"On the rainy week before Christmas, WotC gave to me..." (sings)

Hey all,

Singapore is all dark, rainy and wet these past couple of weeks, and it makes me want to turn emo make an assassin (Ninja!), a monk or something shadowy (warlock?) to embrace the changing season. It helped that WotC released "More Toys for Assassins" earlier on today so I should be able to get working on a shiny new dark 'un in the Character Builder update later tonight.

With Shane thinking of a ranged rogue, Shell rolling an assassin (Ninja!) himself and Vek a cloth-clad avenger, I will try not to accelerate our party's demise with a wrong turn into an ill-advised class. But it never hurts to come up with a few new concepts, and if all else fails, I do have my reliable wizard build or Sunny the SNSD Paladin of Pelor to fall back on.

I grew up on Ninja gamebooks (Way of the Tiger) and AD&D, where the monk and assassin (Ninja!) classes were so flavorful and historically accurate in what they could do. Even now, these classes might not be the strongest or optimal in DPR (damage per round), but the joy of a classic monk brutalizing stuff with his bare fists is...
ki-learly unmatched.


The assassin (Ninja!) class is obviously not a suitable choice for going unarmed fighting, but they can fake it and go without a double handed melee weapon by taking their pick of short-ranged implement powers in the class. With this build, the assassin (Ninja!) can utilize a light shield in his off hand too.
On the other hand, the Monk and the Assassin classes are flexible enough to warrant holding an ordinary double staff (A fullblade/urgosh might favor the Assassin as they do have [w] dice powers, unlike the Monk) for the AC bonus and allow their personal Ki Focus to power both their implement/weapon attacks.

Anyhow, it's way cool that these "Oriental" classes are in 4E, be it that WotC does not want us to see them as Oriental classes and omitted "Ki" as the keywork for its power source just in case it sounded too.. Oriental. Yellow, Oriental, Chi-sh or whatever their PR personnel want to call it, I just know that these classes can only get better.
The Assassin (Ninja!) is a DDi subscriber-only product and will still be supported in future, while the full Monk class will be out next year in PHB3 with even more feats, paths and powers. Not to mention many more Ki foci choices too.

Personally, I cannot wait to get my hands on PHB3 as I am a lifelong Monk fan-boy. The rest of the Psionic classes are just gravy to me. By the way, the Ardent (Psionic Leader) preview came out today as well.

Heals? Power Points? Leader? Heals?

Our current healer-less SoW party scoffs at these keywords.

And why they could not come up with a better name for the class beats me. There is already an Ardent Champion paragon path, the Ardent Strike at-will power and the Ardent paladin class feature etc to further confuse a 4e player. I would even have taken Mantle-ist, over classes like Shock, Missile or an Astral (all connected to common at-will powers).

No worries, it might just be the yuletide holiday mood and the festive resting of the braincells which led to this unfortunate event. I just hope that this is not a benchmark for the future naming of classes to come.

If not, Alex might have a ready-made job for him at WotC. (Maybe a primal class called a "DearDear" or something which excels at maiming fawns, bears and other British wildlife)

*Shudders*



LATEST UPDATE: Vek has left my Ca-en campaign due to work/character constraints and I wish him the best in our alternate SoW adventures. I will be looking for a fourth player and thus, Chapter 2 is indefinitely canned until then.