Thieves in The Fantasy Trip

All page references are to The Fantasy Trip In the Labyrinth rulebook, unless noted otherwise.

A collection of my own musings, not to be taken too seriously. -HJC

Introduction

Legacy Edition In the Labyrinth (ITL p39) notes that Thief is now a profession, rather than a talent. This opens up more room for players to customize their characters. ITL also seems to distinguish the Thief as a stealthy looter from the Rogue as a charming con artist. Illusion might not work for a Rogue because her mark is too smart while a Thief might find illusions to be useless against slime traps.

The Basic Thief

The Thief description at ITL p13 hints at a character who favors DX and IQ over ST and gives a long list of talents. Just taking Alertness, Assess Value, Detect Traps, Knife, Locksmith, Pickpocket, Recognize Value, Remove Traps, Silent Movement, Stealth, and Streetwise would require 14 memory points and an IQ of 12. It's best to assume that this is a list that the starting thief will aspire to. Removing the IQ 12 talents of Stealth (with its 4/DX saving throw) and Assess Value (just bring back anything lightweight that pings on Recognize Value), leaves us with:

Thief, Human, age 20
ST 9, DX 12, IQ 11, MA 10
Talents: Alertness, Detect Traps, Knife, Locksmith, Recognize Value, Remove Traps, Silent Movement, Streetwise, Sword
Languages: Common, Thieves’ argot

Under the logic that Lock/Knock eliminates the need to find or remove traps on locked things (and that Alertness can at least sometimes find other traps that can then be avoided), delete Detect Traps, Locksmith, and Remove Traps and add that spell to once again be at 11 memory points:

Thief, Human, age 20
ST 9, DX 12, IQ 11, MA 10
Talents: Alertness, Knife, Recognize Value, Silent Movement, Streetwise, Sword
Spell: Lock/Knock
Languages: Common, Thieves’ argot

This is a character with minimal utility who needs to put down most of her gear to use her only (non-combat) spell.

As Silent Movement is less effective against dogs, why not remove this and get up to the upper story windows? (But please note that to qualify for even the Burglar job at ITL p58 the Silent Movement talent is required.)

Thief, Human, age 20
ST 8, DX 12, IQ 12, MA 10
Talents include: Alertness, Climbing, Dagger Expertise, Recognize Value, Streetwise
Spell: Lock/Knock
Languages: Common, Thieves’ argot

Acrobatics is generally more useful than Climbing, but costs an additional memory point and there isn't much that a human thief can give up to make room for it. Therefore pick a non human that can pass as human, so long as she keeps her hat on.

Iris Stabber the thief, Half-elf, age 20
ST 7, DX 12, IQ 13, MA 10
Talents include: Acrobatics, Alertness, Dagger Expertise, Recognize Value, Streetwise
Spell: Lock/Knock
Languages: Common, Elvish, Thieves’ argot

If the GM won't let Iris take Elvish as a mundane talent then drop this and indicate that her mom's only exposure to Elvish was that one night. The extra point of IQ helps Alertness, Recognize Value, and Streetwise rolls. A full elf could have ST 6, DX 11, and IQ 14, buy the extra language outright, and have even better IQ rolls and MA, but with a combat disadvantage against bugs.

Gearing Up

What sort of equipment might Iris carry?

Note that Iris can pick up only 8 pounds of additional loot before losing MA to her total load.

Job Procedures

Iris rarely accepts commissions. Instead she will pick a likely target mansion, scope it out for a few days. She'll look for a time and place where she can toss a grappling hook up without being spotted so she can enter from a top floor window.

At ST 7 she can only cast Knock once without becoming weak from fatigue, and she really doesn't want to burn Healing potions on fatigue. Her experience is that an upper entrance is less likely to be trapped and should offer fewer locks to overcome. If she encounters a second lock after the window (on a safe or such), she'll look for a place to quietly rest up from her first casting before attempting the second one.

If there is no spot to hang or leave her backpack next to the locked window then she'll leave this and her steel daggers on the ground, go up and do the spell, then return for her gear. A round trip to a window eight yards up only takes 7 turns, vs the 12 turns a Locksmithing roll would take. (GMs should consider if the -4 DX penalty for hanging by a rope (that is only loosely anchored by a grapple instead of a knot) from ITL p118 applies to spell or talent here.)

The hidden dagger is silver precisely so she doesn't have to show it to supposed allies when casting. Assuming that she is unarmed and hence can be easily subdued in HTH is an excellent way to allow her to live up to her name.

Iris has spent enough time around wizards to know that their things are dangerous, but not enough to determine which of their trinkets are the most valuable. She therefore skips masters of the mystic arts and steals from the mundanely wealthy.

Should she escape with something lootable she'll shop it around to a few buyers and take the best offer.

Combat Tactics

Iris is prowling for money, not blood. She tries to avoid her victims, their guards, other staff and animals, and just get paid. She does have a few tricks to survive and escape.

If she has a dagger in hand then she is -1 to be hit and can force an additional die on her attackers when she is defending. I.e. if the attacker has less than adjDX 13 then they only strike on automatic hit rolls and is almost twice as likely to drop their weapon (9.2%) than hit her (5.88%). If she can disengage she can make an 8 foot jump to safety by rolling four dice (due to Acrobatics) against combined ST+DX of 19, 94.6% of the time, with little chance of being followed.

When she must kill she does. A favorite tactic is to get in the enemy's rear (+4 DX), then do a shrewd blow (-5 DX, by ITL p41) or a head shot (-6 DX, by ITL 120). The 50% chance of landing that backstab to the head then results in doubled 1d+2 damage that ignores armor. This is also useful in HTH combat which is also at +4 DX.

Having a second dagger in hand gives an additional attack for the backstab which is +4 for rear than -4 for off-hand dagger (ITL p 111), but does only 1d+2 damage.

Future Plans

As with most starting Legacy edition characters, Iris will flip xp into dx until she is DX 16. At this point she can start wearing cloth (or better yet water) armor. Her 37th attribute point goes into IQ getting her to ST 7, DX 16 (15), IQ 14.

At this point talents become much more useful than saving up for ever more expensive attributes. And many paths open up for her. Will she focus on combat with Dagger Mastery and perhaps Thrown Weapons, mobility (adding Climbing, Running, Driver), Silent Movement then Stealth, Social talents such as Charisma, Physicker, or perhaps research starting with Literacy then Scholar?

There are also a lot of spells useful for a thief such as Dark Vision, Mage Sight, Scrying, Telekinesis, etc. As she will never have Mana or the ability to recharge a Powerstone she needs to watch the fatigue cost of her spells.

Wizardly Thief

Many of Iris's talents are difficult to reproduce with spells (Teleport being IQ 15 for example), while her low ST score reastricts the spells she can cast.

Iris Stabber the thief, Half-elf wizard, age 20
ST 7, DX 12, IQ 13, MA 10
Talents: Literacy, Recognize Value, Streetwise
Spells: Dark Vision, Detect Magic, Illusion, Lock/Knock, Scrying, Silent Movement, Staff, Telekinesis
Languages: Common, Elvish, Thieves’ argot
Weapon: Untalented silver dagger staff (1d-1)

As before drop Elvish if it isn't "free". This Iris has Silent Movement as a spell (saving three movement points over the talent), but it isn't clear if this is enough to qualify her as a "Wizardly thief" (ITL p59). This does have the advantage that neither animals nor the Acute Hearing talent can hear her movements for the few seconds she can maintain it.

As she is much less effective in combat the wizard will need to scry ahead of time to plan out her heist.

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