Rogues wearing the randomized “fencing gloves” should be able to sell items to shopkeepers which they have stolen from somewhere else at full price, as a pun on “fencing” stolen goods.
Rogues automatically see rings as “low value”, “moderate value”, or “high value”, roughly (but not exactly) corresponding to their base price.
A Rogue-aligned artifact (either a first gift or a crowning gift) that is some sort of small blade whose invoke effect allows you to teleport behind nearby enemies and attack them, perhaps with bonus backstab damage for a short time. Or more powerfully, you instantaneously warp behind and backstab several different enemies within a radius of 10 or 12 from you all at once.
Rogues gain a backstab-related bonus when they and their target are in darkness. Possibly, just make many/most attacks in darkness deal backstab damage when they ordinarily wouldn’t.
A more complex implementation would be to differentiate monsters that aren’t susceptible to darkness because they spawned in a naturally dark area from monsters that are.
New artifact short sword, which is the first sacrifice gift for Rogues. It does extra damage based on the amount of gold carried in your inventory (or possibly your opponent’s inventory, though this would make it no better than a normal short sword on many monsters). The damage bonus eventually runs into diminishing returns so that the damage bonus doesn’t get too ridiculous.
Change rogue’s special spell to knock rather than detect treasure.
In variants that have the Pirate role, this would free up the spell of detect treasure to be their special spell.
Rogues start with a stack of knives instead of daggers, but their dagger skill cap isn’t changed; if a Rogue wants to use daggers, they have to go find some themselves rather than beginning the game with them.
Stealing gloves (also possibly named “rogues gloves” or “gauntlets of thievery”). 0 base AC, and Rogues begin the game wearing a pair. When you hit a monster barehanded while wearing them, you deal no damage (and don’t train bare handed combat skill) but you get a Dex-versus-monster-AC chance of stealing a random non-equipped item or some gold out of their inventory. You can also attack a peaceful monster with them to attempt to steal something; in addition to the Dex-vs-AC roll, this requires passing both another Dex check and a Cha check for them not to notice. If the Dex check fails, you don’t steal anything successfully; if the Cha check fails, they notice (waking up if asleep) and get mad. If the stolen item is currently equipped, there’s no Cha check; the monster just gets alerted and angry.
Caltrops: a nonmagic stackable tool that when applied creates a “caltrop trap” on your space, which damages / immobilizes / slows the first monster to enter it. Rangers and rogues excel at using them and possibly get some bonuses from them. Not difficult to untrap, though it would be nice if some caltrops could gradually be lost in the process. Maybe spreading caltrops consumes five or so of them, and you won’t always get five back during an untrap.
Rogues get backstab bonus against any incapacitated enemy (sleeping/paralyzed) in addition to fleeing ones.
Rogues can build and set traps, more types of traps than just plain pits and land mines and bear traps. Traps may consume some types of items to be set, like a sleeping gas trap will consume potions of sleeping. This should probably not be totally reversible through untrapping. Intended so the player can pick their battles and set up traps in an advantageous position.
Rogues have a 20% (or 10%, or whatever is balanced) chance of stealing a random lightweight item (say, less than 5 aum, or less than 20 aum to include potions) out of a monster’s inventory with every successful melee hit they make. This chance is increased if they are hitting with no wielded weapon or have no secondary weapon or shield, and maybe should scale with experience level too.
