Thief

Benefits

• Trained acrobat: bonuses to Tumbling, Jumping, and Tightrope Walking; can use acrobatics in escape and combat.

Hindrances

• Entertainers of low social regard; the shorter/heavier races struggle with acrobatic feats.

Benefits

• A jack-of-all-trades dungeon-delving thief; no special benefit but no penalty either — the well-rounded party thief.

Hindrances

• None.

Benefits

• Identify poisons: base chance = Assassin level x 5%, +5%/+10%/+15% for Intelligence 13-15/16-17/18.
• Trained in the use of poisons and assassination techniques.

Hindrances

• Advances slowly in thief skills: only 40 discretionary skill points at 1st level and 20 per level thereafter.
• Feared and shunned: -4 reaction penalty from non-evil NPCs aware of his profession.

Benefits

• Adept at ambush: +1 to surprise rolls in a wilderness setting.

Hindrances

• Despised as a crude highwayman: -2 reaction penalty from non-Bandit NPCs who recognize him.

Benefits

• Large number of bonus nonweapon proficiencies (granted even if the campaign doesn't otherwise use NWPs).
• Master of the beggar network and street information.

Hindrances

• Scorned by society: -2 reaction from non-thief NPCs.
• Impoverished: starts the game with only 3d4 gold pieces.

Benefits

• A skilled hunter of people for reward; no fixed mechanical benefit (campaign/DM-supported), but excels at tracking and capturing marks.

Hindrances

• None codified; reputation as a hunter-for-hire colors how the underworld treats him.

Benefits

• +5% on Climb Walls when ropes are involved (max 95% after modifiers).
• Can fight effectively from a rope (e.g. ship's rigging) with one hand gripping: +1 to attack while doing so, and far better at it than others.

Hindrances

• -10% to Climb Walls when climbing without a rope.

Benefits

• None — the classic specialist thief who concentrates his skill points in break-in skills (lockpicking, traps, climbing, stealth).

Hindrances

• None.

Benefits

• Can size up a mark: with a successful observation proficiency check, accurately guess a target's class and level before attempting to rob them.

Hindrances

• Looked down on by other thieves as small-time (just above Beggars): difficulty commanding underworld respect.

Benefits

• +3 reaction with NPC thieves who recognize his profession; best-placed person for locating and hiring thieves and smugglers.

Hindrances

• Tied to a stable home locale (his black-market network); the Fence's life is more business than adventure.

Benefits

• None codified; an information specialist skilled at gathering intelligence and solving problems.

Hindrances

• None codified; effectiveness tied to operating among his own dominant culture/race.

Benefits

• +10% to Move Silently and Hide in Shadows when in the wilderness.
• +1-in-6 better chance to surprise opponents in the wilderness.

Hindrances

• Uncomfortable in cities: -5% penalty to all thief skills in urban settings.

Benefits

• Exceptionally alert: +1 bonus to surprise rolls.

Hindrances

• None codified.

Benefits

• None codified mechanically; a master of disguise, infiltration, and information-gathering hired by guilds and nobles.

Hindrances

• None codified; demihuman spies struggle to disguise as other races, limiting assignments.

Benefits

• A dashing, romantic rogue-swordsman who fights with flair and charm (a thief-class counterpart to the fighter swashbuckler).

Hindrances

• Trouble seeks him out: rival swordsmen challenge him, romantic and dramatic entanglements find him; the DM throws extra good-natured bad luck his way.

Benefits

• None codified; a con artist and grifter who works marks through guile rather than stealth.

Hindrances

• None codified.

Benefits

• Better combat training than other thieves: +1 to-hit rolls, plus an extra weapon proficiency slot.

Hindrances

• Skill training suffers for the combat focus: only 40 discretionary skill points to distribute initially (and reduced thereafter).

Benefits

• Uncanny knack for finding flaws in security systems — a living embodiment of Murphy's Law, used professionally to find everything that can go wrong.

Hindrances

• That same knack means trouble finds him; the glitch in any system is the one he runs into.

Benefits

• An innate sense for magical traps.
• DISARMS a magical trap — she does not remove it — for 1d4 rounds, +1 round per 3 levels. A window to burgle through, not a solution.

Hindrances

• Sworn to her guild: missions on demand, and the guildmaster's permission before she may adventure.
• Once identified, non-elf mages distrust her on sight.
• Hunted by the wizards she has robbed, and by thieves' guilds that want her secret.

Benefits

• +10% to Move Silently AND to Hide in Shadows, in the city and in the wild alike, on top of Dexterity and racial adjustments.
• Tracks at a reduced non-ranger penalty.

Hindrances

• Good-aligned folk react at -2.
• Hated in evil society whatever her own alignment.

Benefits

• Item lore: a 5% chance per 2 levels to place an item's history, purpose and alignment. Each attempt takes 4d3 days, and a research facility may raise the chance at the DM's option.
• Locate-research: a week or more in the books narrows a relic to a general search area.
• Rumour-mongering: 10d100 gp spent, plus Intelligence and Charisma checks, buys a lead.
• +10% to Find/Remove Traps.
• Luck: once a day she may add or subtract 1 from any roll, declared in advance.

Hindrances

• She lectures, and people react at -2.
• Never knowingly uses a charged item.
• Never willingly destroys a magic item or permits its destruction. Life or death is the one exception, and it costs her a week at -2 on saves and attacks from the depression that follows.
• Five items destroyed or allowed to be destroyed over a lifetime loses her the kit.

Benefits

• Passes as a tall dwarf or a short human at only -4, improving by +1 per 4 levels of her most XP-expensive class. The improvement applies to the bonus proficiencies only.
• +10% to two thief skills, picked once and for good.

Hindrances

• Identity erosion: her racial resistance to sleep and charm drops 10% per level, to a floor of 30% — which she reaches at 7th.
• Out of role she is beset by self-doubt about who she actually is.

Benefits

• Against her chosen undead species, prepared: +2 to hit and +2 damage.
• Traces a lair from signs and rumours to a general area, and hunts from there.

Hindrances

• Never declines a chance to destroy undead. Not a suicide charge, but the ultimate self-sacrifice is accepted.
• Sentient undead outrank mindless ones as targets.
• Cannot tolerate a sentient undead even when it is friendly or neutral, and will plot against a good lich.

Benefits

• Full benefits of the Tumbling proficiency, granted free.
• -6 AC in any round he wins initiative and does nothing but evade.
• Against a creature larger than man-sized, a Dexterity check lets the tumbler roll between its legs for position.

Hindrances

• Open Locks and Detect Noise have a base of 0%, replacing the Table 26 bases. The Table 27-29 modifiers still apply normally.

Benefits

• Spell-breaking heckle: with initiative won and a shared language, a jibe forces the caster to make a Wisdom check, modified up or down by the level differential, or the casting is ruined.
• Bard-style crowd influence (PHB p. 42), and a counter-song against magical song and poetry attacks (PHB p. 44).

Hindrances

• Must always look ridiculous. Reaction consequences are the DM's to apply.

Benefits

• +1 to hit AND +1 damage with missile weapons.
• Vanishes into underbrush outdoors as a halfling does, and freezes in place underground as a svirfneblin: 60% undetectable, or 80% for a svirfneblin stalker.

Hindrances

• No shield, and no metal armor of any kind — elven chain included.

Benefits

• The local halfling population, within 3-4 days' travel of the lair, passes on warning of raids against it.

Hindrances

• Rob the wrong victim and the escalation is somebody else's story to tell.

Benefits

• Runs a shell-game confidence trick with its own resolution procedure. Your DM sets the procedure.

Hindrances

• Burned bridges everywhere: long-term allies are impossible.

Benefits

• +10% at 1st level to Open Locks OR Move Silently, then +5% per level thereafter to Open Locks, Move Silently or Find/Remove Traps.

Hindrances

• -1 on melee attack rolls. Backstabs are exempt.

Benefits

• With Local History for an area: +4 on NPC reactions there, and complete knowledge of the hidden paths along his regular route.

Hindrances

• Legal jeopardy wherever the goods are illegal.

Benefits

• Passes as a human child.
• Pick Pockets +5% per level from 2nd level on.

Hindrances

• Watchmen take an interest, and keep taking it.

Benefits

• Never lost: an Intelligence check answers a question about direction. A failure means he knows that he does not know.
• OPTIONAL RULE (the source's own word): on a natural 20 he is confidently wrong instead. Off unless the optional rule phbr9-cartographer-confident-error is switched on.

Hindrances

• None to speak of — the source's own assessment.

Benefits

• News and market intelligence along his routes, and the wealth that follows from knowing both.

Hindrances

• Carries goods, and thieves know it.

Benefits

• +2 on all reaction rolls.
• A story told before battle acts as a bless spell on his friends — the attack and saving-throw bonuses.
• Playing continuously makes the party immune to song-based charm attacks, harpies included.

Hindrances

• Voluntary poverty and no home to return to.

Benefits

• +10% Detect Noise and +5% Open Locks.
• +3 reaction with other races, and +1 even with racial enemies.

Hindrances

• -10% Pick Pockets.

Benefits

• +1 on ability checks for Singing, Dancing, Juggling and Rope Use.

Hindrances

• Laughed off any non-dwarf stage, and will not perform for outsiders.

Benefits

• +10% Open Locks, on top of the Lockpicking proficiency, and +10% Find/Remove Traps.

Hindrances

• -10% Climb Walls and -5% Pick Pockets.

Benefits

• +5% Move Silently and Find/Remove Traps.

Hindrances

• -10% Pick Pockets.
• -2 reaction from dwarves other than Vermin Slayers and Wayfinders.

Benefits

• +1 to hit and +1 damage with a dagger or knife.
• Two-weapon fighting at 0/-2 rather than the standard penalties; a dagger or knife in the off hand keeps its +1.
• +5% Pick Pockets and Hide in Shadows.

Hindrances

• -3 reaction from local law enforcement.
• -5% Find/Remove Traps.

Benefits

• +1 to hit and +1 damage when defending his own goods or animals.
• +1 reaction from merchants — which becomes -2 if he is ever caught cheating.

Hindrances

• Caught cheating, the merchant reaction flips to -2.

Benefits

• +5% Find/Remove Traps, Detect Noise and Move Silently.
• +1 to hit and +2 damage with one chosen hand weapon against Small creatures.

Hindrances

• -1 on initiative in restricted tunnels.
• -10% Pick Pockets and -5% Read Languages.
• The dwarf's protection against large creatures is reduced: ogres and their kin attack a Vermin Slayer at only -4 reduced to -2.

Benefits

• +10% Hide in Shadows and Move Silently.
• Languages cost half a proficiency slot each.

Benefits

• +2 reaction when peddling salvaged wares.

Hindrances

• -2 reaction in every other situation (appearance and stench).

Benefits

• Size up a target: a successful Observation check reveals the subject's class group; a second reveals whether their level is lower than the Tramp's (yes/no). A natural 1 on either check reveals exact information. -5 to both checks against a disguised subject.

Hindrances

• -3 reaction with non-thieves.
• Begging checks take -1 per point of visible AC better than the Tramp's own natural AC.

Benefits

• +5% to initial find/remove traps, move silently and climb walls.

Hindrances

• -10% pick pockets, -5% read languages.

Benefits

• Assassination: on a surprise attack that hits, the victim dies on a failed save vs. death if the victim's HD is no greater than the Shadow's level; otherwise the attack deals ordinary backstab damage.

Hindrances

• Every thief ability except backstab is rated two levels lower than an equal-level thief; every initial ability except hear noise takes an additional -10%.

Benefits

• Table 9 replaces the thief's Table 27 bases: Pick Pockets 20%, Open Locks 15%, Find/Remove Traps 15%, Move Silently 20%, Hide in Shadows 20%, Detect Noise 20%, Climb Walls 65%, Read Languages 5%. Discretionary points as a thief — 60 at 1st and 30 per level, capped at 30 and 15 per skill.
• No more than half a clan is ninja-class. A clan member of any other class MUST take their shinobi kit — it is not an optional choice within the clan.

Hindrances

• Weapons limited to the WIZARD list: dagger, knife, staff, dart and sling.
• Armor limited to padded or leather.
• Hit dice drop to d4.
• Full clan obligation, identical to a ninja's: assignments are not optional, and the clan's interest outranks every other loyalty.