Whew. That's a lot of questions. This is gonna take me a while, but since I've decided to answer every question on this board, here goes...
I don't normally play as any one class, but (c'mon, you guessed it from the name, right?) I like necromancers, especially chaotic evil ones. In NWN, no one class is likely to be much more powerful than the others, I think, plus it's possible to customize your character's class a lot more in 3rd ed... more on this is a moment...
Unfortunately, there are no longer any kits so you can't play as an assassin. In Pnp, it is possible to become an assassin and gain special abilities by having certain skills, feats, ability scores etc. and in this case being of evil alignment and having killed someone for no other reason than to become an assassin. They are called prestige classes, and will not be in NWN. Maybe in an expansion...
There are other things such as skills and feats (if you want to know more about these, buy a rulebook) which you can choose to make your character like an assassin. For example, you think an assassin needs to be good at sneaking and disguising themselves and a crackshot with a bow, you would put a lot of your skill points into hide, move silently and disguise, and take the ranged weapon feats. You're right that backstabs don't work quite the same way anymore; now, instead of a damage multiplier, you do extra damage based on your level. A 10th level thief does 5d6 bonus damage for a sneak attack, and a 10th level one does 10d6. It's 1d6 bonus damage per two levels. It's also possible to make sneak attacks with ranged weapons.
There won't be subraces in NWN, but it's possible that DMs will be allowed to script them themselves, in which case you might be able to give yourself drow abilities. These would probably disqualify you from the character vault though. BTW, I am really, really pleased that Bioware have chosen not to support subraces. It is not realistic that 90% of the online NWN population be made up of drow, which is what would happen if it was possible.
I don't actually have any of the PnP rulebooks and I've never played it, but from what I've heard they get a -2 attack penalty in natural light and some spell resistance (not sure how this works but I think it's different from 2nd ed magic resistance).
What, you had more questions? You're kidding me, right?
If you accidentally join a game DMed by someone like that, you can just quit their game and load your character from the vault as they were before you joined, albeit without any of the experience or items that you gained.
Dual-classing and multi-classing don't work in quite the same way in 3rd edition. I'll attempt to explain. When you create a character, you select one class to begin as. For example, you can start as a paladin, a sorcerer or a rogue, but not as fighter/mage or a mage/cleric. When you get enough experience to level up, you choose what to gain a level in. So if you are a first level fighter and you level up, you can either choose to become a level two fighter or you can become level one in another class, for example you can take one level as a mage. You can do this whenever you level up, and though in PnP you can take a level in up to nine classes at once, in NWN they are limiting characters to no more than three classes. There are no penalties when you take a level in another class, so unlike dual-classing you don't lose your original abilities until you get to a level higher in your second class or anything like that. However, there are certain rules involving this multi-classing that can give you a 20% experience penalty. If you want to know what, just ask. I really should write this down...
If you want to know more about 3rd ed, I suggest that you download the Wizards of the Coast character generator which is where I learned most of what I know (too young to have a credit card so I can't get the books by mail order, and here in Wales we're still waiting for the invention of the wheel, let alone RPGs). If I got this right, click here
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