Class: the Godthief (v1.0)

This class uses terminology that relates to my in-progress homebrew rules. The only thing that really matters is the concept of Luck - which exists as a sort of replacement for Saving Throws (see Troika! for how I essentially use Luck). Whenever the rules expect you to "roll Luck" then substitute whatever you find most applicable - saving throw, reaction roll, spell save DC or whatever. Whenever it asks you to "spend Luck" consider replacing this with a "once per day" caveat or "spend 1 HP" if you're into that.

Is this just a rogue with free level-up magic items that have limited battery life? Sure, I guess you could call it that.

Godthief

You are an acrobatic vigilante, folk-hero, and rake

the sort that features in the stories told to kids - the trickster-vagabond who makes fools of the pompous and always bites off more than they can chew. But you're not alone on your travels. You weave the worship of devata - the little gods - into your tools, your clothes, your weapons, and they take care of you.

[I don't use this stuff but if you do then here it is:]
Requirements: none
Prime Requisite: idk Dexterity I guess?
Hit Dice & Saves: as Thief

Equipment

Godthieves have a Sacred Bundle of astra or god-tools:

1. a scarf 2. a topeng-mask 3. a scarf 4. a hairpin 5. a shawl 6. a lorgnette
7. a canteen 8. a matchbook and cigarettes

[The Knife can take up an inventory space if you play that way, the shawl and scarf are worn (if that counts for inventory in your system, so be it) and the rest is so tiny and lightweight it hardly matters]

Mantra of the Lucky

Your devata see to it that you’re never without small luxuries. Your canteen always has a little bit of something left in it, and your crumpled cigarette packet always contains three cigarettes, and your box of matches always contains three matches. (You can’t use this ability to give out infinite cigarettes and booze to loads of other people in an attempt to make money; the devata will resent the abuse, and cease to aid you.)

When the GM has established details about a person, place, location, or situation, you may spend a point of Luck to add a single detail of your own in the form of a sentence that begins with the phrase “Yes, and fortunately…”. The GM must accept this detail as established, although they may tidy up the edges of context to fit established facts (e.g. you didn’t meet the mayor, as this is a druidic village, you do however meet the chief druid).

Mouse Mocks Tiger

When you humiliate or aggravate someone to the point of aggression, you can goad or trick them. You can have them do anything a furious person could reasonably do (e.g. they could charge at you and fall over, or reach for their dagger only to discover you have it in your hand, or angrily admit to a crime).

Little Worships

The supernatural utility of a godthief’s god-tools are a finite resource. Over time the interred spirit may become weak or sullen from a lack of devotion.

When your tools do anything supernatural (i.e. it’s natural tie a knot with your scarf, but when you make the scarf tie itself into a knot that’s ‘supernatural’) make a Luck roll. On a fail the item is depleted. To replenish devata-powers, you must complete a task or ritual unique to that tool. The list of possible tasks are outlined at the bottom of this class.

Godbound Tools

Godthieves capture or collaborate with devata and enshrine them within their tools with secretive and laborious rituals. These god-tools obey your commands and perform complex and seemingly-miraculous tasks, but in return expect devotion or appeasement. 

The day after a Godthief advances in level they walk alone in the forgotten alleys, forests, and gullies of the world and find and bind a new devata to their equipment. Roll a d8 to discover what their power is. If you re-roll the same ability you gain a second ability or upgrade but keep the same devata and its associated demands.

1. God of Cunning Knots
   You bind a devata within your ridiculously long scarf. It becomes like a monkey’s tail or a third arm to you - it can support your weight, operate simple mechanisms, pick pockets etc. - it can also form knots that no other person can untie, even into the afterlife where the devata will continue to ensnare their ghost.
   If you gain this devata again, your scarf can become as sturdy and strong as steel. It can be made into a barrier, a shield, a platform, a bridge, and other such things that it’s length could be fashioned into. It will be shattered by anything that would shatter forged iron or shear cloth.
2. Spirit of Loose Tongues
   You bind a devata within your trusty canteen. It convinces those who drink to share their secrets, feeling compelled to tell you the things you ought not to know. If they believe you to be a cop, they'll admit to crimes they've committed. If they believe you a thief, they'll tell you the location of their safe. They will remember telling you, although will never understand why they did so.
   If you gain this devata again, you can make those who drink affected with some malady, change, or curse that will take effect upon a condition you specify, such as the imbiber lying, having children, bearing you ill will etc. The effect is temporary, harmless, and perhaps does not reveal itself to the target. Perhaps those who plot the king’s murder shall grow horns, revealing their treachery. Perhaps your drink will taste strongly of lavender, or urine, to those who have not told you their true name. They may comment on the lavender, never realising they have given themselves away.
3. Mephit of Many Faces
   You bind a devata within your humble topeng-mask. It can change your face to that of any man, beast, or spirit of reasonable equal stature to yourself (the rest of your body is unaffected, but you can still disguise it normally). You can change the features, age, and apparent gender of your face and voice any way you choose. If you disguise as a real individual your manner would betray you to loved ones and friends immediately, but acquaintances and strangers would be fooled. It remains like that until you rest, you dismiss it.
   If you gain this devata again, you can warp other aspects of your person, including your clothing, your height, your weight, and your body size, gender, and shape in addition to your face. Additionally you can leave your mask in an area, propped up on something at around head-height, and it can turn itself into any form you desire, just as if you were wearing it. It will not move, talk, or do much more than exist listlessly, but it will appear lifelike (i.e. it is not a statue, it will simulate breathing unless you say otherwise).
4. Saint of Seeing Things
   You bind a devata within your handy lorgnette. It can take a ‘photo’ of what you see through the glasses, and hold onto that image. No matter how you change that scene in real life - whether you burn it, or trash it, or whatever - you can see through the lenses exactly the image you had memorised. When you will it, and you view that scene with the glasses again, the scene you ‘photographed’ becomes reality once more. The table that was broken is fixed - the vital documents that were burned to hide them from the guards lie fresh and unharmed on its surface. If you ‘photograph’ the bank vault opened during business hours - later you return to the locked-up bank and ‘return’ that scene to the opened door of yore. You must be in the same vantage point as you first were - the perspective must align.
   If you gain this devata again, you can teleport to anywhere you can see through the lorgnette, although you will leave the lorgnette behind so will need to go back to get it at some point or have someone else pick it up. You could look through the keyhole of a locked door and take yourself inside that room.
5. Ghost of Cutting Motions
   You bind a devata within your subtle knife. It can cut time - it can cut to the chase. Cut away the guardsman's duty long enough to just walk past him as he wanders off, believing his shift has ended. Ruin the cruel chef by turning his banquet into a disaster as courses come out of the kitchen faster than the guests can eat it - mass hysteria and confusion! The local lothario’s legendary stamina with his suitors turns out to be a myth after you’ve robbed him of an hour or two of his evening. Only an hour or so here or there, but that’s time enough to accomplish plenty.If you gain this devata again, your knife can also cut space, but not both at the same time. Take away the space between yourself and the object (or location) of your design. Remove whole yards - rearrange the local topography to your (temporary) convenience. Reach across the street by making the window opposite (the window of your lover) mere inches away. Reality doesn’t like this and tends to quiver and rebel after a few mere moments, but a moment is all you need.
6. Apsara of Secret Affairs
   You bind a devata within your deft hairpin. It can produce a duplicate of something or someone which exists for as long as the hairpin remains in the original. Objects appear identical - living creatures appear listless or even unconscious, but appear to be alive (they are not). Fool the gangster with a fake diamond, leave a slumbering copy of yourself in the jail-cell.
   If you gain this devata gain, whatever you pin with your hairpin is utterly immovable from what you have pinned it to. Even if you have merely stuck it through the hem of someone's shirt, or even their shadow, and into the plaster of the wall behind them, that person is now affixed to that wall until such a time as you choose to remove the pin.
7. Houri of Shady Coverings
   You bind a devata within your handsome shawl. It can contort, expand, and contract itself - becoming rigid like a tent* or as supple as cloth in a mere moment. It can shrink to the size of a handkerchief or stretch itself to cover a whole acre. It can become form-hugging and silent or billowing and dramatic. It is not animate - it cannot tie itself in knots or wrap itself around something (unless you wrap it yourself).
   If you gain this devata again, you can use the shawl to bundle up non-physical qualities like you would items in a bindle. Light, water, a certain smell, the noise of people talking in a room. You could use it to “record” someone speaking, or stow away sunlight to throw at a vampire.
   *like Batman's cape in Batman Begins
8. Yakshini of Guiding Lights
   You bind a devata within your dogeared matchbook. When you light a match you create an illusory shadow- a silent false image that projects against a surface.. Alternately, you can create a sound that appears to emanate from a particular location. It can’t move very far (a dozen paces) from its original location and fails to stand up to close inspection. The image or sound dissipates when the match goes out or you extinguish it.
   If you gain this devata again, can be both an image and a sound, and is completely convincing to all sensations except touch. In addition, you can delay the effect and give it a simple one sentence instruction trigger (‘greet the next person to enter’, ‘terrify any wild animals nearby’), and it can move a significantly further distance from its casting location (around 100 paces). Additionally when you extinguish a match…?

List of Devata

Every devata has its own personality. When you gain a new devata roll on the following table to see what it requires to win its cooperation and replenish item usage (as described in Little Worships above):

1. Wind Mephit: you must perform a great athletic feat where the price of failure is death or serious injury - climbing a treacherous cliff-face or tower, diving from a ledge into a pool, dancing atop a mountain in a storm, and so forth. This feat must be witnessed by others.
2. Wild Widodari: you must dance before danger. Whether in a fight or a rockslide or a burning house you must not strike, flinch, or flee, nor show any fear. The longer you dance without being harmed the more favour you garner with this devata.
3. Houri Muse: you must inspire someone to accomplish something significant and out of their comfort zone. It must be remarkable - inspiring a fighter to fight is not remarkable, but inspiring a farmer to do so could be. It must be them who accomplishes it - not you.
4. Risk-taking Shikigami: you must steal something from someone, without them knowing it, and bring it back to your companions. But you may not claim credit for it. You might drop it in the centre of camp whilst no-one is looking and return to your tent. Others will marvel at the deed and wonder who could have done such a thing, but you must never let them know it was you. The stolen thing is often an object but could be a person, information, etc.
5. Hidden Guhyaka: you must sneak up on someone or something dangerous and touch them with your hand. You must let them know that you are there and could have ambushed them, but forfeit the surprise willingly.
6. Sheltering Naga: you must perform a significant service for another without them knowing it was you. You might leave food or money or somehow protect them, but they must never see you or know that you helped them. This service must be deliberate - accidentally helping someone does now qualify. It must be specific - you must choose who you are helping. Helping people or groups is fine, but "the nation" or "the environment" etc. doesn't cut it.
7. Fierce Heruka: you must face a danger which is obviously stronger than you or otherwise overwhelming - something you fear. The standoff must be on equal terms and you must struggle meaningfully against it. 'Winning' isn't necessary - only that you struggle and persevere.
8. Caring Kuman Thong: you must perform a great service for a child, and elder, or someone or something else which has difficulty facing hardships. This must be offered free of charge and for no other benefit.
9. Funerary Yamaduta: you must make offerings and prayers for those you have defeated - whether in a fight, or by overcoming them some other way - and to those who have defeated you. You must pay respects. This may take many forms - telling great stories to a rapt crowd, offering them food or items or service, performing rituals to celebrate their memory, making peace with them and their kin etc.
10. Persevering Dakini: you must suffer pain and hardship, bearing your wounds without complaint. You must allow your wounds to go untreated, enduring them for their full length. You can accept no balm or relief. If you have no wounds, you must acquire one.
11. Honourable Goho doji: you must allow an obstacle or enemy to harm you before you are allowed to retaliate. You can evade the obviously-lethal, but you must not attack, move, or make action until you have been harmed.
12. Humble Mother-of-Rice: you must perform a great service involving physical labour and hardship. This service must be offered for free and for no other benefit. It must be long, it must be exhausting, and it must be something humbling. People must see you and remark "ho, that great hero is tilling that man's field, how belittling!" or something.
13. River Kawa-no-Nushi: you must take something which is not yours to give and throw it into the nearby river. You must take something which is worth something to someone - something that could be better used than discarded e.g. food, money, weaponry, treasure. At least one person must see you do this and understand that you have needlessly thrown away something useful or valuable. They can fish it out if they want to - you are not obligated to prevent them.
14. Trickster Yaksha: you must convince someone or something of an outrageous lie. The lie must be something relevant to them, something they would know better - e.g. convince guards of a city that the king has abdicated, convince an astronomer the moon has vanished. You cannot use any magic or reality-altering substances like potions or drugs, but you can employ sleight of hand, tricks, and rope other people into the deception. They do not need to believe it for long, but they need to be genuinely unsure for at least a moment.
15. Deer Rohit: you must run naked around a settlement (anywhere from a city to at least a large campsite) without being seen. You must be like the deer - shy and flighty - and survive by avoiding danger.
16. Rakhosh Wraith: you must perpetrate a hilarious but highly inappropriate, cruel and/or humiliating prank on another. A third party must see the prank and the victim must be humiliated. Witnesses should not be able to immediately tell you were the perpetrator - it will not do to simply shove someone or pull down their trousers - but it does not matter if they can tell the situation is clearly a prank i.e. an artificial set-up.
17. Gharial Psychopomp: you must gather teeth--the more you get from a single creature, and the fresher they are, the more powerful the offering - and sow them in a field.
18. Deceptive Nariphala: you must convince a person or group that you are in fact someone important and powerful - whether a specific person or a generic unnamed patron - but that you are currently incognito and they must keep this secret from the authorities. Make them believe that you are genuinely a person of importance and that they are part of a conspiracy to hide you. Leave them thinking for the rest of their days they know a very important secret.
19. Atoning Yidam: you must convince an authority (e.g. the police, the military, or even just the head of a household) that you are guilty of a crime that not only did you not commit, but was never committed. Confess to seducing their firstborn, admit you stole money from them. Even admit to impossible things - admit you murdered the brother of an only child. Although your claims may be complete nonsense, you must loudly proclaim your guilt and sorrow, and accept, nay, demand, the punishment you are due. Once they acquiesce - either by calling the guard or fining you or restraining or assaulting you in some way - escape your predicament somehow.
20. Gandharva Storyteller: you must recount or depict a conflict between any 2 parties - however petty or grandiose - and spread it around. Do a street show - stick posters all over town - tell everyone in the tea-house - make the story into the hot new thing on everyone's lips. Especially good if it's just a retelling of why the two old men in town hate each other's guts because his cousin sold his sister a cow that died 30 years ago.