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| The boots really pull the whole outfit together. |
The Rogue, or Thief, comes to us from the same wellspring that brought us the Ranger and the Illusionist: nerds not paid by TSR. For a more detailed overview, Stoddard is back on the menu, and Peterson provides a bit more about “The Thief Addition.” It’s a very weird addition. The Fighter interacts with the combat system, the Wizard interacts with the magic system, and the Cleric taps into both. The Rogue, by contrast, is built around a skill system which comes packaged with the class itself.
For some, these skills were the death knell of D&D, as they codified abilities that would be walled off from other classes. Suddenly, the release of Greyhawk removed the ability to be a sneak and a cutpurse from Fighters across the land, who were doing just fine before this thank you very much. This line of thinking reaches back into the primordial.
The iconic title of “Rogue” was introduced as the 1st-level title for the Thief in 1e, but gets top billing in 2e as the name of the mega-class which contained the Thief and Bard. 3e would make the wise decision to adopt it as the actual class name, which it has remained ever after. While thieving is certainly on the menu for this class, they’re capable of so much more, as seen by their many varied kits during 2e’s run, and their eventual evolution into the deadly striker and jack-of-all-trades we know today. As such, this hack will adopt this name over the title of Thief.
Let’s dig into this ne’er-do-well and see what makes the class tick.
