In Issue 58 of d12 Monthly, I moved away from the thief as a class and, instead, substituted the rogue. Why?
Read on.
I did this for major region: to expand the class from a purely city-based role, to a more all-rounded class as it appears in D&D 3.0, but with OSE-familiar traits.
There is nothing overly revolutionary about this idea, but I wanted to implement it as I felt the thief as a class was too restrictive.
And given my goal was to have a bare minimum of classes, I saw an opportunity for it to become more than just a thief (with all the baggage that carries with it).
So, rogue it became.
In doing this however, I expanded the skills that a rogue could take, giving some choice to the player and expanding the class’s purpose.
A player can now use the rogue as an urban-based or wilderness-based class.
I did this by listing 13 skills that a rogue could take. This includes skills that are normally found under the ranger class, like foraging, hunting, and hide in undergrowth.
This mean that the rogue class can be a thief – as per the OSE Players’ Guide, or a ranger – or anything else the player can think up.
The Skills
The player gets to choose 8 skills from the list of 13:
-
-
- Climb Sheer Surfaces
- Find or Remove Treasure Traps
- Hear Noise
- Hide in Shadows
- Hide in Undergrowth
- Move Silently
- Open Locks
- Pick Pockets
- Foraging
- Hunting
- Tracking
- Tightrope walking
- Read Languages
-
And these skills can be used in the normal capacity (as per OSE) or, as I intended them to be used: using the D6 and point buy rules that comes with the class. These are also fleshed out in Issue 13* of d12 Monthly (which is completely free).
* Which was the first issue based on OSE.
Creating the Ranger
Given the above skill choices, a player can easily make up the same thief that appears in the OSE Player’s Guide, but what if the player wants that ranger that is suddenly not available as a class within the scope of the issue.
It’s just a matter of choosing different skills:
-
-
- Climb Sheer Surfaces
- Hide in Undergrowth
- Hear Noise
- Move Silently
- Foraging
- Hunting
- Read Languages
- Tracking
-
And you’re done! One Ranger.
While You’re Here…
Since 2021 I have been publishing d12 Monthly, a monthly zine, which has a ton of articles for any edition of Dungeons and Dragons.
Printed copies are available in my store. The PDF is available on DriveThruRPG and you can get both, plus support my work, via my Patreon.
I will also be releasing some more products in the near future.
Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or my contact page any time.