Faerûnian Rogue Kits (WRR)

__TOC__
: Of course, the Guild of Shadows is a unique and fascinating order. It is not, however, the only variation on the traditional rogue's theme. In my travels through the world I have had the fortune and misfortune to encounter a great many people, all of whom were classed as rogues by the locals but who had very different skills and abilities.
: There are many in the world who feel that all rogues are thieves. Not only is this untrue, it's an injustice to both rogues and thieves. After all, there's not a confident man in the world who would appreciate being likened to a common thug or street ruffian, and few pickpockets have the hearts to be professional killers. Rogues range from the swashbuckling merchantmen of Lantan to the skilful elf woodsmen of Evermeet. Some are good, some are evil, but all are cunning and more than capable of taking cure of themselves in a pinch.
: I have heard some sages say that all adventurers can be grouped into four or five different classes. This may be true. I can certainly see where one could consider paladins to be more or less the same as rangers and druids to be much like the other clerics of the world. There are differences of course; that's what this book is about, after all, but there are more similarities. Among the world's rogues, though, there is more variance than among any of the world's other classes. In some realms, these folk are practically as skilled at combat as the more traditional fighters of Faerûn. In Thay, a country I hope I never have the misfortune to visit again, the rogues are even able to cast spells. Indeed, even the shadow walkers are generally considered to be a subclass of the rogue by the sages and scholars who attempt to classify such things.
:: —From the journals of Athanial the Wind
In the pages that follow, dozens of kits present some of the many varieties of rogue that one will encounter in the typical FORGOTTEN REALMS campaign. These are formatted in the same way that the wizard's kits presented earlier in this book are. See pages 14–16 for a brief overview of the presentation, if desired.
Past publications, especially the Complete Thief's Handbook, have included kits for members of the Rogue class. The ones presented here are not meant to replace those or make them obsolete. Rather, this collection of kits should complement those previous works, giving FORGOTTEN REALMS DMs and players a wealth of material to choose from.
It's worth noting that some of the rogues presented in this section, especially from regions like the Zhentil Keep or Thay, are almost always very evil. As this is the case, they really aren't very well suited for use by players. On the other hand, a campaign where one of the characters was a renegade thief who had turned upon his evil peers and was constantly attempting to avoid capture or assassination could be quite fun.
Before selecting one of these kits, a player should always clear his choice with the campaign's Dungeon Master. After all, if a DM has based his campaign in the city-states of the Vilhon Reach, he might think that characters from, say, the Old Empires are inappropriate. Players shouldn't be put off if a DM rejects their first choice for a character kit. After all, there are dozens of others from which to chose.
Lastly, it should be remembered that the purpose of these kits is to promote role-playing. The actual differences between any two kits aren't largely significant from a game mechanics point of view. One will be better skilled at some things or have access to a different set of proficiencies, but both are still rogues. The importance of a kit is to establish for players and DMs a basic model upon which they may elaborate to create a new and exciting character. A kit is something like the character description one might find in the notes of a playbill. It tells the audience a little bit about the character, but it's up to the actor to bring him to life.