How should I interpret Assassin's Death Attack conditions?

Question

The Assassin presige class feature called Death Attack says:

While studying the victim, the assassin can undertake other actions so long as his attention stays focused on the target and the target does not detect the assassin or recognize the assassin as an enemy.

(Dungeon Master's Guide, p. 180, emphasis mine)

Now, I do not know how to interpret this. For example, a creature rolling a succesful Spot check against invisibility gains a hunch that “something’s there”(DMG, p. 295). However, the creature has not detected an assasin, therefore a Death attack might still be performed, or so I believe. Similar case with listen checks: what has been detected is a suspicious noise, not the assassin. Or does that count as being detected?

A more extreme case is getting attacked by an assasin in Greater Invisibility, or while using the Hide skill to snipe. The logic "the assasin hasn't been detected yet, they only know something is hurling daggers at them" still applies.

What is the correct RAW intepretation of this matter? If it's unclear, what would be the most balanced way of intepreting this?

Answer 1

The intent of the rule, IMO, is that an assassin gets a death attack on someone not expecting to get ganked by you. So being alerted that "there's a suspicious invisible guy over there" does indeed foil a death attack since it puts the target on their guard against you (even though "you" are not totally clear to them, your presence and square is and that's good enough IMO). You have to be either be undetected or alternately not recognized as a threat (the standard "disguised as a barmaid" gambit). Anything that would kick someone into "I'm about to get attacked" mode, much as it denies flatfooted sneak attacks, denies death attacks.

Some of this is GM discretion (horrors!). Is that noise suspicious enough that someone really is in "time to whip out their weapon" mode if they hear it? Does the guy get a Sense Motive when you sidle up to him in barmaid guise and are vamping him to set up the close range stabbing? As a GM I'd rule "unknown invisible guy" is probably a dead giveaway - unless you're in a wizard's club where everyone has an unseen servant, in which case maybe not...

The assassin in my Reavers campaign has gotten off several successful death attacks in these scenarios:

1. The party saw a derro in a room and decided to hang back, he stealthed up and sneak attack/death attacked him
2. He's gotten sniper death attacks in while hiding in the ship's rigging during a melee; he studies a guy engaged with other folks for three rounds and then pops him
3. He killed a crewmate he had problems with at dinner

Now, invisible folks do get sneak attack even when someone knows they're there - I consider death attack to have a higher prereq though.

Answer 2

The rules pretty clearly state that the Assassin 1. must be detected, and 2. must be considered a hostile in order to foil Death Attack. (Or, as the rule says it, at least one of either not detecting the Assassin or not recognizing the Assassin as an enemy allows a Death Attack.) So yes, simply knowing that “something’s there” or “someone’s shooting at me” is insufficient.

As far as balance, Death Attack basically isn’t. The 3 round delay makes it useless in combat, party dynamics don’t often let the Assassin do a whole stealth mission solo so he can try to use it outside combat, and even beyond those details, the DC is usually low and lots of targets are immune to begin with. On the other hand, it’s an abrupt one-shot kill that, by definition, the target cannot respond to – when it works, the target just dies, that’s it.

You cannot really balance that; it’s too swingy. If it were more usable, it could arguably be broken, and even if it isn’t, it does kind of kill the fun of the game if it works too often. This sort of touches on a number of problems with the d20 System in general and 3.x in particular. For example, the skill system isn’t all that interesting: here, the Assassin gets to roll Hide and Move Silently, and the target gets to roll Spot and Listen. The Assassin hopes his are both higher; the target hopes at least one of his is higher. They can, before the encounter, try to increase the bonuses on these checks to push things in their own favor, but during the encounter itself? It is two opposed rolls that are effectively passive. Then the Assassin gets an attack roll; the target is still passive, and there’s not really any tactics either can use here: it’s just the roll of a die. @Magician’s Goblin Dice article nicely covers why this is such a serious problem.

Further, combat rounds are too “long” in the sense that hiding for three rounds during a fight so you can use Death Attack is a waste of time: you could have just fought with your allies (Flanking, say) for three rounds and you would have been more likely to kill your target than you are with Death Attack. Many encounters don’t even last three rounds.

The Assassin is not a bad prestige class; full BAB and full Sneak Attack is nice, and the spells are pretty awesome if you have, say, Spell Compendium. But Death Attack is basically a gimmick. It will rarely be viable, and though it will be pretty awesome the one time it works, it will only be awesome because you successfully used an ability that’s usually useless.

Answer 3

If you are detected you cannot use the death attack, a spot check to reveal a hidden creature or object will (if successful) deny the death attack action. Furthermore a sense motive check to reveal hostile intent on -Said bar wench- is in fact, again if successful, another deny of the death attack action. You can only preform a death attack if your opponent is unaware of your presents and/or unaware of your hostile intent.

The tricky part of this question is when a assassin is hiding in a crowed of people and attacks! Clearly the other people saw him right- he was right their in the crowed. WRONG! making a hide check with sufficient cover will make you have concealment and thus require a spot check to notice - A crowed of people is sufficient cover for a hide check.

(You may make your spot check only if you are actively looking for dangerous or suspicious members of that crowed)