The "Lone Wolf":

Unique Thieves

Most thieves go through a period of training and apprenticeship, as do legitimate tradesmen. They are taught by an established, experienced thief, who was taught by a thief before him. This goes back untold generations, to the earliest thieves who developed skills on their own and then shared them with partners and apprentices. Over the years the skills and techniques have been formalized and perfected, especially under the normalizing influence of the large and powerful guilds that have arisen.

But not every thief is molded in this way. There are always others, known as "lone wolves," who developed outside the "system" of the established underworld. They discovered and developed their larcenous abilities without the aid of a mentor.

Many lone wolves resemble normal thieves so closely that they may be treated as the very same thing, as far as class, abilities and restrictions go.

However, in some cases a lone wolf may turn out very different—perhaps different enough to be considered a class unto himself. To design such a character, you may use the optional rules, "Creating a New Class," in Chapter Three of the Dungeon Master's Guide.

The emphasis of such a character should still be on thieve's skills, but it may be that not all of the traditional skills are present. And the character may have other unusual abilities as well, cultivated to assist in his roguish endeavors.

Imagine, for instance, a self-taught pickpocket. He may have Pick Pockets, Move Silently and Hide in Shadows, and perhaps Climb Walls (to help get himself over fences or whatever when he is pursued by an observant and angry victim). But he could have no other thief skills; for his thieving lifestyle there was no need for them.

Note how this would be different from a traditional thief specialized in pickpocketing (as in, for example, the cutpurse kit): Even though he specializes in the course of his career, the cutpurse received a core training that included all the thief traditional skills—a liberal arts education in larceny, if you will.

Lone wolves often lead dangerous lives. They must be very self-reliant, and they have to find their own contacts for scoping out jobs and fencing stolen goods. As "freelancers" they run a constant and most serious risk of running afoul of monopolistic thieves' guilds.

Guilds are often wary of lone wolves, who are more likely than "established" thieves, with trusted contacts and reliable references, to be spies for authorities or rival guilds. The lone wolf is also regarded by guildsmen with a mix of curiosity and contempt—and sometimes even admiration, if his odd mix of abilities proves particularly useful "in the field."

A lone wolf, as we said, may be a character class unto himself. Most such classes never have more than one member, and when he dies his unique combination of skills is forgotten; the class ceases to be. On rare occasion a lone wolf may take an apprentice or two, and the class may be perpetuated in this manner. (If you are using the 1st edition AD&D® game, you may suppose that the Assassin class arose in this manner.)

Guilds who have accepted lone wolves into their ranks may ask the thief to take on apprentices—but two things usually prevent this: One, conservative guildmembers typically see the lone wolf's unorthodox methods as a threat (because they are not understood), or as inferior to the traditional way of doing things; and two, lone wolves, used to doing things by themselves, are reluctant to share their secrets. An example follows:

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