OSR - Thief Skills Revisited

While playing an old school retro-clone tabletop role-playing game, a few of us were lamenting how the skills of the thief class were of very little use at low levels. More so even than the abilities of other classes, these talents were almost certain to fail, and (as with trap finding) under the most disastrous circumstances. In theory this balances out with high chances of success at higher levels. But this is of little benefit, since many campaigns rarely last more than a few levels. Wouldn't it be convenient if the thief could excel in at least one or two areas, so they had something more reliable to contribute?

Remembering that this actually was the case in a somewhat later (meso-school?) game, and even a more recent OSR game, it occurred to me that this goal certainly was achievable.

This document revises the Thief class from a popular OSR game, mainly by breaking up the advancement of all thief skills with percentile scores and allowing thieves to allocate percentage points to the skills of their choosing as they advance. Percentage points available at each level are based roughly on the number a character obtains while advancing from levels 1 thorough 14 in a more traditional game (with d6 skills being converted to equivalent percentages).

Due to the source material it is taken from, this document is released under the Open Game License v1.0a.