solar separation wrote: ↑Wed Jan 31, 2024 10:14 am
Waldo52 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 4:42 pm
solar separation wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 8:06 am
i think this is one class that should remain gatekept / limited. as to avoid this thing that you're supposed to hardly ever see directly becoming common enough to be more widely known about than they already are.
I've seen this sentiment questioned by at least one other poster. So this is supposed to be a secretive, rare group. To an extent you can say the same for every role except for human fighter.
Assasins are rare compared to what? The necromancers and devil conjurers that appear everywhere you go? The elusive eastern monks with their exotic esoteric wisdom that we have filling the role of generic Skal villager? Druids privy to ancient hidden magic who serve as vending machines for barkskin at the gates of town? The giant or the guy with freaking WINGS? (Grits teeth, lol)
As adventures, most of us represent something somewhat rare. If you believe that the role of assassin should be rare and special even among a sea of unique snowflakes, that logic works better for a formal organization like the guild than it does for access to death attack, poison bonuses, etc.
if i was a medieval peasant and went outside my house i would be more likely to run into a human male fighter than i would some shadowy assassin.
if i was a wizard leaving my wizard tower to go out looking for components to buy, i would be more likely to run into a human male fighter than i would be some shadowy assassin.
i think you knew precisely what myself and other posters were going for when we said that.
your example of conjurers and necromancers are also confusing, because those aren't necessarily rare finds in the setting itself. i would say they're more common(not to say commonplace) than the aforementioned shadowy assassin.
which is how it should be.
Census data in a pretend elf universe is hard to come by, so there's a lot of room for "agree to disagree". But spellcasters are usually described as somewhat uncommon in the realms from what little I read back in the day, outside of more explicitly magical races like elves and yuan-ti.
I can't think of a way for facts to intervene here unless someone with a PHD in Forgotten Realms lore chimes in with statistics. Because I don't want this thread to devolve too deeply into people butting heads on a personally subjective topic for three years I'll just state my opinion one last time, because I think my views are in line with a sizeable chunk of the player base.
Spellcasters are common on the server, I suspect beyond what would be suggested by Forgotten realms lore.
Rogues are common on Arelith as well.
Rogues with some slightly jiggled mechanical bits and pieces, and a bit of extremely basic magic ought to have the opportunity to be common in the same way.
As for members of the guild, that should be much rarer. And those guild members, assassins, should be gated behind application and be made rare/mysterious by that process. Weather they actually have levels in assassin or not.
A final note of caution regarding this class: Assassins have a reputation for being specialists at sending people to Kelemvor's Wall. Weather they're truly overturned in this regard or not, we probably have a current sample size of seven or eight so it's hard to tell.
Unlike zhents or harpers or winged snowflakes the class is not only gated but also potentially overpowered. And when two people have a disagreement in terms of potential PvP rule breaks where do they go? The DMs of course. The same DMs who gave this optimized character the green light to make his murder machine. The same DMs who may have an unconscious bias in his or her favor.
I'm not occusing the DM team of corruption or incompetence, it's just basic human nature. Maybe instead of saying "This class is so good that you have to please us with your concept and earn it, we have good judgement", the best approach would be to take a step back, give it to everyone and then make the same balance adjustments given to any other class with a large enough pool of players to give reasonable feedback.
A class that supposedly specializes in killing other characters, a privilege handed out by the same DMs who adjudicate inter-player PvP disputes. I think there's a profound conflict of interests there. This is just unsettling.
If you're a DM and you consider yourself honest and fair, you're still not free from the unconscious bias. If you're investigating this player's conduct, even if you're not the DM who approved his application you still might not want to make another DM look like an idiot for penalizing a player that your colleague formally endorsed.
The specter of bias would still linger over the assassin's guild if it was open to most classes, but the mixture of this being a permission only option and a potential PvP juggernaut does not sit well with me.