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2 years ago ::
Jul 10, 2011 - 9:20PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Apr 27, 2006
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 Dragon 401
Class Acts: Assassin: Black Flame Zealotby Chad Brown Few trust known assassins, so many assassins train and study in secret, honing their abilities through techniques developed and passed on by guilds. Talk about this article here. 
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2 years ago ::
Jul 10, 2011 - 9:32PM
#2
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While I overall enjoyed the article, requiring a feat to make shrouds work is a bit disheartening.
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2 years ago ::
Jul 10, 2011 - 10:15PM
#3
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Date Joined:
Oct 16, 2009
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While I overall enjoyed the article, requiring a feat to make shrouds work is a bit disheartening.
I, for one, will be houseruling it in along with Expertise and Improved Defenses. And would it have killed them to include some powers? At-wills, at least? Shrouds aren't the only reason assassins are unappealing!
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2 years ago ::
Jul 10, 2011 - 10:20PM
#4
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The overall problem is the shrouds themselves. Waiting more than two rounds to kill something is a bad idea.
Why would you wait to kill an enemy?
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2 years ago ::
Jul 10, 2011 - 10:26PM
#5
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Date Joined:
May 12, 2009
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I liked the article and the concept of the Black Flame Zealots a lot. Crunch, Fluff, i mean, bravo Pre-E Support  The new Power Black Flame Form is nice, though it is likely to not last long. The new Feats presented are quite useful, especially Inexorable Shroud, which i liked how it let you transfer your shrouds from one dropping enemy to another, regardless if you killed it yourself or one of your allies did. Shadow Reservoir can also be taken by Executioner cool i guess.. Lethal Shroud is a little boost to the mehanic too, and the Bracer of Assassination is a neat Item when combined to the Feat Devastating Shroud. It's just missing a few new Powers and the Black Flame Zealot Background to cheerytop !  Cookie to Chad Brown for this Class Act. And to Peter Tikos for the cool art. I liked the masked Assassin.
Yan
Montréal, Canada
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2 years ago ::
Jul 11, 2011 - 1:13PM
#6
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Date Joined:
Feb 25, 2003
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I think i will echo the sentiment to make the shroud-damage-increasin feat just a free bonus feat for Assassins. Guess it's one more reason to anxiously await Houserule support in the online CB on par with the classic one.
Planes Wanderer
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2 years ago ::
Jul 11, 2011 - 1:39PM
#7
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Date Joined:
Oct 16, 2009
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I think i will echo the sentiment to make the shroud-damage-increasin feat just a free bonus feat for Assassins. Guess it's one more reason to anxiously await Houserule support in the online CB on par with the classic one.
No, it's the shrouds-move-when-target-dies feat that needs to be baked-in. Lethal Shroud is just their Backstabber/Lethal Hunter/Killing Curse.
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2 years ago ::
Jul 11, 2011 - 1:41PM
#8
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Date Joined:
Nov 23, 2003
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What Eisenritter said. Don't give out Lethal Shroud: give out Inexorable Shroud. That's the one that shoulda been baked in.
"Nice assumptions. Completely wrong assumptions, but by jove if being incorrect stopped people from making idiotic statements, we wouldn't have modern internet subculture." Kerrus
Practical gameplay runs by neither RAW or RAI, but rather "A Compromise Between The Gist Of The Rule As I Recall Getting The Impression Of It That One Time I Read It And What Jerry Says He Remembers, Whatever, We'll Look It Up Later If Any Of Us Still Give A Damn." Erachima
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2 years ago ::
Jul 12, 2011 - 8:04AM
#9
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Date Joined:
Feb 12, 2004
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That and the previous feat that made enemies you're hidden from unaware of your shrouds.
Overall, it's nice. Some patch feats, with all the positives and negatives of patches, some decent crunch. Doesn't fix the overall issues with the assassin though - primarily that waiting to apply shrouds is by default a bad idea, even if you don't lose them if the target dies early; and that the assassin's overall damage output just scales too poorly due to relatively weak attack powers in paragon and epic - those problems still remain.
What this really needs is a companion article presenting a selection of new powers, particularly paragon and epic powers, which both significantly increase the assassin's potential single target damage output and that either allow shrouds to be built up faster or provide additional bonuses for invoking three or four shrouds at a time to make the mechanic worth bothering with.
Necromancy: Friendship is MagicSpoiler:
Show
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2 years ago ::
Jul 12, 2011 - 10:29AM
#10
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Date Joined:
Jan 21, 2004
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I agree that it would have been nice to get at least a couple of powers with the article, particularly fiery powers that work with the ki focus unless it was intentional for it to be most effective for multiclass and hybrid characters.
I think there are several feats that help assassins keep up with other strikers. It seems that they made the choice to go with a feat tax rather than a class feature adjustment as part of the ongoing review. There are now so many feats that I wonder if they will award a choice of one free shroud-related feat from a limited list when they eventually get round to tweaking the class, similar to the choice that the executioner gets.
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