Quote Originally Posted by LudicSavant View Post
You basically have it backwards. If high skill checks matter, that's more reason to take the Souknife instead, not less.
I don't have anything backwards, I just judge features by their actual merits in game. Case in point... I never mentioned the soulknife and find it quite irrelevant to the topic of the Assassin's features.

For all the talk about narrative powers granted to spellcasters, dismissing the ability to create unfailing false identities that people believe is actually you and thereafter gaining access to all strata of society and organizations is... well, par for the course of standard online optimization speech.

High Stealth doesn't matter because Websense.
High Disguise doesn't matter because Read Thoughts.
High Deception doesn't matter because Zone of Truth.
Etc etc etc

If people follow this advice, they'd think that their maximized skill checks will never work. And that's just not true. The commentary is not helpful, and is misleading, but does answer the question in the thread title.
Quote Originally Posted by Pex View Post
Any class/character who must have one specific magic item or else you're The Suck is a failed class/character. You can never guarantee any one specific magic item will exist in the campaign. It's nice to have. You may get it in loot. You may get it by searching for it. You may also never get it.
Sure, but the original objection wasn't reasonable to begin with. The idea that your amazing disguise doesn't matter because you're going to be subject to Detect Thoughts all the time is only true if your game actually has everyone Detecting Thoughts all the time. Not to mention that the other creatures mentioned (Fiends/Celestials) might have Truesight, which actually DOESN'T foil a mundane disguise, but would see through a magic illusion like Disguise Self.

Again, the commentary is basically something like "it won't work 100% of the time, so it's a useless feature".

@BlatantBeast: Agreed on Narrative Focus class features.