Benefits of Guild Membership (CTH)

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==Benefits of Guild Membership==
"What do I get out of it?" is a reasonable enough query from a player with a PC thief when told his character must join a guild, or if it is strongly suggested as a wise option by the DM. By answering the question, many of the functions of the thieves' guild which benefit its members become clear. Below are detailed the most common benefits gained, although these will vary from guild to guild, with an example of one additional benefit typical only of membership in a certain kind of guild—a highly organized and resourceful one!
It is not the case that every guild will provide all the benefits listed below, but certainly almost all guilds will provide training, access to necessary equipment, and the like.
==Training==
The Dungeon Master's Guide gives training (to gain experience levels) as an option for DMs. There is much to recommend training as a necessity for level gains. Having a PC train with a master, mentor, or tutor—probably with others of his profession around—allows many, many things to happen naturally without their obviously being spoonfed by the DM. Rumors and news can be caught up on. Hints and tips (e.g., concerning the usefulness of some of the new equipment items reviewed elsewhere) can be exchanged. New friends and contacts can be made. Intrigues and scams can be plotted, gossiped about, and initiated; employment can be offered; schisms and factions within the guild can become a focus for adventuring. All this is just for starters. Training is a natural way for the DM to enrich the game in all sorts of ways.
Second, while certain skill gains can be seen as the result of practice, this does not apply to all the advances experience brings. New weapon and nonweapon proficiencies are the most obvious example. How can a thief who has never used a short sword, for example (because he has not previously been proficient with it), suddenly develop a proficiency in its use without training? This is obviously wholly unrealistic. How can a thief learn an Etiquette proficiency, enabling him to pull scams on the rich and haughty more easily, without a tutor to coach him in upper-crust, high society ways? He sure can't learn Etiquette from a dungeon crawl or wilderness hike! Likewise, if the player chooses to pile most of the 30 "skill points" gained for a level into one or two skills only, the PC could well need a specialist tutor to coach him in these skills—a good way to bring in one or two of the specialist thief kits as NPCs, too.
So, training is an important element of the game, and the thieves' guild is the place where the PC thief will have the best chance of finding a tutor to train him. He may have to wait a week or two, or maybe a little longer if the DM wishes this, but by and large the guild will go to some lengths to make tutors available.
==Equipment==
This is a major advantage for a thieves' guild member. It goes without saying that many items of use to a thief are hardly available on the open market in almost any society! Armor and weapons can be had, and likewise straightforward items such as ropes, iron spikes, crowbars, and the like. But where does the thief get lockpicks, tiger's claws, razor rings, silenced armor, and suchlike? From the thieves' guild, of course.
In addition to being a source of equipment for sale (and possibly even for loan), here is an obvious chance for role-playing possibilities. The "blueprint profile" for the Thieves Quartermaster (later in this chapter) shows how a simple trip to buy some new lockpicks at the guild can be turned into an encounter with a very resourceful and entertaining NPC, one the player of the thief PC won't forget!
In some powerful guilds, magical items may be available for exchange (for other magical items, obviously ones of superior value!) or even possibly for loan (with a fat deposit securing the item). Loaning allows thief PCs to enjoy having a magical item without the DM letting them have it permanently! It should go without saying that absconding with the item will lead to relentless and murderous pursuits until the item is returned.
==Information==
The thieves' guild will make it its business to know about many things which are of interest to its members, and that can mean just about anything, so a few examples are given here:
Security: The blueprints for sewer networks (allowing ingress and egress through manhole covers), times of changing guards at major guarded buildings (the Treasury, the Mint, etc.), times of watch patrols (in rich residential areas), the nature and positions of guards (warriors, dogs, etc.) and traps in key buildings, and the like.
Commercial: Who is richer than he looks (and why and how), arrivals and departures of valuable cargoes and items, where certain valuables are cached, hidden, disguised; and more in this vein.
Friends and Enemies: This will depend in a big way on the relationship of the guild with other associations, dealt with later. Sometimes such information will be given to a novice thief for obvious reasons; "do not rob merchants X, Y, Z or else. Understand?" (reasons郵 and Y pay protection money and Z is actually Deputy Guildmaster; the novice might be told some of this). But other possibilities include which corrupt officers of the law are in the pockets of the guild (and therefore should not be dealt with too harshly during a robbery), which servants of the rich are very happy to talk for what magnitude of bribe, which barmen in the rough taverns in the docks will help thieves (e.g., by putting a little something in someone's drink so they can be "helped home" by the thief later), and so on.
General Information: This is a catch-all category. To take but one possible illustrative example: a guild might keep records of legal punishments for various thiefly crimes in neighboring (maybe even distant) locations ("Over there? Not if you value your hands, brother!"). These may not always be accurate and up-to-date, of course.
What the guild knows, who within the guild knows it, and whether they will tell what they know obviously depends on how "hot" the information is, the seniority of the person inquiring, and other factors. These complications don't need our attention now; the important thing is the basic idea here, that the guild is a vital information source. And, to anticipate the responsibilities guild members have to the guild, this is a two-way process. The thief will be expected to report certain information to the guild seniors! This is dealt with later.
==Fencing==
This is an often-overlooked aspect of the thieves' guild. A PC thief may steal all kinds of things which he hasn't any idea about, so far as their price goes. He didn't find the hidden safe in the merchant's house, so out he comes with a bag containing a jade statuette of a cat (actually imitation jade so it's mostly worthless), a crystal vase (exceptional elfin work, worth a fair sum), a crude wooden idol (an antique, and thus worth far more than the thief thinks), and more . . . Indeed, in the absence of any special nonweapon proficiencies (such as Gem-cutting and the like) the thief may often have little idea how much nonmonetary treasures he has stolen are worth. Even with the Appraising proficiency, the thief's estimates may often be wrong, and a fair proportion of items too unusual or singular for the thief to be sure anyway. This is one area where the fence can help the thief.
A resourceful thieves' guild will have members who can accurately value different sorts of items, and will also have contacts with certain specialists who aren't actually thieves but who also aren't terribly ethical either. They can handle real rarities. The Fence thief kit gives a basic design option for fences, and the blueprint profile section (later in this chapter) also details a highly experienced and versatile fence who can be used straight off the page (as it were) or developed by the DM for use in his campaign.
A special case is that of magical treasure. A simple detect magic spell from a mage-thief specialist in the guild, working with the fence, can tell a thief that the nice gold signet ring he filched from the drunk fighter is a magic item, worth far, far more than its value as gold. The same NPC can tell the thief (from an identify spell) that the ring is a ring of protection +2, worth thousands. This only needs a 1st-level magic-user with the fence, but it's a priceless service for the thief!
The other role for the fence, obviously, is that the thief gets "hot" property off his hands quickly. It will probably be out of town very fast, to be sold in some distant location where its illicit nature will not be suspected. Obviously, fences never pay more than a fraction of the market price for goods; but a fraction may still be a fair sum, and the thief runs no risk of being apprehended.
==Specialist Help==
Obviously, the fence is a form of specialist help, but the guild can also act to put members in touch with specialists to help them with certain ventures in more direct ways.
First, certain guild members will be specialists in themselves—expert lockpickers with exceptional Open Locks skill levels and others such. Multi-class thieves are also important people for many jobs—a mage-thief with such spells as invisibility, levitate, and knock (to consider but second-level spells) is of obvious value. Having one accompany a thief on a robbery increases the chances for success considerably, but even if this isn't possible, a simple invisibility spell precast on the hopeful robber gives an important edge for sneaking past guards and the like.
Then again, other adventurers might be called upon. Depending on the guild's relations with other bodies, a cleric (with find traps, among other spells) would be a most useful accomplice for many tasks. If the DM's campaign world has a deity which is an obvious patron for thieves (such as Olidammara of Oerth, or Mask of the Forgotten Realms), clerics of such a deity might well have very cordial relations with a thieves' guild. This is considered in more detail below.
The guild can thus act as a clearing-house, with names and meeting places to assist a PC thief hoping to pull a job but needing help. Again, whether these contacts actually agree to help will depend on many things—notably the reputation of the PC thief! However, the fact that they are there at all can be helpful for the PC thief, possibly for his friends as well, and can be very useful indeed if the thief PC wants to pull some job away from the rest of his usual adventuring group, when he must have some such extra help for success.
Of course, a thief may simply need the assistance of others of his own kind for some job he has planned. This may be a simple decoy person to help with pickpocketing in the streets, or an eagle-eyed lookout for a warehouse job. Either way, the guildhouse may be a better bet than hanging around dubious taverns and hostelries. The flipside of this, of course, is that an impoverished PC can hang around the guildhouse touting for offers of work himself!
Finally, a well-organized guild will even be able to help its members if they get into serious difficulties. A jailer may be bribed, a magistrate bribed or blackmailed, a man of law paid to plead the thief's case in the courts (if the judge or magistrate cannot be bribed). If the captured thief is very senior in the Guild, even a commando-style "liberation" may be possible! Such actions will leave the thief indebted to his guild for some time to come . . .
So, these are the main functions of the thieves' guild, as far as a PC thief entering the guild can see them. There are certainly other things the guild will do, and we'll look at them in due course. Before that, let's look at the other side of the coin—the responsibilities the thief has to the guild. For all the advantages, what does the guildmember have to pay one way or another?