Senior Thieves

Such thieves—including the guildmaster!—should be designed with a little more detail. The following points can e kept in mind when adding some detail to their basic profiles:

Physical Factors: Simple details like age, height, weight, and appearance can be determined. Senior thieves can be taken to be 25+1d20 years if a random determination is needed. Sex can be determined randomly also.

Exceptional Ability Scores: Thieves of high or medium level should have fair abilities to have survived so long. Allow a flat 1-in-4 chance for each non-Dex ability to be rolled on 2d4+10 and record exceptional (15+) scores.

Magic Items: Senior thieves will certainly have magic items suitable for thieves. Different campaigns vary hugely in the amount of magic knocking around. A good guide is to sneak a look at thief PCs (and NPCs) in campaigns you think are well-run, and/or the blueprint profiles given later, and take hints from these about the nature and number of magic items possessed. When in doubt, always be stingy. Magic can be added to a magic-weak campaign; it's hard to retrieve it when too much is floating about.

Guild Position: Non-guildmasters will still likely be important and occupy key positions (especially if council members). A shrewd guildmaster, for example, will keep the second-rankers happy with important things to do. Quartermaster, deputy guildmaster, chief of blackmail, chief of espionage, liaison officer (with other guilds), and many other options can be written in here.

Other Stuff: Personal idiosyncrasies are always a nice, characterizing touch. Cover identities are also important; what face does the thief present to the public? Does he have a trade, is he a merchant, is he perhaps the Constable of the Watch or a trusted tax official?

The most important case, obviously, is the guildmaster himself (or the ruling council). Such an NPC must be individually designed by the DM to suit the campaign. The blueprint profiles which follow the guild design section give a couple of examples of fully fleshed-out mid-to-high-level guildmasters, and these can be used by the DM as they are or as an indication of how to go about designing a guildmaster NPC.

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