Whispers of Death: A Sourcebook for Assassin Characters

Four assassin product hit shelves at nearly the same time. So what is one to do? Buy them all and sort the chaff.

Whispers of Death, unfortunately, fell by the wayside fairly early in the comparisons.

Whispers of Death arrives in your email box as a 42 page PDF including cover, blank page & OGL.

$3 = 8 page equivalent for Mongoose's Power Class book
$5 = 40 pages for Whispers of Death (PDF)
$7.50 = 128 pages for Crimson Contracts (PDF)
$19.95 = 64 pages for The Assassin's Handbook

While better price-wise than the two printed products, it can't stand up to Crimson Contracts.

Formatting is an issue - while generally good, it lacks artwork, has a non-descript cover, and the indents before each paragraph are HUGE.

There is a distinct lack of flavor to this PDF. It launches straight off into rules text, with a selection of Prestige Classes. The prestige classes are all fairly generic - they are a collection of abilities (albeit interesting ones) but with no real background. When they DO introduce minor flavor elements, these are left very bland such as:

"All shadowblades are members of the Order of the Shadowblade. The Order is a structured organization, which may be found at the heart of any major city. The main headquarters is rumored to be in the massive city of Griffon, which serves as the capitol city of Kandor (See the Legends of Chaos Campaign Sourcebook for more information)."

It doesn't actually describe anything about the organization, and refers to a non-existant product. This is partially rectified in the end chapters, but not enough. The prestige class could have at least refered to the fact that the guild is detailed lightly in the Guilds chapter instead of refering to a non-existant book. In addition, some of the special abilities of the classes are not all that ... special. Like the ability of the Mask PrC to slip poison into someone's drink with a Pick Pocket check - which is something Pick Pocket already handles without this ability.

The Mask - 5 level class can be accessed at level 4, is good at "slipping poison" but does NOT get the poison use special ability, so has a 5% chance every time of slipping it to himself in the process.

Shadowblade - 10 level class can be accessed at level 6, and is a "best of" combination of the Shadowdancer and Assassin prestige classes, again without the poison use ability. Combining the abilities of these two different prestige classes is deadly, but I can see it, although I would certainly make this a much harder class to join.

Shadowstalker - 5 level class can be accessed at level 4... basically a poor-man's Shadowblade.

Slayer - 10 level class can be accessed at level 6. At level 6 it gains the ability to feint AS A FREE ACTION. "I feint" "It doesn't work" "I feint again" "It doesn't work", ad nauseum until finally the feint check succeeds... effectively this character gets to deal Sneak Attack damage with every attack. EVERY attack.

Sniper - 10 level class accessed at level 7 (although creative use of PrCs can reduce this to level 6) - only powers are increased sneak attack range and death attack range. Death attack up to 30 ft at level 10, and sneak attack up to 75 feet. Honestly, just make it a pair of feats.

The biggest problem however, is not the rules, but the complete lack of flavor.

The feats are interesting, but aren't very well explained. How does an assassin learn to deal sneak attack damage to undead? What part of an undead ooze is subject to sneak attacks, no matter HOW good your training? Also one feat has an ability requirement that is an even number instead of odd... but that's just lack of experience with the system, it would seem. None of the feats are particularly exciting, with two of the 11 being "take 10" feats.

The point where the book picks up is the Assassin Styles. These are a nice re-build of the Fighting Styles from Quintessential Fighter, but with XP costs associated to them, and of course, they are assassin-related instead of fighting styles. Again, they lack flavour, but these are useful tools that can be added to any campaign... having specific guilds that teach these styles can add a lot of personality to a guild. This is the chapter that I have used in my own games. Unfortunately there are only 6... but it isn't too hard to make new ones using the template.

The compensation section of the book (pay rates) has a table that handles the pay-rates for an assassin based on the target's CR... This is reminiscent of the old 1e AD&D assassin, but the table itself makes little sense... Why a level 8 assassin is paid LESS to assassinate a level 1 target than a level 1 assassin is beyond me.

The guilds are next. Each of the four guilds has a short description, and a standard multi-class advancement path for typical members. This is a nice touch, adding a unique edge to each guild. The guilds are not as flavorful as the ones in Crimson Contracts, nor nearly as detailed as the ones in The Assassin's Handbook.

The spell selection is limited, with the first spell being a level 3 spell that turns a weapon into a shadow version of a +1 brilliant energy weapon (a wee bit on the powerful side for a level 3 spell)

The last two pages are the Assassin prestige class from the DMG.

After the OGL, we have a preview of a class from an upcoming book, and then 10 pages of character sheets (one blank sheet, and four filled out sheets of sample characters, all COMPLETELY under-equipped for characters of their level. For example, the first character, at level 16, has a +2 long sword, a +2 silenced chain shirt and "Standard Adventuring Gear". The last character is level 25, and has a +5 shadowblade, Bracers of Armor +8 and a Ring of Protection +5. He also must have SOMETHING that grants a +4 Dex, since his temp Dex score is 4 higher than his normal Dex score, but it doesn't indicate what this might be. In addition, the character's "build" makes little sense, as his only core class is Fighter, yet he managed to pick up the Assassin prestige class after 5 levels of fighter.

Overall, I felt the book could have been VERY well served with more flavor, elevating the assassin, the guilds and the styles instead of reducing them to yet more numbers. While it did this better than Power Class: Assassin, it fails to have the flavor of either Crimson Contracts or The Assassin's Handbook. A few items within the book are easily added to either of the other books, but if you are only buying one assassin book, this isn't the one. With only 24 pages of actual material not counting the cover, blank page, ToC & credits, OGL and the character sheets, it barely measures up at all.

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