Non-human thieves

[mgtremaine]

Let's talk about the Thief class in Vol 1 of DD. I like how it looks but the first thought that popped into my mind was Halfling Thief? Which leads to the question how should Non-Human thieves be handled? Greyhawk of course added the Thief to OD&D and set no-level limits to the class. DD mentions nothing about non-humans so it is up to the DM to handle.


Does it make sense to have level limits for the Thief is level limits exist for the Fighter (and Magic-User for elves?) What class combo's would you allow?

I have some ideas how I would handle this but was curious to see how everyone felt.....

-Mike

[Mike]

I allow halflings to be thieves with no level limits.

[waysoftheearth]

Level limits have very rarely come into play in my own experience, but it is certainly something the individual referee can tweak to taste.

For me... I'd probably set an arbitrary level limit of 8th on Halfling thieves, and perhaps 6th for Dwarf and Elf thieves.

It's more to remind the players that it's a "Man's World" than anything else -- that only Humans should be able to reach "name level" (9th -- and beyond). This is appropriate if, ultimately, your game is all about Mankind versus adversity. Demi-humans might be incidentally involved along the way, but the story isn't truly "about" them.

As for dual-classed combinations, I think the rules explicitly disallow only the cleric/magic-user combination. Although (from memory) they don't explicitly disallow the anti-cleric/magic-user combination, which might make for an awesome bad guy

[Sean Michael Kelly]

I don't think level limits have ever really come into play in my experience. Since, now with Delving Deeper, I *DO* allow the Thief class*, I also allow Hobbits/Halflings to be Thieves. For some reason, I let dwarves/dwarfs to play clerics and fighters. I guess that gives each demi-human race another class besides Fighter to play.

*I just like the simplified class seen in pre-Greyhawkian D&D as brought to life in Delving Deeper. It seems to fit-in better with the other classes IMHO. Maybe I'm just a Delving Deeper fanboy? So be it.

[Falconer]

I have a similar approach where each race gets a “favored class”:

Elf: Fighter/Magic-User
Hobbit: Fighter/Thief
Dwarf: Dwarf Craftsman

[Zenopus]

There will be rules for non-human thieves in the Perilous Mazes booklet.

[Haldo Bramwise]

Oct 2, 2012 14:02:08 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

There will be rules for non-human thieves in the Perilous Mazes booklet.

Yeah, baby!