Assassin's that don't attempt to assassinate

[Color Blotch]

Like I said... all it takes is one slip in party concentration to allow any assassin to launch an unavoidable and unbeatable ambush. One slip you might not even have chance to affect anyway.

Your point is that if you make assassins unbeatable then they'll be unbeatable. And I say just don't make them unbeatable, nothing in game demands that. Problem solved.

[glorioustheglory]

I like this idea. I mean, there are a lot of ways to implement it.

I also don't find Mandemon's concerns compelling. Yes, the ideal assassin tries to find a way to kill you without leaving room for error. That doesn't mean that he can necessarily find it/actualize it. He doesn't have to be incompetent, nor does his failure have to be luck, but maybe the party is unusually tough, so he tries the one-shot kill, but your party members have really tough helmets, so one of them gets a terrible concussion and loses a lot of HP, but it fails. Maybe his one-shot kill is still a pretty competent shot, but not good enough. Etc. It's not really MORE unrealistic than having a small commando team that can consistently tear through armies of opponents.(which literally almost every single RPG ends up having, and is a bajillion times more unrealistic than surviving an assassination)

I mean, DnD has a class called "assassin". Members of this class have the class ability have the ability to kill someone with one blow. However, success isn't guaranteed.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/prestigeClasses/assassin.htm
"Death Attack
If an assassin studies his victim for 3 rounds and then makes a sneak attack with a melee weapon that successfully deals damage, the sneak attack has the additional effect of possibly either paralyzing or killing the target (assassin’s choice). While studying the victim, the assassin can undertake other actions so long as his attention stays focused on the target and the target does not detect the assassin or recognize the assassin as an enemy. If the victim of such an attack fails a Fortitude save (DC 10 + the assassin’s class level + the assassin’s Int modifier) against the kill effect, she dies. If the saving throw fails against the paralysis effect, the victim is rendered helpless and unable to act for 1d6 rounds plus 1 round per level of the assassin. If the victim’s saving throw succeeds, the attack is just a normal sneak attack. Once the assassin has completed the 3 rounds of study, he must make the death attack within the next 3 rounds."

Maybe this is an UNFORGIVABLE loss of realism. Frankly, I doubt it, and given that we likely lose realism EITHER WAY, as either we have enemies who refuse to assassinate, or who assassinate in the most absurd manner possible, or we have competent assassins not have guaranteed victory against enemies who are tough enough.

[Color Blotch]

Loss of realism? I say good riddance.

[BlackGauntlet]

Couple this with Perma-death and voila! Instant unplayable game!

[J1811]

Since it's a party based game, you could avoid being assassinated by:
1. Assigning lookouts while sleeping
2. Parking a vehicle in a safe place/checking it for traps if you leave it unattended.
3. Being cautious when you get a radio message from someone crying for assistance in an obviously ambushable location

I'm sure there's more. Remember this isn't just randomly losing the game, there would have to be a reasonable story reason to have an assassin after you.

[Fuzi0n]

I have to say that the name of your topic is misleading. It should be: "Assassin's that don't ATTEMPT to assassinate". Being assassinated then having the credits roll probably wouldn't be very much fun.

Too often in games assassins don't attack you in the underhanded ways one would expect an assassin to operate. Even just an adversary incapable of attacking you head on will often hire someone to "deal" with you. These people approach you anouncing their intentions and then combat begins. They should at least begin combat at long range.

This is because some assassins are stupid, arrogant and boastful, or both. There is nothing wrong with this happening once in a while. They also might want to try and to talk to you first because they want to make a deal with you or something.

[Shady314]

I have to say that the name of your topic is misleading. It should be: "Assassin's that don't ATTEMPT to assassinate". Being assassinated then having the credits roll probably wouldn't be very much fun.

Done!

This is because some assassins are stupid, arrogant and boastful, or both. There is nothing wrong with this happening once in a while. They also might want to try and to talk to you first because they want to make a deal with you or something.

Sometimes that is the case. Or the assassin has a personal grudge and wants you to know who they are and why they are killing you. That doesn't bother me. I've never tried to say every enemy needs to be a world class assassin.
But very often games throw assassins at you that are presented as competent without even a personal grudge against you... who then attack you exactly the same as every other enemy you've stumbled across. They don't even have self-buffs up or anything!

[Infinitron]

1. Assigning lookouts while sleeping

Yes, you actually had to assign a lookout while camping in some classic RPGs from the 80's. They wouldn't heal overnight, but if you got ambushed, they'd wake up your party before the monsters got too close.

[suz]

This is because some assassins are stupid, arrogant and boastful, or both. There is nothing wrong with this happening once in a while. They also might want to try and to talk to you first because they want to make a deal with you or something.

Every single one of them

I approve of this topic, and my opinion is the same as on traps and snipers - if you make uber realistic things in game then implement them properly, traps should be deadly, snipers should kill and not scrape. Will it be fun? Probably not, but implementing some halfassed assassin who jumps at you screaming obscenities is IMO worse than not implementing it at all.

No amount of lookouts will help against assassins who have their shit straight.

[Fuzi0n]

This is because some assassins are stupid, arrogant and boastful, or both. There is nothing wrong with this happening once in a while. They also might want to try and to talk to you first because they want to make a deal with you or something.

Every single one of them

Never been ambushed in a game before?

[suz]

Never been ambushed in a game before?

Ambush isn't assassination

[Fuzi0n]

Never been ambushed in a game before?

Ambush isn't assassination

No... but you can be ambushed by an assassin who is attempting to assassinate you.

[AgentTate]

Yes and my players do that. Depending on what setting we are playing in there are many fun toys that exist to help players not be ambushed. Sensors, magic, animals, etc. Sometimes they do hire bodyguards or simply have bodyguards. Other times they are their own bodyguards. They meet on neutral ground. They don't eat food offered by people they don't know. It's more fun when players get proactive and creative.

I have to say that the name of your topic is misleading. It should be: "Assassin's that don't ATTEMPT to assassinate". Being assassinated then having the credits roll probably wouldn't be very much fun.

Done!

This is because some assassins are stupid, arrogant and boastful, or both. There is nothing wrong with this happening once in a while. They also might want to try and to talk to you first because they want to make a deal with you or something.

Sometimes that is the case. Or the assassin has a personal grudge and wants you to know who they are and why they are killing you. That doesn't bother me. I've never tried to say every enemy needs to be a world class assassin.
But very often games throw assassins at you that are presented as competent without even a personal grudge against you... who then attack you exactly the same as every other enemy you've stumbled across. They don't even have self-buffs up or anything!

Now that I fully understand what you're getting at I think I can appreciate what you're looking for. Also: kudos to you and your runners for playing Shadowrun the way it should be played.

[Fed]

You want the assassins to behave realisticly.
Someone argues that if they behave realisticly, it would mean a highly probable death of the whole pary.
(for example - the encounter starts with the head-shot-kill of a PC + you don't know where the assassin is + you are on the open)
And you say it's not gonna hapen because with the game mechanics a head-shot from a sniper rifle isn't a kill, but makes you loose some HP... And maybe blackout.
Which isn't realistic at all.

So the fundament of assassin's work (killing people) isn't working realisticly. Why and how should they behave realisticly?

Day 232.
Dear diary, today an assassin shot me in the head with a .303. It hurt like hell... I must have lost a half of my HP. He also tried to poison me, but I have high con, lol, I just resisted poison without any antidot!

There is no point in behaving like a real-world assassin if your world mechanics don't let you assassinate people like you should.
I don't mean to say they should not behave professionaly.
But I see a flaw in logic "they should behave realisticly - no, because if they do, they will kill us all the time, and it's not fun - it's ok, they will not kill us because we have mechanics of death that is nothing like the real world's death".

[tuluse]

There is a difference between assassins acting realistically and have a realistic success rate.

This is still a game, just because the assassin shoots at you from a distance doesn't mean you die in one hit. Just because you step on a trap doesn't mean you die. Just because you eat a poisoned apple doesn't mean you can't take an antidote.

So assassins can lay traps and act in a realistic manor without realistic results.

[suz]

So assassins can lay traps and act in a realistic manor without realistic results.

Laying non-lethal traps or shooting before you have a clear shot isn't realistic manner for an assassin however

[tuluse]

So assassins can lay traps and act in a realistic manor without realistic results.

Laying non-lethal traps or shooting before you have a clear shot isn't realistic manner for an assassin however

I assume in Wasteland 2 like in the first one, and the Fallout games, you can survive more than a single gun shot wound.

While it's true this is not realistic, it doesn't make attacking from a distance a stupid option.

[SagaDC]

I have mixed feelings on the matter, but I can definitely see where the OP is coming from. But then again, I don't think most of the aforementioned games (Fallout 3, New Vegas, Elder Scrolls) ever really had what we seem to be classifying as assassins. They were something more along the lines of thugs intended to warn us off, or to make an example of us. The closest thing I think we've probably seen to an assassin in any of those games was the sniper who camped out in Minefield, in Fallout 3. He stayed on an elevated position, covered the approach routes with land mines, and then sat back to carefully pick off intruders from a very long distance away. Was he a perfect killing machine? No. But a player who had no idea what was going on stood a very good chance of dying.

I feel that "assassin-like" encounters, if properly handled, could be very interesting. I wouldn't say that it's much fun when the chance of a player (or part of his team) dying is determined by a single randomized roll, but a conventional fight that begins with an attempted assassination might be fun. Of course, the opening of such a fight might result in the player losing a team member anyway, but that would hopefully be determined by the combat system as per normal. There are many enemies in the cRPGs of yesteryear that could obliterate a player character or one of his allies with a single attack, and some games DID allow for absurdly powerful sneak attacks or poisons (Neverwinter Nights comes to mind) that would often leave half of a player's party dead in less than the blink of an eye. Certain encounters, whether an assassination attempt or not, may leave half of the player's hardened Desert Rangers dead within a single combat round.

I would say it all comes down to the relative strength and skill of each assassin or team of assassins that is sent after the team. Some, the cheap or inexperienced ones, might indeed suffer from "bumbling assassin" syndrome. The more powerful ones could very well be a serious threat to the Desert Rangers, but that poses no more of a threat to the player than any other creature that might attack from the darkness and catch him off guard.

Of course, that doesn't apply to throats slit in your sleep or instantly lethal poison sprinkled in your food. I do NOT approve of things like that. At least not unless the player is given a good chance of detecting it, or has to make a series of very foolish decisions to get there (why yes, I'd like some of that greenish-looking pie, Granny Murderton).

[Shady314]

Of course, that doesn't apply to throats slit in your sleep or instantly lethal poison sprinkled in your food. I do NOT approve of things like that.

Luckily no one has asked for that besides Mandemon.

At least not unless the player is given a good chance of detecting it, or has to make a series of very foolish decisions to get there (why yes, I'd like some of that greenish-looking pie, Granny Murderton).

Or yes Myron I will take that suspicious drink, thank you.

You want the assassins to behave realisticly.

You didn't say who you were talking to so I apologize if you meant this towards another post.
That's more a side effect of them acting like assassins. It's not realism I like but verisimilitude.

Someone argues that if they behave realisticly, it would mean a highly probable death of the whole pary.
(for example - the encounter starts with the head-shot-kill of a PC + you don't know where the assassin is + you are on the open)

Which is odd because assassin's fail quite often against hard targets. Which rangers would be.

And you say it's not gonna hapen because with the game mechanics a head-shot from a sniper rifle isn't a kill, but makes you loose some HP... And maybe blackout. Which isn't realistic at all.

Again I am not looking for Hyper realism in my games.

So the fundament of assassin's work (killing people) isn't working realisticly. Why and how should they behave realisticly?

So they don't look like idiots and killing them feels like an accomplishment. Your argument makes no sense. If we followed it why do ANYTHING in the game realistically? Why not fly through the air just because? Because with no explanation it would ruin most peoples verisimilitude.

Day 232.
Dear diary, today an assassin shot me in the head with a .303. It hurt like hell... I must have lost a half of my HP. He also tried to poison me, but I have high con, lol, I just resisted poison without any antidot!

Dear diary today ANYONE shot me and I didn't die. Funny because I've been shot about 1000 times in my murderous rampage across the Wastes. Actually sometimes I did die but it was like time rewound itself and I got to try again. The Wastes are an odd place...
No one is arguing for one shot kills except maybe Mandemon.

There is no point in behaving like a real-world assassin if your world mechanics don't let you assassinate people like you should.

But the mechanics do let you assassinate people. If the NPC manages to kill you then you just got assassinated. If they don't kill you then they failed to assassinate you. If you pull any of those same tricks on an NPC (like planting C4 on Joanne Lynette) then YOU just assassinated someone.

I don't mean to say they should not behave professionaly.

Actually you just said that in the sentence above. Never in my OP did I use the word realistically. How does an assassin act professionally but also unrealistically? I think you're trying to argue the mechanics of the game make everything inherently unrealistic which is true but a rather meaningless statement as it applies to everything.

But I see a flaw in logic "they should behave realisticly - no, because if they do, they will kill us all the time, and it's not fun - it's ok, they will not kill us because we have mechanics of death that is nothing like the real world's death".

That's because you are arguing against a strawman.

[SagaDC]

In Fed's defense, that diary entry made me chuckle.