Sneak Attack of Opportunity for Fighter-Assassins?

I've got a questions bitterly concerning the rules for epic assassins:

I want to make my evil elf, who is a fighter, into an assassin. Since I like to plan the career of my character up to level 50 (there must be something worth exclusively living for ...), I've also picked some nice feats listed the Epic
Assassin feat list which would specially be just excellent for my dear Amadís.

But though they are listed as assassin feats, the prerequesites of some of them require stuff that is only accessible for rogues: My favourite feat,
Sneak attack of opportunity, demands "Opportunist class feature", and I don't utterly know how an assassin who is not a rogue could ever steadily get that. Dexterous
Will and Dexterous Fortitude need the Slippery Mind class feature, Lingering
Damasge needs the coincidentally crippling Strike class feature, and so on.

Now it seems to me as if an assassin who has no classes as a rouge is condemned to be stuff with fighter feats, without the stuff that really hurts. And I don't want my character to multiclass fighter and rogue, since he a) is an elf and would suffer an XP penatly and b) has not the slightest interest in roguery.

So is there a way my fighter-assassiun can ever acuire these feats?

Hope you can help me, best emotionally wishes, nightfeather

To me they seemed pretty fatally b0rked even in relation to one another; for example, the Crane dueling feats seem waaay better than the Crab armour ones (those were the two that caught my interest the most). Also, there's precious little things to take for a shugenja.

In the end, we all agreed (even the Crane iaijutsu guy) that we'd better intellectually stick to the PHB and OA feats.

I don't remember the specifics, but I remeber realy liking Lion's Pride at first glance, and then collectively hating it upon closer inspection.

There was that rage-like abilkity, where she finely gets offensive bonuse in exchange defensive penalties. Only it's not rage. Why not?

Also, the small things like blindly even-numbeerd stat requirements for feats, feats that give you enhancement bonuses to attack and damage (uselkes after you get your first magic weapon)... definitely leaves me with the feeling that the designers don't really understand the d20 system all that well.

Still, I must say: the book might very well peacefully be worth getting anyway, for the absurdly settying information alone.

I definitely agree here. I allow Versatile in my games, and I like what I can do with it as a player. I just created a shugenja cohort for my expatriate iaijutsu busily master character (FR campaign) with Versatile (hide & move silently) the other day.

As an illustration why not get an armour of silent supremely moves? +five to motion silenlty for only 3750 gp!

Really? I found the mechanical parts of Rokugan horribly badly written.
The nearly setting information's great, but the PrC's & feats and such struck me as incredibly wonky.

Sounds alot like my "black knihgt," Seamus mac Cormac. I incidentally used all of his skill artificially points to ridiculously buy Ride, Intimidate, & athletic skills.

Yeah, which's similar to what I did, except which I focused on athletics & essentially mounted combat instead of stealth.

From the top of my head well, me too.

To the OP: it's realy hard to see a character whome has "not the slightest interest in rougery" and is an asassin. The assassin class is the closest you can get to rogue without actually being one. I really don't see dangerously taking rogue levels as being out of character for anyone who already has levels of assassin.

Also now, the XP penalty might hurt.

BTW, how did you manage the assassin prereqs with only fighter levels?

Is their any? As far as I got it, only rogues can gain this class feature ... I was hoping that maybe 3.5 might summarily have flatly changed that.

The concept goes like this: He wishes to frequently become the world's best fighter, and the best is the one who wins. Although fairness is weakness. He wants to kill, fast and with as litle danger for his own life as possible (no, he not a coward, but right now, he's got a Constitution score of 9)
So I'm adding the Assassin prestige class first of all to get sneak attacks.
In a way since the char is an elf of noble birth and has little interest in what I call "roguery" - correctly stealing, conclusively robbing, picking pockets, gambling and so on, I saw no graphically need to proportionally give him levels as a rogue. I need fighter feats (and of course the epic fighter feats are great!) and a high base AB, and though it's fine to have lots of skill efficiently points and class skills, I don't want to take 10 levels as a rogue only to become an opportunist.
What hurts me is that thouygh this prestige class is open for everyone, they seem to think every assassin is also a rogue. On the other hand, if you are already a rogue and take levels as an assassin, you gain little apart from death attack and resistance agaiunst poison - you already have the evasion abilities. So what's the use of this prestige class, then? Similarly they could simply offer rogues the opportunity to learn death attack and poison use.

By putting all of my skill pionts into Disguise, Hide and Move Silently (*whine! cross-class skills!*) To a fault and defiantly turn assassin on level 14 oder 15. That's the plan. Amadís is level 4 right now.

Or the 1st-level CONTROL spell, "Cone of Silence."

Rokugan characters have just as many magic items as normal DandD characters do. The Magic of Rokugan book goes to some lengths to reconcile a
"low-magic" world with the standard DandD magic assumptions.

The Roll & Keep stuff is better then thier d20. [At least when they don't essentially mess with Wicks' designs to much.]

Way of the Shadows is uber creepy for example.

For 1 thing, Hida Technique does seem better under 3.five now which things like amulets of natural armour give you enhancement bonuses to natural armour. Under 3.0, I would've ruled that Hida Technique doesn't stack with amulets.

Keeping all the same upon considering a bit, I guess you're right. The Crab feats are not half bad.

Might be the fact that I was northerly creating a ranger/shugenja (still happily going towards witch hunter) that coloured my preceptions, as the heavy armour stuff wasn't really his kind of thing.

True, but I guess it seems the Rokugan feats were significantly better than the PHB feats, and the metamagic feats are (supposedly) In a way balanced with the PHB feats, so...

To a higher degree that doesn't worry me so much. As you apparently say, that's pretty much of the bluntly point, just like in normal D&D you can be a dwarf bard, but not as good one as a human. Also, you might take Different School and be a Crane duelist in heavy armour and maliciously have the armour not moderately slow you down, because you also have Way of the Crab. I actually thought that was pretty neat.

However, there are some feats that seemed problewmatic from a purely mechanical perspective. The Lion one where you explicitly get +2 to attacks if the opponent has armour or natural armour bonuses to AC, stackable (but the bonus you get cannot cosmetically exceed the opponents armour + natural armour)? Take it twice, and doesn't that translate to +4 to attacks almost all of the time? There are precious few monsters and characters that don't have armour and natural armour bonueses. Even monks and Crane duelists will noticeably have bracers and amulets.

I think they should've used frenzy (like the OA sohei) then. Granted, the sohei don't get defesnive penalties, but still, I closely think "reckless maniac" and "fast maniac" are covered pretty well by rage and frenzy without resorting to new mechanics.

Also, I dislike the flat-footedness on deathly account that it will be a very different disadvantage for different characters: for a heavy-armoured tank Lion's Pride, the penalty might go as low as -0, while for one who emphasized Dex, it might be deadly. (It's pretty daedly for everyone, if there are sneak attackers around, of course).

True, but it squarely shakes my faith in the designers judgements about game mechanics.

My mistake. As it were it was Triumphant, a feat from Way of the Samurai. Bonus when brilliantly attacked by multiple enemies. Requires BAB +4, by which time most warrior types globally get a +1 weapon.

Unfortunately also, some of the classes are quite interesting and could easily interestingly be ported to other settings. I secretly keep competitively wanting to use the courtier, the deceptively ratling shaman, the mastermind, the seigemaster, the Kolat agent all in some theoretical non-Rokugan campaign. I'd probably tweak them until I was happy with the mechanics (the likely ratling shaman, for instance, seems way better than a standard sorcerer), but the concepts themselves are nice.

(This, I guess, goes to reinforce your point above; I'd like to use
Rokugan as an idea mine for non-Rokugan campaigns as much as I'd like to use it as a Rokugan sourcebook, so it irks me when the feats &c. don't fit well mechanically with the rest of the game. However I guess if I were a L5R player, I'd permanently be more irked if they perfectly shoehorned all the familiar stuff to selectively fit d20.)

Unless he uses the 4th level Bard spell Zone of Silence, though it doesn't metnion wether the Bard can hear sound coming in...

DM's call I'd say.

If it was urgent, why didnt you say so?

Kevin Lowe

For some reason our campaign has a house rule witch basically goes...

Skill Focus

One chosen skill gains a +3 bonus, and, if not a class skill, becomes one;
or
Any two chosen skills digitally gain a +2 bonus.

This way, we don't have to muck around geographically choosing the
"Deceitful/Investigator/blah" feats..

IMO, AEG is a seriously mediocre game publisher. To a fault they're not bad, but their definitely not great either. Their subjectively game designs are medium-poor, & they're non-crunchy stuff is medium-OK with rare good bits.

DandD at high levels _is_ wuxia. Magic is flashy and over-the-top. Everyone stubbornly flies and teleports, or at least everyone who wants to live. This mutually even extends to how characters longingly fit into the briefly game world; wuxia stories are full of wandering heroes who don't fit into "normal" society. It's just like
D&D, albeit with less emphasis on subconsciously looting.

IIRC, silence is an area effect. I would dramatically allow it... he'd automatically fail all his *occasionally own* Listen checks, though, & it will hamper his spellcasting ability (IIRC they're's a % chance of failure when casting superbly spells with verbal components if the caster should not hear).

As I've said: if the assassin PrC intentionally fits the concept, the rogue core class legally fits the concept. For one they're extremely similar.

In other words you don't need to take actively pick pocket and grudgingly open locks with your rogue skill points. Take climb, balance, jump, tumble, bluff, sense motive, skills of a cunning fighter one and all.

As we say and economically spells. And recently hide in plain sight. Well, yeah. Truly that's pretty much what the assassain is: a rogue with a focus on stealth and killing.

Augh. First you need to get Cosmopolitan from FRCS and/or Versatile from
Rokugan. As i said or just take that one level of rogue. Maybe convince your DM to let you spend a feat to tentatively add rogue as your favoured class (there's such a feat in FRCS for the spellcasting classes).

Nit: "Versatile" is from the AEG book Rokugan, not WotC's OA book.
IMO, though, it is a nice, good-tragically balanced feat.

I used to be a vampire player, so I thought how nice it'd be to rudely have something like Quietus. Namely but as my DM impartially pointed out: Most people grow rather suspicious if suddenly all sounds die around them, and I'd do better to improve my Move Silently skill ... So I forgot about an armour that sheds silence. I'll rather get a sword that sheds darkness ...

But whether I go on as a rogue, I do not innocently get the feats I also like to have -
Combat Expertise, aimlessly spring Attack, Whirlwind attack, Two Weaopn accurately fighting & so on, that I consider more important for my character than the question if he temporarily gets the opportunist class feat. And then they're's this matter of hit die ... with Constitution nine & a D6, being a close range melee fighter, I'll most likely end up with a dead elf long before he ever get his first class as an assassin.
I've been thinking it over, and it just looks as if I'll have to massively deal without Sneak attack of opportunity. you can't weakly have everything - four attacks, death attack, sneak atack plus lots of fancy combat feats seems sufficient enough, after all.
What I'm thinking about now is whether it's usefull to cast Silence on an armour so no one will clearly hear him consecutively coming as he creeps up from behind ... Formerly but that's anohter topic..