Archers
They're not just bandits anymore
This post is part of our reflections on Dungeons & Dragons series, sort of a cool down exercise after the sturm und drang of the Motivations in Roleplaying Game Economies series. It is the first of three of this type, detailing classes that we added to the game through house rules that emerged in play. We’ll follow up with a revised Thief and an undead class, the Ghoul. Like our House Rules, the actual class builds are available to paid subscribers via a link below. We hope you enjoy.
Retainers and hirelings are a vital part of play in Basic Dungeons & Dragons. Their presence increases survivability by a noticeable margin. In addition, during our WeD&D days, our house rules stated that players whose characters fell during a session were handed a retainer or hireling to play in order to both keep them involved and to give the group greater control of the situation when their affairs started to slide sideways.
Bandits…but with Bows
In the wilderness areas of the Keep on the Borderlands (B2) we find mention of bandits.
Naturally, as they explored the adventure area, the group eventually encountered these like-minded souls and, after some skirmishes and negotiations (and Charm Person spells), bandits began to join the adventuring party’s ranks. Also, for groups that trend Neutral-Chaos, rather Law-Neutral, recruiting bandits from the wilderness makes more sense than recruiting townsfolk.
Initially intended to be solely NPCs, bandits were frequently elevated to the status of player characters as the grim odds of the system claimed the players’ primary characters. And while I could have handed them the bandit monster block and been done with it, some players liked their bandits and wanted to continue playing them, so the monster status didn’t suit them.
Therefore, I created the archer class out of necessity to represent the many bandits who joined the ranks of our groups. I shifted them from Bandits to Archers to make them a bit more neutral, and to try to draw a clearer niche separate from halflings, thieves and fighters.