Assassins and action economy

The assassin makes a trap where rocks fall on the party. They all have to make their defensive checks at the same time. Then the assassin runs away to try again another time.

Image sauce?

Too big to be linked directly.

media.wizards.com/2015/images/dnd/articles/Toon_Hommlet_full.jpg

Domo!

Only through GM fiat, which is why they either are completely ineffecive or completely unfair. There is no middle ground with them and as such shouldn't be used.

Most assassins don't wait until they're locked inside a 10x10 featureless white room with the PCs to try and assassinate them.

AoE attack in the ambush round that has enough damage to kill off everyone in range immediately.

In other words, explosives, lots and lots of them.

Sell a fake/cursed "Rope Trick" spell to the party wizard, wizard casts it and whole party climbs up the rope into what they think is going to be a standard Rope Trick extra dimensional shelter, thinking they'll be safe from potential assassins. In fact the rope leads to a sphere of annihilation.

Well, maybe not Sphere of Annihilation, but rather some other near-certain death situation.

You can't kill the party outright or it's unfair, but you also can't give them a fighting chance or the assassin's incompetent. The best you can do is to turn it into a plot hook.

The rope trick leads the party to hell. There's no way back. They need to fight their way through demons and shit to get home.

Why is he doing it alone? He should be hiring local goons to act as muscle, disposable pawns, and meatshields. He should be ambushing the party after something else has already bloodied them.

extremely long range attacks in an area where there is either no cover or only cover of poor quality that simply buys you some extra time

That's assuming the assassin jumps on the party like a moron instead of poisoning their food, separating them, or murdering someone in their sleep.

Historically the effective way for one person to assassinate a sizeable group is to blow them the fuck up. Poisoning is an option too but honestly it's pretty difficult to feed a bunch of people enough poison at the same time to kill them.

If you want it to be a combat encounter then don't make your assassin be a fucking idot: he's going to hire mercenaries to back him up and start the fight from hiding at long range if he can.

But honestly I wouldn't throw an assassin at the party as an actual challenge. An assassination ATTEMPT can be a great plot hook - suddenly the party has to track down whoever's got it out for them, ideally while they're under pressure to complete a primary objective - but you generally need to set it up to fail because it's bullshit to have everyone roll to save vs lethal poison out of nowhere.

Who says he has to kill all of them? in-story he could only be hired to take down a specific target and in a meta-sense if he takes down, say, the only person for miles who can raise the dead or has some other critical ability you were just about to use, then him accomplishing that and then either retreating or dying is mission accomplished.

Hit and run. That's why 5e rogues get Cunning Action.

If he can't divide them, he brings a squad of thugs and strikes when they're not expecting it. He stalks them and joins whatever fights they are in if it doesn't seem they're gonna win, then reaps fame. He makes allies in the society that the party exists in, to have his battlefield prepared for him. If you set that kind of a thing up, it's less bullshit.

He doesn't need to kill them all at once, either.

Even elves meditate

Snipers gonna sni-

The assassin is an Elite or even Solo enemy.

By not LETTING them do that many things to his one?

Use terrain, use traps, hit isolated targets instead of taking on everyone at once, attack while they're asleep, get some hired goons...

Simple.

Have him show up when the party is really fucked up and leaving a dungeon or some other big bad fight. He's been trailing and tailing them for days or weeks waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Leave clues during the session(s) before this happens that they feel like they're being watched every once in a while.

If the party is too tough or too magically prepared, feel free to add extra things to ensure the assassin manages to function, whether that's magically enhanced stealth, some sort of trap that the assassin has prepared (or even a cursed item placed where the players would find it), some sort of disguise where they can more easily get the drop on someone by appearing to be completely nonhostile before approaching, or extra hired goons as necessary.

Remember to always add deadly poisons to the assassins weapons and if he has to run away that's fine, the poison will do it's work. It's the whole assassin shtick and it's always fun to play to the traditional stories.

Why does the assassin have to kill them all at once? It annoys me when GMs always have the enemies fight to the death and just flat out attack the party.

When I run the enemies will try to run if they would believe they have enough HP to survive, beg for mercy if they don't, or try to go out with one last hurrah if they are crazy enough.

The assassin might stage a distraction (bonus if it wounds the party), run in and kill one PC and then try to leave.

By being too subtle.

Solo ganks.

>Have him show up when the party is really fucked up and leaving a dungeon or some other big bad fight

Perfect evil plan. Players can't even complain because it's just such a smart move.

To unfuck solitary bosses and action economy you can simply give a boss multiple actions.

How do you do this without cheating? Magic items? Haste?

You're tasked with subduing a group of people whose physical density rivals that of an early ww1 tank and half of you think jumping out at some point will do anything?

You don't kill these people like lost tourists, you lead them to their own ruin by telling them what they want to hear and setting them upon each other or impossible goals with bad information

>two-headed ogre
>one of the heads is a sorcerer/psion

Assassins don't work on tabletop, because the whole point of assassinating people is that, when done well, you won't give your target any chance to fight back or even defend themselves.

Even if your system allows for a scenario where one regular assassin can instantly take out an entire PC party, only the worst kind of GM who is actively trying to piss off his players would do so. It's like an even more obnoxious version of just going "rocks fall, everyone dies."

Forced memes are forced

A better way to do it is to have an ally or informant tell the party that there's a price on their heads.

Then the party has to make sure they're prepared for an assassination attempt. Examples include...

>Bodyguards
>Magical proximity alarms
>Befriending the local assassin guild or similar

If the party doesn't make an attempt to protect themselves, have a close NPC ally take the bullet for them. If they don't prepare at all after that, then have them wake up in the middle of the night making saves against poison.

YOU!

I like you! We can be friends!

>player insults a crime boss on a deeply fundamental level, kills his son, and results in the destruction of his family and arrest
>crime boss tells him he is dead
>consigliere hires essentially Agent 47 with most of the bosses remaining cut on his orders
>player is mad when he is strangled to death in his bedroom after failing literally every single roll in the entire encounter

What should I have done? I even gave him a warning from an old gypsy woman.

round 1
>assassin attacks from shadows, getting sneak attack
>initiative rolled
>entire party focus fires on him, taking off 2/3 of HP

Round 2
>assassin rolled in middle of initiative
>paladin and ranger get him down to 5 HP
>on his turn assassin tries to run away
>wizard casually magic missiles his ass

Gee, good idea user. Running away was such an effective strategy for him wasn't it.

If you only killed one player, and if you gave him a chance to fight, I think you were okay.

>someone tells you you're dead
>don't immediately kill them
Fucking casuals.

shadow step

if you want the assassin to actually succeed:
large bombs, poison gas attacks, all enchanted to prevent detection (assuming magic exists)

if you want a 'fair fight':
incapacitating bombs like flashbangs or teargas, (with difficult but possible saves, and that limit/slow actions without preventing them completely), slightly less powerful enchantments to prevent detection

That's literally the only way to run that scenario. I'm sure you're a great GM who always comes up with inventive scenarios and challenging fights.

>three-headed ogre
>the other head is a bard with perform: kazoo

Eh, he needs to divide and conquer yo.

Force equal disasters for members of the party with horrible consequences should they not be dealt with simultaneously.

ie, the paladins wife is kidnapped in transit by a band of particularly rapacious orcs while at the same time, the rogue is told in no uncertain terms he needs to do a job, and do it now and its lengthy, complicated and just get the fuck over here or we're 'revoking' your membership.

the halflings village is under siege and the opportunity has come for the daddy issues tiefling warlock to finally speak to her father person to fiend, in hell.

If they split, the smaller groups get minions while the larger groups get him. If they dont split, their people get maimed.

I would also introduce this guy to the party and his reputation early on and have it slowly build up.

Possibly have him do this before and give them puzzle pieces to figure it out. A hopeless challenge is boring and not very fun.

A strike to your respective jugulars can be exciting, especially if you have a party good at utilizing the world around them.

Paladin sends his paladin bro's to save the halfling village, rogue sends some bandit friends to ransom the wife, the tiefling tells her absentee father to fuck right off and the halfling pulls strings with the halfling mafia to get them to lay off the rogue and they proceed to track down his base of operations and confront him. Bam, awesome encounter and a few sessions of intrigue.

Poison. Full auto weaponry that allows shooting multiple targets. Traps. Framing party. Fire. Traps (falling rocks and such).

日本で暗殺は成功しない、日本には嘘つきと死人(ゾンビ)しか居ない為、海外からゾンビパークと馬鹿にされている、野球は子供の言う事は選手は聞く必要は無い、すぐ嘘をつくから

...

>serving revenge hot
Pls.