Pretender assassin - balance?

[Gandalf Parker]

Ive used assassin pretenders. It can be fun. The Lord of the Hunt with a Black Heart for instance.

[pole_shift]

The Mictlan national Pretender (the bat-like Lord of the Night, not the Smoking Mirror guy) *is* an Assassin! Few players know this.

[Vynd]

I agree with Truper for the most part. Most of the time there should be things to do with your Pretender than hiding and sneaking around, assassinating people. From time to time it might come in handy, especially if you can lure your enemy's prophet or Pretender into position for assassination. But it seems to me that most of the leaders you catch won't be all that impressive, and meanwhile you'll be missing out on the Pretender's help in research or fighting or whatever.

Since this is true, it doesn't seem like that unbalancing of a thing to let Pretenders, even powerful ones, be assassins. It would probably be more "realistic" to limit this to the physically smaller Pretenders or the ones with illusionary powers or things of that nature. It's kind of hard to imagine a Titan sneaking up and bushwhacking someone.

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by pole_shift:
The Mictlan national Pretender (the bat-like Lord of the Night, not the Smoking Mirror guy) *is* an Assassin! Few players know this.

I didn't !

[Arralen]

It isn't.
It's stealthy+10 only...

[pole_shift]

It isn't.
It's stealthy+10 only...

He *is*. Try him out. Sneak him into Neutral Province and notice you can select "Assassinate Enemy Commander" as an action. He rocks.

[ April 13, 2004, 23:52: Message edited by: pole_shift ]

[GavinWheeler]

I get the same result, using the Windows Version and patch 2.08: He does not have the 'assassin' ability icon in his description, but does get the option to assassinate.

I would agree that using the pretender as an assassin is not really worthwhile most of the time, so would not be unbalancing.