Some advice on Assassin

[citronvand]

Since my poor fluffy little Minotaur Berserker died I've now started a Vampire Assassin and I'm currently at the lair. I've noticed how I have to be MUCH more tactical, running away (bat form), stair hopping, poison/curare needles e.t.c. Quite enjoyable. I do have some questions I haven't found any answer for:

Should I use bat form when I explore new territory? Faster movement speed and higher stealth sounds to me like a good idea but maybe I'm overlooking something. I'm always at Bloodless or close to bloodless anyway so it's not like my blood is stopping me.

Armor penalizes stealth with the formula "-6 × (Evasion Penalty)^2". If I understood it correctly that's -96 stealth for a leather armor?
Now I have a strength of 10 and Armour skill of 4 so my evasion penalty is just 2, not 4 when I equip it. So would it be correct to assume my stealth penalty is -24?
I think it is possible to lower the penalty even further, I've seen people recommend that Strength and Armour skills should be equivalent of the encumbrance rating of the armor. But does anyone know how much strength and or armour skill I need to only get 1 EV penalty? Or 0 if it is possible.

Another question I have about the assassin is what type of weapon I should use. Short blades obviously since I want to backstab enemies but daggers or short swords? I currently have a +5 +5 Dagger of protection (5 AC) but I found 2 new weapons in the labyrinth which looks interesting: +3 +2 Dagger of Defenstration {stab, rFire+} and a +3 +5 Short Sword of Draining. I have no idea what {stab} does. Does it increase my backstabs? It says "extra damage" on the info screen but not how much or if there is any requirements. For all I know it could just be 1 extra hp damage on stabs. So, what type of weapons would you recommend to an Assassin and which of the 3 weapons I just mention would you recommend to me?

Finally, I checked out the Enchanter class and correct me if I'm wrong but... What the f... It's basically an Assassin on steroids. It has pretty much the same skills, basically sneaky sneaky stabby stabby. But they start with a spellbook that has Ensorcelled Hibernation (put enemies to sleep), Confusion and Invisibility. And all of them are hexes which vampires has a +4 on. Why would I ever pick Assassin over Enchanter? Especially with a Vampire. I guess I lose my curare needles but they are not infinite and a +2 +2 dagger is not worth it. What does a assassin have over an Enchanter? Because to me they're basically the same class except that Assassins doesn't have spells which would be EXTREMELY helpful for an assassin.


--------Feel free to skip my rant under this line--------

P.S. A bit off-topic but I just have to add a little rant about vampires in this game. First of all I find that from a gameplay perspective they're fine, as in balanced. Now I haven't gotten very far so my opinion may change of course. But something that just irritates me is that you gain more from being bloodless than "Alive". A vampire should in my opinion be at his best when he's full of blood and vice versa. You shouldn't want to be bloodless. Vampires should always want to drink blood, not "Oh, I shouldn't drink that delicious baby blood because then I could be poisoned and lose my cold resistance and not turn into a fat bat and I wouldn't be that stealthy anymore since everyone knows that mummified corpses are really stealthy, so I'll just starve". Yes, you can't regenerate health while you're bloodless, that's what you have old papa Makhleb for. And if that's not enough you can always drink a potion of blood, go heal up and then go back to starving again.

Now I understand what they're aiming for, basically a hybrid Undead/Human who is either Human or Undead depending on how much blood he has in him. That's interesting but not really a vampire in my opinion. Since to me a vampire is always undead and his power is directly tied to how much blood he has in him. Has any vampire ever starved because he would be more powerful then in any vampire movies/books? Anyway, that's just my opinion, feel free to disagree with it. Please don't take me for some kind of huge vampire nerd who thinks they exist and whatnot. It's just that I find it a interesting "monster". I find undeads in particular interesting in fiction. Brainless ones (who cannot think, no personality) are kind of boring though.

[crate]

Assassin is a gladiator that picked up a blowgun instead of nets.

[gofftc]

... A vampire should in my opinion be at his best when he's full of blood and vice versa. You shouldn't want to be bloodless. Vampires should always want to drink blood...

..feel free to ignore the spoiler below

Spoiler: show

To throw some objective pragmatism (whatever that is) at this fantasy game;
maybe the blood is what makes you human, and weak..just for the opposite of it.

[ontoclasm]

The formula you quoted for the impact of armor on stealth is based on the old EVP rating - leather had an EVP of 1, and thus subtracted a whopping 6 from your stealth. I'm not sure what the new formula is, but suffice it to say that leather barely impacts your stealth at all. In general, it's kind of a waste of time to calculate all these formulae to get meaningless numbers; you can usually get more information by just using your intuition (Does it seem like you should be able to sneak in leather? Yes, it does. And, indeed, you can). If that fails just try on the armor/weapon/whatever and see what happens.

Any short blade is a passable tool for stabbing, but daggers get a large additional bonus that makes them the best at it. The {stab} tag just adds some more damage to your attacks and ironically has nothing in particular to do with stabbing. All of those weapons are fine, and there's no reason not to carry around multiple weapons and switch when the situation calls for it (e.g. to the rF dagger when facing something with fire).

The big draw on the Assassin is curare. Your needles will indeed break, but only rarely, and curare is horrifically effective. Basically, if an Enchanter gets noticed by a tough enemy with high MR (or rC before getting Confuse online, or whatever), she may have few options other than running away. Meanwhile, the Assassin can just plug the guy with a needle and mash him up in melee. Enchanters are certainly powerful, though, and probably easier for a newbie.

[Siegurt]

Since my poor fluffy little Minotaur Berserker died I've now started a Vampire Assassin and I'm currently at the lair. I've noticed how I have to be MUCH more tactical, running away (bat form), stair hopping, poison/curare needles e.t.c. Quite enjoyable. I do have some questions I haven't found any answer for:

Should I use bat form when I explore new territory? Faster movement speed and higher stealth sounds to me like a good idea but maybe I'm overlooking something. I'm always at Bloodless or close to bloodless anyway so it's not like my blood is stopping me.

Coudn't hurt although it's time consuming to run away from everything as a bat, transform then come back to stab

Armor penalizes stealth with the formula "-6 × (Evasion Penalty)^2". If I understood it correctly that's -96 stealth for a leather armor?

That's the old formula (the old evasion penalty was 1 for leather)
The new formula is 2*(enc^2)/3 so with leather that's -11 (for comparison "uncannily" stealthy is 520+)

Now I have a strength of 10 and Armour skill of 4 so my evasion penalty is just 2, not 4 when I equip it. So would it be correct to assume my stealth penalty is -24?

Stealth doesn't use adjusted evasion penalty, it uses the base penalty of the body armour (see above)

I think it is possible to lower the penalty even further, I've seen people recommend that Strength and Armour skills should be equivalent of the encumbrance rating of the armor. But does anyone know how much strength and or armour skill I need to only get 1 EV penalty? Or 0 if it is possible.

see above

Another question I have about the assassin is what type of weapon I should use. Short blades obviously since I want to backstab enemies but daggers or short swords? I currently have a +5 +5 Dagger of protection (5 AC) but I found 2 new weapons in the labyrinth which looks interesting: +3 +2 Dagger of Defenstration {stab, rFire+} and a +3 +5 Short Sword of Draining. I have no idea what {stab} does. Does it increase my backstabs? It says "extra damage" on the info screen but not how much or if there is any requirements. For all I know it could just be 1 extra hp damage on stabs. So, what type of weapons would you recommend to an Assassin and which of the 3 weapons I just mention would you recommend to me?

Stab increases does additional damage equal to 0-25% of the damage done (it's the same as chopping for an axe, or bashing for a mace) either dagger will be better than the short sword, dagger's get bonus damage for backstabs twice as fast as non-dagger short blades (Although ultimately they have the same cap, so once you're in the high 20's weapon skill and stealth you might want to switch to a heavier short blade, won't make too much difference.

Right now the difference in damage between the two daggers is minimal, I'd use the protection dagger most of the time and switch to the rF dagger when you need to deal with a fire-damage dealer, you'll probably find something better later.

Finally, I checked out the Enchanter class and correct me if I'm wrong but... What the f... It's basically an Assassin on steroids. It has pretty much the same skills, basically sneaky sneaky stabby stabby. But they start with a spellbook that has Ensorcelled Hibernation (put enemies to sleep), Confusion and Invisibility. And all of them are hexes which vampires has a +4 on. Why would I ever pick Assassin over Enchanter? Especially with a Vampire. I guess I lose my curare needles but they are not infinite and a +2 +2 dagger is not worth it. What does a assassin have over an Enchanter? Because to me they're basically the same class except that Assassins doesn't have spells which would be EXTREMELY helpful for an assassin.

There are also needles that paralyze and sleep creatures, enchanters however *are* pretty nice. Primarily the reasons to use Assassin vs. enchanter are: 1. you get a better starting weapon, 2. you have a higher starting dexterity, 3. your skills are a little more devoted towards stabbing at the start.
You can always pick up a spellbook or blowgun later, and of course you will get better weapons as well.
Hexes have some drawbacks notably many late-game things are immune or very difficult to get hexes to work on so you have to have some alternate way of stabbing online at that point anyway, Assassins just get you pushed in that direction to start with.

[some12fat2move]

Assassin is a gladiator that picked up a blowgun instead of nets.

Then where's mah frickin TRIDENT

[DeathKnyte]

What does a assassin have over an Enchanter? Because to me they're basically the same class except that Assassins doesn't have spells which would be EXTREMELY helpful for an assassin.

An assassin has 3 more strength and 1 more dexterity at start, compared to an enchanter. Conversely, an enchanter has 4 more intelligence than an assassin. If you start one of each character, you will also see the different equipment (darts, blowgun, dagger +'s, spellbook) they are given - and what they have already pre-identified (poison potions come to mind).

An assassin can learn spells, while an enchanter can learn to use a blow gun. The starting backgrounds are just what you start with, and characters can (and nearly always) change and adapt to what the game throws at them.

God choices, can impact each background / class combination dramatically as well. You would not find Trog as helpful to an enchanter, but to an assassin he would prove quite beneficial.

Once you have more experience with playing the game, you can "make" the game more interesting, by playing along certain arch-types, or lines (called conducts), or simply spoil yourself and play each race according to optimal number crunching.

All in all though, if you're new to the 'stealth & stab' approach, an enchanter is the easiest to get going and start learning the nuances of the play style.



Edit: Verified and corrected the starting background stats.

[mikee]

Assassin is one of the best classes for realizing that class does not have to be a determining factor in how you play your character. Look again at some of the observations you have made. As an assassin, you do not actually start with spells, which has a side effect of making it difficult to even stab consistently. The blowgun and needles are very useful, but they do not require weapon skill and may run out anyway. Your starting weapon is among the worst in the game, and none of your armour is particularly special either. In terms of playstyle and building your character, what conclusions do you draw from these facts?

[Sandman25]

Assassin can worship Trog who provides needles, antimagic weapons and BiA. So Assassin does not need any conjuration to kill monsters he cannot stab.

[battaile]

I think mikee pretty much nailed it. My only As win was as a MfAs who started out fussing and fretting over how to be a stabby ninja fishman, then ended up just killing stuff with a bigass polearm and nemelex decks. The only legacy of his starting kit were 2.2 levels of throwing that never got utilized.