Assassin kit and Poison Weapon
cbarchuk
Member Posts: 322
Due to the nerf are darts still the best weapon for an assassin to use? Starting a new game of SoD with a custom party and trying to decide if my poor elven assassin should stick with darts or go with shortbows. Or maybe I should just drop the assassin entirely and go with a stalker or something to fill the scout role. Thoughts?
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Comments
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/63930/assassins-using-darts-after-2-3-still-worthwhile#latest
Personally, I think it makes sense to go for both short bows and darts for an assassin for maximum flexibility. If you carry Biter with you at the end of SoD it carries into BG2 and is available right at the start.
Thanks for the feedback. I have him primarily using a shortbow with acid arrows. Anyways I went ahead and started two games simultaneously one with an assassin and one with a dual wielding stalker. I just finished the dungeon where you defeat Coldhearth the lich. Both groups did a good job and I'm playing on hard difficulty. But I did something interesting with the assassin during the Coldhearth fight. I'm using RR mod so my assassin gets the higher backstab multipler sooner plus the improved shadowblade you get from Slythe. So his backstab is sitting at x6 as an 11th level assassin. I have a 5 man group consisting of a Human Cavalier, Dwarven fighter/cleric, Elven assassin, Halfling fighter/thief, and a Half-elf sorceress. I sent everyone but my assassin to the broken portal where you have to destroy the phylactery. Had my assassin use an oil of speed potion combined with his boots of speed. From there I walked in the room with Coldhearth and agreed to help him. I turned around and backstabbed for 100 damage and dropped him immediately. Grabbed his key and flew up into the phylactery room and grab Coldhearth's phylactery. I then raced back to the broken portal room where the rest of my part was stationed. Right before my assassin arrived I had my other party members move into the room and engage the fire elementals that spawned. My assassin arrived shortly after and destroyed the phylactery. Done. Quick and easy. So having the ability to take out higher priority targets immediately has proven to be quite nice. I haven't used poison all the much. I've mainly have been using the assassin as a scout and backstabber. So he fared quite well in this dungeon. We'll see how it goes from here. Stalker has been rock solid as well being able to go toe to toe while dual wielding.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/48441/original-poison-weapon-ability-for-bg1-ee-and-bg2-ee
On the elven assassin, as you know I enjoy this class. I like the melee focus of your assassin and the liberal backstabbing and scouting. I have also found that approach to work well in SoD, same as in BG1. The RR SSoB is great and ensures smooth backstabbing.
If you are thinking more melee instead of more ranged, there is nothing wrong with using either short bow or dart instead of both. Short bow is just fine as an assassin's main ranged weapon. This would then leave you extra pips for TWF in case you plan to take advantage of RR's 3 TWF pips for later dual-wielding short swords already in early SoA.