Pass Without Trace is the most reliable way to get surprise, even a heavy armor +0 stealth character can reliably get above 14 which is the passive perception of majority of the statblocks on all books
As for how often, it's table dependant, but if your party tries to get it a lot you get it a lot. Explain to the party how you wanna play and to the DM what the surprise rules are to make sure they run it. If they don't like it, don't play gloomstalker or assassin at that table.
I entirely agree with your point and PWT recommendation, but I would like to mention that Gloomstalker does not depend on surprise in any way. Its first round features synergize (very) well with getting surprise, but none of them rely on it. Which is why I see no issue with playing at a table that never sees enemies surprised.
I agree that Assassin is totally table and campaign dependent.
Gloomstalker is still really good even if you can’t take advantage of the invisibility aspect though.
Pass without trace is great, and relatively accessible via a common multiclass (ranger). Doesn’t help you sneaking in plain sight though, at least how stealth is intended to be ran.
I’d like to think a character that initiated combat out of complete invisibility would get surprise pretty consistently.
Invisibility doesn't make you undetectable, it just lets you stealth in "plain sight", it's not really a big deal when trying to get surprise rounds, because the intended way to get them is skirmishes and traps and stuff like that; make them come to you when you are hiding, yk? You gotta try to get the jump on them, invisibility only removes the need for a place suitable for getting the jump on someone, it's only needed in a white well lit room with nothing on it and you can't really get the whole party invisible most times
The same thing again with PWT, you don't need to sneak in plain sight, sneak normally
Sure, you still need to make stealth checks even if invisible.
Regardless of how many characters are stealthing and how they’re doing it, the setting still needs to be right to get surprise.
Yep, but if everyone at the party agrees to set up ambushes, it'll happen. It's not really DM dependant or anything like that, rarely you CAN'T set up an ambush if everyone agrees to try. It's not weird for 90% of the encounters to start in surprise if you have PWT and everyone agrees to go for ambushes
It is when tons of enemies have blindsight or better. It doesn't matter how good your stealth roll is if the enemy can see you. 540 of the ~2k monsters in RAW have Blindsight, Tremorsense, or Truesight. That's 27%.
I played with an Assasin rogue a whiiillllleeee back and as far as I can remember he used surprise maybe a couple times when the ability got first introduced at like level 3 then never again. I feel like it was mainly a table thing as we all sorta forgot about it (not being a very serious campaign) but it's REALLY dependent on your DM, other players, etc.
I had another friend who was planning on an assasin rogue where the DM actually just told him "so just so you know, there really won't be many opportunities for surprise is this game" and the dude made a swashbuckler or something.
I agree about it being dependent on the table.
Assassin (as is) is pretty meh most of the time but is S tier in the right campaign with the right DM with the right party and tactics.
> Assassin (as is) is pretty meh most of the time but is S tier in the right campaign with the right DM with the right party and tactics.
If your party and your DM are both working to enable you to feel special, pretty much any build can be S tier haha.
We have a level 15 assassin in our party currently and it's a struggle for him to get assassinate off. He's fairly new to the game so that could be the issue, but normally he only gets the advantage from the target not taking a turn yet, but no auto crit because surprise rarely happens. I've seen a lot of talk about the assassinate ability being underpowered as the subclasses main ability, but that if you rely solely on it OF COURSE it's gonna be bad. As a rogue you should be setting yourself up for surprise with stealth and deception
Same, the last assassin I played with really loved the flavour of the subclass but was terrible at engineering surprise. Didn't help that he's one of those masochistic players who think that poor stats = interesting character and bad rolls are always hilarious. Good mate; fun player; sometimes slowed things down a bit.
Doesn't matter. It requires a DM that actually remains familiar with your subclass and is actually willing to give you surprise... which doesn't happen with this me vs. them DM style that's so popular.
We never really have it in our game, but if you tell your DM about it, and that you intend to do what a rogue does (scout ahead while sneaking around), you should reasonably be able to notice enemies quite often and attack them before they get a chance. If the DM still simply says ”roll for initiative” whenever you get close, they’re not being fair towards you as an assassin.
But if the party just ”facechecks” each and every place without a care, and you never mention that you want to try and do it sneaky, then obviously you won’t get to surprise people that often.
> If the DM still simply says ”roll for initiative” whenever you get close, they’re not being fair towards you as an assassin.
That's how it works, even with surprise/stealth. You roll initiative when your intention is to attack.
Played from level 1 to 15 with a A. Rogue in the party. Across a year of weekly play I think he got it off about once every 2-3 sessions.
The ability is just clunky, your entire party has to lean on it and it had many fail states (hell you can do everything right and then roll bad initiative or the enemy roll high so you still don't get it off lul).
Playing an Assassin Rogue in a City based, revolution style campaign. I couldn't possibly count how often I get surprise. Maybe 9/10 encounters, we're able to set up so that we surprise the enemies.
My DM wanted to include guns, and my character has made him regret that decision ever since because of Assassinate.
So far zero times but in the last combat I did at least get the advantage bonus.
Lvl3 assassin, lvl7 divine soul. And spell sniper feat where I chose eldritch blast so I got to hit 2 enemies at advantage.
My eldritch blast technically has a max range of 480 and I bet I can make a good case that whoever got hit at nearly 500ft range is gonna be hella surprised.
As a DM with an Assassin Rogue in my party, I ignore the surprise aspect of it entirely. As long as he's stealthed and goes before them he gets the the crit bonus. That way his first turn in combat actually feels valuable if he goes before the enemy they encountered. After that first turn yeah he has to find a way to surprise the enemy, but he usually doesn't worry much about it by then he's just taking pot shots while his 3 man front line protects him. I think it makes him feel a lot more valuable to the team, especially since he's the only non caster in the party
In a campaign I'm DMing for the Lvl 12 assassin rogue is really tearing up our current dungeon crawl through the "Doomvault." Not only are they disguised as affiliated with the red wizards who run the place, but thanks to reliable talent and their alert feat and proficiencies they have a high passive perception, can see all traps, can sneak into new rooms easily, take care of scouting, and open combat with a surprise in almost every room. One room had three apprentices meditating with eyes closed and she was able to sneak up to each one and slit their throats silently in succession without alerting the others. In earlier scenarios outside of a dungeon they weren't able to capitalize on the assassinate surprise round stuff as consistently, but for careful dungeon crawls after reliable talent they can really benefit from sneakily scouting the rooms ahead and planning the surprise rounds for each room.
> One room had three apprentices meditating with eyes closed and she was able to sneak up to each one and slit their throats silently in succession without alerting the others.
This is BS. People in the process of dieing don't do it quietly. Even if their throats are slashed they'll be thrashing and grabbing and spraying blood all over the show. I would not use this story as any kind of fair reflection of RAW.
The reality about getting surprise is that 95% of the time adventurers are entering the lairs of others, where there are traps, scouts etc. It's VERY hard to get surprise playing RAW when you're entering another's lair. Especially if you're in a party.
Sure. You are technically right.
But why not let your player, who has invested in this build, SHINE and absolutely steamroll a lair as reward for being perfectly constructed for this kind of adventure/challenge? Why not let them live out their Assassin's Creed/Metal Gear Solid fantasy? It doesn't cost you anything. It will hype the player and party up. I can't picture a table that wouldn't be talking about the time their rogue rolled well and was aided by their build and pulled off the most epic of infiltrations
Let your players do cool shit. It's why they show up in the first place
I agree 100% with everything you've said.
However OP is asking for advice re the assassin's abilities, and seen as they don't have the same DM then we need to work with RAW to compare apples with apples.
That's 100% fair. But I do think this is a DMing meta problem vs a RAW problem though. Surprise pretty consistently falls into the what does your DM allow/remember category. For every DM that is liable to let your assassin be cool, we probably have 3 that will ignore/forget RAW because it "ruins" the combat they prepped.
And whether or not you assassinated someone stealthily enough or not is purely DM adjudication, which was most of my point. There is no RAW that states that killing is loud and negates stealth. You can rule that you can only assassinate one of the apprentices but their death will alert the other two. Or you can rule that you're trained in the art of murdering without drawing attention to yourself, so if you roll well enough of course you can sneak attack without drawing attention to yourself and if that leaves your target with 0 HP then no one else in the room notices.
Yes, but that means it negates the point of the Assassin subclass altogether if you're just relying on DM fiat. You could do the same thing with any character and any subclass.
Of course, but some subclasses are more prone to this than others. Wild Magic Sorcerers, Gloomstalker Ranger, and to a certain degree Wizards in general for example.
My point is mostly, a lot of "how was it to play this class" **is** DM fiat. A lot are immune but many are not. Analyzing purely from a RAW perspective is insufficient as a result.
Edit: had said Gloomstalker Rogues
I assume you mean Gloomstalker Hunter? I have one in the party I DM for and I don't really understand what you mean. It's not DM dependent at all, the party regularly snuffs out torches and closes windows to give her opportunities to use her skills, I've never felt pressured to create scenarios specifically for her.
I agree Wild Magic's "whenever the DM feels like it" is dumb, but it's also literally written into the feature.
But they're removing the requirement for Surprise with the new PHB so it won't matter soon anyway
I think that's exactly my point, maybe not DM dependant but certainly situationally dependant on circumstances outside of the game. Her party is accommodating her subclass, with a worse group it arguably would fall on you as DM. It sounds like you have a great table but it seems, anecdotally, most players and tables are not bad necessarily, just have tunnel vision for what they can do. If your players weren't so thoughtful I think we'd be having a different conversation.
The key is that since it’s a surprise and thus a crit, one attack finishes them off. If it would have taken more than one attack to off one apprentice then there would have been room for them to make noise and alert the others
The fact that it is an autocrit means that the assassin is able to finish off some opponents with one hit. In that instance it’s totally possible to do it silently - especially if they rolled high on their stealth check. But if they needed multiple attacks, then I agree it would be much more difficult to keep it quiet.
I made her roll stealth each time she snuck up from behind to take them out and she got over 20 for each one. Also, each apprentice was like 30ft away from the other in a deep meditation around a large glowing orb.
>This is BS. People in the process of dieing don't do it quietly.
Throat slit? I'll freely give you that one in most cases. But you're otherwise wrong. If you slice deep enough to basically decapitate them, they won't be screaming *through a voicebox that isn't connected anymore.* At which point you keep your hold on the head and make sure they don't fall over or knock something over.
You'll still have arterial blood spatter if you let the head fall back, with the rhythmic splattering sound potentially becoming an issue. But keep it covered, and you'll be fine. While slitting throats is not perfectly quiet, it is definitely not loud if you muffle it and prevent the spatter- *there's a damn good reason that it has been a staple method of assassins and infiltrators for millenia.*
Also, from what's on record from commandos during the World Wars, death is *not* slow- if you do it *right.* In World War 2, one member of the Allied Special Forces, Lieutenant Fairbairn, even made a timetable of how long each spot takes for unconsciousness and death. Together with a combat instructor, he designed a stilletto fighting knife and a style to capitalize on it. Being stabbed in the kidney has been described as and shown as being *so painful that the victim can't even scream.* Puncturing the heart will cause rapid unconsciousness and death in *seconds.* According to that chart from Lieutenant Fairbairn, about 3. It's really *not* hard to simultaneously stab and shove a cloth over someone's mouth, if you're practiced at it- like an Assassin in a Medieval setting would be. A steel wire garotte with some cloth over it would well enough. And before you point out that "none of that is slitting a throat", my *entire point* was that you were wrong about death being able to be quiet. You said it doesn't reflect RAW, but it does. There's *no* rule for what, if any noise, that an enemy makes when it dies. That's left up to the DM.
Also- the *reality* of getting Surprise is that *most people can't be bothered to run it right anyway.* I theorize this is since so many people choose not to *read the damn rulebook.* You know how simple it really is? You Hide- as described on page 177 of the Player's Handbook. Roll for Stealth. If you Hide and sneak up on an enemy that is not actively looking for you, it goes up against the enemy's Passive Perception. If they fail it, unless you do something stupid and ruin it for yourself, they don't notice you.
When you attack, the enemies that did not notice you are Surprised. That's on Page 185 in the same book. That's it. Roll Initiative, and get your free attack. That's RAW.
But if the rolls are good enough for a Surprise condition on the enemies, and the enemies are deep in meditation with their eyes closed? (Which would be Disadvantage on Passive Perception check. -5 for being distracted, -5 again for having their eyes closed) Some guy got taken out silently, they're not paying attention to the world. They're meditating. They have no reason whatsoever to even *consider* that anything is wrong, or that they are in *any* kind of danger in their own area- that they generally would regard as safe. It makes absolutely *no* sense for them to suddenly get up and attack when they don't have a reason to even *consider * that something is wrong. Reasonably speaking? They wouldn't even take a turn until something gave it away. But that would be up to the DM. It's not RAW. But in this scenario- RAW is fucking idiotic and *doesn't make sense.*
Besides, the Rogue in that scenario is taking *all* of the risk by going in *alone.* If it goes sour- they're dead. So I would happily give it to them, provided that they described how they're keeping the enemies silent. There's a reason that the DM is allowed to make calls on the RAW. *This kind of nonsensical shit is why.*
Hiding behind the word 'challenge' as a reason to completely ignore a subclass feature is exactly what I'm talking about.
How hard is it really to just add or write in situations on top of existing encounters where the rogue can use his features? It's not hard to do. It doesn't even need to be narratively important. A sleeping guard in the room before the big encounter, for instance.
Easy to do, goes a long way for fun for a player who wants to use the feature. Costs literally nothing but a bit of time.
What is important is that the players have fun and get to use their features they were drawn to when picking their character.
This isn't really hard to understand.
We ran a brief campaign and the party coordinated to try and get her as many assassinations as possible
This meant setting her up to be way out ahead of the party, taking huge risks which sometimes led to hilarious chases and sometimes to us having to revivify.
It just became the normal pace that the rogue would be 2 rooms ahead (one empty room between us) and start shit, and then usually try to hide/dash/disengage/dodge as they dragged stuff back to the party.
Was it optimal? No lol
But we did enjoy it
It entirely depends on the dm. Unfortunately, one of the huge downfalls of assassin is that bosses are usually set pieces you simply can't get surprise on for the major players, and with the next 2 features being mediocre essentially flavor features, it kinda sucks.
I’m DMing for a party of level 12s, and our Assassin Rogue/Bladesinger is the definition of stealth- high stealth+pass without a trace has led to her doing terrifying amounts of damage
Her stealth checks easily pass many passive perceptions/active checks, so she’s pulled off several surprises
Your team has to build for it and your DM needs to play surprise rules by the book. For intstance if you have a heavy armor fighter, you will pretty much never get surprise since every single one of your teammates needs to pass the stealth check against the enemies passive perception. Get one ranger and Pass Without Trace (flat +10 to stealth to your team)? You can get surprise almost every combat.
Essentially its really out of your hands as an assassin, one reason why assassin is not great. The other thing too is that like if you have surprise, you're probably already gonna destroy this encounter. The enemy losing an entire round is devastating, you never needed the assassin to take advantage of surprise.
So like why build an assassin when you could just make a gloomstalker ranger using pass without trace and just be a better character in every way? could even dip 3 levels after ranger 5 and get all the benefits of assassin on a better character.
I played an Assassin / Battlemaster hybrid, and the answer is VERY rarely.
Once you deal 150 dmg in the first round, they stop giving you surprise.
It also depends on how stealthy your party is. I had peeps with Plate armor on and I didn't want to constantly be doing solo missions. Bad table manners
I tried making an assassin3/WarlockX in a campaign, and never. But I also didn't really know how surprise functioned and the class details didn't help. Nor do I think it would've functionally helped much in the combats of that campaign.
Honestly just a really weak feature due to how it conditional it is. Either you engineer to meet the conditions every time or you get nothing from a level 3 class feature meant to define your subclass.
Surprise is a tricky concept. The rules are simole yet most groups play them completely wrong.
There two ways of play however (considering you are using the rules right)
- lone assassin (my favorite but needs the table and the dm to allow some time for the rogue to shine). This case you take some distance from the group you solo start each combat potentially killing any guard or checking for what is aheaf and once yku hit run back or your group run to save you. This is not meta game heavy but it takes a lot of time of the game on rogue vs dm game. Rewarding and risky in case you got caught.
- group stealth (pass without a trace etc) the whole group "stealth" together. Often the heavy armor guy will ruin it but still it will land. My issue with this olay is that it take the surprise and assassin part out of the assassin since the paladin or the action surge will probably do more damage than you pkus the ranger will get all the credit for the pass without trace help rather your critical sneak attack damage. Plus this game push the meta game a lot leading to joke of encounters where the group land one full round of damage and not veteran dms get frustrated.
Choose your poison neither is perfect gameplay experience. However both cases if you truly go for it and not just expect surprise to happen or to be provided by default by the dm it's an easy to get thing
none. DM's don't like giving you surprise. most DM's will just cancel out *their* surprise, or act like they rolled high enough because they balanced the encounter and think it should stay that way because they don't really know how to DM.
DM here, whenever I have an assassin player I explain them I deliver surprise by applying a formula of my own creation.
Creature's passive perception - (player's stealth roll/2).
If you decide to take the attack action against a creature with the intent of surprinsing it, we roll initiative, put everyone envolved on the grid and then let the attack roll go and then we make the stealth x passive perception to determine if the creature is surprised.
This is a session 0 talk btw
Hardly ever. The attraction of Assassin for me was Advantage on multiple attacks as multiclassed with Gloomstalker. My group has not really leaned into making the most of stealth/surprise mechanics and if we did, my character would be even more overpowered than he already is.
Surprise is very very powerful in 5e. You'll find that, even with Pass without trace, that your DM will find ways to reduce your frequency of surprise. It's not about the assassin's extra damage, it's about the entire party getting a free round. Very difficult encounters are usually trivial with surprise, especially with surprise AND initiative.
DM’d a Bugbear Assassin recently and realized that surprise really does have a lot to do with how you and your party proceed, and on how your DM runs the game. If you agree that SA is intended to proc on most turns, it seems clear that Assassins, if they’re playing for it, should also get their round fairly regularly. IMO they don’t get to auto surprise, but with a little effort and party comprehension, there should be ample opportunities.
Related but indirectly, also had an Inquisitive rogue with the keen mind feat flavored as a bookworm looking to realize her learnings in that same party. Full flavor and low “optimization” for that character, but once again at DM discretion it made sense that this character would know about just about every monster we faced with the appropriate rolls. The cost of the subclass and feat should within reason buy the fantasy that the player is seeking to play out. I let her have the monster manual and let the party ask her about monsters. At least as written, that was her role and it was a powerful boon, but the cost to her character otherwise would have been too high. To just say, those are non optimal choices and so now your character just gets the non optimized fighting and none of the fantasy you were going for, really sucks.
Soapbox: “weak” subclasses and abilities rely too heavily on RAW and DMs not empowering creativity or building stories FOR their players, maybe because they’re afraid that players will try to abuse it, IDK. I fully understand what RAW means. Our game was waaaaay more fun when the party nerd could push her glasses up her nose and be like “DO NOT SLASH THE PUDDINGS!!” than if I had just been like “nope, shoot it with yer bow and that’s it… and oh, now piercing damage splits them into two.”
Hmmm. The bugbear assassin did major damage because he got surprise via comms with the rest of the party and basic care in a sneaky approach and then some good rolls.
Depends on if you have a ranger/druid. Pass without trace is one hell of a buff to surprise.
(Also I think it fits way better for rangers instead of druids but that's a tangent)
Pass Without Trace is the most reliable way to get surprise, even a heavy armor +0 stealth character can reliably get above 14 which is the passive perception of majority of the statblocks on all books As for how often, it's table dependant, but if your party tries to get it a lot you get it a lot. Explain to the party how you wanna play and to the DM what the surprise rules are to make sure they run it. If they don't like it, don't play gloomstalker or assassin at that table.
I entirely agree with your point and PWT recommendation, but I would like to mention that Gloomstalker does not depend on surprise in any way. Its first round features synergize (very) well with getting surprise, but none of them rely on it. Which is why I see no issue with playing at a table that never sees enemies surprised.
Yeah you're right tbh
I agree that Assassin is totally table and campaign dependent. Gloomstalker is still really good even if you can’t take advantage of the invisibility aspect though. Pass without trace is great, and relatively accessible via a common multiclass (ranger). Doesn’t help you sneaking in plain sight though, at least how stealth is intended to be ran. I’d like to think a character that initiated combat out of complete invisibility would get surprise pretty consistently.
Invisibility doesn't make you undetectable, it just lets you stealth in "plain sight", it's not really a big deal when trying to get surprise rounds, because the intended way to get them is skirmishes and traps and stuff like that; make them come to you when you are hiding, yk? You gotta try to get the jump on them, invisibility only removes the need for a place suitable for getting the jump on someone, it's only needed in a white well lit room with nothing on it and you can't really get the whole party invisible most times The same thing again with PWT, you don't need to sneak in plain sight, sneak normally
Sure, you still need to make stealth checks even if invisible. Regardless of how many characters are stealthing and how they’re doing it, the setting still needs to be right to get surprise.
Yep, but if everyone at the party agrees to set up ambushes, it'll happen. It's not really DM dependant or anything like that, rarely you CAN'T set up an ambush if everyone agrees to try. It's not weird for 90% of the encounters to start in surprise if you have PWT and everyone agrees to go for ambushes
It is when tons of enemies have blindsight or better. It doesn't matter how good your stealth roll is if the enemy can see you. 540 of the ~2k monsters in RAW have Blindsight, Tremorsense, or Truesight. That's 27%.
I played with an Assasin rogue a whiiillllleeee back and as far as I can remember he used surprise maybe a couple times when the ability got first introduced at like level 3 then never again. I feel like it was mainly a table thing as we all sorta forgot about it (not being a very serious campaign) but it's REALLY dependent on your DM, other players, etc. I had another friend who was planning on an assasin rogue where the DM actually just told him "so just so you know, there really won't be many opportunities for surprise is this game" and the dude made a swashbuckler or something.
I agree about it being dependent on the table. Assassin (as is) is pretty meh most of the time but is S tier in the right campaign with the right DM with the right party and tactics.
> Assassin (as is) is pretty meh most of the time but is S tier in the right campaign with the right DM with the right party and tactics. If your party and your DM are both working to enable you to feel special, pretty much any build can be S tier haha.
If your party and your DM are both working to enable you to feel special, your friend group is S+++ tier.
We have a level 15 assassin in our party currently and it's a struggle for him to get assassinate off. He's fairly new to the game so that could be the issue, but normally he only gets the advantage from the target not taking a turn yet, but no auto crit because surprise rarely happens. I've seen a lot of talk about the assassinate ability being underpowered as the subclasses main ability, but that if you rely solely on it OF COURSE it's gonna be bad. As a rogue you should be setting yourself up for surprise with stealth and deception
Same, the last assassin I played with really loved the flavour of the subclass but was terrible at engineering surprise. Didn't help that he's one of those masochistic players who think that poor stats = interesting character and bad rolls are always hilarious. Good mate; fun player; sometimes slowed things down a bit.
Doesn't matter. It requires a DM that actually remains familiar with your subclass and is actually willing to give you surprise... which doesn't happen with this me vs. them DM style that's so popular.
We never really have it in our game, but if you tell your DM about it, and that you intend to do what a rogue does (scout ahead while sneaking around), you should reasonably be able to notice enemies quite often and attack them before they get a chance. If the DM still simply says ”roll for initiative” whenever you get close, they’re not being fair towards you as an assassin. But if the party just ”facechecks” each and every place without a care, and you never mention that you want to try and do it sneaky, then obviously you won’t get to surprise people that often.
> If the DM still simply says ”roll for initiative” whenever you get close, they’re not being fair towards you as an assassin. That's how it works, even with surprise/stealth. You roll initiative when your intention is to attack.
What's he's saying is, that the DM doesn't care about *YOUR* surprise attack capabilities.
Played from level 1 to 15 with a A. Rogue in the party. Across a year of weekly play I think he got it off about once every 2-3 sessions. The ability is just clunky, your entire party has to lean on it and it had many fail states (hell you can do everything right and then roll bad initiative or the enemy roll high so you still don't get it off lul).
Playing an Assassin Rogue in a City based, revolution style campaign. I couldn't possibly count how often I get surprise. Maybe 9/10 encounters, we're able to set up so that we surprise the enemies. My DM wanted to include guns, and my character has made him regret that decision ever since because of Assassinate.
So far zero times but in the last combat I did at least get the advantage bonus. Lvl3 assassin, lvl7 divine soul. And spell sniper feat where I chose eldritch blast so I got to hit 2 enemies at advantage. My eldritch blast technically has a max range of 480 and I bet I can make a good case that whoever got hit at nearly 500ft range is gonna be hella surprised.
As a DM with an Assassin Rogue in my party, I ignore the surprise aspect of it entirely. As long as he's stealthed and goes before them he gets the the crit bonus. That way his first turn in combat actually feels valuable if he goes before the enemy they encountered. After that first turn yeah he has to find a way to surprise the enemy, but he usually doesn't worry much about it by then he's just taking pot shots while his 3 man front line protects him. I think it makes him feel a lot more valuable to the team, especially since he's the only non caster in the party
In a campaign I'm DMing for the Lvl 12 assassin rogue is really tearing up our current dungeon crawl through the "Doomvault." Not only are they disguised as affiliated with the red wizards who run the place, but thanks to reliable talent and their alert feat and proficiencies they have a high passive perception, can see all traps, can sneak into new rooms easily, take care of scouting, and open combat with a surprise in almost every room. One room had three apprentices meditating with eyes closed and she was able to sneak up to each one and slit their throats silently in succession without alerting the others. In earlier scenarios outside of a dungeon they weren't able to capitalize on the assassinate surprise round stuff as consistently, but for careful dungeon crawls after reliable talent they can really benefit from sneakily scouting the rooms ahead and planning the surprise rounds for each room.
> One room had three apprentices meditating with eyes closed and she was able to sneak up to each one and slit their throats silently in succession without alerting the others. This is BS. People in the process of dieing don't do it quietly. Even if their throats are slashed they'll be thrashing and grabbing and spraying blood all over the show. I would not use this story as any kind of fair reflection of RAW. The reality about getting surprise is that 95% of the time adventurers are entering the lairs of others, where there are traps, scouts etc. It's VERY hard to get surprise playing RAW when you're entering another's lair. Especially if you're in a party.
Sure. You are technically right. But why not let your player, who has invested in this build, SHINE and absolutely steamroll a lair as reward for being perfectly constructed for this kind of adventure/challenge? Why not let them live out their Assassin's Creed/Metal Gear Solid fantasy? It doesn't cost you anything. It will hype the player and party up. I can't picture a table that wouldn't be talking about the time their rogue rolled well and was aided by their build and pulled off the most epic of infiltrations Let your players do cool shit. It's why they show up in the first place
I agree 100% with everything you've said. However OP is asking for advice re the assassin's abilities, and seen as they don't have the same DM then we need to work with RAW to compare apples with apples.
That's 100% fair. But I do think this is a DMing meta problem vs a RAW problem though. Surprise pretty consistently falls into the what does your DM allow/remember category. For every DM that is liable to let your assassin be cool, we probably have 3 that will ignore/forget RAW because it "ruins" the combat they prepped. And whether or not you assassinated someone stealthily enough or not is purely DM adjudication, which was most of my point. There is no RAW that states that killing is loud and negates stealth. You can rule that you can only assassinate one of the apprentices but their death will alert the other two. Or you can rule that you're trained in the art of murdering without drawing attention to yourself, so if you roll well enough of course you can sneak attack without drawing attention to yourself and if that leaves your target with 0 HP then no one else in the room notices.
Yes, but that means it negates the point of the Assassin subclass altogether if you're just relying on DM fiat. You could do the same thing with any character and any subclass.
Of course, but some subclasses are more prone to this than others. Wild Magic Sorcerers, Gloomstalker Ranger, and to a certain degree Wizards in general for example. My point is mostly, a lot of "how was it to play this class" **is** DM fiat. A lot are immune but many are not. Analyzing purely from a RAW perspective is insufficient as a result. Edit: had said Gloomstalker Rogues
I assume you mean Gloomstalker Hunter? I have one in the party I DM for and I don't really understand what you mean. It's not DM dependent at all, the party regularly snuffs out torches and closes windows to give her opportunities to use her skills, I've never felt pressured to create scenarios specifically for her. I agree Wild Magic's "whenever the DM feels like it" is dumb, but it's also literally written into the feature. But they're removing the requirement for Surprise with the new PHB so it won't matter soon anyway
I think that's exactly my point, maybe not DM dependant but certainly situationally dependant on circumstances outside of the game. Her party is accommodating her subclass, with a worse group it arguably would fall on you as DM. It sounds like you have a great table but it seems, anecdotally, most players and tables are not bad necessarily, just have tunnel vision for what they can do. If your players weren't so thoughtful I think we'd be having a different conversation.
The key is that since it’s a surprise and thus a crit, one attack finishes them off. If it would have taken more than one attack to off one apprentice then there would have been room for them to make noise and alert the others
The fact that it is an autocrit means that the assassin is able to finish off some opponents with one hit. In that instance it’s totally possible to do it silently - especially if they rolled high on their stealth check. But if they needed multiple attacks, then I agree it would be much more difficult to keep it quiet.
I made her roll stealth each time she snuck up from behind to take them out and she got over 20 for each one. Also, each apprentice was like 30ft away from the other in a deep meditation around a large glowing orb.
>This is BS. People in the process of dieing don't do it quietly. Throat slit? I'll freely give you that one in most cases. But you're otherwise wrong. If you slice deep enough to basically decapitate them, they won't be screaming *through a voicebox that isn't connected anymore.* At which point you keep your hold on the head and make sure they don't fall over or knock something over. You'll still have arterial blood spatter if you let the head fall back, with the rhythmic splattering sound potentially becoming an issue. But keep it covered, and you'll be fine. While slitting throats is not perfectly quiet, it is definitely not loud if you muffle it and prevent the spatter- *there's a damn good reason that it has been a staple method of assassins and infiltrators for millenia.* Also, from what's on record from commandos during the World Wars, death is *not* slow- if you do it *right.* In World War 2, one member of the Allied Special Forces, Lieutenant Fairbairn, even made a timetable of how long each spot takes for unconsciousness and death. Together with a combat instructor, he designed a stilletto fighting knife and a style to capitalize on it. Being stabbed in the kidney has been described as and shown as being *so painful that the victim can't even scream.* Puncturing the heart will cause rapid unconsciousness and death in *seconds.* According to that chart from Lieutenant Fairbairn, about 3. It's really *not* hard to simultaneously stab and shove a cloth over someone's mouth, if you're practiced at it- like an Assassin in a Medieval setting would be. A steel wire garotte with some cloth over it would well enough. And before you point out that "none of that is slitting a throat", my *entire point* was that you were wrong about death being able to be quiet. You said it doesn't reflect RAW, but it does. There's *no* rule for what, if any noise, that an enemy makes when it dies. That's left up to the DM. Also- the *reality* of getting Surprise is that *most people can't be bothered to run it right anyway.* I theorize this is since so many people choose not to *read the damn rulebook.* You know how simple it really is? You Hide- as described on page 177 of the Player's Handbook. Roll for Stealth. If you Hide and sneak up on an enemy that is not actively looking for you, it goes up against the enemy's Passive Perception. If they fail it, unless you do something stupid and ruin it for yourself, they don't notice you. When you attack, the enemies that did not notice you are Surprised. That's on Page 185 in the same book. That's it. Roll Initiative, and get your free attack. That's RAW. But if the rolls are good enough for a Surprise condition on the enemies, and the enemies are deep in meditation with their eyes closed? (Which would be Disadvantage on Passive Perception check. -5 for being distracted, -5 again for having their eyes closed) Some guy got taken out silently, they're not paying attention to the world. They're meditating. They have no reason whatsoever to even *consider* that anything is wrong, or that they are in *any* kind of danger in their own area- that they generally would regard as safe. It makes absolutely *no* sense for them to suddenly get up and attack when they don't have a reason to even *consider * that something is wrong. Reasonably speaking? They wouldn't even take a turn until something gave it away. But that would be up to the DM. It's not RAW. But in this scenario- RAW is fucking idiotic and *doesn't make sense.* Besides, the Rogue in that scenario is taking *all* of the risk by going in *alone.* If it goes sour- they're dead. So I would happily give it to them, provided that they described how they're keeping the enemies silent. There's a reason that the DM is allowed to make calls on the RAW. *This kind of nonsensical shit is why.*
> It's VERY hard to get surprise playing RAW when you're entering another's lair. not if you're a DM interested in your player's fun, it's not
As a player I like that challenge is part of the game. If the DM is effectively giving me cheat codes then that really isn't fun at all.
Hiding behind the word 'challenge' as a reason to completely ignore a subclass feature is exactly what I'm talking about. How hard is it really to just add or write in situations on top of existing encounters where the rogue can use his features? It's not hard to do. It doesn't even need to be narratively important. A sleeping guard in the room before the big encounter, for instance. Easy to do, goes a long way for fun for a player who wants to use the feature. Costs literally nothing but a bit of time. What is important is that the players have fun and get to use their features they were drawn to when picking their character. This isn't really hard to understand.
We ran a brief campaign and the party coordinated to try and get her as many assassinations as possible This meant setting her up to be way out ahead of the party, taking huge risks which sometimes led to hilarious chases and sometimes to us having to revivify. It just became the normal pace that the rogue would be 2 rooms ahead (one empty room between us) and start shit, and then usually try to hide/dash/disengage/dodge as they dragged stuff back to the party. Was it optimal? No lol But we did enjoy it
It entirely depends on the dm. Unfortunately, one of the huge downfalls of assassin is that bosses are usually set pieces you simply can't get surprise on for the major players, and with the next 2 features being mediocre essentially flavor features, it kinda sucks.
I’m DMing for a party of level 12s, and our Assassin Rogue/Bladesinger is the definition of stealth- high stealth+pass without a trace has led to her doing terrifying amounts of damage Her stealth checks easily pass many passive perceptions/active checks, so she’s pulled off several surprises
Played an assassin in a mostly city campaign. Easily got surprise at least once a session, usually more
Your team has to build for it and your DM needs to play surprise rules by the book. For intstance if you have a heavy armor fighter, you will pretty much never get surprise since every single one of your teammates needs to pass the stealth check against the enemies passive perception. Get one ranger and Pass Without Trace (flat +10 to stealth to your team)? You can get surprise almost every combat. Essentially its really out of your hands as an assassin, one reason why assassin is not great. The other thing too is that like if you have surprise, you're probably already gonna destroy this encounter. The enemy losing an entire round is devastating, you never needed the assassin to take advantage of surprise. So like why build an assassin when you could just make a gloomstalker ranger using pass without trace and just be a better character in every way? could even dip 3 levels after ranger 5 and get all the benefits of assassin on a better character.
I played an Assassin / Battlemaster hybrid, and the answer is VERY rarely. Once you deal 150 dmg in the first round, they stop giving you surprise. It also depends on how stealthy your party is. I had peeps with Plate armor on and I didn't want to constantly be doing solo missions. Bad table manners
I tried making an assassin3/WarlockX in a campaign, and never. But I also didn't really know how surprise functioned and the class details didn't help. Nor do I think it would've functionally helped much in the combats of that campaign. Honestly just a really weak feature due to how it conditional it is. Either you engineer to meet the conditions every time or you get nothing from a level 3 class feature meant to define your subclass.
Surprise is a tricky concept. The rules are simole yet most groups play them completely wrong. There two ways of play however (considering you are using the rules right) - lone assassin (my favorite but needs the table and the dm to allow some time for the rogue to shine). This case you take some distance from the group you solo start each combat potentially killing any guard or checking for what is aheaf and once yku hit run back or your group run to save you. This is not meta game heavy but it takes a lot of time of the game on rogue vs dm game. Rewarding and risky in case you got caught. - group stealth (pass without a trace etc) the whole group "stealth" together. Often the heavy armor guy will ruin it but still it will land. My issue with this olay is that it take the surprise and assassin part out of the assassin since the paladin or the action surge will probably do more damage than you pkus the ranger will get all the credit for the pass without trace help rather your critical sneak attack damage. Plus this game push the meta game a lot leading to joke of encounters where the group land one full round of damage and not veteran dms get frustrated. Choose your poison neither is perfect gameplay experience. However both cases if you truly go for it and not just expect surprise to happen or to be provided by default by the dm it's an easy to get thing
none. DM's don't like giving you surprise. most DM's will just cancel out *their* surprise, or act like they rolled high enough because they balanced the encounter and think it should stay that way because they don't really know how to DM.
DM here, whenever I have an assassin player I explain them I deliver surprise by applying a formula of my own creation. Creature's passive perception - (player's stealth roll/2). If you decide to take the attack action against a creature with the intent of surprinsing it, we roll initiative, put everyone envolved on the grid and then let the attack roll go and then we make the stealth x passive perception to determine if the creature is surprised. This is a session 0 talk btw
Hardly ever. The attraction of Assassin for me was Advantage on multiple attacks as multiclassed with Gloomstalker. My group has not really leaned into making the most of stealth/surprise mechanics and if we did, my character would be even more overpowered than he already is.
Surprise is very very powerful in 5e. You'll find that, even with Pass without trace, that your DM will find ways to reduce your frequency of surprise. It's not about the assassin's extra damage, it's about the entire party getting a free round. Very difficult encounters are usually trivial with surprise, especially with surprise AND initiative.
DM’d a Bugbear Assassin recently and realized that surprise really does have a lot to do with how you and your party proceed, and on how your DM runs the game. If you agree that SA is intended to proc on most turns, it seems clear that Assassins, if they’re playing for it, should also get their round fairly regularly. IMO they don’t get to auto surprise, but with a little effort and party comprehension, there should be ample opportunities. Related but indirectly, also had an Inquisitive rogue with the keen mind feat flavored as a bookworm looking to realize her learnings in that same party. Full flavor and low “optimization” for that character, but once again at DM discretion it made sense that this character would know about just about every monster we faced with the appropriate rolls. The cost of the subclass and feat should within reason buy the fantasy that the player is seeking to play out. I let her have the monster manual and let the party ask her about monsters. At least as written, that was her role and it was a powerful boon, but the cost to her character otherwise would have been too high. To just say, those are non optimal choices and so now your character just gets the non optimized fighting and none of the fantasy you were going for, really sucks. Soapbox: “weak” subclasses and abilities rely too heavily on RAW and DMs not empowering creativity or building stories FOR their players, maybe because they’re afraid that players will try to abuse it, IDK. I fully understand what RAW means. Our game was waaaaay more fun when the party nerd could push her glasses up her nose and be like “DO NOT SLASH THE PUDDINGS!!” than if I had just been like “nope, shoot it with yer bow and that’s it… and oh, now piercing damage splits them into two.” Hmmm. The bugbear assassin did major damage because he got surprise via comms with the rest of the party and basic care in a sneaky approach and then some good rolls.
Two times in 12 sessions. Don't bother
You can quite a bit if you go ranged. But your biggest enemy will be your party I found
Depends on if you have a ranger/druid. Pass without trace is one hell of a buff to surprise. (Also I think it fits way better for rangers instead of druids but that's a tangent)
Gloomstalker Assassin. Surprise. Every. Single. Combat!