Thieves and Assassins

Assassins are not a separate character class (in AD&D® 2nd Edition rules). They are simply people who are awfully good at killing other people. But the skills of the thief are valuable for this, above the natural skills of any other character class, because they are skills of stealth and sneaking about undetected. Many assassins will be thieves, multi-class thieves, or characters who began their adventuring life as thieves but then changed to another character class.

The assassin kit earlier in this volume adds detail to this natural affinity. Going further, the multi-class thief is probably the strongest option for assassins. Combining the skills of the thief with spells such as invisibility, jump, knock, levitate, rope trick, and sleep, just to consider a few low-level spells, makes for a potent assassin indeed. The fighter/mage/thief has all these advantages, of course, plus the bonus of additional hit points, and is thus an especially attractive option, although progress is slow.

So, given that many assassins are likely to be thieves, there will always be a fairly strong link between the two guilds. Cool relationships are possible if the thieves have "gone respectable" (become merchants themselves, etc.), or if the assassins are especially evil, ruthless sorts under a truly heinous guildmaster. Not unusually, though, the two will have at least moderately friendly relations. Information is quite likely to be exchanged between the two guilds, the guild seniors may meet occasionally to fraternize and discuss prospects, thieves may be paid to do spying groundwork for an assassin setting up a kill, apprentices of one guild who may be suited better to the tasks of the other may be exchanged; there are many ways the guilds can cooperate.

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