Thief table 1-9 Reimagined

[finarvyn]

I was looking at the thief skills table (table 1-9 in the core rulebook) and saw some patterns I liked. First, note that for all of the skills (except "cast spell from scroll" which is a dice type) there are only a few different number progressions. What I thought would be cool is to rebuild the table in a way which might be less cumbersome. You'll let me know if I succeeded.

My first step was to take each of the four number sequences and give it a "class" designation -- class A skills end up at +15, class B ends up at +13, class C at +9 and class D ends with +8.

Then I simply organized each into piles. For example, for a Lawful thief:
Class A = Hide in shadows*; Climb sheer surfaces*, Find trap†, Disable trap*
Class B = Backstab, Sneak silently*, Pick pocket*, Pick lock*
Class C = Disguise self‡; Handle poison
Class D = Forge document*; Read languages†

So, if you know which class a particluar skill is for your thief, you have a smaller chart to look at to obtain the correct bonuses. I did this for all three alignments of thief and it seems pretty straight forward. Again, whether or not it's an "improvement" I'm not sure. It does look pretty simple on paper.

If I could figure out how to upload it, I'd share it.


EDIT: In retrospect, I think my use of the term "class" is a bad one. Perhaps I should have called it "type A" and so on...

[Bertrag DeepDelver]

In an effort to simplify the system, I have experimented with using a dice chain for the thief skills (D4 for lvl1 through lvl10 at a D20). It works a little like the warriors deed die. I allow the thief to apply the die to any "thiefly" action including swashbuckling and acrobatic activities as well. Unlike the warriors deed die, rolling a 3 or higher has no special significance. I like this method for a few reasons beyond simplicity:

1) It gave the thief player a little different mechanical feel. When applying luck, they might be rolling a handful of dice for some actions.

2) Low level Lock/Trap DC's dont need to be modified for high level thieves because the "thiefly" action die doesnt guarantee success with low rolls remaining a possibility.

I like how DCC gives thieves of different alignments special treatment and wanted to address alignment as well. Since my method just uses the same dice chain for all alignments, my thought was to instead give thieves "Flexible Morality". Basically, they declare their alignment on an as needed basis. For that situation it then stays set moving forward but for different situations the thief can declare a different alignment. This means the thief has the optimal aligment when treating with Patrons, the partys cleric and so on. It gives them a mechanic for their duplicitous nature and has worked at low levels for a few adventures thus far. Im not sure how it will work out over the long run and am hoping it creates some interesting situations for the thief when playing both sides of the fence.

[Weisenwolf]

This has already been tackled in 'Mt thief my way' by Colin Chapman in the Crawl Fanzine 10. It's easy to then create your own sub classes of thief from there.

https://data.archive.moe/board/tg/image ... 650728.pdf