Tags
B/X, Basic, Dungeons & Dragons, House Rules, Labyrinth Lord, OSR, Random Tables, Random Thursday, RPG, Subclasses, Thief
Thieves remain one of my favourite character classes. Proof once again that I’m not “old school enough” since I like a class who’s abilities could be all role-played for the truly old school.
Remember – if using these rules, all characters must have a subclass. If you really don’t want a subclass, petition the GM to let you take the focused subclass (Focused Fighter, etc), which provides no new abilities, but instead makes leveling up a bit faster.

Thief Illustration (c) Wizards of the Coast
Thief Subclasses (d12)
- Bounty Hunter – +1 to hit and damage against his own race
- Dungeoneer – +20% chance to detect traps
- Butcher – Increase backstab multiplier by 1
- Scout – +1 initiative, +1 hear noise
- Fence – +2 on reaction rolls to buy and sell goods
- Guild Thief – +10% to open locks and pick pockets
- Thug – d6 hit die (d8 if using advanced hit dice)
- Knife Artist – +1 to hit and damage with daggers
- Outcast – -1 on reaction checks, +1 weapon damage
- Arcanist – Cast magic user spells as a magic user of 1/3 level. Cannot wear armour.
- Focused – +10% to earned XP
- Choose one or make up a new one
I love all these d12 subclasses posts. It makes we want to play OSR/1e!
Thieves are my favourite class. This is good stuff and very neatly done.
Puts me in mind of an old buddy who’d only play thieves/rogues – wonder what ever became of him?
Now, with all these subclass tables, I’m itching even more to get behind the screen. Can’t see an OSR game they wouldn’t work with (though maybe ACKS, with the introduction of Custom Classes in the Player’s Companion, would prove an issue).
Very nice! I did something similar but used a set of Talents which could be bought by the character in place of General Skills (which I don’t use in my B/X games.) I am in the process of writing a Lankhmar campaign document for my upcoming B/X game, and these ideas could come in handy.
A suggestion: I’d change butcher into assassin; that’s how I do it in my games, to get rid of the assassin class and fold it into the thief class.
I specifically am going through all the subclasses I wrote in the tables to get rid of existing subclasses so there isn’t a conflict. In fact, Butcher was originally Assassin when I wrote this, but since d12 Assassin subclasses is being posted next week, I didn’t want to have a conflict with it.
Ditto for the cleric. In the original version of the d12 cleric subclasses the first entry is Paladin. In my revised list this has been replaced with Crusader.
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