The Thief

"Shake my hand. C'mon, boys, won't you shake a poor sinner's hand?"

My favorite class is rogue. There's been a lot of names and variations, and now in Pathfinder there's a ton of classes that can fill the role that'd go to the thief in first edition. Whether it's rogue, bard, investigator, alchemist, mesmerist, slayer, or monk, the thief fills a role of nonmagical(let's put a big asterisk here for later) skill based utility. Back in the day you'd be disarming traps and climbing walls to pass ropes down for the party, then acting like a tiny wiry version of the warrior. Those are still your job today, but now there's a lot of other things that are also your job, whether they seem like it or not.

That's the major point I'm gonna make today. The Thief is a very unique way to play the game that can be a lot of fun, or it can simply be the half-fighter they look at to go first when the party gets to the dungeon. That second way isn't an invalid way to play, but you're not playing your role to your fullest. Regardless of your actual class, the Thief builds a toolkit through equipment, skills and class abilities, and must apply it themself. That's not easy, but the opportunities the GM is leaving for you aren't going to be marked with neon signs(Unless you're playing Shadowrun in which case disregard that) but are there regardless. It's a change in mentality that might not be EASY, but I promise you it's a much more rewarding way to play.

Basically, the Thief needs two things. They need a wide range of skills, and they need utility provided by their class to compliment those skills. This means the Rogue and their talents, the bard and their spells, the monk and their movement utility...but also a well built Alchemist can get into the act. Or Wizard. Or "half and half" classes like mesmerist, spiritualist, occultist, swashbuckler, investigator, or slayer can fill this role. Being the utility support character is a state of mind, and multiclassing a little tiny bit into a high-skill class like bard or rogue can go a long way. For one, it gives you those sweet, sweet class skill bonuses. For two, even two levels of rogue will give you a rogue talent which you can spend on patching up something you're bad at. Mostly this would probably be Fast Stealth so you don't need to cut your move speed in half while sneaking, but there's a ton of very useful basic rogue talents. Bard would get you bardic knowledge, some 1st level spells, and a handful of cantrips. I'll go into how useful cantrips can be later.

So I'm going to go into helpful things to stuff into your virtual toolbox later, but first a bit more on that Thief mentality. I keep saying Thief partly because we're not talking about specific classes right now, but also because despite your character's alignment, you have to start thinking like a criminal. If you see a wall, estimate the climb DC from the description. If you see guards, count how many and where they go. See a house, mentally note the ways in. Once your party has a goal, think of how you can apply your toolkit to immediately accomplishing that goal, morals be damned. Once you have a list of how to do that, you can apply morals to it later. Just remember to apply morals BEFORE you enact your plan, or else that probably means you're evil. In general, see people as obstacles or things to manipulate. See physical security as hurdles to vault over. Think outside of the box, and outside of what you think the GM wants you to do. If you're having a bit of trouble, there's a discovery show from a while back called It Takes a Thief where a former professional burglar breaks into people's houses to prove a point about home security. The show is mostly the one guy kicking doors down then violently throwing through people's things, but it might provide some insight to how a criminal can work. Other shows like Lie to Me and Leverage can help too, but remember they're fiction, and try to take ideas and concepts more than specific cons.

I hope that helps. As a special note to GMs...be reasonable when you're designing people's houses, castles, et cetera. By default, the Thief has to surprise you a bit to work their mojo, and don't take it as an insult. If they want to steal the macguffin instead of going on a quest to earn it...consider the fact that stealing it will probably be just as hard as the quest was supposed to be. So what's the problem? If you're worried about the other PCs sitting out, encourage The Thief(or thieves) to involve the other pcs in the plan in roles they can fill via spells or skills. If they HAVE no skills and they're not complaining(I see you there, Blorch. Stay in your corner.) Maybe they WANT to sit these out and watch the Thief work. You're gonna find out a lot of your job as a GM requires communication.

Midweek I'm going to give you that list of what you might want to put into that toolkit. This one's getting a bit long.