My Home Brew Old Hack: What about Assassins? Need them or not?

Yes I finally gave my little old schoolish RPG sort of a name and since this month’s RPG Carnival is Assassins. I figured this would be a great way to start dumping my thoughts on to the old blog.
One of the things I want to do with my Home Brew Hack is to make things as simple as possible. That is especially true when it comes to classes. There’s no need to throw in a whole bunch of classes unless they really add something to the mix and are different enough to warrant the addition of a whole class. I looked at Lamentations of the Flame Princess for some real inspiration and just a little guidance. Heck, the game basically just has four classes (Cleric, Fighter, Specialist and Wizard) plus three racial classes. So here we go some thoughts on the Assassin.
So should the assassin even be a class? Or should it just be a job? Or both? As a job, it’s kind of a no brainer. Anybody who is willing to kill a specific individual for a price could be considered an assassin. In game mechanics, a rogue, bard or ranger could fit that bill and have the needed skills to get the job done. Heck even other classes could get the job if they are creative about it. If you want to be liberal about the definition, a good party getting paid to take out the evil overlord might even be considered assassins. So yeah. Just about any adventuring type could do the job of an assassin. So you can easily get by without even having a separate assassin class. So it’s really tempting to just the assassin to the side.
But then I always don’t do things the easy way but I also think that an assassin can bring a unique flavor to a party. So what about the Assassin as a class. What separates it from other classes? What makes them unique compared to everybody else? I think the defining characteristic for an assassin is that they are good at killing things. Not necessarily good at fighting but good at killing. What I want to do is make the class unique different from anybody else who might doing the job of an assassin. For my little Home Brew Hack I decided to give them a few neat abilities besides the normal Death Attack, sneak attack, poison and rogue like skills. So these are some of the additional abilities that an Assassin would get that no other class would get.
TRICKY FIGHTER (Dexterity): Assassins don’t always fight fair. They are experts at feinting and other dirty tricks in combat. When an assassin attempts to fight dirty, he makes an opposed Dexterity check. If the check is successful then the assassin may attack the opponent with a Sneak Attack. If the assassin fails the check then he has wasted his turn on maneuvering and looking for an opening.
PRECISION STRIKE: Assassins rely on speed and accuracy in combat. When using a light or lesser weapon in melee combat they may opt to use their Intelligence modifier rather than Strength when determining damage.
KILL WITH ANYTHING: Assassins are trained to use anything as a weapon. They take no penalty for using improvised weapons and even their bodies can be used as deadly weapons. At 1st through 3rd levels, these attacks do a base damage of 1d6. At 4th through 6th, 1d8. At 7th through 9th, 1d10. And at 10th, 1d12. (OK. I never really like Monks and they never really fit into my fantasy world view. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t like the idea of some of their abilities.)
Now like I’ve mentioned it’s really tempting to have no assassin class since that kind of leaves the rogue kind of boring in comparison. But messing with the assassin causes me to rethink the rogue and look for things that really make them unique but that’s another post.
Yes, this isn’t quite complete but the whole Home Brew Hack thing is still much in the planning and creation phase. Once things get more organized and finalized then I’ll post more details. But run with it and enjoy.