Thief
I've been puzzling over Thieves and Expert type classes for a long time. The campaign I'm working on is well underway, but as I was on vacation over the last few days I hadn't had time to work on it in earnest. Thus, I decided to finalize the various system elements needed for the campaign. This is basically lower effort work.
Classes are something I tend to tweak between campaigns. I wasn't fond of the way I did Expert classes last campaign. Basically, there Thieves, Hunters, Bards, and Engineers which all had different x-in-6 skills with fixed progressions. This was okay, but I am really trying to limit options and focus things down. Too many classes or skills or what have you make one wonder what the campaign is even about.
So, with that in mind, here is a pretty classic take on the Thief. The class is an expert of dungeon exploration first and foremost. I am pretty happy with what I came up with. Commentary will be provided after the class description.
You are able to wield any weapon, but may only wear light armor. Among magic weaponry, Thieves may only use magic swords, daggers and bows. Hit Die progress as Wizard, while attack bonus progresses as Cleric. Base XP is 1200, doubling each time.
You have the following basic abilities: when you would gain combat advantage in melee, you instead deal an additional d6 of damage. You also have five Gear Bubbles. At any time, you may fill in a Gear Bubble to add a piece of adventuring or thief gear. Daggers may also be gained in this manner. While in a settlement, you may pay 25gp to empty all of your Gear Bubbles.
You have a suite of thief skills: (CLIMB) Climbing up and down sheer surfaces and brachiating through trees. (PICK) Opening locks. (DISARM) Disarming small trapped devices such as spring-loaded poisoned needles. (STEAL) Stealing or concealing items by sleight-of-hand. (SNEAK) Moving stealthily to pass or surprise enemies. (HIDE) Hiding in nothing more than shadows. (FIND) Finding hidden or secret doors and passages.
Success rates begin at 1-in-6. You have four skill points available to invest in the above skills. Each point increases your odds of success by 1. Each time you level up, you gain 2 more skill points. No skill can surpass 5-in-6.
At 5th level, Thieves may use magical scrolls like a Wizard.
You begin play with a dagger and a shortbow.
While I had originally created a more open ended form of Thief based on The Deft from Whitehack, running some games revealed problems with this. I run a very hack 'n slash style game, and the very open ended character creation means that useless characters are easy to create. While this resulted in lots of silly fun (A failed artist impressing a mad scientist with their dope concept illustrations is an excellent outcome) it wasn't quite tuned to what I wanted.
I want the available classes to all be imminently understandable and immediately useable. The above Thief class has obvious parallels to the LotFP Thief, but with the traditional Thief skills instead of the more open skills of LotFP. Also, the Thief skills are unique to the Thief here. No one else can lock pick or brachiate like a monkey.
Originally, I was going to use a system like Delving Deeper's Thief (in which thief skills are fixed at 3-in-6) with some progression. But, while I don't value customization nearly as much as others, I feel like giving the Thief some choice here would be fun.
The most novel decision here is lifting the Gear Bubbles from Vanilla Game and making it exclusive to the Thief. While I've enjoyed playing with Gear Bubbles, I think they take away from the inventory game a little too much. For Thieves, however, I think it will be a really fun way to emphasize their expertise in dungeon delving.
The next steps pertain to the Gear Bubbles. I'd like to define what specific items the Thief can produce. I'll do so when I compile the gear list.