The following was the culmination of several months of one-on-one play by post over Discord with a friend of mine. His character, Mat "The Magnificent" Rench, travelled solo through the entire first floor of the
Chambers of God, a megadungeon I am currently in the process of
being murdered by finishing. Mat was an early version of my Thief, and that character was played to the
bone. Quite literally, after he lost an arm. The Tricky and Opportunist rules have gone through a fair bit of adjustment since then, as Mat was a nigh-unstoppable juggernaut when played "correctly":
For reference -
Gambit: Bet something beneficial on a hit (e.g. knock prone, disarm, shove), in return for something detrimental on a miss (e.g. drop your weapon, enemy gets a free attack, fall prone). You cannot use this to deal damage.
Opportunist: Whenever you Gambit, deal +1d6 damage
Tricky: When you Gambit, you can replace a miss condition with a tactical advantage.
Mat's player cottoned on to a a neat gameplay loop - if you can use a Gambit to set up a different tactical advantage, you could use
that advantage for your next Gambit, and so on... resulting in a significant power-boost. If Mat could keep hitting attacks and staying on the ball, he could continuously deal +1d6 damage and inconvenience his enemies. This eventually resulted in Opportunist changing to:
As a Gambit, deal +1d6 damage. And yet, Mat's shenanigans live on!
I didn't make that change during the campaign (of sorts) as they were the just reward for a crafty player, and likely the only thing keeping the solo character alive down there. By the time Mat reached the Dervish the second time, he had lost an arm, gained a mechanical replacement, made a friend (from a brain-eating demon gem and a wizard brain-in-a-jar) and discovered the meaning of love...ish.
