Assassins have mastered the dealing of death with a unique blend of mental techniques, stealth, and poison. They often strike unseen, using the knife, the garrote wire, and the dart as their tools. Every assassin acts of his own accord, and bring to the practice their own devotion: be it to law, to the nefarious, or to nothing at all. In the end, they all find unity in the singular perfection of death.
Skills and Psionic Abilities
| Level | Skill |
|---|---|
| Level 1: | Dagger, Hand to Hand, Hide, Staff, Sword, Whip |
| Level 2: | Night Vision, Peek |
| Level 3: | Kick, Sneak |
| Level 4: | Dodge |
| Level 5: | Meditation |
| Level 6: | Obscure Evidence |
| Level 7: | Pick Lock |
| Level 8: | Dual Wield |
| Level 9: | Enhanced Damage |
| Level 11: | Blinding Dust, Trip |
| Level 12: | Parry |
| Level 13: | Fast Healing |
| Level 14: | Envenom, Prepare |
| Level 16: | Second Attack |
| Level 17: | Blindfighting |
| Level 18: | Muffle |
| Level 19: | Evade, Haggle |
| Level 20: | Plant, Taint |
| Level 22: | Trance |
| Level 23: | Blinding Cloud |
| Level 24: | Snap Kick |
| Level 25: | Caltraps |
| Level 26: | Craft Dart, Dart |
| Level 28: | Nerve |
| Level 29: | Stab |
| Level 30: | Smokescreen |
| Level 32: | Disguise |
| Level 36: | Vital Strike |
| Level 38: | Garrote |
| Level | Ability |
|---|---|
| Level 10: | Acuity |
| Level 15: | Celerity |
| Level 21: | Shadow Fist |
| Level 27: | Mindshield |
| Level 34: | Conceal Remains, Prowess |
| Level 40: | Cloak |
Tips
Assassins gain both rogue-like tricks and psionic foci, which means that as a class, they tend to favor races with a higher mana pool. Although this is in no way required (and thus, kankoran and srryn assassins still function similarly to how they did before), it does give the aelin, nefortu, and (especially) shuddeni assassins significantly more leeway with their mental powers. For example, a shuddeni will find it far easier to maintain the cloak focus, and even considerable time cloaking two targets should the need arise. For more mundane foci, such as acuity, celerity, and so on, an assassin of any race should rarely run into difficulty maintaining multiple abilities at once due to the regeneration provided by both meditation and trance. It should be noted, however, that the self-buff psionic foci of the assassin may only be applied to himself (and not others).
Although assassins are capable with many weapons, shadow fist brings a bit of difference to their unarmed damage, in that it type-changes it to mental damage. This damage type is treated as magical, allowing an assassin to bypass some defenses even while unarmed, or with an open free hand. In addition, this type change also applies to the damage dealt by kick (and snap kick). This can amount to a significant amount of in-round damage to chaja characters.
Poison use is of particular interest to assassins, and it can be delivered in multiple ways. It can either be coated onto a weapon via envenom; applied to a dart and used either in-room or from an adjacent room; or applied to food. The poison from envenom will typically have a lower chance of taking full hold because of the ease of delivery comparative to others. Taint, therefore, has the strongest likelihood of delivering a poison at its full potency. In general, a poison can strike for its full potency, a lesser variation with shorter duration, or have no effect (although no effect is most likely when the target has some resistance to poison, such as the spell protection from poison).
