Silent and mercenary, the Assassin ‘s goals are shrouded in mystery. Do they fight for the thrill of the kill? Or do they care only about their payday? Enigmatic and deadly — but in a cool, sexy way, not a tryhard edgelord way — the Assassin strikes swiftly and stealthily, whether by stabbing their Enemies in the back or sniping them from afar.

The Assassin prefers a stealthy approach to combat, favoring their natural talent for lurksmanship.

Bunkers & Badasses PHB, Assassin Class, by Nerdvana

When I was playing Borderlands 2, I loved playing Zer0. I really enjoyed going with a build focusing on the sniper rifle, the occasional swordplay, and using that cloaking feature. This is pretty much the same focus for the TTRPG version.

Backgrounds

There are some different backgrounds that you can pick from and each one gives you a different flavour on what you’ll be able to do.

• Challenger: Less sneaky (-2 Sneak checks), more damage (+1 damage)
• The Blade: Awesome sword damage (+3 melee damage), likes solid ground (-2 traverse checks)
• Enigma: Not great with doing things (-2 Interact Checks), good aim (+1 Accuracy)
• Ghost: Fast (+1 speed), sneaky (+1 Sneak Checks), but don’t talk to people (-3 Talk Checks)
• League of Assassins: So assassiny (+1 Mastery), but maybe a little too focused (-2 Insight Checks)

Skill Tree

Each class has a skill tree that you use for levelling up. The Assassin’s tree is called the “Mercenary Skill Tree”. As you level up, you move between Tiers and gain skills. You spend skill points within your current tier to take something like “Fast Hands” (+1 Speed, +1 Interact) or “Counter Strike” (+1 Hit after being hurt).

Many skills can be taken multiple times and allow you to flavour your character in what they will focus on. For Tier 1 Blade assassin, as an example, going with Iron Hand, and two Headshot skill levels would be very effective.

Archetypes

For this particular class, the Enforcer or the Deadeye would work really well. Deadeye would be better if you wanted to build more of a sniper character and the Enforcer if you want to focus more on close range melee combat.

Stat modifiers

The Assassin class focuses more on Accuracy (+2), with a little bonus to Speed (+1) and Mastery (+1). When you build out your character stats, you need to choose whether you want to offset that with the points you are spending, or if you want to lean into that and overemphasize those traits.

Image credits:

• Cover image artwork copyright Gearbox Software, sourced from http://www.game-art-hq.com/wp-content/uploads/Zer0-Borderlands-2-Art-Render.png