I watch a lot of anime. I enjoy keeping up with shows that come out each season and picking anywhere from 7 to 30 to watch on a week-by-week basis, along with those that I binge-watch after the season ends.
I have a particular fondness for fantasy anime, whether it’s an isekai show or not. I know that many people with more refined palettes consider most isekai to be garbage, but every now and then, I find a hidden gem. Handyman Saitou in Another World is one such gem.
The basic premise of Handyman Saitou is that a Japanese handyman (Saitou) was summoned to a fantasy world where his skills are much more appreciated than they were back on earth. He joins a party of adventurers as a thief and proves himself invaluable to their success.
the problem with thieves
In
the beginningGreyhawk, theUniverseThief was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
In the wider ttrpg community, it has become something of a joke that the first D&D supplement (Greyhawk) was where things went downhill, in no small part due to the inclusion of the thief class. The core problem is this: the thief has special rules for things like climbing walls and picking locks. Based on that, should fighters and wizards even be allowed to attempt climbing walls or picking locks? What happens if they try? Greyhawk thieves weren’t particularly good at those activities, so what does that imply if anyone else attempts it?
Many of my peers have attempted to solve the problem with thieves by raising the scale of their talents and increasing their reliability. Further still, many games have evolved the thief into more of an “assassin”, specialized in using daggers to sneak attack from the shadows. While I considered these approaches for The Serket Hack, my design priority is to ensure that classes have a unique identity. In some ways, this is making the thief worse in the eyes of those who dislike skill exclusivity.
enter the scoundrel
Given that my “thief” needs a unique identity, I needed to narrow down the possibility space in order to figure out what they actually do. First: a glass cannon dagger-wielding assassin isn’t unique. That’s just a specialized fighter — and I already have another class for fighter specializations. Second: the player characters in this game are heroic; when presented with opposition, the confrontations are loud and flashy. Stealth is not an important verb in the player’s toolkit, and I certainly don’t want to create an identity based around it.
You can’t swim, you can’t dance, and you don’t know karate. Face it. You’re never gonna make it.
With a clear picture of everything the “thief” can’t do, I realized that its identity is found in the negative space between those limitations.
- The Scoundrel cannot attack.
- In a party full of characters capable of great violence, the scoundrel is a violence enabler.
exploring the role
In The Electrum Archive, they call it the Fixer. In some anime, they call it the Guide. Semantics aside, most adventuring parties would fall apart without someone good at dealing with all of the things between battles. The most straightforward example here is a locked door standing between the hero party and the demon lord. A scoundrel picks the lock, enabling the violence of the mage and fighter.
Handyman Saitou doesn’t fight: he’s just a normal guy from another world. Instead, he holds torches and helps the wizard remember what spell he’s casting. He maintains the fighter’s gear and fusses over the tailoring. He looks for good deals at the blacksmith and packs lunches for everyone.
The answer to the exclusivity question isn’t that the fighter or wizard can’t attempt those things, it’s that their resources and attention are better spent on the things they are good at. If the wizard has to prepare the Knock spell and then expend a spell slot on it to get through the door, that’s one less fireball he has to throw at the enemy.
I think we as a community were close to this answer back in the 3.x days of skill monkey rogues, but modern design has moved away from large skill lists. When you had like 40+ skills to choose from and most people could only pick a handful, it was incredibly valuable to have a jack of all trades to cover the gaps. I don’t think skill lists are the most elegant solution to the thief problem, but they definitely carved a niche for the class.
exploring the mechanics
The scoundrel cannot attack enemies directly. Furthermore, their turn is divided into three phases (Prepare, Scheme, and Action). Prepare represents getting useful items out of your pack, communicating plans, and observing the field. When you Prepare, gain one Beat and roll 3d6:
- 11+: Gain Mid Die Beats instead
- 13+: Gain High Die Beats instead
Beats measure how much time you have to work during this turn and are discarded once your turn ends. During the Scheme phase, you may spend your Beats on any number of Gambits — techniques and tactics to support your team during battle. The scoundrel starts with some Gambits, but can learn more from other scoundrels in the world. It pays to make friends!
- Pick-Me-Up
Cost: 3 Beats
Target ally heals 2d6 HP. - Emergency Maintenance
Cost: 2 Beats
Target ally clears all status effects. - Ruse
Cost: Variable
Target enemy gains one stack of Trapped for each Beat spent working on the Ruse. - Primed
Cost: 2 Beats
When target enemy is damaged by an attack, they take an additional 1d6 damage from each status effect they have and then all status effects on the target are removed. - Distraction
Cost: 3 Beats
Target ally steps up their next attack roll.
After spending Beats on Gambits, the Action phase functions like it does on a normal turn. The scoundrel may take generic actions like Item or Flee, or they may trigger any Gambit whose cost has been fully paid.
I’m not sure if any of this fixes the thief, but writing this certainly helped me hammer out the role and mechanics for the scoundrel. Right now I’m working hard to get a minimum viable something in time for the Minimalist Jam deadline. I can’t wait for everyone to be able to read some version of The Serket Hack fully assembled.