The Rogue: A New Class to Replace the Thief
Thieves are a class I truly love, but we need to get rid of some of the features that go against the OSR principles we try to follow.
I have one main issue with the Thief class as written; it places a limit on other players’ characters. What happens is, when a guy playing a Fighter sees “Pick pockets” as a Thief skill, he will subconsciously write it off as a possibility for himself. Same with “move silently.” OF COURSE the fighter can move silently. Everybody on earth is capable of being quiet. Now, wearing heavy armor might make it significantly, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
A lot of people get around this by saying that anybody can try anything, its just that thieves have better odds. Or anybody can roll under DEX to pick pockets, but thief skills are a “second chance.” I don’t like this. Because, as much as a GM can try to change a player’s perspective, they will always draw their own conclusions, and the only safe choice is to remove the potential conflict entirely.
My Mistake From Last Week
Now, this is where I come out and show some personal accountability. Last week, I published a class that was sort of the opposite of this. I have since deleted it, but to recap, you could take 7 skills, with 13 skills to choose from. My intentions were good. I wanted to fill the archetype gap by allowing players to create a different type of skill-based character.
I posted it to Reddit, and had a pretty good conversation with someone there about it. He or she brought to my attention that it generally isn’t a good idea to do this, because it can diminish the abilities of the other players/characters. Letting someone custom-build a character built for dungeoneering will make them overshadow the rest of the party.
On top of this, many of the skills get in the way of the OSR principle of PLAYER SKILL. When someone can just roll to read a language or remember some bit of lore, it makes it so the magic-user never even has to bother using a read languages spell. Or that the one dude in your group who takes amazing notes doesn’t get his moment to shine, because you just roll dice whenever you need to recall something.
I Completely Rebuilt It…
That being said, let’s dissect my new choices. There are a couple skills that it’s reasonable to say the other classes DEFINITELY CANNOT do, or skills that are impossible/difficult to replicate through roleplay, which actually have practical utility. I have deduced that these criteria apply to three skills:
Climb Sheer Surfaces - this one feels obvious. There ain’t nobody who can just deftly climb a straight brick wall without actually training for it.
Find/Remove Treasure Traps - The logistics of roleplaying this would suck. You’d have to figure out how every single trapped chest actually works, just to allow the party to spend half an hour discussing how to disable it. I think it’s better to keep this skill.
Hide In Shadows - I think this is a fair one to keep, as long as the phrasing is appropriate. Anybody can hide behind something, or duck into an alley, but you can quickly assess an area and find a way to blend into the shadows an not be seen.
Now, for the skills I nixed, and my reasoning behind it:
Hear Noise - Anybody can fuckin hear things. Plus, it is a common demi-human feature (yeah Listen at Doors is kinda different, but in real life it isn’t), so using this for the thief can diminish that feature for other classes. The DM should allow anyone to listen for noise with a chance appropriate to the circumstances, and halflings and dwarves should have an even higher chance of success than anyone else.
Move Silently - It’s not that hard to just be quiet. Anybody should be able to do this. If the situation is risky, or has some factor that has consequences, it should probably be a roll-under-DEX situation, with a penalty based on armor. I’d be comfortable giving a Thief/Rogue a bonus, though.
Open Locks - I think that anybody can try to use thieves’ tools. This would, again, be a DEX roll modified by difficulty, and I’d probably make sure the Rogue will usually have a higher than average chance of success. I’d consider allowing a character to practice in downtime to improve at using them.
Pick Pockets - Same deal. I just don’t think it should be a skill you have. I think the setup for the situation is most important. Doing it out in the open is gonna be hard, but putting in the time to start a conversation with someone, get them into a secluded place, and distract them enough to allow another PC to sneak up and snag the purse? That’s good shit.
The other thing I did was cut out read languages and scroll use, and add a Disguise, Poison, and Forgery ability. In addition to Backstabbing, you can choose one of these at character creation, and pick up more as you level. I think adding these will give a bit of custom
izability, and more than make up for the loss of skills. Oh, and I changed the skills to an X-in-20 point buy system.
Are you going to put all this together in a book or something?