This book, the second clone of the "Complete such and such Handbook" format, contains a lot of supplemental rules for rogue player characters. As with the first book in the series, "The Quintessential Fighter", this book provides character concepts, prestige classes, some feats, some new equipment and new rules expanding the system.
The character concepts provide some roleplaying notes, some background and motive for characters, a small advantage and a small bonus. Some concepts are specific to non-human races.
Seven new prestige classes, most of which are of the five level variety, are proposed. Here are descriptions of those that I thought stood out. The Crusading Footpad is a roguish servant of a church, the "paladin of rogues", who gets a divine companion (i.e. a familiar), and can smite undead. A kind of spiritual Robin Hood. The Shadowy Avenger is a redresser of wrongs, striking at the criminal element of society from outside the law. This city slicker of a prestige class has an interesting mix of special abilities. For example, when facing injustice, the Shadowy Avenger can act with a form of rage that gives him +2 to attacks and adds 10 ft. to his speed.
The trick of the trade section offers many new uses for old skills. Appraise can detect forgeries, concentration lets you act more quickly when taking 10 or 20 on skill checks, concentration can also let you act with a partial action when stunned, forgery includes rules for forging coins, gather information can be used to spread rumours, etc. This is a pretty big section with many interesting new uses for skills. Some tricks include using equipment such as acid, marbles and how to use a whip a la Indiana Jones. The section on "Tools of the Trade" describes some new weapons, armour, special equipment and a few magic items and weapon special abilities. The new armour include some made out of varieties of leather from unusual sources, such as displacer beast leather (attacks have 10% chances to miss the wearer) and rust monster leather (non-magical weapons striking the target have 10% of crumbling into rust).
Most of the new feats are interestingly balanced. Not too many double skill focus feats. Some feats pertain to the creation of poisons and some magic traps as described in subsequent chapters. Some of these feats are Rogue feats, only available to that class.
A section called Law and Order provides guidelines to represent the potential response of law enforcement bodies such as town guards depending on the area of a town, the level of activity or presence of guards and the kind of action performed that could attract their attention. This involves the guards making a check against a vigilance DC. If it is successful, the guards intervene. Some examples of guard patrols stats are provided for quick use.
Poisons and their creation is the subject of a section that describes 21 new kinds of poisons. The rules for making poison are simple and efficient. The next section describes trapmaking. This section describes the creation of simple traps in a very generic way.
Spell Matrices are a new form of magic item that can hold spells. These are highly unstable and will spill the spell on anyone that disturbs them, making useful components of traps. The system needs some tinkering because the caster level in the stat blocks of these items is higher than what is stated to be the maximum caster level in their description.
The last section is a pretty impressive set of rules that take care of guilds and other organisations. These rules can be applied to many different types of organisation whose purpose is to generate profit. The examples illustrating this section are the thieves' guild, the assassins' guild, the explorers' society, the spy ring and the trading company. The rules provided here describe how a character can start his own guild or organisation, set goals for it and calculate the revenue (or deficit) generated month by month.
A definitely well made book for those who play rogues.
New Prestige Classes: Agent of the Crown, Commando, Crusading Footpad, Deep Tracker, Executioner, Shadowy Avenger, Tomb Raider.
