What are the best Thieves Tales you have read?
Or, what is the best (worst) thing you ever had your thief do in an adventure?
The last time I played a thief or rogue character was in 1991-1992. He died while climbing down a mineshaft -- that part sucked -- but I had quite a bit of fun with him while it lasted (for the record his descent down the shaft was motivated by pure greed, which I think is a good way to go for a thief.)
In a campaign lull, I once pick pocketed one of my own party and planted the ill-gotten booty on another party member. Then, 'accidentally' pointed out the new, extra bulge in his pack. That was fun ... and very bad ;>
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Our party was traveling through a desert, and we came to a few merchants at the lip of an giant ant-lion pit. A third merchant was in the pit being chewed on, and the other two were trying to help him out. We went over to investigate, but the guy in the pit died before we could get him out of there.
One of the other characters had recently acquired a Ring of Animal Friendship, and decided to try it out on the ant-lion. Someone wondered aloud if you had to feed the target something it liked to eat to make the ring work, at which point my character shrugged and shoved one of the other two merchants into the pit. The final merchant flipped out, and I had to run him through. She wound up not even bothering to charm the ant-lion. Good times...
One of the more fun ones was many years ago. We were playing in Krynn where clerics were rare, there was one traveling with our group but he wasn't acting very religious so i took his medallion of faith. He believed that it was taken by his god and I didn't give it back till he started acting pious.
"Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn" by Aspirin had some of the best thief tales I can remember (other than yer pal, Conan, in his early days ...something about an Elephant god...) In campaigns, I played a halfling thief/assassin in the wilderness, Sir Janadin of the Fair Folk, and he would fire sling bullets from total cover and the badguys never could find out where he was firing from. He ended up desecrating a corpse of an enemy using that enemy's dog...but that's another story when I am even drunker :)
I'll have to check that book out.
A little off my own topic, but check out the story " King of Thorns " in Villains Victorious . It is about student assassins and remindes of the old "Thieves Guild" modules/tests they used to print, and the game Thief: The Dark Project.
A little off my own topic, but check out the story " King of Thorns " in Villains Victorious . It is about student assassins and remindes of the old "Thieves Guild" modules/tests they used to print, and the game Thief: The Dark Project.
The movie "The Gamers" when the thief steals the pants off the guy at the bar.
All of the Fritz Leiber Lankhmar stories. That's where it's at.
And most of Robert E. Howard's Conan tales.
Lol; I had a thief steal all the papers for a castle/palace/summer home type place once and did some forgery and gave it to another party member unknown as a part of his inheritance; so when he went to take it over and it was occupied; well, we got the local guards and wiped the place out; moved in an been livin their ever since; the place was supposed to be abandoned anyway and so far no one has said boo to us. Filed all the right papers and greased the right palms and we have us a nice locale.
My husband once created a thief and rolled randomly for his height and weight. He ended up short and quite fat and was thus dubbed "Wedge" by the rest of the party. This nickname was indeed prophetic as gaming years later, he was once used as a tool to block open a complex secret door. We were all punch-drunk that gaming day and laughed about that incident much longer than its intrinsic humor demanded.
Then, after establishing deep trust and loyalty with his party members, the wounded thief convinced them to allow him to guard a recently discovered treasure chest while they continued on through a dungeon - promising to pick him up on the way back. With a secreted magic item, he then teleported home with the treasure and then back to his dungeon guard post. He faked unconsciousness when his party returned and claimed ignorance about the disappearance of the treasure chest. His fellow characters spent the next gaming session trying to track down non-existant bandits before giving up their treasure for lost. I, as the DM, used this as an opportunity for an adventure hook and the party vigorously pursued some criminals who, though guilty of other unrelated charges, had nothing to do with the treasure chest and the dungeon. Wedge acted especially indignant when confronting the wrongly-accused bandits. The party tried every means to get them to confess without success. Wedge, meanwhile, was able to purchase another small home within the city limits that could serve as another "safe house" outside of his associate's knowledge. My husband and I kept exchanging looks during the game and trying really hard not to laugh, or worse - confess the whole hysterical thing!
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Thieves Tales:
Worst:
PC Name: Zink
Class: Rogue
Race: Halfling
Psychology: Aggressive, to a fault
Level: 1st level Rogue
Campaign: Greyhawk
Circumstances: First campaign, 1st day out, all level 1. After traveling most of the day with the rest of their newly formed party(first adventure for all characters), they come across a high brick wall in which they needed to traverse. The rogue was volunteered due to his 'skills' in climbing. Just as he is about to reach the top, he fails a roll miserably, slips and falls, and with a sickening crunch, dies on impact. The rest of the party looks at one another, when the wizard breaks the silence with; "so now what are we suppose to do?" It was a hilarious moment.
Best:
PC Name: Pilpherr
Class: Rogue/Assassin
Race: Halfling
Psychology: Extremely Passive-Aggressive
Level: 9th level Rogue/1st level Assassin
Campaign: Greyhawk Homebrew
Circumstances: Somehow found himself cut off from the rest of the party and in the Mage/Demonologists personal study. Pilpherr decided to make the best of things and pulled his knife and cut a small line through the summoning circle then made haste to get out of there. He later heard that the mage was tragically killed by one of his summoned evil entities. Everyone in the party thought it ingenious but, in truth, i stole the idea from a Conan novel. No, Conan didnt do it but a master theif in the novel did. Needless to day, Pilpherr earned level 1 in assassin and membership in the local assassins guild for his daring and ingenious actions.
Thoth-Amon
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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PC Name: Thesus Alexander Arien, Master Thief
Class: Rogue
Race: Human
Psychology: Total coward, but astonishingly good at what he does.
Level: 12th level Rogue
Campaign: Forgotten Realms
Event: This character had decided, of his own volition, that the church of Bane (Greater LE Tyrant deity) needed to be taken down a notch in the city he and the rest of the party were staying in. He sneaks into the temple, knocks a couple of guards out, bypasses a couple traps, sneaks into the temple vault, and loads up two bags of holding with loot (approximately 100,000gp worth). Character redistributes the wealth to local temples of GOOD deities instead (keeping a "modest" 60% for himself) and returned to the temple of Bane to do it all over again a few days later. After some brief recon, he discovered that the security had been vastly enhanced. Not phased in the slightest, Thesus proceeded to employ golembane scarabs against the patrolling constructs, duped some of the guards into triggering their own traps, annihilated an undead patrol with his scroll of sunburst, and even managed to Sneak Attack a level 20 Necromancer to death without a scratch. Then, he got into the vault and removed the REST of the remaining wealth with his bags of holding.
The next day, the temple had started selling its spellcasting services at reduced cost and had began to sell off it's clergy's armor and weapons. Thesus, ever wanting to be a complete bastard, proceeded to steal all the holy symbols and spell components he could find and also began making off with the armor and weapons that they had been selling, often AFTER they had been sold to local merchants which made said merchants very irate and caused them to drive the 'lying, cheating bastards' out of town.
The temple of Bane's reign of terror was over after less than a week of Thesus's relentless pillaging. He accomplished all of this BY HIMSELF during the downtime between sessions of the campaign. Incredible skill combined with uncanny preparation and planning allowed me to pull this off, as well as a healthy amount of luck. The DM was flabberghasted that a level 12 character could possibly survive these encounters and make the checks that needed to be made.
What are the best Thieves Tales you have read?
In Dragon 184 there was this short story called "How Nemra Added a Line to the Book of Thieves". I read it when I was much younger and it totally shaped how I think an awesome thief should act. Its all about this wily rogue who is trying to steal a magical statue from a temple that petrifies anything that touches it. It's the ultimate fantasy heist story, and the ending is a nice twist (its got these 'rules of thievery' kind of things sprinkled throughout that were nice little gems to take to the gaming table). Rogues have been one of my favorite types of characters since 2nd ed.