Some sneaky questions

General ACKS Forums Ask the Autarchs
,
1

So I have some questions about the Thief and classes based off of it.

Starting early? Do people allow thieves to do Hijinks in a month of down time? Recently some players have been creating items or resting from resurrections. While other players have to wait or there is downtime do you let them do solo Hijinks? What do the rules say about this (personally don’t see anything saying you can unless I am blind) and what was the intent behind the rules? (Look at you Alex)

Speaking of: Treasure Hunting seems to be the only Hijinks that doesn’t give EXP right away. Why is this? Is this because generally these are bigger payoffs? Also what happens when someone does this Hijinks 1000 times? Surely there are not meant to be that many treasures just lying about? Should I start to give penalties with excessive use of this one?

Spells that temporary give bonus to skills: Should you allow this to be used for Hijinks? For example you spend the whole month casing out a place, planning to steal everything. You spend it getting to know the area and the people, how mister Joe takes out his dog every day after dinner. While the entire Hijinks takes a month you only need to be sneaky for a few hours at most. Again I don’t see anything saying these checks represent work over the last month just that you need to make them and you find out what happens.

Why does high morale work in favor of the city but low morale doesn’t for Hijinks?

Is there any downside for pardoning people over and over if you are the domain leader?

That’s all I can think of now, thank you.
Can you use smuggling to remove the fees and fines for Mercantile Adventures?

2

Re: Treasure Hunting: Really any of the hijinks, if done perpetually or en masse, stops making sense without a world that reacts to it. Treasure Hunting is pretty easy to deal with, because one can easily rationalize maps ‘expiring’ as other treasure hunters find treasure independently, and I expect most parties will be quite unable to raid a thousand sites before anyone else can reach any of them.

Arguably giving penalties for excessive use of any single hijink, and thereby forcing a guild to diversify, makes sense in general.

I have penalized domain morale for excessive pardoning.

3

tarting early? Do people allow thieves to do Hijinks in a month of down time? Recently some players have been creating items or resting from resurrections. While other players have to wait or there is downtime do you let them do solo Hijinks? What do the rules say about this (personally don’t see anything saying you can unless I am blind) and what was the intent behind the rules? (Look at you Alex)

APM: Yes. I allow thieves to hijink during downtime.

Speaking of: Treasure Hunting seems to be the only Hijinks that doesn’t give EXP right away. Why is this? Is this because generally these are bigger payoffs?

APM: Treasure maps are considered “magic items” for purposes of XP. “If the party recovers magic items on an adventure, and sells them without using them, they receive 1 XP per 1gp earned in the sale. If the characters use the magic items, they do not get any XP, even if they later sell them.” A character who recovers a treasure map from a hijink can sell the treasure map to a buyer (at some % of the alleged value of the hoard) or can use the treasure map, and get XP from the treasure recovered thereby.

Also what happens when someone does this Hijinks 1000 times? Surely there are not meant to be that many treasures just lying about? Should I start to give penalties with excessive use of this one?

APM: Use your discretion as Judge to adjudicate this. It would be entirely reasonable to impose penalties however, for the obvious reason that there are not that many treasures lying about.

APM: In my own campaign I worked out the available treasure hoards in advance. When a treasure map was discovered, I’d randomly select one of those treasure hoards as the destination of the map. This could result in players finding maps to a hoard that had already been looted, or finding a map to a hoard they already had a map to.

Spells that temporary give bonus to skills: Should you allow this to be used for Hijinks? For example you spend the whole month casing out a place, planning to steal everything. You spend it getting to know the area and the people, how mister Joe takes out his dog every day after dinner. While the entire Hijinks takes a month you only need to be sneaky for a few hours at most. Again I don’t see anything saying these checks represent work over the last month just that you need to make them and you find out what happens.

APM: No, you cannot use spells that give temporary bonuses to skills on Hijink throw. The Hijink throw is abstracting a long series of activities.

Why does high morale work in favor of the city but low morale doesn’t for Hijinks?

APM: To avoid making poor slums too profitable.

Is there any downside for pardoning people over and over if you are the domain leader?

APM: There is no penalty provided for in the rules, but as Judge you certainly could impose one if it becomes warranted.

Can you use smuggling to remove the fees and fines for Mercantile Adventures?

APM: Yes.

4

Follow-up question because your answer made me think about it.

How much coverage of a +skill spell, each day, would be necessary to allow the thiefy character to apply the bonus to his hijink?

I think we can assume if it’s permanent (which is probably a magic item), he can apply the bonus. Starting at 3rd level, an elven nightblade could cast Chameleon or Silent Step on themselves twice a day. At third level, this is only six turns (one hour) of coverage.

At 14th level, though, that 2/day would be 28 turns, or 4 hours and 40 minutes.

I might have answered my own question but I’ll keep going anyway. Since you can’t do anything else significant while hijinking, my gut is that it takes roughly 8 hours a day of hijinking. Therefore, my instinct is to allow any skill bonuses that apply for 8 hours or more a day; even a 14th level nightblade would require magic items of some kind to make up the difference and get the bonus if that’s the case. I’m just curious if hijinks have a specific number of hours per day attached to them already.

5

question on that as a 3rd level assassin i did a spying/blacknail hijkink and it actually succeded. I earned 3400 gold. Am i right that by raw i should be earning 3200 xp off this? It just seems weird to almost double my xp on the basis of one roll of the die.

6

So I also wanted to know how people handle how they populate Thieve Guilds. I just use a chart of my own make, similar to amount of lairs in a hex, based on market level. Then I roll again to determine who owns the guild and if they are friendly with other guilds with reaction rolls.

I allow the use of another Hijinks, turf war, that is similar to assassination to attack other guilds. Making it harder to do Hijinks. How do other people handle other guilds in the same towns?

7

I Haven’t had a chance to put them into practice yet, but I did write some House Rules covering guild warfare.

http://www.autarch.co/forums/house-rules/guild-warfare

8

That’s correct.

It’s a risk-reward tradeoff. You can also lose your character pretty easily doing hijinks with little opportunity for your friends to help you.

9

Can you use hide in shadows in the middle of a fight assuming you have shadows to hide in? Its not like other games where line of sight is a thing for hiding as you are literally blending into shadows.

10

Can you use hide in shadows in the middle of a fight assuming you have shadows to hide in? Its not like other games where line of sight is a thing for hiding as you are literally blending into shadows.

11

I would probably allow it in a case of “run away and hide” but not for “hide nearby to stab someone next round”

12

[quote="Alex"] No, you cannot use spells that give temporary bonuses to skills on Hijink throw. The Hijink throw is abstracting a long series of activities. [/quote] Seeking clarity here. There are magic items that give boons to abilities that govern Hijinx throws, like the Elven Cloak's boon to Hide in Shadows, which governs Assassination hijinx. You're saying that a character cannot use an Elven Cloak-assisted Hide in Shadows throw for Assassination hijinx?

13

[quote="Atlictoatl"]

 

No, you cannot use spells that give temporary bonuses to skills on Hijink throw. The Hijink throw is abstracting a long series of activities.


-Alex

Seeking clarity here. There are magic items that give boons to abilities that govern Hijinx throws, like the Elven Cloak's boon to Hide in Shadows, which governs Assassination hijinx. You're saying that a character cannot use an Elven Cloak-assisted Hide in Shadows throw for Assassination hijinx?

 

[/quote]

I would rule that if the item provides a permanent bonus, it applies to hijinks, but if it provides a temporary bonus it does not. So an Elven Cloak provides a bonus to hijinks, but a Chameleon spell does not.

 

14

Thanks for your response, Alex. Could you say a little more about how that interacts with your previous comment about the Hijinx roll being an abstraction covering a multitude of activity? I can see arguments on both sides, but especially when considering that there may be other activities covered by (say) a Hide in Shadows roll for Assassination, it's easy to dismiss the magic item as not having relevance across all of that diverse activity.

Still, you'd grant benefit of the item?

15

Well, I suppose my answer is that a reasonable Judge could reach either conclusion and have it be supported!