ability is quite handy)
Similarly a drow demonic apostle of Shax.
I presume "Sanctuary" would be an effective means of ex-filtrating an area after a successful assassination.
Indeed.
The only way to get more skill points is by either pumping int or going cloistered cleric. I'd skip disguise past putting one or two points in it, as you can easily do this with magic. If you want to be a cleric who breaks and enters, perception and disable device are absolute necessities, but if you want to be someone who talks their way into places, diplomacy and bluff might be more fitting.
Knowledge religion would be nice as a cleric yes, but one together with the class bonus and point of int will mean you're looking at a +5 already.
You'll want a weapon with a high crit multiplier to make those coup de grace's hurt even more. A punching dagger is a nice and easy small weapon that is x3. A falcata would cost you a feat, but is 19-20 x3 with 1d8 damage. Ask your dm whether you can use Power Attack on a CdG or not :)
As for the variant channels, darkness and contracts/oaths seem okay. I only listed it as an option, but I don't think it is particuarly powerful of useful. The darkness one can be quite cool tho :) stack it with the spell deeper darkness and the lvl8 darkness domain power and your targets will be quivering.
Cleric 5th, Assassin X.
Wisdom only needs to be 13 to cast spells (which are buffs) and Cha only matters if you're interested in negative channeling for area damage. Otherwise channel smite becomes somewhat worthwhile to tack on extra damage with the death attack.
No, it isn't optimal, but it can work and it's pretty unique.
I once made an NPC Druid/assassin with the plan to disguise himself as one of the PC's horses. Never got a chance to use him, , , yet.
Heresy would work, though I think that the Darkness (subdomain night) domain is a far better pick. In the end it comes down to personal opinion, so if you rather skip Darkness and go for either of those inquisitions, it will work just fine. I'd say Heresy is stronger than Conversion.
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Sounds a lot like Erevis Cale from Paul Kemp's books based in the D&D FR setting.
I'm not familiar with that one, but the thread title immediately made me think of Father Gomez from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, a priest who is granted "preemptive absolution" by his church before being sent to murder the trilogy's protagonist. Of course in that setting the priests of the Magisterium had no spellcasting ability so in Pathfinder terms he would probably have been a rogue or one of the spell-less ranger archetypes.