With a little more thought put into it.

Attributes: For as long as man has had material possessions, there have been those who have tried to seperate him from said possessions. The Thief short circuits the path between work and reward by letting somebody else do the work and running off with the reward when everyone’s back is turned.

It’s an old archetype, and there have been attempts to overturn it in the modern age; just look at Enron. Still, the image of the burglar, the mugger, and the pickpocket hold strong in the collective unconscious. The Thief can run the gammut from a noble Robin Hood that steals from the rich and gives to the poor, to the greedy man that will steal food out of a starving child’s hand if given half a chance, and all the shades of grey in between, but ultimately narrows down to one simple goal: To take what others have.

Taboo: First and foremost, the Thief steals things. This is what seperates thieves from non-thieves, by definition. Much like their adept counterparts, Thief avatars must steal on a regular basis or risk losing their powers. On the other hand, getting caught is not as problematic for avatars as for Kleptomancers; a natural pre-requisite for getting caught is performing the crime in the first place, which is what being a Thief is all about.

In other words, if you spend a game session without even trying to take somebody’s watch, car, or dentures, the GM can take your avatar rating down if he thinks it’s merited (if you’ve been hounded by clockwork, uh, hounds from the start of the session to the end, you might not have had the time or even opportunity to steal anything, so that’s kind of iffy). If you try to take something and fail, then you’re probably in the clear… or you may get knocked a bit if the GM thinks it was really half-assed, or done just so you could point to the theft and say “I’m a thief! I stole something! Can’t take my skill down now!” (Although it’s generally unwise to taunt the Game Master like that no matter what your character is like.)

Symbols: The hood, the ski mask, the dominoe mask, and black clothes especially. The short knife, dagger, or the more modern switchblade are popular. Rapid technological advancement has brought the thief new symbols, such as lockpick sets, infrared goggles, and suction cups. The striped shirt and the burlap sack are sometimes cultural elements; they may or may not help depending on where you are and how you operate.

Masks: Robin Hood (English), Ishikawa Goemon (Japanese), Carmen Sandiego (Modern)

Suspected Avatars in History: Depending on who you ask, Robin of Loxley was a Thief Avatar. Anyone implicated in a plot to steal anything as valuable, rare, or proverbial as the “Crown Jewels” has a fighting chance, but in a way not unlike that of the Loyal Laborer, the best Thieves are not known to history at large since they were never caught.

Channels:

1% – 50%: The Thief is highly skilled in his respective skills. If he fails a roll for a skill such as Pick Pockets, Locksmithing, Sneak Around, Hide In Shadows, et cetera, he can re-roll that skill if he makes an Avatar: Thief check. If he fails the Avatar check, he’s out of luck. Also, if a Kleptomancer is an Avatar of the Thief, no charge can be generated with thefts assisted or accomplished with channels. This makes combinations of the two rare.

51% – 70%: Shadows are a Thief’s best friend. This channel makes any dark spot safe haven for the avatar, within limits. It doesn’t offer physical protection, first and foremost, so if your opponent is spraying-and-praying, the bullets can still hit you if they get sent in the right direction by chance (beware of Bodybags bearing grudges). Also, the darker the shadow the better it works; staying out of range of a streetlight at night would confront people with negative shifts of 40% or so to Notice you there, while just hiding under the shade of a tree during a sunny day wouldn’t do much more than 10%.

71% – 90%: Similar to some of the powers of the Pilgrim, this allows the Thief to make daring, astounding, and even physically impossible escapes from security guards, police, and guard dogs. With an Avatar: Thief check, she can disappear after turning a corner, dashing through an open doorway, diving into a storm drain, or doing something else that takes her out of the sight of anyone nearby. There are a few limits to this ability, though; the way you disappear dictates the way you re-appear, for one. If you ran around a corner, you appear near a corner elsewhere. If you go through a window, you appear out of a window somewhere else. A clever thief can use this channel to disappear into a cloud of smoke from a smoke bomb, but if there’s no other smoke within range, it won’t work… or perhaps she’ll find herself in a smokestack in a giant factory, falling into the furnace. The other limit is that of range; she can’t go more than ten miles in any direction. On the plus side, the second channel CAN be used with this channel, and shadows are in plentiful supply almost everywhere.

91%+: At this level, the Thief can steal anything as long as nobody is looking right at it. This includes clothing someone is wearing, organs, pacemakers, priceless artifacts behind gigantic security systems, you name it. Intangibles like skills and memories can’t be grabbed with this channel, but the previous Godwalker had a custom channel that could do it.

Present Godwalker Channel: Lars Evans recently was ousted from his Godwalker role by a rare Kleptomancer/Thief Avatar named Chad Preston, who literally stole the title of Godwalker from him using random magick. Thanks to the fusion of two differing magick approaches, and possibly the influence of the Invisible Clergy, there’s been a lot of symbolic backlash on Lars, Chad, and Gary Smith, Lars’ longtime rival who was present at the event. Still, Chad has come out strong. His new channel he calls “The Perfect Alibi” and he can use it to cause the universe to rewrite itself enough to support any single story he has at one time. It doesn’t implant false memories, but it can affect a videotape or other material evidence.

What You Hear: A number of criminal executives are trying to steer the act of thieving away from taking physical objects and towards fudging the books, replacing the Thief with the Embezzler. The Enron fiasco may be one such attempt at ousting the present Godwalker through unparralelled acts of theft, along with many disasters involving Savings and Loans in the past. It hasn’t worked yet, but sooner or later somebody will probably pull it off.

Avatar Interaction: Despite the fact that one avatar wants to make profit and the other wants to take stuff without paying, it’s not uncommon for Thieves and Merchants to get along pretty well. After all, every criminal needs a fence. The only certainty is that Thieves and Judges hate each other, much like the Masterless Man and Dark Stalker do.