Wednesday, May 4, 2016

The Tools of the Trade

Most of what makes the Thief great is looking at something like an ability, spell or piece of equipment and seeing a completely different way to apply it. To get your brain juices squishing around I'm gonna list some of my favorite tools, and to prove that a lot of the Thief's best friends are overlooked, I'm only going to use the Core Rulebook. If this is all obvious to you, well. Sorry. I know a lot of people to which it's not.

Spells and Use Magic Device. While I could probably write a whole book on UMD's ability to emulate class features and how useful that might be, the thing that's going to come up most often is UMD letting you carry around wands for a little bit of spell utility. If you want, rogue talents can even give you a few spells. Low level spells can have a deceptive amount of use to you. I'm not going into the obvious ones(invisibility, silence, animate rope, reduce person, featherfall), just some that you might have overlooked for being useless as a matter of course.

Detect Magic. I don't think I should have to tell you why you should have an item that causes this effect. You're going to be dealing with magic a LOT, and not all of it is going to be sigils and magic traps you can detect via Trapfinding. In addition, it tells you what swag to grab.

Mending. Mending can put together a torn letter, fix a broken lock, let you open a letter's wax seal then put it exactly back as it ought to be, or steal things the owner thinks were destroyed like official seals, keys, blackmail materials, pictures, plans or more. Paper can be VERY useful to you.

Dancing Lights and Ghost Sound. There's a will save associated with ghost sound that even the dumbest guards have a fair chance on, but it's a catch 22 situation. Even if they make the save and realize it was an illusion...they still might go check it out. If they're a patrolling guard, they absolutely will go look. They'll know someone is where they shouldn't be, but that may not matter to your goals.

Mage Hand. Duh. This also applies a bit to Open/Close which can handle way more weight than Mage Hand can, 30lbs as opposed to 5.

Acid Splash/Spark/Ray of Frost. Sometimes you need very, very little damage to destroy something you're setting out to destroy, or to get a lock or bar out of the way. Each use is only one round too, so it can get you through an obstacle very quickly.

Alarm. It can be silent if you wish, and this can tell you someone's coming, giving you ample chance to hide or skedaddle.

Obscuring Mist. Nothing about this spell implies it's extraordinary for mist, so if you use it to mask your getaway and create cover to hide behind, someone without ranks in Spellcraft might not even think it's anything but a normal weather pattern. Depending on the day, of course.

Floating Disk/Unseen Servant. Carrying things silently while you climb around like a monkey. Floating Disk also lasts 1 hour per level and can be used as a 3 foot 'leg up' to get somewhere high.

Expeditious Retreat. Sneaking cuts your move speed in half, and this will get it back to 30ft per round.

Magical Aura. There's the obvious use of hiding your own magic items to smuggle them in, but also casting it on someone else's gear to cause a fuss. Slight of hand will let you touch someone's gear, and the few seconds of distraction an argument causes might be all you need.

Darkvision. Basically, ever since 3.0 D20 has put a bizarre emphasis on how powerful some things are, and darkvision is one of them. YOU are the reason why. Darkness is your conealment-creating friend, and a light source will give your position away faster than anything else will. I heavily recommend trying to get this via a racial ability, because other sources are really expensive. Plus, goblinoids are cool.

Disguise, Disguises, and Layers of Defense. Basically, you don't want to be caught, but if you are caught, it helps to have another way to fool them. This can mean bluff checks, but also having a disguise, nonmagical or magical. If you look like you're plausibly supposed to be there, you're going to get a vastly different response than someone who looks like hot death in black leather. White lies are better than bigger ones, as well: You get a bonus on bluff checks if your story is plausible, so implicating yourself for a smaller crime("I know the party is in the main hall, I just thought I could get a glimpse at the duke's armor collection!") is way easier than boldly stating you're doing no wrong. Disguises, or even just the right clothes, go really far toward that.

Bribery. This is really obvious, I just wanted to caution you against going way, way over what a reasonable bribe might be. It can be tempting, since you HAVE that much money, but dropping hundreds of gold on someone when buying them a beer might suffice is a giant, glaring clue that you don't want to leave. Suddenly, they know you're loaded, and even if they're completely unwilling to tell, one failed will save to Detect Thoughts is all it's going to take to implicate you. Unless your GM's world is different, there aren't very many rich adventurers in one place. Someone finding out a guard or apprentice was bribed with alcohol could be anyone. Someone finding out they were bribed with 200 gold narrows their search down to probably five people in the entire city. If you're having trouble, a Sense Motive roll could tell you what that person would expect to be paid. Or if they're willing to be bribed at all.

Class Abilities. This is a super quick rundown of some helpful class abilities you may not have thought about.

Fast Movement. Stealth cuts your move speed in half, and you want to be able to cover as much ground in a single round as possible. Monk and Barbarian's speed bonus, or expeditious retreat spells, can cover for you if you don't want to take Rogue for Fast Stealth.

Bardic Knowledge. Everyone loves this one, but I want to point out it grants you the ability to make knowledge checks untrained, which could be really useful if you're faced with something strange.

Wild Shape, animal companions, and familiars. Unless your target is ridiculously suspicious, seeing a bird or cat inside their house will probably be met with a mild "shoo, shoo" at best.

High Jump and Slow Fall. Most buildings are protected assuming you're going to try to get in from the ground. Being able to leap further than they expect you to be able can put you on their roof and bypass a lot of their locks. Just expect any place with a court wizard to have thought of this.

Lay on Hands, Cure Wounds, and Altruism. People tend to look the other way if you're offering something for free or for cheap. Clerics give shit out for free all the time. Even being able to cast CLW once or twice can get your foot in the door.

Skill Mastery. Most of the rogue talents are really self explanatory, but I wanted to mention how fucking good this one is. You want to eliminate every chance for failure you can, and not having to roll stealth, disable device, bluff, or any number of other skills can go a long fucking way. Even at high levels, a dopey 1HD guard might spot you if you roll bad, and you'll always have to deal with normal people with not so many levels.

Now, while I was writing this I bought Ultimate Intrigue(Quick! go look up the release date on the book to find out how far in advance I write these!) and...wow. This is full of stuff a good heister, social character, or thief type can take. I won't be going into it or any other 'obvious' tools, though. I'm just trying to express how useful some very normal stuff can be if you look at it differently. In the end, I hope this got you to just think outside the box when it comes to playing a utility character. It's a bit of a weird wraparound: You're playing a person in a game who sees the world around them like game pieces to manipulate. If that's a bit cerebral for you, just remember: You have to apply YOURSELF. You have to find opportunities to use your toolkit. Don't wait for the GM to make them, because most of the time, they already have.

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