2025 Character Creation Challenge, Day 28: Snik-Snak, Goblin Assassin

It's day twenty-eight and we're in the home stretch of the challenge! Let's circle back to Old School Essentials to give my brain a breather. Today I'm making a sneaky goblin who is really into stabbing and poisons.

All Old School Essentials characters generated for this challenge use the Advanced Fantasy rules and the Advanced Method of character creation. Rules for goblins as player characters were published in Carrion Crawler #1. A list of optional and house rules I use are provided in my day two post.


A Comparison Between AD&D and OSE Assassins

AD&D assassins are AD&D thieves, but with more murder. AD&D assassins can do all the lockpicking that thieves do, but not quite as well. It says something that the AD&D assassin got slapped with the evil label. Gary Gygax wrote "the killing of humans and other intelligent life forms for the purposes of profit is basically held to be the antithesis of weal" in the AD&D Player's Handbook. Which is a curious choice in a game that rewards invading the homes of intelligent life forms, killing them, and looting their possessions for profit.

OSE assassins have certain thief abilities, but pared back to make room for the additional murder abilities. For example, OSE assassins have no lockpicking ability. This is likely to preserve the utility of the thief class. OSE also takes a more nuanced approach to the moral questions by allowing assassins to be neutral or chaotic. However, OSE assassins cannot be lawful.

Snik-Snak, Goblin Assassin, 1 of 2

Back to Character Generation

On one hand, all my rolls for ability scores were in the double dights. On other hand, half the results were twelves. Which, of course, is a point too low to generate any bonuses. But having no penalties to deal with is nice.

Goblin characters in OSE get +1 DEX and -1 STR. Which is fine for an assassin or thief. I used the Adjust Ability Scores rule to lower his WIS by 2 to bump up his DEX to an 18. This won't directly help him be a better assassin, but would speed up his progression.

Being a goblin and an assassin offers up a long and varied list of abilities. The affinity with wolves goblins get is interesting, but depends on the campaign. Otherwise, goblins share many features with gnomes. As mentioned above, OSE assassins don't get the full range of thief features. This may mean a closer relationship between assassins and thieves in OSE settings. A thief's abilities to pick locks and counter traps might be necessary to carry out an assassination. This might lead an assassins' guild and a thieves' guild to work out a partnership to the detriment of folks who are important enough to be assassination targets and wealthy enough to rob.

I rolled the maximum for hit points. With is a whopping 4. His CON bonus pushed that up to 5. OSE assassins and thieves have underwhelming durability for characters who are expected to get anywhere near combat. Sure, a successful assassination or backstab could drop an opponent, but then there's a character with d4 hit dice within easy reach of that opponent's buddies. There's the DEX bonus to AC, but that only goes so far with leather armor. I can see why later D&D bumped the hit dice of roguish types to d6.

Snik-Snak, Goblin Assassin, 2 of 2

Background

Snik-Snak started life as an apprentice blacksmith in a community of goblins large enough for such specialization, but too small to attract the wrong kind of attention. The goblins conducted the occasional raid, but found hiring out their services as mercenaries and cheap labor to be more lucrative. A nearby drow enclave found the goblins to be useful.

Snik-Snak's agility and fairly sturdy frame led to an invitation from a drow organization to learn certain skills. That training came with a price, but working as an assassin wasn't too different from raiding or mercenary work. Except for working alone, being much quieter, and coming with better pay.

Times were good until the drow launched a wave of assassinations in a nearby city-state using goblins to do the work. Snik-Snak got out before the drow disavowed the goblin assassins and left the goblin community holding the bag. They scattered into the mountains. Snik-Snak looked for a place to market his skills.

He eventually fell in with a band of adventurers. Doing quests and delving dungeons isn't much different from what he did before. He does miss working alone, though.


Resources

The rules for goblin player characters on OSE were published by Necrotic Gnome in issue #3 of Carrion Crawler.

The character sheet is by William Braidis Lee and is available on itch.io. It only supports ascending AC when it wants to and there's no place for spells. It's fine other than those things.