PHBR2 The Complete Thief's Handbook was a book that utterly captivated me when I first read it.
At the time, that was surprising. Even back then, I was of the opinion that (once they got to the higher levels) spellcasters were where it was at, primarily wizards but also clerics. Even fighters had their appeal; the visceral nature of just wading into a group of foes and unleashing carnage has a draw all its own. But thieves? The whole "canny knack" aspect - whether it was for slipping a dagger between someone's ribs when they weren't paying attention or tripping a trap that no one else even realized was there - seemed rather iffy to me from the get-go. That only worked if you could be smarter/wiser/luckier than your opposition, and even if you could summon that level of perspicacity all of the time, the dice were bound to fail you at some point. That's not to say that my issue with thieves was one of playability, but rather that they always seemed like a particularly narrative niche in a game that didn't play up narrativism. There's a reason why these guys weren't in
Original Dungeons & Dragons.
So what was it about this book that hooked me as soon as I read it? In this case, I'll quote from the book itself (page 46):
However, in some cases a lone wolf may turn out very different--perhaps different enough to be considered a class unto himself. To design such a character, you may use the optional rules, "Creating a New Class," on pages 22-23 of the Dungeon Master's Guide.
It then went on to discuss an example of such a character: "Bluehand" Ajathar, a thief with slightly subpar thieving abilities, but who could cast wizard spells of the Illusion/Phantasm school.
That completely
blew my mind.
While the section on those "lone wolves" who had custom classes was framed around the idea of them being thieves, it was obvious that it didn't have to be. Which meant that there was no reason why NPCs - or even PCs! - of any stripe couldn't be such paradigm-breaking individuals. While that may sound like a power-gamer's dream come true, I was stunned by the sheer breadth of possibilities it opened up, as it provided an in-game basis for why such an adjustment to the standard allowable classes could happen. To this day, I still think that "Bluehand" Ajathar is one of the coolest NPCs in D&D, and one I wish WotC would give a cameo somewhere.
With that out of the way, the rest of the book had some areas that I found decently interesting as well. For instance, despite how little draw I felt toward thief characters, the "Tools of the Trade" chapter did have some allure to it. The same way that a good utility mage will have a spell for every situation, the sheer plethora of thieves' equipment (helpfully categorized by area of larceny) held my interest for the same reason. Who doesn't want to be Batman, just happening to have the right piece of equipment for the job while your super-friends all fidget and try to figure out what to do?
The section on thieves' guilds did less for me, alas. Their urban concentration was one thing, but my impression had always been that they were limited to a
single urban locality; that meant that not only were they not very helpful if you were adventuring in forgotten tombs and forging through orc-territory, but getting in good with a guild wouldn't be useful unless you kept going back to
your guild in the same city; otherwise it was having to ingratiate yourself with a new guild in a new town, potentially over and over if your adventuring party was itinerant (as most parties seemed to be). At least with a temple, their unifying religion meant that once your cleric made it clear they had their god's approval (via higher-level spells) they were a certified big shot. At a new guild, showing that you could out-pickpocket the higher-ranking members seemed like a quick way to get a knife in the back.
To be fair, the idea of frequent urban larceny as a way to increase the personal wealth of a thief character in particular, and the party in general, never really occurred to me. Solo adventures always seemed like a good way to get yourself killed, and there wasn't really a "downtime system" back in the days of AD&D, even if activities taken in-between adventures were clearly a thing. As such, it wasn't until much later, when I stumbled across a third-party supplement making that made downtime thievery viable for rogue characters in Pathfinder 1E (specifically, Fat Goblin Games'
The Rogue's Guide to Capers), that I warmed up to the idea of "casual heists" as a way of increasing cash-on-hand.
On a mild tangent, I can't remember if PHBR2 was where they first floated the idea of allowing thief skills to be raised above 95%, but only in terms of compensating for penalties. That is, you could push your Hide in Shadows score up to 120%, for example, but you'd still only have a 95% chance of success when you rolled; it was just that when you wore scale mail (-50%), your adjusted chance of success would be 70% rather than 45%. But I think that optional rule was floated elsewhere, and I'm misremembering.
Either way, this particular supplement is one that I still enjoy rereading after all these years.
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