Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Do Assassins suffer from arcane spell failure when casting their class spells? I ask because they don't seem to get the Bard armoured casting feats as choices. So will I be limited to wearing no armour?

Assassins don't suffer from ASF, you can cast their spells in whichever armor you want without limitations.

If I'm looking at this right, this is due to the limitations of the Assassin not having a spellbook, correct? They aren't casting "spells", mechanically speaking, and thus aren't subject to ASF. If the new Spell system gets implemented, then won't the Assassin then suffer from ASF as normal?

Not exactly. By PnP rules "Assassins casts spells like Bards do", which means that they can cast spells in light armor and likely have access to Battle Caster. How the spellbook will be implemented on BG, if it gets implemented, I'm not sure.


edit: Actually, it's kinda worded in a weird way as it's not clear what it means when they say "casts spells like Bards do". So I'm not sure.

Ah, my apologies, just ignore me in my ignorance

Cel'Daren wrote:Ah, my apologies, just ignore me in my ignorance

No need to apologize! That is what the forums are for. Ask freely

assassins are natural armored casters, the question would be if they had to pick up battle caster feat or not if they picked up medium armor prof.

generally most never get it, my AA assassin does have it but oddly enough she is also a bard with the feat anyway...

The issue is in how it's worded in dmg 3.5. "An assassin casts spells just as a bard does." should relate to the fact that they don't prepare spells. The bard's ability to cast arcane spells with no asf in light armor doesn't come as a feature of "bard spellcasting", it comes from a special kind of weapon and armor proficiency. But then again, why did they reference a bard and not a sorcerer in Assassin's features if it wasn't aimed at light armor spell casting. It's one of those things that wotc didn't really define clearly.


In any case, if I had to take a guess, I'd say that the Assassin class on the server will keep its spellcastiing without any ASF regardless of the armor type if the proper Assassin spellbook goes in.

Thids wrote: In any case, if I had to take a guess, I'd say that the Assassin class on the server will keep its spellcastiing without any ASF regardless of the armor type if the proper Assassin spellbook goes in.

I hope so, I made a strength assassin so I rely on heavy armour to stay alive. If Arcane Spell Failure gets added I may need to scrap him.

In Neverwinter Nights we treat Assassin spells as not having arcane spell failure at all. Because their spells used to work as feats, mechanically. The new magic system sticks with that. Its backwards compatible that way.

That's very good news! Luckily if the opposite, all my Assassins wear cloth.