Known World Magic Items: Avrine's Lockpicks

Avrine's Lockpicks
New Magic Item

Avrine Nimblefoot is a legendary figure among the folk of the Five Shires and western Karameikos, especially the Hin. She lived about 50 years ago, and was a daring swashbuckler of a lass, living a life of wild adventures and daring deeds. Among the stories told about her are the tale of how she retrieved the jeweled crown of Penhaligon from a bugbear bandit who accosted the Baron on the Road on a trip to Specularum for a tourney, and a wild yarn about a game of dice with the gods which lasted the entire harvestfest holiday week and earned Avrine the enchanted lockpicks that now bear her name when she tricked the god into admitting defeat (even though he was obviously winning, the storytellers add with a knowing wink and grin).

Avrine's lockpicks are a set of exquisitely crafted thieves tools made of platinum decorated with diamonds of various colors. When used by a non-thief, they grant the user the ability to Open Locks af if he were a thief of 1/2 his current level. Example: Giano is a 4th level halfling. When using the lockpicks, he can open locks as if he were a 2nd level thief.

In the hands of a thief, they are even more powerful, granting a bonus of +3 effective class levels when calculating the Open Locks chance on the tables. For example, Magwell, a 7th level thief, steals the lockpicks and then tries to unlock a door with them. Using the lockpicks, he has the Open Locks chance of a 10th level thief!

The lockpicks are a unique item, and worth about 5000 gold pieces if sold.

Known World Magic Items: Mask of the Eagle's Talons

Mask of the Eagle's Talons

The Eagle's Talons are an old, well established thieving guild based in Specularum, though the exact location of their guildhouse is a closely kept secret. Despite many attempts, including recent ones by Duke Stefan, the secrets of the guild, and the identity of its headquarters remains unknown to most of the city's residents.

Since most of the guild's activities take place at night, and their membership is primarily human, vision has long been a problem for the Talons, who like most thieves abhor the thought of needing to carry a torch or lantern along with them while they work. To resolve that dilemma, the guild has long secretly employed the services of Specularum's Magic User's guild to create these magical masks, which grant them a limited ability to see in the dark like their demihuman peers.

These Masks are lightweight half-masks, made from fine black leather, shaped to resemble the face of an eagle. An adjustable buckle on the rear of the mask allows it to fit any wearer of Hin to Human size. The masks are stylish enough to be worn around at night without causing one to look out of place, but doing so in Specularum is risky, since most of the city watch instantly recognize one as the mark of a Eagle's Talon thief.

When worn, the masks grant their wearer Infravision to a range of 30 feet. If worn by a creature that already has natural infravision, they instead bestow a bonus 15 foot range to the existing Infravision. Magical Infravision, from any other source, is negated for the duration that the mask is worn, providing only the mask's 30 foot infravision range, though the magical Infravision will return upon removing the mask, unless its duration has expired, of course.

The Masks are fairly rare outside of Specularum, and are worth about 1,500 gp on the black market. Any non-guild member who is caught with one of the Masks is usually beaten severely and robbed of it, with a stern warning about the consequences of opposing the Eagle's Talons. Repeat offenders will be subject to attempts by the guild to kill them.

The wearing of festive masks by nobles (and wannabe nobles) while socializing is considered a statement of style in Specularum, despite the fact that the city isn't really all that cultured, compared to the wealthy cities of Thyatis, but some of the petty nobles there like to act fancified, so in the nicer parts of town, wearing masks out at night is considered acceptable.

The Hin (Halfling) Sneak, an optional PC Thief variant.

Here it is, The Hin Sneak, an optional halfling "thief" class for Classic D&D!

The Hin Sneak (150kb PDF)

This file is provided for your private use. Please do not redistribute it without discussing it with me beforehand. Thanks!

House Rules - Expanded Lock Picking Houserules

We like to give some variety to locks and traps, to make things a little more interesting than the old "ok, roll to unlock/disarm it". While intricate detail of the workings of the device is overkill in most cases, I found that a simple system to differentiate the quality of various devices doesn't slow things down too much. Here's what I came up with.

Lock/Trap Quality	Open Locks and Remove Trap Adj.	Notes and probability
Shoddy	+10%	Very poor quality; bad worksmanship, cheap materials and outdated technology. 1-15% chance of device being this quality.
Poor	+5%	Poor quality; bad workmanship, cheap materials or outdated tech. 16-40% chance of device being of this quality.
Average	0	Average quality. 41-75% of device being of this quality.
Good	-10%	Good quality. High quality materials used. 76-90% of device being of this quality.
Excellent	-20%	Very good quality. Excellent materials, workmanship or innovative tech. 91-98% chance of device being of this quality.
Peerless	-40%	Exceptional quality. Excellent materials, workmanship and innovative tech. 99-00% chance of device being of this quality.

I also added a set of higher quality thieves picks and tools to the equipment list. The "Peerless thieves picks and tools" cost 250gp, but grant a 10% bonus to all OL/RT checks made by the thief using them.

In addition, I came up with a system allowing for multiple attempts at picking a single lock. By the book, if the thief fails the first attempt, he must wait until he gains another experience level before attempting it again. This is a little unreasonable, in my opinion.

I rule that the first attempt at picking a lock takes 1d4 minutes. Each subsequent attempt is made at a -10% (cumulative) chance of success, and takes an additional 1d6 minutes (so, the first attempt is 1d4 minutes, the second is 1d4+1d6 minutes, the third is 1d4+2d6 minutes, etc)