My Life As A Gamer: To Win As An Assassin (Part 2)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

From Hangaround To Made Man

Your Assassin starts his career as a stalker and a sucker-puncher. Eventually he proves useful or resourceful enough to learn some of the trade secrets of the Thieves he's sometimes mistaken for (Thief Skills, 3rd Level) and the Organization allows him to form his own crew (may recruit other Assassins as Hirelings, 4th level).

Learning Thief Skills opens up more options for stalking targets and setting up sucker-punches. Despite being two levels being a Thief of the same level (save for Backstab), there is no doubt that merely having them is a benefit.

The trap is in thinking that your Assassin is now like a Thief. He is not. Your Assassin's role is not the Thief's role; Thief Skills exist to exhance and expand the Assassin's core function of stalking targets and setting up Assassinations. Your man is not limited to dressing and acting like a Thief. He can use Pick Locks (etc.) while in armor. (There is no prohibition on using Thief Skills in armor in the rules, just on what armor he can use.) He can Assassinate and Backstab with any weapon. Poison use can be done with any applicable weapon.

All of this points to Thief Skills being adjuncts to the core Assassin usage of Disguise to avoid attention and set up Assassinations via Surprise, rather than the Disguise function being subordinate to the Thief Skill usage to do so. (You do not need to Move Silently, Hide In Shadows, or Climb Walls if you look and act like you belong there so you can move about unhindered.)

This is a great model for playing an Assassin.

As for those hireling Assassins, your man's best use of them is on Spying Missions to get intelligence on targets that your man follows up with to Assassinate. Your man wants them trailing and surveiling the target's Keys To Power, which usually translates to the key subordinates or officers about the target. If they're up for it, you can have them Assassinate them to further weaken the target by peeling away their security.

When there is no active target to stalk, your man should use them on Spying significant figures in a general sense; the Assassin character is a Spy, which means that higher-level Assassins become Handlers and the Assassin Organization is a cult, a syndicate, and an Intelligence Agency. Start with spying on the Thieves; their collective activities are a reliable tell as to where the power is in a city and its surrounding region.

No one that doesn't resort to scrying should know less then your man about the affairs of that area, and your man's ability to make good on that only rises as he levels up.

No one should be better able at exploiting that intelligence than your man, especially as he levels up. Tell your underlings only what they need to know, and realize that your man's superiors do the same to him in turn.

What Winning Becomes

The Assassin, as soon as he can afford to do so, should hire on juniors and put them to work spying. He then has an income stream as their handlers, taking contract Spying jobs and assigning them to his hirelings, when he doens't need them to do missions on his targets.

The Assassin uses his hirelings to expand his awareness of the campaign environment and its players, with the aim of identifying potential allies and enemies as soon as possible to deal with them as soon as he is able. Given what the rules of the game demand of a character to advance, the Assassin is wise to focus intelligence collection on targets that promise a big score so he can not only meet expenses but fuel his development.

All possible revenue sources should be exploited, as that revenue fuels the Assassin's development and efforts.

In play, this looks like the Assassin being less of a street huster and low-rent hitter and starts growing into someone that contends with Thieves for control of territory. The Assassin, as he goes from 4th to 8th, should be aiming at the Thieves and bringing them to heel; this will pay off when he becomes able to recruit Thieves as Hirelings at 8th level, and having suborned the Thieves to his control, his ability to collect revenue and intelligence explodes in reach, and the wise Assassin ensures that the Thieves benefit from this not-so-voluntary association so they don't buck his control. This turns your man into someone everyone recognizes: a Made Man, a Man of Respect.

Your Assassin's arrival at Guildmaster of Assassins.

That's right, winning as an Assassin is much like rising up the ranks in organized crime (or the cults that they sprung out of). You won't go wrong by modelling your man's career on those models.

Which means that when he arrives at prime time, and emerges as a Faction Leader in his own right, winning changes yet again. Tomorrow, we talk about the Domain Game.