What's the Best Assassin Build?

[quietman1920]

Following the Awesome Arcane Archer build info in the prior post, does anyone have good suggestions for an Assassin build?

[robertthebard]

rogue 5, assassin 10, shadow dancer 5, so far anyway, hide in plain sight is a must for any assassin.

[koconnor100]

The problem with assassins is that the back stabbing (sneak attack in 3E rules) and death strike (why do they call it a death strike when it only stuns, not kills ? ) are useless against high level enemeies (they're all immune to sneak attacks), reducing you to mediocre combat abilities, traps, and hopping you picked up some useful stuff for the Use Magical Device skill.

Also, at high levels, everything has true sight and can see through your stealth as well, so much for hide in plane sight.

In SoU it's great (rogue then assassin, maybe 1 level shadow dancer to get the hide in plain sight) because you finish by level 12-15.

In the OC, finishing at 15-19 , the top end monsters neutrilize too much of the rogue type abilities.

You sure you don't want a ranger with 1 level shadow dancer ? Who can duke it out like a pure fighter when the stealth stops working ? Nice suit of magical plate mail and a huge nasty vicious magical great sword stashed away in a bag of holding for emergancies ?

[ 07-25-2003, 11:57 PM: Message edited by: koconnor100 ]

[Willard]

Take a lot of levels in monk. Then take one level in assassin. You may not get the damage reduction at level 20, but you'll make all those monsters feel just silly with your death attack!

[robertthebard]

Which brings me to my latest experiment, as yet untested: Monk, Assassin, Blackguard. will only have 3 lvls of black guard on the test char, but shooting for a ninja type build

[Legolas]

I personally like the 10/10 bard/assassin, the kind of character that sings and plays and juggles at the banquet and then empties his hidden crossbow in the king's chest.
You get spells of up to lvl 3 (and lvl 4 spells you can't cast) you do not need to select beforehand (at least 4 spells of each level up to 3 can be cast per day), the bard song, reasonable combat abilities and a decent amount of skill points from the bardic side of the family. Your lockpicking skills and ability with traps have to come from the assassin class.
The 10/10 rogue/assassin offers more skillpoints and at rogue level 10 you get one of those nice special feats as well. Traps and locks are less of an issue
The hide in plain sight ability is nice enough, but a single level in shadowdancer is not too practical considering the resulting xp penalties. You'll only be able to take it safely when you've reached level 20, at which point the ability is far less useful than it would have been earlier on.
I suppose it depends on the kind of character you want ot build.