Thinking about Leeches

Yesterday's post about healing was not, completely, about healing or healers. But it tied in with something I've been thinking about for the last week or two: the leech.

I've told before how I started playing modified White Box OD&D. I never saw the rule books, but my GM had mimeographed tables and materials, which I laboriously copied on a typewriter. But there were some changes, one of which was the Leech, meaning a healer. This was what people today would call a prestige class; you could add it to your main class if you met certain criteria. My GM never used it, and I skipped the "extra" typing, so I don't really have a good idea about how it worked. I wish now I had.

What I've been thinking is: how would I re-create something like the Leech? Perhaps, using the build-a-class rules I've been working on? It's possible to view a potential Leech class as variant of the Talent class described in the Zero Classes. The problem is that a Thief has three broad abilities: stealthy, clever, and surprise attack. "Healing" is really only one ability; in a sense, the Leech isn't beefy enough to be a stand-alone class.

A possible solution: use multi-classing, but add another "class" called "Single Talent" with a lower experience point cost. This is a class that only has one ability or variant ability from the Talent class. So, you could add just the stealth abilities to an ordinary fighter and call that character a Fighter/Stalker, let's say.

I'm thinking the experience progression should probably be half the normal Thief (Talent) progression, with a 6th level cap or lower, so that characters who take Single Talents can't match the level of ability of dedicated classes or hybrid classes.