I’ve decided to work my through the basic classes of White Box. I just did the Fighter and now it’s time for the Thief. Yeah, you know those sneaky bastards.

The most annoying thing I found about the original Thief was that percentile skill system. It’s one of those mechanics that just totally felt tacked on. This is a bit of genius in White Box. So many run things run off the good old X in d6 mechanic so then why not thieves? So thieves ended up with one skill Thievery that runs on that system. Like I said, simple and genius. It makes leveling up easier and quicker so you can back to looting those dungeons.

But it’s almost too simple. So here’s my hack for Thieves. They have two skills: Thievery and Skullduggery.

Thievery is the thief stuff. OK, it’s picking locks, finding and disarming traps, climbing and stealth.

Skullduggery is all about the con. It’s sleight of hand, deception, disguise, and streetwise.

Here’s another way to look at it. Thievery is used for devices and the environment while Skullduggery is for people.

At 1st level, the player chooses which is their character’s primary skill and it progresses just like in the book. The other skill is their secondary skill is one point less.

And there you go a simple and quick hack on the Thief.

And if you’re still here and don’t know what White Box is then grab up the PDF for free on DrivethruRPG or get it dirt cheap on Amazon.

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