Rogue

盜賊 · Rogue / Thief — A versatile problem-solver who works in the shadows

The rogue specializes in non-combat skills like infiltration, trap disarmament, lockpicking, stealth, and deception, rather than direct combat — a versatile problem-solver class. Using light leather armor and daggers, rogues avoid direct confrontation and excel at backstab attacks targeting weaknesses. The archetype of D&D's Rogue class, an essential profession in every fantasy RPG, taking responsibility for traps and treasure in dungeon-exploring parties. Literary variants include Tolkien's hobbit Bilbo Baggins and Discworld's characters. Their morality spans a wide spectrum from righteous Robin Hood-style thieves to ruthless cutthroats.

Lightweight armor of hardened leather

Leather armor is the branch of light armor made by hardening the hide of a beast at one seat, and within it the European cuir bouilli, 'boiled leather,' is the best-known. Despite the name, cuir bouilli was not made by boiling proper, but by setting the hide in warm water of about 70 to 80 degrees Celsius, or in wax or oil, so that the hide grew hard at the same seat while keeping its grain and some of its softness. Hardened by the same method, leather gained at one seat a hardness near that of wood, while remaining much lighter and quieter than mail and plate, and so suited the seat of scouting, ambush, and a light march. The figure often drawn in films and games, of a man wrapped from head to knee in a suit of leather alone, is rather more swollen than the seat in true history. The commonest seat of leather armor was as part of a single great suit, the couter and the poleyn laid over mail at elbow and knee, the small scales of the Mongol and the Japanese, the jack of plates with small iron plates riveted on leather, and a single suit of leather covering a man from head to knee at one seat was rare.