The Assassin’s Handbook is from Green Ronin Publishing’s Master Class line of D20 supplements meant for use with
Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition. As with the first title in this series—
The Shaman’s Handbook—this slim (64 pages) soft-cover presents a new base character class, a few associated character classes and an array of accessories that go well with the new classes. The rest of the book goes over to presenting a context wherein the class makes sense, which (often) doubles as a bare-bones campaign setting.
The version of the assassin class presented in this book takes the prestige class version seen in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (henceforth "DMG") and expands it into a base character class. The class has the Base Attack Bonus, Hit Die and Saving Throw progression of a rogue. This class gains 4 skill points per level, and it has 22 class skills—all focused upon the stealth, professional and infiltration skills needed to do their job—and it has a specialized spell list with up to 4th level spells. As class abilities, its primary powers are the Killing Blow (as with the DMG version) and an improved use of Coup De Grace attacks. It gains the Sneak Attack ability, and it grants bonus feats from a sanctioned list as well as bonus languages at 1st level. In return, the PC can’t be of a good alignment. In the abstract, it is well designed. The spells are neat, practical and entirely in keeping with the sort of stuff that assassins would develop and employ; some of these new spells are also additions to the sorcerer/wizard list.
The new feats are welcome additions to the D20 corpus of Open Game Content. Some of them are clearly meant for use with the assassin class here and in the DMG; these are the “metapoison” feats (Empower Poison, Extend Poison, Maximize Poison), those like them (Poison Focus) and feats that improve one’s stealth/ambush capabilities (Death From Above, Glib Tongue, Prone Shot). More general feats include Improved Dodge and Weapon Panache (This is like Weapon Finesse, but the PC substitutes his Charisma bonus—instead of his Dexterity bonus—for his Strength bonus on attack rolls.) that I’m certain will see wider use. There are reasons to take, and to not take, all of them; none are too sweet to ignore nor too poor to bother with.
The new poisons are also welcome additions to the Open Game Content corpus. There are roughly an equal number of historical and fantastic poisons, both types of which I’d expect to see a great deal of use beyond this book- especially in adventure modules. I do hope that I see them appear in other products—especially Dungeon Magazine—in the near future. None of them are must-haves, and none of them are undesireable; as with the feats, they fit into that sweet spot between “too good to pass up” and “too piss-poor to bother with”.
This assassin variant is sufficiently different from similar classes—rogue, ranger—to take and hold a niche apart from the rest, but the assassin class as a concept remains too specialized for me to accept this version over the DMG prestige class version. Indeed, this concept of the assassin—as a narrowly focused professional killer—is the poster child of the prestige class paradigm. I know that I’m not alone on this position, and neither am I alone in accepting this concept if the context allows for it. The authors wisely provided such two such contexts: the Mafia-like crime families of the Vultur and the cult (based on the historical Ismaili sect) Straight Path cult. The former presents the assassin as a secular, underground trade where children learn the skills as they grow up, whereas the latter trains youths to assassinate as a holy act, heedless of personal safety. To the credit of the authors, this is well-written fluff content and I found it quite useful. I may not use the setting information as written, but the fluff provides two useful templates that show a GM how to form an organization where the assassin character class (any version) would logically fit. I want to see this sort of stuff in a book devoted to a single character archetype.
The sample characters in this book are not all assassins. The leader of the Straight Path cult is a fighter, one of the Vultur leaders is a barbarian and there are other classes seen in this group of NPCs: clerics, monks, wizards, rogues, etc. Neither are they all human; the NPCs include a yuan-ti, a half-orc, gnomes, dwarves, elves, tieflings, etc. The authors went out of their way to ensure that a representative sample of races and classes got some space, so as to show the reader how they might find a niche in the shadowy underworld of the assassin. (Again, as an aside, I must note that I see little difference in practice between designing an infrastructure for rogues or rangers and designing an infrastructure for assassins; the only true difference is the focus of the group’s activities.) These NPCs receive full stat blocks and all of the background information necessary for a GM to use them as written as well as templates for similar characters.
By the way, I must call out the chapter spent on the historical assassin sects of the world. The Ismaili sect—the sect that the Straight Path cult comes from—as well the ninja and the Italian assassins (from which the authors created the Vultur) receive their due as folks who shaped the evolution of assassination as well as assassins over the course of human history. This little bit of history sparked an interest in more information about these groups as well as others—such as the Thuggie sect of Kali worshippers in India—and I so wish that there were space for a bibliography.
(Note on Open Game Content: All text in Chapters 1-6 & 12; all bracketed text in Chapters 7-11. That’s rather generous, and I appreciate Green Ronin for being so.)
In conclusion, I say that The Assassin’s Handbook is good for those looking for a cheap (and $15 is cheap) supplement for use in developing adventuring material that focuses upon the shadowy underworld where organized crime and espionage are the key players for those who live there. I’m not keen on the revised assassin class herein, but that’s purely a matter of taste; I dig the prestige classes and all of the accessories, so I see those crunchy bits—when coupled with such tasty fluff content—as being worth the price right there. This book is certainly not necessary—it’s as much a luxury as an ice cream sundae—but it’s worth having around. There’s something useful for most gamers in this book, and it doesn’t take a major readjustment of a campaign to make use of most of it. (Just the revised assassin class itself needs that.) The authors did a good job, I’d like to see more from them.
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