First off, I hope this is the appropriate thread for such a topic, if not I apologize.
I was making small talk with someone at my local PFS group. Somehow, something made me bring up that I never liked nor have I understood why you had to be evil to take the assassin Prc. Just after I make this comment another player had overheard this tidbit of the conversation and somewhat irately retorted, "Because they KILL people!" with which I responded, "Everyone one does! Every pathfinder has killed people." While I'm sure this is a generalization I think it is fair to say most pathfinders have killed people. We then proceed on an adventure in which we slay pirates... Which are people.
Is this it? Is the fact that the class is designed to kill people why its evil? I'd say most classes provide the ability to kill.
Is it how they kill? Well ninjas can use poison too. Slayers and ninjas (not sure about rogues so I'm omitting them) can also perform death attacks. Sure the assassin later learn ways to help ensure they stay dead, but them being dead was the whole point in killing them in the first place right? In a world where bringing people back from the dead isn't uncommon, this ability would be most helpful for good and evil forces alike. You can't tell me the better aligned folk of the world would really like that super powerful evil cleric whom took a lot of effort by a lot of people to get rid of would be real happy if someone just waltzed up and went Boop! He's back.
So why the evil alignment restriction?
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The answer is because an assassin kills not for an ideal or any good reason. They will kill you for money alone, or just because someone says so. Noble killings are the least of their concerns.
I understand that in real life someone can be an assassin for their government, and kill for reasons other than "just money" but the specific assassin class which is evil, is not the same as an assassin(the profession) even though I don't think many of them will normally be good either.
edit: Also a lot of the game is based on fantasy tropes, and in most fantasy settings assassins are evil.
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As to people coming back to life, that cost a lot of money, and most people do not have PC money. They are rich in fantasyland term.
The average(level 1 commoner) person earns about 400gp a year. Even experts that are higher level can't easily afford a raise dead. It would take years of saving and more money to remove the negative levels.
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I believe it's original (because I also believe it's heritage from 3.5 and older) intent was to mark the assassin as a dedicated murderer who places value in mortal life, only as long as the opposite end of the weight stays down.
They don't have creeds, death is a service, and they instigate the violence.
Mind you, I think a lot of Pathfinders who are good aligned, or even neutral would consider nonlethal approaches if:
1) It was more easily effective without dedicating to it
2) Didn't carry the almost blatant threat that anyone not escorted directly to prison would simply wake up, heal up, and come back for round 2. I imagine, if I were a bandit, and someone whopped me so well that I passed out, and I came to with them looking at me saying "Go away." I'd listen and never look back.
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I know that when I really get into the game, I tend to forget the moral implications of: Kick down the door, and murder everyone. I think I'll try and play with far more nonlethal approaches.
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Oh yeah forgot about the kill a random dude thing. I suppose this PrC does have a sort of evil fluff written into it. I was just wondering why the evil had to be interwoven into the class as nothing it is mechanically capable of is inherently evil. I'm sure someone would love to get their assassin's creed on. I am aware that their are others ways to do this but this PrC provides death attack like 4 lvls early.
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Because Paizo hates Prestige Classes and wants you to take Archetypes.
/sarcasm off.
...
real reason: Its a very old legacy Artifact from 2nd Edition Greyhawk Setting, in which "The Assassins" were an evil Guild. And to join these you had to prove worthy and dedicated to the organization, just like a Mafia initiation.
Thus when 3.0 was created the Assassin Prestice Class was created with this fluff-background as Greyhawk was set as the standart/generic 3.x setting.
Implicitly saying that in every setting there is a worldwide organisation with the monopoly of training dedicated Assassins, and all other professional stealthy killers are basically just amateur hour, who might get the job done, but never really professionally with 1-stab-1-kill.
And this then got carried over, again, into 3.Pathfinder.
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Killing someone is not necessary evil. The reason why you kill someone is what makes the difference between murder and killing. The soldier fighting in a war killing the enemy is not necessary evil. Even the executioner killing those condemned to death may not be evil. The guy who kills anyone for the right price is evil. What makes the class evil is not the skill set it’s the fluff.
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At risk of being mauled;
The alignment system is purely your relationship with the divine and arcane powers of Pathfinder. The way I explain it is that there is capital letter Good, Evil, Chaotic, Lawful and non-capital letter good, evil, chaotic and lawful. They overlap, but they aren't the same.
Non-capital words describe who your character really is. They deal in relative terms, most of the time. Most characters are in it for the greater good, but they can use methods that are considered by the gods to be capital letter Evil.
For example, if we presume that Hercules was capital letter Chaotic Good in relation to the gods and was just a non-capital letter good man in his day-to-day life, him being mind-controlled by Hera to murder his wife and children briefly made Hercules capital letter Chaotic Evil, because murdering your family members was considered the greatest offense in Greek Mythology, even though the people who heard these stories knew that Hercules was still a good man.
The way you measure what alignment you are is by comparing your actions with the domains of the deities. Let's make it an example that no good GM would actually force upon a player.
The Lawful Good player is caught by an Urgathoan cult along with a corpse and a spell has been cast upon his cell that keeps Good characters imprisoned. Because Urgathoa is the goddess of suicide and she is described as Neutral Evil, acts of suicide can only be commited by characters that are within one step of her alignment. Outside the cell, innocents under the paladin's protection are going to be devoured alive if he doesn't stop the cult.
In this situation, stereotypically, players will argue that the paladin isn't non-capital letter evil for drinking the slightest bit of blood before busting out. But to the gods and for magical purposes, the moment he drinks blood, he ceases being capital letter Good, meaning that he can now escape his prison, though also no longer has his powers.
That's how the alignment system works in my opinion. It's purely to describe how the powers that be identify you. The power that be are very often wrong, but they are also very often right. If you are an assassin with an Evil alignment, you are regularly commiting acts that offend the Good-aligned gods, even if you don't have another choice or even if you have good reasons for doing so.
It just so happens that assassination is offensive in the eyes of the Good-aligned gods. Thus, to them, you are Evil, even though to your family and friends, you are just trying to do the best you can.
Pathfinder and D&D are settings where "you always have a choice". Even if you don't. There are divine rules written in stone that you don't cross for as long as the gods are who they are. If Urgathoa were ever killed and followed up by Naderi as Goddess of Undeath, then necromancy could potentially stop being [Evil] magic.
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Its a very old legacy Artifact from 2nd Edition Greyhawk Setting, in which "The Assassins" were an evil Guild. And to join these you had to prove worthy and dedicated to the organization, just like a Mafia initiation.
It's older than that: The 1st Ed AD&D assassin class (thief sub-class) required an evil alignment.
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real reason: Its a very old legacy Artifact from 2nd Edition Greyhawk Setting, in which "The Assassins" were an evil Guild. And to join these you had to prove worthy and dedicated to the organization, just like a Mafia initiation.
Older than that even: assassin (and Greyhawk, in fact) predate First Edition.
First Edition assassins, though, were amusing. You had the same hierarchy rules as druids (only so many assassins of X high level can exist at the same time, and only one of the capstone level!) and it was one of two classes that could lead to the scenario of having a character with 4 stats of 18, yet its stats were too low to play.
Str 18
Dex 11 ~Assassin requires Dex 12!
Con 18
Int 18
Wis 18
Cha 05 ~"Here or lower a character can only be an Assassin"
=Your stats are too low for a playable character. And that's not even the worst (since illusionist, with its 16 Dex requirement, was the "here or lower" for Con.)
Because Paizo hates Prestige Classes and wants you to take Archetypes.
/sarcasm off.
You may be speaking more truthfully than you think . . .
real reason: Its a very old legacy Artifact from 2nd Edition Greyhawk Setting, in which "The Assassins" were an evil Guild. {. . .}
2nd Edition? Try 1st Edition -- it's in the Player's Handbook (without tthe specific mention of Greyhawk, but Greyhawk was already around, just not mentioned in the Core Rulebooks of the day).
Murder for hire is bad.
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Oh yeah forgot about the kill a random dude thing. I suppose this PrC does have a sort of evil fluff written into it. I was just wondering why the evil had to be interwoven into the class as nothing it is mechanically capable of is inherently evil. I'm sure someone would love to get their assassin's creed on. I am aware that their are others ways to do this but this PrC provides death attack like 4 lvls early.
That assassin PrC suck at its job. The rogue and slayer especially are better assassins. There are a few thread on this issue that go into detail on it.
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Because Paizo hates Prestige Classes and wants you to take Archetypes.
/sarcasm off.
You may be speaking more truthfully than you think . . .
Paizo did not really make PrC's weaker, they just make the game less dippable, since in 3.5 people would take classes just for mechanical reasons and dip 3 to 4 classes. They also don't front load classes as much.
The idea of a PrC was not to just get be a stronger class, but a more focused class. However many did have special abilities that were stronger than a normal class. Many of them are still playable, but they are not just a power grab anymore, which is not really a bad thing. There is no reason why they would really care if you played a PrC. They could have just stopped making them altogether really. People would have complained, but I don't think it would have mattered much if they had waited until 3 or 4 years to say "no more PrC's".
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Sorry Wraith but the "not frontloaded" really sound too much wrong. Classes in pathfinder are explicitly more frontloaded that they were in 3.5 so that you can play them in the "supposed way" earlier than before.
The real reason that thing are less dippable than before is that most of the core classes abilities have "level based" dipendency that prevent them from remaining good in the long run if you don't keep the levels piling in. In any case as you can easly deduce from reading this board with APG and ACG pathfinder is the same if not even worse dipfest that the 3.5 was. At leas in 3.5 you tend to have a single PrC maxed out.
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Sorry Wraith but the "not frontloaded" really sound too much wrong. Classes in pathfinder are explicitly more frontloaded that they were in 3.5 so that you can play them in the "supposed way" earlier than before.
The real reason that thing are less dippable than before is that most of the core classes abilities have "level based" dipendency that prevent them from remaining good in the long run if you don't keep the levels piling in. In any case as you can easly deduce from reading this board with APG and ACG pathfinder is the same if not even worse dipfest that the 3.5 was. At leas in 3.5 you tend to have a single PrC maxed out.
Actually they are less front load, and the lack of dead levels also helps. I know the swashbuckler and fighter are still in the dip category.
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What does a "summoner" do? They summon. Very neutral act.
What does a "wizard" do? Magic. Up to the individual to exhibit alignment.
What does a "paladin" do? They explicitly exist to aid others. Clearly Good.
What does an "assassin" do? They specifically exist for the purpose of making individuals dead. Sure, there could be one who only hunts down and kills really bad folk, but when you're looking for a girlfriend and she asks "what do you do for a living?" and your answer is "I kill people", she's not going to be thinking you're Mr. Wonderful.
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Because Paizo hates Prestige Classes and wants you to take Archetypes.
/sarcasm off.
...
real reason: Its a very old legacy Artifact from 2nd Edition Greyhawk Setting, in which "The Assassins" were an evil Guild. And to join these you had to prove worthy and dedicated to the organization, just like a Mafia initiation.
Thus when 3.0 was created the Assassin Prestice Class was created with this fluff-background as Greyhawk was set as the standart/generic 3.x setting.
Implicitly saying that in every setting there is a worldwide organisation with the monopoly of training dedicated Assassins, and all other professional stealthy killers are basically just amateur hour, who might get the job done, but never really professionally with 1-stab-1-kill.And this then got carried over, again, into 3.Pathfinder.
Try 1st edition, it was a sub-class of the thief.
Then in 2nd edition "Al-Qadim: Arabian Adventures", there was an assassin kit you could play. It was more like how the middle eastern "assassin" came about in the real world.
Now, I actually could see another class that could be a assassin like that is Lawful Neutral.
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What does a "summoner" do? They summon. Very neutral act.
What does a "wizard" do? Magic. Up to the individual to exhibit alignment.
What does a "paladin" do? They explicitly exist to aid others. Clearly Good.What does an "assassin" do? They specifically exist for the purpose of making individuals dead. Sure, there could be one who only hunts down and kills really bad folk, but when you're looking for a girlfriend and she asks "what do you do for a living?" and your answer is "I kill people", she's not going to be thinking you're Mr. Wonderful.
Check out Death-Match.com
It's a dating site that women would just kill to get a hold of a guy like you! :)
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In first edition, the Assassin was the most overpowered class in the game and had the Evil alignment restriction. In that time, one could play any alignment and the game was more exploratory than heroic. The overall feel of the game made for allowances to play the evil alignment, to dip into other classes and provide in party clashes to a point.
2nd edition cut back on some things, some because of perceptions fettered out by dumb stories and attributed psychosis being a part of having played the game. Half-Orcs were cut because of perceptions of how they came to be, demons and devils were changed, and assassins were not a class. A kit was released much later, when TSR was trying to tread water and release licenses of really horrible games. The kit, mentioned above and also, I believe, in the Rogues splat book, was also evil restricted and just as broken as the first edition version.
As time went on, the game was turning to a more heroic play, and the in-fighting within the party was frowned upon. It was suggested that the party be of NON-EVIL alignment, and a good number of groups played with good alignments only.
3rd edition came out, and the assassin was again not in the PHB. (It was with the rest of the PrC's in the DMG) Most groups, by this time, played good characters, though some GM's still allowed Neutral characters. The Kill Shot ability that the Assassin has is insane. (forgive me, I forget what the thing is actually called) I, myself, considered the class an NPC class, as it to was limited to Evil alignment.
PF just copy and pasted the PrC and adjusted the skill and other pre-regs to PF standard. Still evil, though I don't see any reason to change that.
There are other classes that can do things similar to the assassin, and the need for a class named as such just is not there.
Why is the Assassin required to be Evil? My question is, why would it not be?
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It's because the Assassin was written as a killer-for-hire, and their original spell list had some nasty spells in it. A hired assassin has to work pretty hard just to stay Neutral or better; the original writeup, making them willing to do any job for the right price, put them over the edge. If you think the Assassin's abilities work equally well for a cult enforcer or a special forces guy, you can get rid of the killer-for-hire part and they work fine as non-evil.
I'll note the Pathfinder has some supernatural abilities that flavor-wise do make a certain amount of sense as being fueled by Evil, either spiritually or because of the assassin's focused intent. Still, an argument could be made for a particularly grim Neutral character gaining true death and angel of death. If you assume these abilities stem partly from special training, and the Assassins as a group are evil, the alignment restriction makes a certain level of sense. Still, I imagine there are going to be Neutral characters in many Evil organizations, getting by as they best know how.
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I see their is a deal of history behind this history behind the evil alignment and get the whole killer thing is typically evil, but it was mentioned that a Paladin exists exclusively to help people and they are good. Paladins d a good bit of slaying to ya know, I'm also sure they'd appreciate having the ability to help ensure their evil adversaries stay dead. I also agree with Juda that most characters might indeed kill to many npcs to be considered truly good. While defending yourself from hostile attackers is totes an acceptable thing to do perhaps a truly good character would prepare to have a nonlethal way to take care of hostile npcs who fall under the category of non evil such as simple thugs and highway men.
On a side note tho, the "capital letter" alignment thought is very interesting and I actually really like it.
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The majority of moral systems do not necessarily equate killing with evil. Murder (by definition unjust killing) is always evil, but a lot of killing isn't necessarily evil, and might indeed be good.
In any case as you can easly deduce from reading this board with APG and ACG pathfinder is the same if not even worse dipfest that the 3.5 was. At leas in 3.5 you tend to have a single PrC maxed out.
If it seems that way to you it's because you're exposed to some optimizers now in a way that you weren't in 3.X. In Living Greyhawk (3.0 and 3.5 RPGA organized play), stuff like level 12 characters who had 10 or 11 different classes were extremely common. (Full casters were less likely to be mutts and might only have 3-5 different classes.)
While Pathfinder isn't perfect, it made a lot of changes to make many PClass mutt characters less optimal. This isn't to say that a character with half a dozen classes might not be optimal for some specific purpose, but this is way better than 3.5 where it was optimal for literally everything. (Unless you were a druid.)
Also note that you will see more mutts than normal when building for a specific level target, such as PFS which retires at mid-levels. There's not much point (mechanically) to picking a build that gets to do something really cool at level 13 when you know you are 100% guaranteed to never see level 13.
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Again. I don't think that we should trust Paizo or Wizards of the Coast with their definitions of the alignments. TBH, it was clear to me from the beginning that their definitions and grasp on the alignment system was flawed.
To me, the alignment system will remain your identification papers for the gods, not your actual personality. Gods are angry all the time about all kinds of things. If Saranrae knows you are an assassin, she'll see you as evil. That's what matters in the alignment system. Not what matters to your day-to-day life, though. To your friends and your family, you could just be doing the best you can in your circumstances.
Being chaotic evil in the alignment system imo says nothing about your present nature and more about your standing with the powers that be, based on your previous trials. How likely it is that you will slip up, be it because you do so willfully or unwillfully. To the gods, you always have a choice, even if you don't from your perspective (except if you were genuinely deceived). As an assassin, you've probably done a lot of bad things in the past. Whether you seek penance is not relevant to the gods or the way magic interacts with you until after you completed your *atonement*.
In Pathfinder, the god of assassination is Lawful Evil. So the act of assassination is somewhere in that spectrum in the eyes of the gods. So in order to gain the skills that you seek, you have to be considered evil in the eyes of the gods, even if you aren't evil to your peers or people in general.
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@OP: It's one thing to kill, or to be good at killing, or doing/handling things that lend themselves well to killing. It's another to LIVE for killing, and to obsess over the best way to kill as the leading drive of one's life. It isn't the same as a Fighter who loves his sword or a Sorcerer who loves explosions. That's more a reflection on themselves and the beauty they see in such things, and within the workings of their minds, the deaths of others is actually a secondary consideration. For an assassin, it's all about the Other, and a commitment as a way of life to hurting the Other.
While I see that killing being your occupation sort of being evil, I don't see the need for it be seen that way. Pathfinders get paid for what they do, a lot of that involves killing people. I've mentioned a certain adventure before in another topic and will bring it up again. The whole point of the adventure was to find this guy who was finding relics and selling them or something, so the pathfinders dispatched a team to find him and try to recruit him for the pathfinders. If we could not sway him to join we were to KILL him. We obviously would have been paid either way. Thus i was basically getting paid to kill someone had we not been able to convince him to work for us. Does that mean the pathfinders are evil? Does that make any of us who did the job evil? None of us were assassins but we were getting paid to possibly kill. I'm not saying there are no evil assassins, but am saying that all the other classes are getting paid to kill people, albeit less subtly, I don't see why the different means of killing should be in question here. ALL the classes are paid to kill. I just don't see the need for the restriction of alignment. Having such fluff being enforced by mechanics is weird, I don't even see the need for the assassin to have such fluff considering that the idea of assassin is about as broad as fighter or slayer.
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No class is paid to kill. Some characters are paid to kill. The assassin PrC has flavor based on killing without regard for life. Basically the flavor makes it evil.
If I am slanting my interpretation it is simply an error in memory as it has been a while. Although it sticks out in my head somewhat more prominently than other adventures as it brought up a question I've been pondering for a while, see the "Statements that blur the lines between social skills. How to handle them?" thread, and you'll see that I explained the gist of what we were assigned to do in the same way and that thread was made before I made this one. However, this quest did happen some time ago and my memory could be failing me here, but this is how I remember it because it caused the situation that prompted the question in this other thread.
Exactly, I'm not arguing that the flavor of the class isn't evil, (I did forget about the kill someone just to be an assassin tidbit) I am now arguing that the flavor shouldn't be there and that it should be as open to interpretation as any other class.
Master Spy is pretty much the same prestige class with out the evil fluff and most of the same abilities.
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The beginning of the Texas Rangers. The first rangers were told to seek out troublemakers and "Shoot'em or recruit'em." So, giving people who are doing things Hobson's Choice goes back to the beginnings of one of America's most celebrated law enforcement teams, and likely way, way further back then that. Intelligence agencies and crime families do the same thing all the time.
==Aelryinth
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Murder for hire is not evil in TTRPGs! It's a well-respected institution. Ask any PC ever! PCs might not like the evil wizard on a personal level, sure, but the gold and magic items they covet are what seals his fate. GROGNARD MUNCHKIN GLORY!!!