The Griftmaster's Guide to Life's Wildest Dreams: The Fast Track to Riches and Infamy
The Griftmaster's Guide to Life's Wildest Dreams: The Fast Track to Riches and Infamy is the fourth and final planned book in the HackMaster class book line. This 144-page softcover sells for $19.99 and gives the thieves the power in the HackMaster universe. It was released in September 2003.
This book has six chapters, an index (divided up by the coupon sheet and thus a pain to use), and of course a table of contents. It adds a huge amount of material for those playing thieves and for those who want a thief-centered campaign.
Chapter 1, Character Classes, is arranged alphabetically. It begins with one of eight new classes, the Acrobat. Folks will recognize this class as the thief-acrobat from the original Unearthed Arcana and Dragon Magazine. Other books used for material are the Complete Bard's Handbook, Complete Book of Elves, The Complete Thief's Handbook, Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue, and Oriental Adventures, all of course the TSR versions. The thief-acrobat was poorly converted-a number of the skills weren't made right for HackMaster, and so the acrobat class is suspended in sanctioned tournament play until it is fixed. Not that many folks are playing acrobats, anyway. The Assassin class is discussed in more detail and while you may not agree with the argument, a good argument is provided to explain why assassins are evil in HackMaster. Reminds me of the KODT strip where Weird Pete was nostalgic fof when folks didn't argue about whether assassins were evil-they just were evil. The bard class is vastly improved-their magical identification ability is described better and their ability to learn skill without prerequisites and to attempt any skill untrained without the failure for a fumble makes them more useful. There is also a table on armor, so those thief-group characters that wear armor know the effect on their skills.
Next up is the first of two new character classes from the Kingdoms of Kalamar converted to HackMaster, the brigand. Brigands fight better than standard thieves, have sneak attack instead of backstab, move quickly, and are excellent at setting ambushes, appearing intimidating, and at high levels, appear as they desire. Thus a brigand could appear as a tough hombre or a kind highwayman forced into a life of crime by evil people. Brigands cannot be Lawful Good or Lawful Neutral, so here's your Robin Hood type. The next class is the charlatan, the half-elf or human with the potential to do everything. The designer frankly screwed up on this class, as the prior charlatans weren't this powerful. Charlatans go against the grain of a class-based game where class matters a ton, like HackMaster. This is because they can copy most powers temporarily (a minor issue) and permanently buy some of the best powers of the PHB classes. A charlatan can cast like a magic-user, turn like a cleric, backstab like a thief, dodge like a monk, fight like a fighter, and all this without changing class! I know who designed them and the idea they originally had, but somewhere along the line the designer missed the signs and let in this class. Not surprisingly, the HMA doesn't like charlatans. In an unsanctioned game, you have a lot of control, but they still make the rest of the party obsolete if funds and EPs are available. The infilitrator is my favorite class in the Griftmaster's Guide, for it is an excellent character class faithfully converted from the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting in which it appeared. Part spy, part woodsman, the infilitrator moves quickly and quietly to acheive and objective. They have full weapon access, fast movement, uncanny dodge (as in d20), don't leave tracks, have a sneak attack, and can learn a ton of skills. Their thief skills are a little lower, starting only at level 4 (as opposed to only be able to Disable Device certain DCs in d20), but they still rawk if you don't need them as the true party thief. Monks are detailed next-not because they are thief-group characters (they in fact are in the fighter group), but to clarify monk issues. Though this is superseded by Hackjournal #9, so the section is pointless now. The next class is a minstrel. Basically a band leader with no special powers until level 9 but you start out with a ton of skill points for musical and social skills and a bunch of free skills-when playing a minstrel you'll want a package (see chapter 2 discussion) but this is an alternative for the races which can't be bards but for players who want a bard type. Next up is the ninja, for those Oriental adventures fans or those who have munchkins with fever-induced dreams (ninjas are spawned from these dreams) in their group. Ninjas must be Lawful Evil or Neutral Evil in HackMaster and must be human. They also are great at disguise and have a variety of abilities. The problem is they are evil-and let's face it, most people who want to play a ninja don't roleplay the culture of one; they just want to be the invisible bmf killer. Then we have the thief-group pirate, a contrast to the fighter-group pirate. They get Slip Away Into Shadows and Stealthy Movement, but without thief skills are less powerful than their fighter brethern unless they take a package (several are designed clearly for pirates). Rangers and armor are discussed next-these poncy natureboys and girls don't have as much armor flexibility as regular thief-group characters (they are fighter-group characters) so we see how they stick to studded leather armor for sneaking. Then you have the standard thief, wherein magic armor, backstabbing, and the clarification of single-class and thief-group is provided (the last needed only for newbies and those of small cranial capacity). Finally, the Yakuza, my second-favorite class in the book appears. Yakuza must be Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil and are like mobsters-in fact the HMA Manager considers them closer to historical medieval theives than our adventuring thieves. Yakuza pick pockets, open locks, move silently, hiden in shadows, and detect noise as their thief abilities. They also can wield any weapon, know how to play games of chance, and they have great information-gathering abilities as long as they are part of a family. They also have a ki ability to take half damage or half a critical hit severity level a number of times a day equal to their level if they don't attack until the end of the round and take a -2 to attacks. They can do this at most once per round. Dual-classing costs and times, name levels, and the fractional ability die for leveling up are listed at the end of the chapter.
Chapter 2 Thief Group Priors, Particulars, and Options is even meatier than chapter 1! That's hard to believe, but you have the Quirks and Flaws, training tables, and packages in this chapter. The chapter begins with Quirks and Flaws for the thief group, ways for you to get BPs and for the GM to screw your thief character over time and time again. However, many quirks and flaws seem influenced by problems exhibited in episodes of Seinfeld, and thus are quite funny as in-jokes. You have the Loud Talker, the Close Talker, the Expanded Personal Space, and Whisperer problems that make it hard to talk to the PC. Add in the flaws of Sleep Stealer and Suspicious Mannerism (I give all my pregen thieves the handlebar mustache part of suspicious mannerisms) and you've got some comedy waiting to happen, at least until the PC is beaten to death. Poor Impulse Control, Secret Identity, and Social Guilt are potentially humorous as well. Nonetheless, your thief-group character is being screwed, so it's probably best to be safe and not be rolling on these tables if you can avoid it. Pages 30-57 cover packages, a way for your single-classed thief-group character to have a basic personality, skills, and some special tricks. Most modify thief skills, so it is possible for a character who is not a standard thief to have those skills at level 1 through a package, even skills they normally might not have at all. In a nice change, all packages have the same cost addition for non-preferred classes, 4 BP. Again, some classes are barred from certain packages, but unless you are playing an assassin, you have a ton of choices with 36 packages to chose from. Costs range 2 BPs for Rover to 20 BPs for Gallant. Rover is basically for adventurer thieves, slighting cheaping the costs of High Aletness and Clver Packer and giving them a bonus of +15 to the money roll as well as more weapon options (it says any but this might be errated). Gallants are your troubadors of your and perfect for bards and minstrels. They cannot be evil or chaotic neutral and most are Neutral Good. Gallants get to give a speech as they die, get lots of social skills, better armor and weapon choices, and a +2 bonus to hit, damage, AC, or saves (only one of those) each round if following his code. The code means, well, you're going to be all for one and all for love. In the hands of the right player, a Gallant kicks butt and gives you tons of roleplaying for your group. Other packages include the bounty hunter (no magic, but competes with the fighter-group Bounty Hunter class), Blade, Con Man, Fence, Loremaster, and Spy. Using the packages, you as a player can make an awesome thief or a GM can provide your party the thief skilled at the job they need without having to make them as high level.
Next up are the Urchin Days training tables, or simply put, how your thief-group character learned her trade. Social class, character class, Wisdom, Charisma, and Intelligence all affect these tables. The tables in the Griftmaster's Guide are similar to those in the Spellslinger's Guide; they are long and feed into each other so that doing well early really helps. First you find out why your PC joined a thief-group class, be it to spite the parents, for adventure, they were an orphan, or their parents were petty criminals who got locked up for stealing custom wagon wheels. Then you find out if your PC learned all by themselves, as part of a gang, or with a guild or mentor through Introduction to Roguishness and Type of Initial Training. Then you get rolls on how well your mentor taught you the technical and social parts of thievery and a roll on overall training quality. Finally, there are tables for training incidents (stuff that happened during training-mostly getting arrested), the incarceration table (you die at 19, but you can't roll a 19 on 3d6!) which your thief will have to roll on 1d4-1 times, and tables for contacts and loot stashed. About half of the prison incidents are good for you and about half are bad-all are pretty funny. Like a friendly librarian incident being that in a freakishly liberal moment, the state built a prison library and you were buddies with the librarian, so you got academic skills. Or being on a cell block dueling team with a ringer and picking up a free weapons skill. Or being branded a riot instigator or being shanked. Actually, being stabbed isn't funny to you because your PC dies, but everyone else laughs. The rest of the chapter has skills, talents, and proficiencies, and thief personalities. You've seen all the thief personalities before unless you've been living in a cave, but the by-race personalities are helpful to show where most members of the race end up as thieves. 19 new skills flesh out the thief group, from Acting to Disguise to Trailing and Whistling/Humming. The new one of great use is Observation-a catch-all notice skill like Spot in d20. The 11 new talents provide for a variety of thief styles and the bulk can be used by non-thief group characters. Of notable interest are Forgettable Face, Magic Trap Sense, and Simultaneous Backstab attacks. The first makes it hard to recognize your PC-always good for criminals. The second allows only a single-class thief to notice magical traps and disarm as normal instead of at no better than half! Simultaneous Backstab Attacks lets your thief-group charater with backstab (not sneak attack) say hello with two longsword friends at the same time!
Chapter 3, Elements of the Thief Campaign, covers 28 pages and has some excellent material and some material that needed more thought. The chapter starts with a fiction vinette about a thieves' guild and their plan to take down an evil duke. It really gets the juices flowing for a thief campaign and shows the types of thieves you might use or run into. The chapter discusses how thieves fit into society, businesses, how thieves work with magic-users, what guilds provide and expect from their members, and the myriad details needed to run a campaign centered on thieves or one where thieves do more than just disarm traps and open locks in dungeons. The section on guild structure and design includes an excellent example, and there are tables so PC thieves running a guild or a whole NPC guild can be run off a few die rolls every month of game time. This part of the chapter is a huge asset to the GM and to any player who wants to run a thief who will be successful in the long run. The weak part is the organizations section of the chapter, listing thieves' organizations in Garweeze Wurld. One isn't really for PCs (Sadok Guild), one is totally evil (Lords of Crime), one is for Grevans only (and we think this is a Kenzer and Company in-joke), and one is a society for minstrels and bards in Fanagerie. True, thieves' guilds are going to depend on the cities, but none of the examples is particularly inspiring. Though each group has some nifty powers-like the minstrel group heals people with their music.
Chapter 4, Rules of the Road, discusses thief skills, poisons, and scams. Now you can have your thief pick locks silently and you know the penalties. Trap detection and disarming is better explained. The sleight-of-hand with Pick Pockets is explained in more detail. And most importantly, there is a table for how many EPs a thief gets for disarming a trap-higher-level thieves get more. Since this is HackMaster, that makes sense, for a trap hurting them hurt someone more important than some first-level Footpad. Mountaineering climbing and wall climbing are also discussed. There is a table for average thief skills, so that the unprepared GM has skills for NPC thieves, and the animal and poison rules provide nice help to your thief. Some poisons even do death +1d6 damage! Scams include three-card monty, short change, and forgery.
Chapter 5, Stealth Hack, discusses thieves and combat. Backstab is clarified-now it is closer to the d20 sneak attack in mechanic, but not completely. The Improved Backstab Weapon Proficiency is shown here-by sacrificing damage dice a thief crits more often and does higher severity crits if in the crit range. The coldcock attack is a new way to take out guards-but rather than killing them they get bonked on the head and take a nap. Finally, thieves get more weapons on their weapons list and those new weapons appear. Like the Cho-nuka repeating crossbow and the 12-gauge crossbow.
Chapter 6, Equipment for the Thieves' Skills has powders, tools, and silenced armors. Your thief would do well to acquire equipment from this chapter for it makes doing the job a lot easier. Now, make sure to get weaponblack for those nighttime raids.
The 12 coupons are of set 2 of 2, as two sets were made. Set 2 has more Star Wars (as in the original through Jedi)-related quotes and thus I bought it given my love for it and the players' love for Star Wars. The other set has coupons with similar effects, but different tag lines. Coupons include, Thieves Can!! (automatic success on single use of any thief skill), I've Got a Bad Feeling About This (+25% to Find Traps for 3 hours), If Money is All You Love, Then That's What You'll Receive (extra share of treasure when played at end of current adventure), and These Aren't The 'Drods You're Looking For (tell Undetectable Lies per the spell for 24 hours), and one that any player worth their salt can abuse, Forged Invitation (play this coupon to gain admittance to any social event).
Artwork. This is an all-Fraim and Drum book. Stacy Drum did the cover and the Brothers Fraim are responsbile for the interior art. The cover shows four PCs fighting two ogres, giants, or trolls (can't really tell) in our orange cave featured in other HackMaster works. The halfling in the blue and white shirt has been ripped in half by one of the beasts in a grisly scene. The thief in the forest green shirt is drawing a dagger and the thief in a blue shirt with a bloody dagger is grabbing a necklace from one of the dead or wounded giant-kin. A pixie-fairy is holding a ring in one hand, and it looks to be stealing another from the downed giant kin. And the lair is full of loot. Not the most awesome action scene of the class guides (Combatant's Guide wins that), but definitely gets you ready to adventure! Page 20 has my favorite piece, a minstrel or bard (not like he wears a sign) playing a stringed instrument (looks like a guitar) and rawking out a room of adventurers or other armed tavern dwellers as he waves to the crowd. Again, a Fraim piece, but they are HackMaster art. Page 122 has a thief climbing a rock wall to get up into a window where is some phat loot to steal!
In sum, this book closes out the class guide series quite well. It is reasonably typo-free (those are being fixed) and provides a huge amount of choice for making thief-group characters. More importantly, it helps center the thief-group characters in the world so you can have a world of PCs thieves, NPC thieves, and the hapless fools they rob. I rate this book five stars out of five. Get down to your friendly local gaming store or the Kenzer and Company website, pick up a copy, and start earning 2 EPs per 5 gold pieces your thief ingeniously steals. Rumor has it if you can pretend to be a priest, defeat the king, and steal the treasury with the help of your friends, you might even challenge Pikey "the Pretender" Brosef for most EPs from a single theft. Better find something worth millions though-so start small and then steal your way up to the top! *Theft in real life is bad. Do not be stupid.*
