Rogue - Assassin Changes

[redoubt]

Here is the first draft of potential changes to the Assassin tree.


Core Abilities:

Assassin's Trick: This now works on all enemies and no longer has a saving throw. Targets now lose 25% Fortification and their Sneak Attack immunity.

Nimbleness: Nimbleness no longer requires sneak attacks and works on any hit.

Deadly Shadow: You gain +2 Dexterity and +2 Intelligence. You gain +4 Sneak Attack dice. You gain +4 to Reflex saving throws.~

Change acrobat sneak speed to a straight movement speed buff. Then add to each assassin core:
+10% sneak speed
+10% chance to hide from tremor sense/blind sight while sneaking
+10% chance to activate switches/levers etc without exiting sneak.

Nimbleness needs to add to dodge cap with each stack. Expire ONE stack at a time (not all at once.)

Deadly shadow: Also add +10 hide/move silent. +2 Assassinate DC. -10% threat.

Assassins trick needs to be quicker.

Tier One

Poison Strikes: (Opponents struck by these attacks are considered to be "poisoned" for 10 seconds.)

Shiv no longer reduces threat when you attack. It instead offers an additional passive component that reduces threat of all your attacks by 5/10/15%. The attack portion now also makes a Bluff check using your Bluff skill.~

How long does the threat reduction last?

Stealthy: add +5/10/15% sneak speed

Sneak attack training: add -10% threat to each tier (but only to sneak attack training in the assassin tree.)

Tier Two

(As a reminder, Venomed Blades now scales with 200% Melee Power.)

Bleed Them Out: The bleed damage scales with 200% Melee Power.

Damage Boost: Cost reduced to 1 AP per level. Changed to boost Melee Power by 10/20/30.~

As others have mentioned, bleed and venomed blades scale poorly.

Venomed blades:
reduce cost to 1 AP per
1d4/1d6/1d8 per 5 rogue levels

Bleed them out takes to long to build up useful stacks. Drop the cooldown to 4 seconds. Increase bleed damage to
1d8 at rogue 5
1d10 at rogue 10
2d6 at rogue 15
2d8 at rogue 20

Tier Three

Critical Accuracy is removed.

Critical Mastery: (1/1/1 AP) + 1/2/3 bonus to critical damage and to confirm critical hits~

Good.

Tier Four

Critical Damage is removed.

Weakness Poison: Your attacks against "poisoned" enemies (from Poisoned Strikes) reduce the Melee Power and Ranged Power of the opponent by 10 for 10 seconds.

Execute: Melee Assassinate attack: +3[W] damage. If target is below 30% health, deal 500 damage. This damage scales with 200% Melee Power. (Cooldown: 15 seconds)~

Raising the % is good. Add a second check against the assassinate DC: if below 30% the attack triggers an assassinate attempt even if not in stealth. If not assassinated, deal 500...

Killer needs to expire one stack at a time.

Tier Five

Measure the Foe: Gain +2 Melee Power, +2 Dodge, +2 Maximum Dodge, +1 to hit and +1 to the DCs of your Assassinate ability for every 4/2/1 seconds you remain stealthed. This effect stacks up to 5 times and lasts for 10 seconds after you come out of stealth.

Deadly Poison: Your attacks against "poisoned" enemies (from Poisoned Strikes) do +5 damage.

Light Armor Mastery: (1/1/1 AP) While wearing light armor you gain 2/4/6 to maximum dexterity bonus of your armor. (This also affects maximum dodge.) You also gain 1/2/3 Physical Resistance Rating.

Sev~

Measure the foe:
add 5% sneak speed per stack (yes, if you get all the sneak speed bonuses you will sneak faster than your normal movement, but these are assassins. They should "appear" out of nowhere. Speed is key to this and also just to keeping up with the group in todays game.)
Have the stacks expire one at a time.

Light armor mastery:
T1 gives 2 PRR
T2 gives PRR = 2/3 BaB +4
T3 gives PRR = full BaB +6

Knife spec:
This is a very narrow category of weapons. Keep it narrow, but boost the bonus. Some options include:
+1W
+1 threat range (assassins are very good at making accurate hits)(This would be a total of +2 threat)
+1 multiplier (this would be a total of +2 now)(I think the first two options are better for an assassin than this one though.)

THEN ALSO:
Work out TWF.
Work out the auto agro problems.

There are lots of great ideas posted in the rogue forum and I don't want to repost them all here, but there are lots of neat ideas for the stealth system and I even posted one about the assassinate system for crit fails and successes causing different reactions for the mobs.

Thank you for the feedback and being active in the thread.