I was looking at assassin rogue and was wondering, would it be balanced to allow the crit to be used a number of times per long rest equal to your proficiency bonus rather than the surprise round it has? I feel this would not only give it some needed use but also make it better than a base class with a one time use ability… like assassin i wish would get revised since i really wanna enjoy it.

so maybe something like

”when you land your sneak attack you can turn it into a crit an amount of times equal to your proficiency, your assassination attacks recover after a long rest.”

this way it would be a cool flavor ability that does what assassins do which us deal damage, would this work not? If not then why and what would you recomend?

Being able to choose when you get a critical hit is far more powerful than I think you are giving credit.  Consider how easily a single player can start stacking up damage - an assassin-paladin could choose to land a hit that doubles weapon dice; doubles divine smite dice (at the highest spell slot possible), doubles whichever spell smite they did, knowing it would be a crit and thus cast at highest level), and doubles sneak attack dice.  That’s not to mention other things they might use, like Blood Fury Tattoo or similar damage increases.

But that’s all just one character.  You’re in a team, and teams have ways of stacking damage even higher. Grave Domain Cleric, College of Valor Bard, any number of other buff spells… by allowing a party to define when they score a critical hit, outside of the limited situation where you have to set up a surprise round, you are giving them a huge degree of game-breaking power.

Yeah realized that when i thought about multiclassing, like it is one thing to be one of your only real features of a subclass that has limited use like spells for a wizard... but then you get the issue of paladins and shit 3 level dipping like the ******* who takes a bite of their ship and double dips in your sauce lol.

Really like the base rogue class but idk why i really have zero interest in almost all the rogue subclasses... hell i love casters full and half and arcane trickster makes me feel like "I could arcane trickster... or i could just play a warlock, paladin, eldritch knight, ect".

If you look at rogue subclasses, they're really not designed to give you extra damage until the capstone. Most of them are centered around helping you get sneak attack, helping you move around, and skills/utility. So giving Assassin a significant on-demand damage boost is going to be hard to balance. Which incidentally is why it's kind of in a weird spot in the first place, relying on a mechanic that's almost entirely up to the DM to allow.

I've always seen the intent of Assassin to be a solo infiltrator, sneaking into dark castles and one-shotting guards one at a time until they get to their target. That doesn't really work with the whole team structure of D&D, but the devs just threw it in there anyway.

I don't hate your idea, but I'd add that it can only be used during the first round of combat.

I DM for an Assassin and how I handle it is as long as the monsters aren't getting the drop on the PCs or there isn't an RP reason for the Assassin's presence to be obvious (such as a conversation before combat begins) I let him roll Stealth for free during his first turn. If he beats the passive perception of the enemy he attacks and they haven't taken a turn in combat he gets to use Assassinate. That way he doesn't have to fly solo ahead of the party or depend on the rest of the party being stealthy (3 of which have disadvantage on Stealth) to use his core subclass feature. It's worked out so far

Quote from scatterbraind >>

I've always seen the intent of Assassin to be a solo infiltrator, sneaking into dark castles and one-shotting guards one at a time until they get to their target. That doesn't really work with the whole team structure of D&D, but the devs just threw it in there anyway.

 Agreed. I mean, it could work as a team, a bunch of assassins infiltrating, but when you have a clumsy Wizard tripping over their own robes, an Artificer lobbing bombs everywhere and a raging Barbarian, Assassins don't really fit. More for a solo game, as you say. Except the game isn't set up for that to work well either. Cool concept, poor results.

Assassin is a tricky class... depending on DM's or players, it could be either the most broken, beastly subclass in the game, or it's just a weird subclass with an ability that sounds really, really cool that you can get through an entire campaign without ever using. Just to refer to something well known... I remember in Critical Role's first series one of the players was an Assassin Rogue, and I think he used his Assassinate feature maybe... 5 times over the course of the series? With a big group it's really hard to get a Surprise Attack without either running off ahead of the party, or just really, really hoping that nobody in your group rolls low on their stealth.

That said... if I were to make it easier for an assassin to pull off their assassinate feature, I would change how it works. Instead of giving them say... 4 crits per-day that they can trigger at-will, I would give them something closer to a Gloomstalker Ranger where the subclass just deals extra damage specifically on the first round of combat. I think I'd just set it at a consistent 2xProf Bonus. That way it still gives you a big boost to damage on the first round of combat, which is what the subclass promises, but makes it so you can use it repeatedly throughout the adventuring day without becoming dangerously overpowered and limits the amount of multi-classing shenanigans you can pull off.

Honestly, it's the Assassins other features that really suck. I have never once seen someone use an Assassin's Infiltration Expertise in-game. You get a feature that requires both 1 week of downtime and 25 GP to set up a false identity... and honestly, most DMs would let you do the same thing regardless of class with that big of an investment. The 13th level Impostor feature is even harder to make use of... you need to observe a creature for three hours, and then you can impersonate them believably. Keep in mind that the subclass makes you choose at 3rd level if you even want proficiency with a disguise kit, and doesn't otherwise give you any unique ability to alter your appearance to resemble that person... so you basically just get really good at voices, which you might be able to use under very specific situations, but unless the DM is going out of their way to manufacture situations to take advantage of these features, you're likely to never once use them.

I do like that the subclass gives you features that are useful in social situations rather than just being all-combat, but it would be nice if these features were a little easier to use, or at least more useful.

Quote from Linklite >>

Quote from scatterbraind >>

I've always seen the intent of Assassin to be a solo infiltrator, sneaking into dark castles and one-shotting guards one at a time until they get to their target. That doesn't really work with the whole team structure of D&D, but the devs just threw it in there anyway.

 Agreed. I mean, it could work as a team, a bunch of assassins infiltrating, but when you have a clumsy Wizard tripping over their own robes, an Artificer lobbing bombs everywhere and a raging Barbarian, Assassins don't really fit. More for a solo game, as you say. Except the game isn't set up for that to work well either. Cool concept, poor results.

 
I mean, it also works on a team that solves most of its problems without first resorting to combat.  If you have a solid face character and keep your assassin hidden, they can use a verbal cue to say to the assassin “conversation going poorly; just hit them mid sentence.” Or just have a ranger on the team and use Pass Without A Trace to make your party extra sneaky.  Or have a party that can move into a situation very quickly after the assassin fires off that first shot.

Lots of ways to play it so they’re not engaged in “solo” play, while still being able to utilise their class skills. Therein lies the class’ problem - it’s not that it’s a “solo” class, it’s that, to the extent it is a team class, you need a team who can and will utilise the tools you provide.  In some parties, that level of teamwork can be lethal; in others - particularly ones with several folks suffering Main Character Syndrome - the level of teamwork required can easily fall by the wayside.

Instead of modifying the assassinate feature itself, perhaps instead add a feature that dovetails with it. Maybe something like this:

Stealth Surprise

Additional 3rd-level Assassin feature

Whenever you successfully Hide from a creature using your Cunning Action, the creature must succeed at a Wisdom (Insight) check against a DC equal to 8 + your Proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier or count as surprised by you during your next turn. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Proficiency bonus, and regain all uses of this feature whenever you finish a long rest.

That’s just a first draft of an idea I’m spitballing here. It doesn’t change the Assassinate feature at all, but it uses another Rogue feature (Cunning Action) to make the Assassinate feature more relevant throughout a combat. Instead of automatically granting the Assassin the ability to declare a Critical Hit At will, it ups the odds while still allowing for a chance to not work due to the ability check, and another because the attack still has to hit too. Wadaya think?

Quote from SebbyRavencroft >>

I was looking at assassin rogue and was wondering, would it be balanced to allow the crit to be used a number of times per long rest equal to your proficiency bonus rather than the surprise round it has? I feel this would not only give it some needed use but also make it better than a base class with a one time use ability… like assassin i wish would get revised since i really wanna enjoy it.

so maybe something like

 

”when you land your sneak attack you can turn it into a crit an amount of times equal to your proficiency, your assassination attacks recover after a long rest.”

 

this way it would be a cool flavor ability that does what assassins do which us deal damage, would this work not? If not then why and what would you recomend?

This fixes both of Assassinate's major flaws (relying on surprise while on a class and subclass with no initiative buffs and scaling with number of attacks made on a class and subclass that should focus on making 1 good attack).  Because it has identical scaling to Wails of the Grave on Phantom Rogues at level 3 and has frankly balanced benefits (focused damage of an inherited type, works off-turn) and drawbacks (can't kill a second target which is otherwise potentially unhittable, no whispers of the dead floating skill proficiency), it's intrinsically not OP (Phantoms aren't even a good subclass until level 9, at which point they skyrocket to competing for top subclass depending on what you want to do).   Solid work.

Honestly I think the easiest and most simple fix is this. If you are hidden at the start of combat you get assassinate. Remove surprise. Just be hidden. 

Roll the ribbon features into one freebie you get as a part of assassinate and then give them poison based abilities between assassinate and death strike. Give them the ability to make specific limited poisons at the start of the day they can use to give status effects or damage. These last a day and you get an expanded list exclusive to assassins. Choose contact, ingestible or weapon poisons. Make poison damage ignore resistance and make poison dc equal intelligence plus prof. 

Get Pass without Trace on your party. 

I usually start counting the combat turns for assassinate at the point when the assassin has actually joined in with the combat (I.e. when they decide to attack, or when an enemy has spotted them), so they can stay back and wait until combat has started, even for a couple of turns if they want to and providing the enemies are unaware of their presence they still get the benefit of surprise when they join in and strike.

 One option would be take away surprise requirement for the auto crit.  Just get automatic advantage and crit on a hit in the first round of combat.  The problem with a number of times per test is that you could spam it.  Once per encounter is good but not super unbalanced. 

The rest of the features still suck though...

Quote from 01011000Lehrer >>

 One option would be take away surprise requirement for the auto crit.  Just get automatic advantage and crit on a hit in the first round of combat.

This is exactly the Homebrew I would use - the problem is that, whilst Assassinate is an awesome feature, the ability is perhaps the most situational in the entire game and not well designed for a team dynamic where Sir Goodwill ruins the stealth check thanks to his Paladin Plate Armour.