Buccaneer

Description

Buccaneers are thieves of the high seas, plying the trade lanes in search of prey. They intermix with and complement their piratical warrior cousins — to the extent that any of these scoundrels can be said to complement anything.
A hardv Constitution (no less than 10) is required to survive long months at sea and be a Buccaneer.

Role

Buccaneers closely resemble their land-dwelling cousins, Bandits. They, too, are desperate and cruel. fiendishly cunning, and likely to have a lot of internal squabbles.
Like Bandits, Buccaneers cooperate for survival and success. They also have sordid pasts — pasts which will often bind them together. Many a pirate ship used to be put to legitimate use, but its crew rose in mutiny took the ship. killed everyone not party to the act. and turned to piracy.
Mutiny and piracy are both punishable by death, and on the high seas the warship or merchantman of any state will gladly carry out that sentence, if given a chance. Buccaneers will therefore fight to the death, against all odds, rather than lace capture and inevitable summarv execution.
Buccaneers do not belong to guilds: although, like Bandits, a ship of them may be considered a nonstandard guild of sorts. Sometimes groups of Pirate and Buccaneer ships will even make alliances, and cooperate to raid richly laden (and therefore well-defended) merchantmen. There mav also be rivalry among pirate groups — especially when one of them carries a healthv cargo of booty that has not yet been hidden in a safe sanctuarv.
Buccaneers like to have secret sanctuaries, probably in a secret cove or on a tiny island. There they rest between raids, store treasure and provisions, and plan their activities. Such sanctuaries will have the best protection available to the Buccaneers, possibly including magical defenses.
Related to but distinct from Buccaneers are Privateers. These are "legitimate" Buccaneers. Privateers have received the sanction of some nation to practice piracy on the merchantmen of another nation. WeII known historical examples ot this include the Privateers of Elizabethan England, captained by such illustrious personages as Sir Francis Drake. These daring "sea dogs" raided gold-laden Spanish galleons as thev returned from the New VVorld. While Privateers are sanctioned by one nation, those on whom they prey certainly regard them as pirates and will treat them as such if they are captured.
A group of NPC Buccaneers should include not just thieves but a healthy number of warriors with the Pirate kit. and perhaps a Swashbuckler or two as well. Even a renegade mage might be found among them. (Privateers are even more likelv to have the services of a wizard, especially one with talents in the manipulation of water and wind.)

Skill Progression

Buccaneers make much less use of the traditional thief skills than thieves of other kits. Climbing around the rigging of their ships requires some wall-climbing skill, and the delicate step needed to work high above the deck mav carrv over into excellence at moving silently. Finally, Buccaneers favor the read languages skill — they like to be extraordinarily adept at deciphering the strange, secret codes adorning maps, codes that may tell a sly captain the location of a rival's buried treasure.

Weapon Proficiencies

The DM may wish to make classic Buccaneer weapons, such as the cutlass, available to thieves ot this kit.

Non-weapon Proficiencies

Bonus

Navigation, Seamanship, Swimming

Recommended

Alertness, Direction Sense, Fishing, Gambling, Intimidation, Looting, Rope Use, Tightrope Walking, Weather Sense

Equipment

Buccaneers dress themselves as sailors (with weapons, of course!) and carrv about the same equipment when at sea. Also, like sailors, they will avoid armor — it gets in the way of climbing around the rigging (double penalties on climbing rolls), and also presents a problem for someone unfortunate enough to find himself overboard.

Special Benefits

Because oi their familiarity with ropes. much used in the nautical arts, Buccaneers gain a bonus of +5% on climbing rolls if ropes are involved — +10% if they are ropes on a ship. (Note that the total chance of success with a thief skill, including all positive and negative modifiers, cannot exceed 95%.)
Alwavs be sure to consider the various Climbing modifiers. Buccaneers also can fight from a rope (usually on a ship), so long as the feet and one hand can grasp it, and they are much better at this than other types of characters. They get +1 on attack and saving throw rolls in rope combat, +2 on such rolls in shipboard rope combat. Note that these adiustments should be added to all the other modifiers — which are usually negative. For instance, a climbing character would normally get a -2 penalty on attacks: so the Buccaneer•s +2 bonus merely negates this.
Use common sense when applying the saving throw bonus for a Buccaneer in rope combat; while it would apply to dodging a lightning bolt, it would not apply to saving against a charm or hold spell.

Special Hindrances

As their expertise lies in rope-climbing. Buccaneers suffer a penalty of -10% when they attempt to climb without one.

Races

Almost all Buccaneers are human, since few demihumans and humanoids are known as seafarers. The occasional half-elf might be found among a Buccaneer crew, or, even more rarely, a half-breed or full-blooded aquatic elf. For such an elf to leave his own people would indicate a turbulent past indeed.

[Complete Thief's Handbook]