Apologies for not posting much of late! I’ve been participating in Brigadine’s Brigstein, a Braunstein-style wargame that he’s been running on Discord for the last month, with eight players submitting daily orders, plus his normal game still running in the background (heh, or probably more accurately, we’re playing in the background of his normal game). It’s been a blast, and I’ll post a play report on it after it concludes in the next few days, but in the meanwhile:
Thieves.
The Thief is perhaps the most-maligned class across all iterations of D&D. Grognards complain that it shouldn’t exist, because everyone should be thieves. New school players think Thief is a subtype of the “Rogue.” And frankly, in a new school combat-oriented game without a meaningful framework for exploration, a Rogue is a better fit for the playstyle. In a rules-lite OSR game, removing Thieves works out okay. But neither of those cases fits ACKS, which has robust exploration mechanics and is OSR but not rules-lite. Thus, ACKS needs a Thief.
The synergistic approach to player and character skill requires that thief-type skills be mechanically codified, and even if everyone is to have access to the basics, it is valuable to have a class that leans into that and is especially good at it in the same way that, even though all classes can engage in combat, it’s valuable to have the Fighter exist as a class to be the generalist paragon thereof. No one says “all characters are Fighters, we don’t need a Fighter class.” The game designer talks more on that here.
Likewise, ACKS preserves and in fact expands the exploration component of the game. An Assassin fills the role of a Rogue in later games, but it is a distinct niche from the Thief who excels at dungeon exploration and controlling the flow of play therein.
ACKS II really capitalizes on this potential, and is the best take on the thief class I’ve seen in RPGs. So how does this work?
The Adventurer-Thief
First, Thieves have the ability to Hide and Sneak. When they’re alone (or with other sneaky individuals), they have a 4 in 6 chance of surprising most opponents (and a small but steadily increasing chance of passing their actual throws and being truly undetectable). At low levels, they can’t win a fight with a random encounter like this, but they have good odds of slipping away back to the party to avoid it (and to then let the party as a whole avoid it, negating it entirely). This works similarly for intelligence gathering on keyed encounters as well.
The key impediment to this sort of action in other games (besides the low odds of success) is that the Thief would need to carry a light source. Not so in ACKS II! Shadowy Senses give the Thief a primitive form of night vision, based on research into real life human development of echolocation.
Being skilled at Listening enhances this further, in a way common to most OSR games. Uncommon to those games, ACKS II actually has a table to determine how far away a sound can be heard from, based on its loudness and intervening obstacles. I’ve found it an excellent addition to my DM screen.
The Thief also gets the iconic Backstab, the ability perhaps most often misunderstood. A low level Thief isn’t really a combat-oriented character, and people who try to shoehorn the Thief into that niche via Backstab tend to build piles of dead Thieves. Rather, Backstab is yet another tool for shaping engagement. A hidden Thief can pick off a lone sentry (with a bow, unlike 1e!), and as part of a victorious party Backstab is supremely lethal as a tool to pick off fleeing enemies and prevent them from informing their companions. Together with stealth, Shadowy Senses, and Listening, this gives the Thief an unparalleled ability to control the terms of engagement.
But there are other components to scouting ahead as well. A Thief’s ability at Trapfinding can be used proactively, but so long as the Thief does not exceed the slow pace of exploration movement, they can also use it reactively if they would set off a trap to instead discover it. It functions like an additional saving throw, reinforcing the Thief’s role as the ideal point-man.
The next three abilities work neatly as a set: Lockpicking, Trapbreaking, and Climbing. Together they ensure that no where is off-limits to a Thief, and allow the Thief to open new pathways for the party as a whole. Locks, traps, and obstacles can be cleanly and simply solved by the Thief, without making a lot of noise or requiring a lot of equipment (besides some rope). Plus, being lightly encumbered in leather armor makes the Thief one of the best candidates for swimming through submerged passages or squeezing through narrow crevices (yes, there are rules for that).
Their last starting ability is Pickpocketing, which is perhaps the only one I am really dissatisfied with. It works fine, it just doesn’t come up much. I will probably include concealing weapons as a Pickpocketing throw, and take a few leaves from Olle Skogren’s book on using it as a more general element of finesse (and his modules are excellent, definitely worth grabbing for PWYW).
As a final comment on the early game Thief, I will note that while Thieves will do everything possible to avoid desperate situations, many of their abilities can truly shine as a last insurance against such cases. Being lightly encumbered to run away swiftly is improved by their stealth. If the torch is dropped and goes out suddenly, the Thief can still function amidst darkness. If they get stuck somewhere, they have the abilities to perhaps find a creative way out, whether up a chimney or through locked doors or via hidden halls. Against some truly terrible foe that cannot be avoided, a spear charge with backstab is a suitably monstrous amount of damage.
The above description is not to say that the ACKS 1e Thief doesn’t play that way, but rather that the ACKS II Thief leans into that role and is as before, only moreso. A few different times now I have run one on one games for a single player running a Thief, and had an excellent time of it, I think Thief is perhaps the class best able to operate alone or with a handful of henchmen.
The King of Thieves
What does that look like when a character gets to higher levels?
A thief-lord becomes the boss of a syndicate sometime in the mid-levels, with lesser thieves answering to him in turn. This typically requires some clever maneuvering to eliminate whoever used to hold that role, and more to stay ahead of any rivals that emerge from other gangs around town that might muscle in on one’s territory.
More than just a very solid income source, a thief-lord’s ruffians are a source of information. Rumors and goings-on, blackmail material, treasure maps, there are all manner of different things they might turn up. The thief himself can attempt these hijinks abstractly, or send his underlings on his behalf.
If it comes to war, they can infiltrate and spy on enemy armies, spread falsehoods to mislead enemy reconnaissance, sabotage supplies, create hidden ways into enemy fortresses, and even assassinate enemy commanders directly.
As the thief-lord becomes truly powerful, he will command not merely one syndicate, but others in cities across the realm managed by his trusted henchmen - a proper guild of thieves.
Thus, just as an Adventurer-Thief controls the flow of dungeon exploration within the dungeon, a King of Thieves controls the flow of exploration at a strategic level by identifying targets - civilian, military, dungeon, etc. - and providing actionable intel on how to hit them. Likewise, the veil of false rumors, sabotage, and misleading intelligence he spreads is an exceptionally potent form of stealth that functions at the scale of armies and kingdoms. His vast wealth and comparatively high level (because of the thief’s low XP cost) opens many doors in the realm of intrigue. These tools are subtle and can prove difficult to master, but they ultimately function within the same paradigm as low levels, of the mastermind who controls information and pacing to gain great leverage. And if his plans fail, those same abilities act as a final safety net to give him an extra chance to survive the fallout.
The Eternal Adventurer
This archetypal continuity has not been lost on my players. Indeed, it has been my experience that players generally disinterested in domain play and logistics find the thief domain options a more compelling alternative. My hypothesis on why this is focuses on a few components: first, the limited bookkeeping necessary; second, the limited visibility; and third, that leading a syndicate feeds into adventuring more directly than other endgame options.
On the first point, the necessary records basically amount to the hideout’s value, a list of characters by class and level, and the sum total of their tributes. There’s no month-to-month change unless the player actively initiates it (whereas domains gain and lose families each month - separately for urban and rural counts - and make morale rolls). I have further attempted to streamline this by the introduction of my house rules for Spy Rings, newly updated for ACKS II, which aggregates ruffians and simplifies the process of ordering specific hijinks.
On the second point, it is simply true that a hideout (once established and secured) is less likely to be attacked or openly confronted than a typical domain is (particularly one in the wilderness, where a character might go to build one). Players who don’t want to have to worry too much about beastmen ruining their day can thus relax a bit. Rival syndicates and legal authorities may take an interest in them, but these are generally known threats by the point a hideout is established, and can be dealt with proactively (and often nonviolently). Similarly, there’s no Favor and Duty table (though that I think I might change) to throw random requirements at them.
Finally, whereas fighter and cleric endgames opens up conquest as a new field of play and alternative to adventuring, and a mage’s endgame is somewhat of a parallel that converts wealth into magic resources without adventuring for them, a syndicate is a resource that directly feeds into adventuring play by generating treasure maps and rumors (and in my houserules, by helping them liquidate their finds on the black market). Moreover, if a syndicate encounters real trouble, it’s generally more the sort of trouble that can be addressed by adventurers suiting up for a delve through the sewers than by armies. Overall then, players who tend to prefer the adventurer style of play can find much to appreciate in running a syndicate, and find it relatively little work on their part to keep up with while potentially netting them some very respectable reserve XP.
Spy Rings
One of my own houserules that has proved useful in helping players understand and manage syndicates has been spy rings, alluded to above. It groups ruffians into gangs of 30 (i.e. platoon-sized), that then can be hired to perform hijinks, or given protection so that they offer tribute to a boss. This reduces the number of characters needing to be tracked substantially. The original rules I set up were workable, but were based on characters automatically accomplishing hijinks without a roll, which proved simple but unsatisfying in play.
For the revised ruleset, I have updated them to use the ACKS II demographics, removed the XP mechanic (which ended up largely being pointless tracking), and used binomial probability analysis to map hijink outcomes for the 30 characters involved to a monthly 2d6 roll per spy ring. Note that most of the time, no roll is required regardless because the ring just offers tribute to its boss; the roll is only to resolve specific hijinks that the ring has been hired to perform. It felt overly simplistic to just assign them to spy on someone and have an automatic success, and the revised framework has proven more satisfactory.
I find it particularly valuable to have this abstract framework in the context of building a setting and managing NPCs. Axioms 3 very helpfully removes recursion from domain income calculations, but the recursion in thieves’ guilds was never addressed - likely because the Auran Empire setting has very large realms, but appears to lack empire-spanning guilds of thieves that would make such math painful. My own setting does have a prominent organization of that sort, so being able to quickly and easily put together income baselines has proven helpful. Likewise, instead of keeping a list of ruffians employed by any given noble who might have some on staff, it’s just one item to track how many spy rings they retain.
I’ve attached these rules below, so that anyone else who finds them of some use may take advantage of them. Please let me know if you do, and if there are suggestions for an eventual third iteration I am quite open to them.
I'm considering bringing the thief rules into my on-going ACKS 1e campaign. The shadowy senses alone are a huge boon.