Assassin's that don't attempt to assassinate

[Mordul]

And yes - assassins are not super-humans. They usually succeed because they choose when and where they strike. They also usually choose the way to strike so there is no need for a second strike. They also usually shoose the enviroment and attack so the victim and/or his bodyguards don't have a possibility to retaliate.

There are many different kinds of assassins. You've laid out ONE kind. Most political assassins end up sacrificing themselves in order to get close enough to the target. They are usually caught or killed sometime after.

Possibility to retaliate* until they have killed their target (i.e. your party). If the assassin is only interested in ONE member of your party then you are completely correct, they could very well martyr themselves in the process. But more likely an assassin is after your entire party, therefore s/he would not act without the ability to more than reasonably kill your party in one attempt.

If an assassin does not choose a weapon that has all the chances to kill with a first strike (using one of his strongest advantages - surprise factor) and if he does not have a way to get out of retaliation before ant retaliation is even possible - he is an unprofessional moron (or has some other priorities than killing his target and living to collect the reward). Just as someone who goes to his target, declares himself to be an assassin and then dies pointlessly.

1) Unprofessional morons can try to kill you too.

Wait.. but wouldn't they just charge you? As you like the word verisimilitude, maybe you can explain why a moronic hitman may possibly successfully ambush you, but why an assassin could not create a killzone in game?

2) You can change hunting rifle to rocket launcher.

Umm what?

3) You can change any aspect of the encounter you like

What are you quoting here?

It does not depend on the world's mechanics.

Everything in a game depends on the mechanics.

The Story depends on the mechanics?
And I believe Fed was trying to say that the goal of an assassin is to bypass the defenses of a target whether they be skill-based, equipment-based. or situationally based.

If he choses a weapon/trap/poison/whatever that does not usually kill people (just hurts them - so PC have a steady fighting chance) - he is unprofessional moron who could have just walk to PCs and introduce himself as an assassin.

I think the NPC has a better chance employing the usual methods of assassination and succeeding then just walking up to the PC and then FAILING anyways. The failure of all these arguments is that games are giving us assassins that are failing to assassinate anways. So why not make them appear competent and fail rather than idiotic and fail?

Did you mean "I think the NPC has a better chance employing the usual methods of assassination and possibly failing then just walking up to the PC and then FAILING anyways."
You seem to be saying that assassins use assassination techniques. They don't. An assassin uses whatever opportunities arise to kill a target. If a target was waiting for a subway in real life, an assassin might shoot them in the rush or push them into the oncoming train. In Wasteland 2, what would stop an assassin from following the party and starts shooting while they are already engaged in combat? Shoots the Sheriff while you are getting a quest from him? All the deputies or townsfolk might mob you. An assassin is a person who will attack you at your weakest and most off balance.

You cann't make an assassin to behave professionaly and give PCs fighting chance. It's his job - not to give a victim fighting chance.

Yes you can. Even in the real world assassins fail. Some of you live in a very odd world where hitmen and such never fail and are never caught. There is no reason that a game cannot mimic this.

You misunderstand "fighting" chance. A fighting chance is what an assassin is attempting to discourage. An assassin might fail true. But the target does not usually escape unharmed. Most Assassins are not caught by chasing them down. They must be cautiously hunted down. An assassin on the run in Wasteland 2 should have a fairly high probability of attempting a booby-trap or comes after you when s/he realizes they cannot outrun your pursuit indefinitely.

2) Don't do reckless shots they take calculated risks and certainly not going to shoot when they aren't sure they'll hit.

No one has a 100% success rate in shooting. No one. You're assigning superhuman qualities to a guy with a rifle. Yes the best can have fantastically amazing hit percentages under extreme conditions but there's no reason the PCs can't exist in the lucky minority.

They can perpetually exist in that happy 1% or ultra-happy .0001%? They might obtain such a lucky roll, not exist there.

4) Unlike in video games - snipers, assassins and people in general value their lives, they won't be running to you or shooting recklessly if they fail the first shot. They'll just wait until you pack your shit and get out of there before making another ambush somewhere else.

I don't care about UNLIKE video games. We are talking about a video games. Is this the confusion? Are you and others thinking I'm in some off-topic forum just shooting the breeze about real life assassins?
Anyways I have no idea why you are even mentioning this. In my scenario the sniper shot 1-2 times and then runs away so I am thinking you did not actually read anything I wrote.
After the assassin packs up your party can double back and attempt to track down the assassin.

Yes. Someone might take a few sniping shots at your party, but again unless s/he wants only a subset of your party, they need to plan on something more substantial to take your party down.

I realize that in PC games and the movies snipers aren't portrayed as too-effective units, but it is the single most economically effective unit on the battlefield. They hit troop morale so hard that they justify extremely expensive airstrikes and mortar bombing even without having 100% chance of eliminating them.

Any unit on the battlefield can justify mortar or airstrikes against it. As for troop morale I don't think there will be a morale mechanic for the party.

ANY Unit? So Private First Class Mendez hiding behind his Humvee might be attacked by an airstrike as well? Must be a senator's Son.

QFT

No you can't make an assassin behave professionally AND make them more powerful, skilled, smarter and better equipped than the party and give the party a fighting chance. So don't do that.

EDIT: I will stop saying sniper and instead use sharpshooter. Perhaps the word sniper is carrying some baggage here.

"So don't do that"? The assassin doesn't need to be a deity, s/he just needs the right opportunity.

Personally I think the word "Assassin" is the misnomer here. You want to take it from Level 1 to Level 5 while we see Assassins as Level 11, Game-Breaking.

Verisimilitude simply means the quality of realism. It doesn't mean Quasi-real. It doesn't mean Faux Real. Your argument is similar to asking a person to fill a container...and getting angry when they turn a fire hose on you. Do you want a cup of realism? A quart? We gave you an ocean. Too much I get it, but we merely started answering your thread.

I understand that videogame "assassins" are more or less broken as-is, but they add a quantity of realism by making your actions meaningful in-game. Now to you, their cons outweigh their pros, but for others the balancing act is acceptable. In Fallout New Vegas on the Hardest Difficulty, it didn't matter that I might see the Legionnaire Assassins coming from over the hill, they could mess me up. I respected their combat effectiveness, and the fact I was hurting the Legion. I did not play the game feeling outraged that the Assassins were not attacking while I slept but rather happy with what I got.

[BubbaBrown]

An anecdote from another game: In Fallout: New Vegas with the New Vegas Bounties 2 mod, there were plenty of situations where those you killed/arrested had friends who were none-too-happy about what you did. I remember three times that I'd get surprised by an assassin trying to take me out. One was up front about it and tried to SMG spray me to death at point blank range. Later an entire platoon of hick family members charged me from over a hill with the only warning being, "There he is! Git 'em!" Another tried to snipe me with a decent rifle from a nearby building. The bastard was using a Stealth Boy and the only clue I had that something was up was the first slug to the arm. The last one made his attempt on my life after I turned in someone. I heard a loud metal plunk against the NCR Bounty office building. I had no idea what the hell it was. Another loud plunk hit within my view and I heard the distant sound of a big gun. Then, I got tagged by huge powerful round to the leg that did something horrific despite having upper-tier armor as I ran for cover. After some careful scouting and dodging fire, I discovered the brother of the guy I just turned in was trying to take my head off from a few hundred yards away in cover with a .50 rifle.

So in context of the original post, I'd like to be made to believe anyone after me is going to at least make a halfway decent attempt to take me out. I mean it might be a bit unfun to have an insta-kill headshot without any warning, but a random grenade tossed at the party from a shadowy alley in the bad part of town wouldn't too far out of the question. Have a little bit of warning be from the fact that a normally populated area is strangely empty of people.

[SagaDC]

What Fed said. I have described why having "professional" assassins in the game is bad idea and why we have the "moron" types. What Shandy has consistently described are simple hit men, not assassins.

You're just caught up on semantics here. What his request boils down to is that he wants NPCs who are trying to kill your party to act in a way that isn't running up to you and telling you they are going to kill you.

Are you totally against ambushes, attacks from range, and traps in the game? If not, then you agree with Shady's request, and we're just talking about degrees of deadliness here.

I would agree with tuluse, here. There seems to be a major misunderstanding about what assassins actually are. According to just about every dictionary in the world, the word "Assassin" means: 1) One who murders by surprise attack; 2) A murderer, especially one who kills a prominent person; and 3) A member of the secret Shia Muslim sect that would engage in suicidal attacks on prominent targets (1094-1256). The word "professional" does indeed imply that the individual has done it on a regular basis, but by literal definition that just means someone who regularly attacks by ambush (or someone who repeatedly kills prominent people, I suppose). What many people describe in their descriptions better describes a professional sniper, a skirmisher, or a guerrilla warrior.

[Fuzi0n]

I wonder why this thread is so long actually. Being ambushed by assassins is pretty normal in a game.

If they decide to talk to you first, well then there is usually a reason for that - Maybe they are stupid and arrogant or maybe they are acting as bounty hunters trying to capture you.

[Mordul]

I know that using movie references in a game setting doesn't correlate perfectly, but the broad idea of assassin usually involves someone so effective at killing that (while he can certainly still fail) s/he succeeds in killing their opponent more often than they fail. In Hanna, the movie about a girl raised in isolation as an assassin, While she has good aim it isn't about sniping. Hanna kills grown soldiers and hitmen/assassins in hand-to-hand combat. occasionally shooting but usually only against other armed opponents. I bring this up not because snipers shouldn't be in-game, but because an assassin IMO is a person who kills effectively, a person who plans an attack (Hanna's entire life is training and planning the attack) to eliminate the chance of the target surviving.

[suz]

stuff

According to some people Hanna should train all her life and then come at your party, (not speak up - that's a taboo according to OP), do double damage - but not kill someone and then be swisscheesed by 7 bullet spewing machines to be proudly called an assassin

[Mandemon]

stuff

According to some people Hanna should train all her life and then come at your party, (not speak up - that's a taboo according to OP), do double damage - but not kill someone and then be swisscheesed by 7 bullet spewing machines to be proudly called an assassin

Yeah, that's what OP has been saying. Complains about assassins not being assassins and then goes on to length to say how assassins should not assassins.

[tuluse]

I know that using movie references in a game setting doesn't correlate perfectly, but the broad idea of assassin usually involves someone so effective at killing that (while he can certainly still fail) s/he succeeds in killing their opponent more often than they fail. In Hanna, the movie about a girl raised in isolation as an assassin, While she has good aim it isn't about sniping. Hanna kills grown soldiers and hitmen/assassins in hand-to-hand combat. occasionally shooting but usually only against other armed opponents. I bring this up not because snipers shouldn't be in-game, but because an assassin IMO is a person who kills effectively, a person who plans an attack (Hanna's entire life is training and planning the attack) to eliminate the chance of the target surviving.

And remember how Eric Bana fails to kill Cate Blanchett? That's a perfectly good example of what OP is asking for in this thread.