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Pretty much since I started playing D&D back when 3.5e was first released, I've been building specific and often unusual character concepts. And just now, an interesting idea came to mind: could you make an effective assassin using a full-caster class, and if so how? I mean, in theory, full-progression spellcasters are the most versatile and arguably powerful characters in the game, but to be a proper assassin requires a very specific set of skills that don't immediately spring to mind for full casters.
Now, I'm gonna go monkey around with this myself (possibly in the morning since it's 1:00am right now), but in the meantime I thought I'd pose the question here as well. So here's the rules for this challenge:
1) Create a PFS-legal 12th level character using only a single full-progression spellcasting class.
2) Ignore equipment, aside from an optional weapon. Since magic items are pretty much equally accessible to all classes, including them would just clutter things up when the goal is just to see how the class would perform on its own merits.
3) In order to be a proper assassin, one must be able to reliably kill a specific given target before they are able to react much. At the very least, without being able to alert others or get help. An assassin should also be capable of doing this with no collateral damage (including extra killings) or witnesses.
Personally, I think I'm going to try for three different flavours with this to build:
A) Boring, But Practical: This type of assassin is simply reliable. Given ideal but typical circumstances (at night while the victim sleeps alone in their room or something, not while bound and unconscious in a private demiplane), they are most guaranteed to be able to off as wide a variety of targets as possible.
B) Beyond the Impossible: This type of assassin is able to kill someone and get away with it in an incredibly difficult situation, like while the target is surrounded by guards or is on a different continent. The entire assassination need not occur entirely under those circumstances, but it must start under them, and whatever remains may exist must be returned to wherever the target had been at that start before the assassin can escape. Don't know if this one will actually be possible to do, but I want to at least give it a shot.
C) Smoke and Shadows: This kind of assassin must be impossible to catch. They may not be able to kill any target, they may not be able to kill in any situation, but they cannot be tracked or discovered. No one knows who they are or how they do what they do. For bonus points, the Nameless One feat is off limits.
For this, I have something simple that can satisfy flavors B) and C), but it is not quite as reliable at condition 3) (kill without witnesses, or collateral damages).
The idea I have is simple- druid.
Druids are able to turn into a variety of forms over long periods, which makes them fantastic at disguise and stealth. Who would suspect that the bluejay on the window sill would suddenly turn into a big brawny guy with a dagger?
Additionally, they have a variety of crowd control spells that would allow them to hamper, delay, and trap opponents. There are also options to manipulate animals for trickier kills (charm the lord's horse- suddenly the lord has an 'unfortunate riding accident').
A particular approach I like is a druid focused on earth elementals. Earth elementals both provide fantastic stats (at level 10, you can go large sized, have +6 str/natural armor, and I am pretty sure you can guy a large weapon for it to use), but they can also earthglide. That is a fantastic way to sneak in close without warning or to slip away. Not exactly subtle... but suddenly having a 16 foot tall giant appear behind you and stab you with a sharpened telephone pole is hard to guard against. You can go with more of a Jason Vorhees thing- big and intimidating, but able to slip in and out when people are not looking.
Add in the ability to spontaneously cast summon spells to grab elemental minions to help out (air elementals are always nice to have- they can chase down escapees).
Druid assassins also just feel right in terms of flavor- there has to be at least some druid circles that go eco-terrorist, right?
yeah, even with the nerfs from 3.5, druidzilla still works in a lot of situations. They are still one of the most versatile classes.
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Literally any of the full casters work, since there are so many spells that obviate traditional stealth. And by the book, death spells are about the only reliable way to kill someone quickly enough for them to not call for help unless you severely outlevel them.
12th level, full caster, PFS legal so no crafting. Hmm.
Aiming at C). Let's imagine a cleric of Sivanah 5 / veiled illusionist 7. The veiled illusionist PrC does the heavy lifting here, with a supercharged disguise self, several illusions of your choice added from the sorc/wiz spell list (e.g. greater illusion of treachery), and one of the most reliable means of disguising your spellcasting out there. You can get nondetection from a domain. Cleric spells of 5th-6th level do include stuff like plane shift and touch of slumber for the assassination, scrying and find the path to find the target, and word of recall (or plane shift, again) for the getaway.
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Anything that casts Phantasmal Killer (heightened) will work, just jack up the DC.
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Well, not a full caster but any inquisitor will so.
Actually, I remember that prestidigitation is a fantastically 'boring but practical' spell for assassins. it covers so many small details that are at the heart of a murder mystery.
-it can change taste. That means that you can use poisons with obvious aftertastes without any worry.
-cleaning up blood is obvious. However, the spell also has a 'soiling' function it is vague. Could you soil someone else's sword with blood? That could allow you to frame someone.
-temperature change. While there is a limit to the amount of material you can change... that can be used to trick investigators. Manipulating the temperature of a severed finger can trick people about the time of death- a warm finger make the death seem like it just happened (even though it might have been days). A cold finger makes them thing the death happened hours ago, even though you just slit the throat.
- color change. I could argue for circumstantial bonuses to disguise if you wear something obvious (a red cloak), and then you change the color once you are out of the sight of pursuing guards.
Wisdom based caster. Wisdom of the flesh trait for stealth. And the Throatslicer feat.
No sleep hex witch yet??
With Throatslicer?
With Throatslicer?
You keep going on about that feat.
It's not very useful here.
If you've got your victim defenseless, then you can almost certainly take that full action to coup de grace.
You can make people helpless at range, walking up to the victim negates using a full round action coup de grace. Throatslicer allows you to close with and kill.
Useful for an assassin, no?
No, not really.
When your window is that small, you've probably done something wrong. Also, you still need two rounds. Disable one round, coup de grace the next. You can disable and close the first round, then full-round coup de grace the next.
Seems like you would want feats like:Conceal Spell (and eventually Improved Conceal Spell), and Subtle Enchantments. These all have another feat as a common prerequisite: Deceitful. Archives of Nethys lists all of these as PFS-legal. I would have also listed Cunning Caster, but Archives of Nethys says it isn't PFS-legal.
Combination of extended Murderous Command and Extended Deja Vu to get someone else to do your work for you and take the heat could be hilarious.
Optimizing a build for mindthrust on a psychic would be pretty cool if you could get the damage high enough.
Would probably need meta rods though and you said no magic items.
Arcane Trickster... doesn't even work particularly well within its idiom. You're giving up too much to continue things that don't work well together. You'd be better off with just the spellcasting. Or single-classing one of the many, many two thirds casting classes and having some decent skills. Which is the forte of most of the two thirds casters.
Sorcerer with Shadow Bloodline gets Shadow Well at level 9, effectively a better version of Hide in Plain Sight. Just have them cast one death spell of your choice. Instant assassin.
Or you could just be a God Wizard. Scry your opponent. Cast Greater Invisibility. Teleport to their location. Annihilate them with high level spells.
Honestly, 9th level spells make such a thing easy to do. The only issue is deciding which 9th level spellcaster to go with and which high level spell to cast. This would be a lot more challenging if you wanted to make an assassin who targets full-casters, rather than a full caster moonlighting as an assassin.
Literally any of the full casters work, since there are so many spells that obviate traditional stealth. And by the book, death spells are about the only reliable way to kill someone quickly enough for them to not call for help unless you severely outlevel them.
This. It isn't even worth coming up with builds because all you really need are spells. Maaaaybe some feats to cast those spells in a concealed manner, or building to make the DCs reliably high enough. But really, the best counter to a magic assassin is to have magical counter measures.
An AP I ran featured a murder mystery at level 7-- someone was brutally eviscerated at he inn the party was staying, one room over, with no one realizing in until the next morning. In trying to figure out how it was done, the wizard realized he could have done it SO EASILY. Invisibly fly up to the window of the room, cast silence, break window, murder person, cast Make Whole to fix window, leave. When they used Speak with Dead on the victim, even asking "Who killed you" becomes questionable if someone can use glamours.
Really, the question is why anyone bothers to be an assassin without magic. By level 12, they can use divination to find out when their target is most vulnerable, teleport to them, hit them with a Save or Die, then teleport away with no one being the wiser. They can then magically cloak themselves to prevent others from divining that they did it. They can impersonate or Dominate bodyguards. They can barter with Outsiders to carry out he murder. Unless the target is sitting in an Anti-Magic field or something similar, the caster always wins.
Is variant multiclassing legal? Make a wizard vmc rogue with accomplished sneak attacker and now all you have to do is find a way to deliver the sneak attack damage
Is variant multiclassing legal? Make a wizard vmc rogue with accomplished sneak attacker and now all you have to do is find a way to deliver the sneak attack damage
I don't actually think sneak attack is a great way to assassinate people. The damage isn't reliable, and it doesn't multiply on a critical hit, for a coup de grace.
I'd rather have the feats.
Also, I'm pretty sure variant multiclassing isn't society-legal.
Druid.
Turn into thrush. Fly into room at night. Summon dire croc. Fly out. The end.
That was the first suggestion in the thread (to some extent or another). Only I more focused on how the thrush suddenly grew a big brawny arm holding a dagger.
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Somehow these will overlap with other recommendations.
Travel tricky cleric works well for this.
Druids have earth elemental with echolocation and thousand faces (urban gets it at 6 skin shaper get alterself at 4 for hours per level).
Anything with dim door and a 4x weapon.
Nature fang can actually get the assassinate slayer talent.
Solar mystery oracles get dim door.
Lunar oracle get a wild shape type ability.
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12th level, full caster, PFS legal so no crafting. Hmm.
Aiming at C). Let's imagine a cleric of Sivanah 5 / veiled illusionist 7. The veiled illusionist PrC does the heavy lifting here, with a supercharged disguise self, several illusions of your choice added from the sorc/wiz spell list (e.g. greater illusion of treachery), and one of the most reliable means of disguising your spellcasting out there. You can get nondetection from a domain. Cleric spells of 5th-6th level do include stuff like plane shift and touch of slumber for the assassination, scrying and find the path to find the target, and word of recall (or plane shift, again) for the getaway.
any full caster with programed image or permanent image (or both), can also multi into veiled illusionist for extra masking self abilities.
then pick shadow gambit feat and have a LOT of, birds for example (each it's own spell), fly around -ether programed to follow the caster and then 'hit' the target when using the feat. or permanent around and the same as above. the best part is deniability as nothing can point back to the caster unlike other spells being cast.you can setup the illusion to deal the needed damage for the target ("The shadowy attack can deal acid, bludgeoning, cold, electricity, fire, piercing, or slashing damage, but the damage must be appropriate to the illusion")as well as the method to deliver the damage being touch attack or save rolls.