I just finished the game with my assassin character, and he is pretty damn tough. The poison weapons thing when your duel weilding is just mean, not to meantion the hide in the shadows/move silently sneaking up on people bit (100+ backstab damage (critical hit x 6)), and once i got the reflecting magic cloak thing, i became the beholder destroyer. only bad thing seems to be that the assassin is very much a fighting character class, yet he can only get one star on each weapons proficiencie thing. and also how did anyone else get any of their equiptment from the origional game like interplay said you would? took me ages to get the money for that shadow armour and dagger of venom in bg1, but nevermind.