Hello!

Im playing an awesomely cool dwarf thief/charlatan/master thief. And i love it. However i have a few issues with the careers. Which is the lack of the skill observation. For me observation is kind of the most important skill for a thief, next to skulduggery and stealth, but as it is today its simply not there. I mean you sneak into a mansion unseen, and there you cant hear/see the guarding dogs. And if you get pass the dogs you still cant find the glitter/safe you,'re suppose to steal/lockpick. And further if you find the treasure you still cant find the deadly trap the filthy rich merchant has set to keep unwanted fingers away from his gold. I know i still can buy it for twice the amount of xp, but its like a warrior should have to pay twice xp for weapon skill, in my opinion. So why on earth doesnt thieves/master thieves get observation????

the second problem i got with this game and my sneaky thief is that climb is athletics, a strength based skill which neither is in any of the thief-careers which means my agility 5 is useless when i want to climb up to a window to break in. So to sum up i got a thief that cant climb, that cant see, hear or find ****. Our warriors scale surfaces twice as good as me in their freaking chain-mails

I ve tried to take this up with our GM but hes a Rule-nazi (if you read this, please dont kill me;p). "If its not on my card you pay double". So my question is, how do you guys deal with this in your campaigns? Or am i missing something? Am i as a nimble thief suppose to have strength 6 and pay tons of xp on something that i recon should be my primary skills.

You deal with it through a house-rule.
Unfortunately, house-rules need to get approved by the GM, so you're in a bit of a bind there…

There's lots of skills that should be available to different careers that are not.

But what it looks like to me is that the careers you've taken, don't quite mesh with your concept of what you're describing.
I'm not sure of what the career cards say, but there should be a catburglar career, who has those types of career skills…
scaling buildings & stealthy movement & good observation skills.

A thief is merely somebody who steals and is good at it. Breaking & Entering is a different dish, ask any prosecutor

Maybe create your own career, together with your GM?

It sounds like you think more of a thief from D&D with searching fot traps and climbing around. I agree with Nisses, in my opinion thieves are more on the lines of cutpurses, stealing money from people at the market and stealing food from the stalls. Thus they don't need observation or athletics as much. As a general a thief does't enter houses.

You could simply buy observation and athletics as out of career choises, as your GM suggests. Sure, the XP cost is higher, but you'll have the skills you want. And 1 XP extra isn't that much if it's something you really want for your character, I would not call it a ton of extra xp. All of my players have trained at least two out of career skills at some point each.

I understand your GM, if I'd allow one player to exchange or add one or two skills to his/her career because it feels right for the career, I need to extend option that to all my players or "force" them to make up compelling reasons as to why it's ok to "break" the rules. While warriors have Weapon skill, they do lack a lot of other skills that could fit a warriro career. Why doesn't the soldier have observation? If he's a soldier he probably needs it when he stands guard on a castle wall or guard the camp at night right? Why doesn't soldiers have athletics? They excercise all the time to be in shape, they should be able to run, climb, swim etc.? Observation and athletics are so universally applicable that it's quite easy to make compelling arguments as to why a career should have them.

I for one think that the skills of the thief career are the right ones. They fit well with a thief (but maybe not as well for a burglar).

Also, I allow players with coordination trained to get a white die per training in coordination on climbing rolls, as nimbleness, balance etc. is useful when climbing. Ask your GM if he'd consider it, that would at least make you a bit better a climbing (there are several examples in the written adventures where skills add white dice to relevant checks even if they're not the primary skill that's used for the check, there are also some action cards).

You could also put a fortune advance in Str, as that would augment your ability to climb.

The last option I can come up with is that you simply move into a career that has observation (and/or athletics), examples of "fitting" careers for a thief to progress into could be gambler, scout or assassin. All of them have observation as a skill as an option.

Vasquia said:

Whilst training a skill does give you a decent advantage, it isn't the be all, end all of skill checks. The thief in a mini campaign I'm playing in was still able to break into a house happily without observation and athletics trained (she might have needed my dwarf to give her a boost up, mind). A good strength and intelligence score should see you through most easy/medium challenges.