Burglar

Description

The consummate Burglar is an expert at breaking and entering the most difficult buildings, bypassing walls, locks, traps and guardians, grabbing the best loot, and escaping unnoticed as stealthily as he arrived.
The cat Burglar requires a minimum Strength of 10 and Dexterity of 13.

Role

In many ways, the cat Burglar is the stereotypical professional thief. He probably uses more of the traditional thief skills, and more frequently. than any other kit.
Even within the ranks of Burglars, thieves often specialize even further. Some specialize by skills. A "box-man." for instance, is an expert at opening locks, especially safes and well-protected chests. A cat Burglar or second-story thief specializes in climbing walls (which can be a remarkably effective protection, especially if ground-level entrances have people around them). Teams of Burglars who specialize by skill often find the most success.
Other Burglars specialize by target. Jewel thieves in particular are the elite among Burglars; the protection found around the objects of their attention demands that their skills and cleverness be honed to perfection.
Burglars of any background may be found. Even thrillseekers of the privileged classes may take up jewel Burglary as a challenging, profitable, and exciting pastime.
Almost all successful Burglars have some sort of guild affiliation. In order to get rid of the loot they take, they of course need a fence (especially if their score is distinctive — e.g., fabulous gems, valuable artwork). Guilds provide the Burglar with innummerable benefits: fencing of even the most distinctive items, connections with potential "business" partners, access to specialized equipment, and, not least of all, protection. A guild can arrange the fix (to free an imprisoned Burglar), and provide deterrence, protecting its Burglars from other guilds and powerful criminals — people who don't take kindly to being robbed themselves, and are more likely to make hasty decisions about a suspect character's guilt or innocence.

Weapon Proficiencies

Better Burglars do not bring weapons with them on a job; it only means more serious penalties if they are caught — either legal penalties, or more immediate ones like a jumpy victim panicking and attacking them. On some jobs, however (e.g., stealing from dangerous criminals) a Burglar is wise to have means of self-defense. Small, quiet, concealable weapons are naturally favored, though a Burglar may choose proficiency in any weapon among those normally permitted to thieves.

Non-weapon Proficiencies

Bonus

Alertness, Looting

Recommended

Begging, Information Gathering, Jumping, Observation, Rope Use, Tightrope Walking, Tumbling

Skill Progression

The vital skills of a Burglar are open locks, find/remove traps, move silently, hide in shadows, detect noise and climb walls. As mentioned before, a Burglar may concentrate particularly on one of these, but he would probably then want to be as evenly excellent as possible in the others.

Equipment

Burglars love to use specialized hardware to increase their chances of success. For a thorough examination of some specialty items available, and their effects on thief skills, consult the equipment chapter later in this book.

Special Benefits

None

Special Hindrances

None

Races

Members of any race may be Burglars, and it is a favorite kit. Non-human thieves often specialize in areas that offer excellent racial bonuses. For instance, dwarves may specialize in lockpicking and trap detection. And elves may specialize in reconnaissance (they sneak around and report on the presence and nature of obstacles).

The Specialist Burglar

A broad, general range of skills is often what adventurers choose, but for the urban Burglar, specialization is the way to go. There are a number of reasons for this.
A specialized thief is simply more marketable. People in the underworld want someone excellent for a job. That may mean a high-level generalized thief, one who has been in the business long enough to be good at everything. But it's not easy for a thief to reach that level. Therefore, by concentrating on one skill, a relatively low-level thief may compete with a thief many levels higher for jobs of a certain type.
Suppose, for instance, we have a "box-man" — actually a woman — named Annelise. By concentrating as many points as possible in her open locks skill, she can have a score of 85% at only 4th level (this does not include modifiers for race, Dexterity armor or kit). Since she can put no more than half of what she earns at each level into any one skill, she distributes her remaining points more or less evenly among the other skills. She would probably neglect pick pockets and read languages, however, since they usually are not useful to a Burglar.
Compare this to a "generalist" thief, which adventurers tend to be: On Table 19 of the DUNGEON MASTER Guide (Thief Average Ability Table), you can see that Annelise's level of lockpicking skill would not be attained before 14th level.
Now imagine that a mob of jewel thieves is preparing for a job. They have diverse skills — except that they are lousy at lock-picking. They need to bring a box-man into their mob. Who would they choose? Well, first off, a 14th-level thief is pretty bloody rare.
And even if one were available and willing to work with less-experienced thieves, he would probably demand a larger share of the take. Otherwise it would not be worth his time; he has uniformly good skills, and could probably commit this robbery on his own. A job with which he would need assistance is probably well out of the range of these thieves.
Annelise, then, is a pretty attractive option. She might be able to climb little better than a fish, but that's the cat Burglar's expertise; after he's mounted the building, he can lower a rope for the less sure-footed. By offering Annelise a reasonable share of the loot, the other Burglars are almost assured that their difficult lock will be opened.

[Complete Thief's Handbook]