Smoldering Wizard's Old-School Gaming Forums

I'm making some tweaks to all the classes for my own personal house rules document. So I wanted to upload a few of them to get your feedback.

Here is my Assassin who has been slightly altered from the original. I'll up load a few others later today. Thanks again Doug as your feedback is very much appreciated.

A few things on this one -

- For thief skills - "Hide in Shadows [+3] and Move Silently [+3]". What does the +3 refer to? Thief skills in complete are percent checks normally.
- Same for "However with a successful Poison Arts skill check [+3]" - I don't see how this check is done or what die is used?
- "The base chance of a disguise being discerned is on a roll of 18+." - Again, same - is this a check on a d20? Does the disguise ability get better as the assassin goes up in levels? If not at 1st level 18+ on a d20 is a 85% chance of the disguise succeeding, which seems high for a novice assassin.
- "Fighting Style: When dual wielding an Assassin gains a +2 to hit & a +2 to their AC." - This seems over-powered, with that rule I would always dual-wield, especially since the assassin can't use a shield anyway, there is no downside.

For WB, my own preference for dual-wielding is to allow it with a DEX of 15+, then it gives +1 to-hit but damage is just 1d6 and no shield can be used. With variable weapon damage as in complete, I think you would be better off importing the AD&D rule that allows two attacks but at a penalty. If you want to give an AC bonus for dual-wielding (I can kind of see this as using the two weapons to guard more effectively), make it an option - either attack with two weapons OR defend with the AC bonus, but not both. Just my opinion of course!

Btw, I like the 'shadowy senses' rule. Have not seen that anywhere, is neat.

Hey Doug,

Yes, the thief skills. I forgot the mention that. I'm using the saving throw as the "skill check". So a level 1 Assassin has a 15 for their saving throw. A +3 is the bonus to that saving throw when using those particular skills. So a beginning Assassin would need a 12+ on a d20 to succeed at Hiding, Moving Silently, or using Poison Arts. Hopefully that's clear. Sorry about that.

Disguise. The base chance for success is already 90% rules as written. I'm using a d20 as mentioned so I simply converted the check and nerfed it slightly.

The dual wield idea. This came from the Akratic's house rules where his custom rogue was given the Swashbuckler fighting style that is listed under the Fighter. I'll link these rules under my Fighter post. But I thought it would be cool. But I definitely don't want it to be overpowered. So I appreciate that feedback.

Something else to note is I gave the Assassin the same attack progression as a Fighter. Not sure if you noticed that or not.

Using the save for skill checks works. I did not look closely at the attack progression, I don't think it's a huge deal to use the fighter as a guide for that, although I like keeping fighters unique in that way (for WB I like to beef up the fighter attack bonus progression to give them +1/+1/+2/+3/+3/+4/+4).

I'm honestly thinking of completely removing the extra classes and simply go with the basic 7 classes. I'm not really a huge fan of them anyways. So I'm basically trying to create my own OD&D house rules with a splash of BX. But hell, at that point I might as well just play BX. But there are certain touches that OD&D has that I find very cool and a vibe that is unsurpassed. So I may move some of my posts here to the Core section.

S&W Core is not mentioned often as the 4th printing is essentially Complete without the extra classes, but it is a solid game. You might find some ideas in the core rules 1st or 2nd printings, which you can download in the rules section of the forum. They have the racial classes for Dwarf/Elf and all d6 based hit dice, with the adjustments to the d6 like d6+2 for Dwarves.