Contrary to popular belief, Dungeon Fantasy isn’t all about fighting monsters: there’s also exploring the dungeon, looting the dungeon, and selling the loot back in town (sorry, couldn’t resist). The Bard takes care of the last of these very important activities, but for the others you want a Thief.

Stats

Thieves start out with ST 11, DX 15, IQ 13, HT 11. They bump their Perception to 14, decrease their Speed from 6.5 to 6, and increase their Move to 7.

The four stats are pretty similar to the Martial Artist’s and the Swashbuckler’s, but emphasize IQ more since this is our official skill monkey.

Advantages

All thieves start out with Flexibility, High Manual Dexterity, and Perfect Balance, all of which are excellent boosts to anything involving tricky movement and most physically-oriented “thief skills”.

They get 30 extra points for discretionary advantages, and their selection is actually a bit low on stat boosts: just DX and IQ instead of all four, and just Per, Basic Speed, and Basic Move instead of all secondaries. The rest of the choices are all stuff that offers further specialized bonuses to the same areas enhanced by the standard advantages. Thieves are one of the only professions that can start out with above-average Wealth, which gives them extra starting money and helps with selling loot in town. And they can pick Weapon Master (Knives) if they want to go in a fightier direction.

Yes, “all knives” count as a single weapon here because their base stats are worse. If you take this, you probably want to wield them with the Main-Gauche skill instead of Knife.

Disadvantages

The thief’s mandatory disadvantage is one of Greed, Kleptomania or Trickster, explaining why they chose the profession in the first place. Discretionary choices can make them either someone who needs money fast and constantly to fuel a gambling or partying addiction, or someone whose anti-social personality and criminal record has locked out of getting legitimate jobs.

Skills

A thief’s melee weapon skill choices are the same as the swashbuckler’s plus Knife, though their skill level will be “only” 15 or 14 and they lack most melee support abilities. The most recommended option here seems to be “weapon and shield”, instead of the swashbuckler’s single blade. You’re not a god of parrying, so having a shield or cloak in your off hand is a big help.

You do get a lot of mundane non-combat skills. All that sneaking and exploration stuff that’s secondary and optional for everyone else is part of your starting spread, at much better levels. You’re particularly good at the stuff that maps to D&D’s traditional thief skills: stealth, climbing, lockpicking, trap detection and disarming, etc. Also acrobatics and escaping from bonds.

Your secondary skill choices are mostly more “niche” areas of spying and crime like forgery, poisons and lip-reading, and also include a selection of social skills.

Special Thief Traits

You get no enhanced advancement limits, but you do get a lot of exclusive mundane skills in your template and a few special traits:

  • Catfall (10 points): you suffer much less damage from falls.

  • Expert Backstabbing (2 points/level): Adds its level (which has no cap) to your ST for melee attacks that allow no active defense. That means they can’t see you coming: they’re unconscious, or you start your turn behind them, or you’re invisible, or you’re in a social situation where they didn’t expect you to attack. You need to put in the work to get into one of these situations maybe once per fight, but the extra damage will be worth it.

  • Gizmos (5 points/each): Each Gizmo lets you pull one small item out of thin air per session. This can be either something you have on your sheet but didn’t specify you were carrying, or an item you didn’t have subject to certain price limits (which are more generous if the thing is thief-themed). This isn’t magic, it’s advance planning combined with a little bit of cinematic trickery.

  • High Manual Dexterity (5 points/level): This is a Talent that gives bonuses to a bunch of common DX-based thief tasks.

  • Sensitive Touch (10 points): Gives a large bonus to perception rolls involving mainly your sense of touch, and to rolls where being good at “working by feel” is an advantage, like searching bodies, lockpicking and disarming some traps.

  • Silence (5 points/level): Like the Scout ability.

Customization

The book recommends three example skill and advantage selections that can take a generic thief and turn them into a sneaky burglar, a stabby assassin, or a smart and silver-tongued mastermind.

Generally speaking, it’s all about your mundane skills here. Unlike in D&D, thieves never stop being relevant, even when there are utility spellcasters in the party. Utility spells usually don’t let you skip skill rolls entirely. Therefore, those casters won’t be casting spells on themselves to make the thief obsolete - they will casting spells on the thief to make them even better at their job.

Your thief’s quirk points should be spent on more skills! There’s some sweet high-tier thief gear out there but it’s outside a starting character’s price range. But it with your ill-gotten gains after you start adventuring.

The “This Ain’t D&D” section

The DFRPG Thief is equivalent to the old school Thief class in terms of intended function and combat ability. The difference here is that their starting success chance in those traditional thief duties is much higher.

You can take them in a fightier direction if you want, with access to Weapon Master (Knives) and to something that works a lot like the classic AD&D Backstab ability. But if your main desire is to have a cool sword and deftly weave through a fight while stabbing enemies in sensitive spots more or less at will, you want a Swashbuckler.

That said, in games that allow “multiclassing” the Thief does have an easier time becoming a Swashbuckler than almost everyone else.