A Case for Lawful (and/or Good) Assassins

    I find that the assassin class often gets a bad rap, and this is largely due to their alignment limitation. The requirement for members of the class to be evil is meant to limit its somewhat overpowered assassination ability. Paladins and rangers also had to deal with alignment restrictions, but most D&D adventures revolve around good parties, so they felt less out of place. Assassins on the other hand were often the fish out of the water, not fitting into most parties. In this way, the limit worked at its intended purpose, as the assassin was rarely played for these reasons

    I started thinking about the assassin's alignment limitation recently upon reading the Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy Player's Tome from Necrotic Gnome. The version of assassin presented in this book is limited from being lawful, a fairly big limit considering that OSE, like most B/X derived games, only includes the Law-Chaos alignment axis. This limit is in many ways the logical adaptation of the one from AD&D, as lawful and chaotic are largely synonymous with good and evil in how they are defined by OSE, but it struck me as odd because I felt that an assassin could definitely be lawful in nature.

    The Morag Tong from Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind comes to mind. They are a group of assassins who are officially sanctioned and endorsed by the government of Morrowind. Should the proper paperwork be produced one could hire a member of the group to kill anyone they want. This is largely allowed in order to regulate the violence between the ruling houses of the region and to stop them from entering into open conflict with each other. This serves to maintain order and prevent the established society of Morrowind from collapsing into chaos. In this way, the Morag Tong is a lawful organization. They follow the law and work to uphold society and order, and which fits snuggly into the definition of lawful.

    One could also argue that the Morag Tong, or an organization like it, is morally good. If we take good to mean working for the benefit of others then the Morag Tong could certainly count. They are preventing the mass bloodshed that would surely take place if the factions of Morrowind went to war. But one could also argue that murder is not a valid means to an end, or that the people of Morrowind would be better off if the ruling houses wiped each other out. These arguments are certainly valid and come from the problem of using terms as abstract and subjective as 'good' and 'evil'. My point is merely to say that an organization of legal assassins could be considered good. Therefore, despite how sacrilegious it might seem, one could argue the existence of lawful good assassins.

    Now, this is a very specific edge case and obviously most hitmen would be considered evil or chaotic by any metric. The same Elder Scrolls series that spawned the Morag Tong also features the Dark Brotherhood, an assassins' guild that is definitely chaotic evil in nature. But it is worth considering these edge cases when discussing all-encompassing rules like alignment restrictions. I would propose that assassin's potential alignment should be limited by whatever assassin's guild they are affiliated with. A member of a lawful assassins' guild like the Morag Tong would have to be lawful, while a member of a chaotic evil guild like the Dark brotherhood would have to be chaotic and/or evil. This would limit the alignment of an assassin without excluding lawful guilds like the Morag Tong. One could also maintain a different alignment as an independent assassin, but it could result in conflict with guilds.

Thanks for reading all of this, I'd be interested in reading other people's takes in the comments. I think this could lead to an interesting discussion of the alignment system, the assassin class, and their place in D&D.