KELT-SET =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Bishop of Blackmoor Found B/X D&D in the 1980's =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." - Gary Gygax
"Enjoy a 'world' where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!" ~ Gary Gygax 1 November 1973 Men & Magic
"By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes:" Second Witch ~ Act IV Scene I Macbeth
Stonegiant Level 5 Thaumaturgist member is offline
100% in Liar
Joined: Jul 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 240 Location: St. Augustine Beach, FL. Karma: 9
Re: Thieves: Pro or Con? « Reply #17 on Jul 24, 2007, 11:47am »
The Arhcetype for the thief IMHO is found especially in the Middle East with characters like Aladin, Ali Babba, etc. As for the Robin Hood type I think they fall under another Archetype- The Archer/Woodsman/Huntsman. I do agree that the way thief skills are determined should be redone witht he idea in mind that the other characters can sneak the thief however can do it better and can do other things while sneaking. I also feel that the thief character should have a touch of the shrewd merchant about them. I could even see having the CHA score effecting some thief skills. As to determination of thief successes and failures I think they should be a combination of #in # on d6, %, d20 chart, etc. Much like the opening doors, Bend Bars/Lift Gates, and saving throws, this I feel plays more like the OD&D system and expresses the abilities better.
Re: Thieves: Pro or Con? « Reply #18 on Jul 30, 2007, 9:57am »
Quote:
There's a lot of good to the thief. There's also a lot of bad.
I've never quite come to terms with the feeling that the thief and traps are self-justifying.
Really, the root of the problem I have with the thief is that so much of their ability is tied to something separate from the rest of the game. Sure, they interract with the exploration part of the game, yet no other class has defined abilities in that part of the game, it's always been part of the game managed mostly by informal rules.
there were mechanics in the game for dealing with tricks and traps in the game already: find traps spell, wands (and some swords) able to detect traps, ring of xray vision, traps a re usually only spri
"Doors must be forced open by strength, a roll or a 1 or 2 indicating the door opens, although smaller and lighter characters may be required to roll a 1 to open doors."
"Traps are usually sprung by a roll or a 1 or a 2 when any character passes over or by them. Pits will open in the same manner."
So some of the thiefly functions are already covered by the rules before the introduction of the thief. The thief class adds and expands to that coverage.
I feel they are a worthy addition to the game that does expand on the opportunities available to all. Bilbo in The Hobbit is recurited as a burglar becasue of his natural abilities, courage and ingenuity.
Re: Thieves: Pro or Con? « Reply #19 on Jul 30, 2007, 10:09pm »
We usually play without thieves unless someone decides they just have to have one, which is not too often with my regular players. We usually just let the fighters do most of the thief things with hobbits, elves and dwarves having advantages over each other and humans on specific things.
For instance hobbits and elves are great at hiding and moving silently. Dwarves are great at traps. Etc.
Joined: Nov 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 245 Location: Behind the Orange Curtain Karma: 10
Re: Thieves: Pro or Con? « Reply #20 on Nov 21, 2007, 2:16pm »
<first post>
I had to vote for them - I love playing them too much to want to see them left out.
Looking over the chart for the Thief abilities, they are all neatly divisible by 5 - it would be easy enough to cinvert them to a d20 roll, if anyone wanted to avoid the "slippery slope to RQ"...
Joined: Dec 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 104 Location: Freorig Norð Karma: 14
Re: Thieves: Pro or Con? « Reply #21 on Feb 10, 2008, 12:18am »
Even though I loved playing a Thief back in the day, I realize now how much the system becomes unstable once various "skills" are brought into play.
Honestly, there are two types of characters: Mundane and Magical (either through mystery or deity). Maybe that's the problem: Magic has two classes in Clerics and Magic Users and perhaps the Mundane Fighter should as well. All it really takes to make a Thief are the restriction of various armors for Dexterity's sake and using Dexterity as the Prime Requisite for calculating Experience.
Has anyone ever looked at The Big List of Fantasy Archetypes?
There is an endless choice of variations that one could be. Still, if you want to be an Adventurer you must have the ability to access Magic or know how to Fight; otherwise, you're a goner.
Joined: Sept 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 942 Karma: 27
Re: Thieves: Pro or Con? « Reply #22 on Feb 10, 2008, 10:19am »
I think the real main impetus for Thieves came from those pesky locked and trapped treasure chests. Instead of having to haul the chest to a locksmith in town or use Knock to avoid the trouble of breaking a chest (if indeed it was breakable), a Thief could open it in the dungeon (and reduce the likelihood the trap would spring when the party opened it by whatever method). Adventurers were less likely to find that a heavy haul was just copper.
To a certain extent, the environment altered to protect the Thief's "niche." Dungeon doors formerly just stuck became locked. The "Remove Traps" roll got applied to things besides treasure chests (I've seen DMs rule that a Thief can simply roll to negate any sort of trap without rationale as to how), and traps tended to function reliably (not just 1/3 of the time) if not disarmed by a Thief. Hiding and sneaking got harder for non-Thieves. Magic leather armor started to appear. In most games IME, high-level Thieves were allowed to use magic scrolls without recourse to Read Magic, something even MUs could not do.
Stonegiant Level 5 Thaumaturgist member is offline
100% in Liar
Joined: Jul 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 240 Location: St. Augustine Beach, FL. Karma: 9
Re: Thieves: Pro or Con? « Reply #23 on Feb 10, 2008, 10:28am »
It was posted at the OD&D guild by one of the C&C society play testers for the original rules that the rules originally did have the thief class included but it was dropped before publication much to the surprise of many of the people playing them there.
Kyrel Level 6 Magician Defender vs Spam member is offline
Joined: Jun 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 488 Location: Florida Suncoast Karma: 13
Re: Thieves: Pro or Con? « Reply #24 on Feb 12, 2008, 5:38pm »
I'm someone who happens to like the "Thief" class. I find it to be a great character class alternative that doesn't unbalance the game at all (at least IMO). As for the thief skills, I don't see a problem with them: the % roll is just a class feature. I like thorulfr's recommendation: if your bothered by the % roll, divide them by (5) & use a d20. I suppose the bottom line is, if it doesn't fit in you campaign, either (a) don't use them at all, or (b) tweak the s**t out of them until you get what you like.
Joined: Aug 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 323 Location: Leander, TX Karma: 14
Re: Thieves: Pro or Con? « Reply #25 on Feb 13, 2008, 12:41am »
One of my bright ideas is that a high Dex gives a Surprise bonus. However, I don't give the Surprise bonus unless the whole group has it and nobody is in metal armor.
This means that a dexterous Fighting Man could do well to limit himself to light armor, both for Surprise and general mobility, and scout ahead of the rest of the party. My notion is that if Surprise is gained, the surprising party may choose to sneak past the other party if circumstances allow. So that takes care of sneaking. Hiding is possible if there are sufficient conditions for hiding (and it should require less if you're properly dressed and not carrying a steamer trunk full of melee weapons and coins on your back), so nothing beyond the purview of a FM there, either. Climbing is possible if not encumbered and if sufficient handholds, etc. are present... it may or may not require a roll. Hearing noise is already covered.
What does that leave? Just traps, locks and 'pockets'. But pockets aren't invented yet so let's forget those. Locks seem to me to be the purview of the boxman, a specialist who can be consulted in town. Or just bash the chest open with a handaxe! Traps are the only lacuna. You could handle them like secret doors, or just with description. After all... how does Indiana Jones find out that there's a dart trap in the ancient temple? He sees suspicious-looking features of interior decoration, and tests a hypothesis with a torch. THWOCK! Yep, there was a trap alright.
Joined: Jul 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 410 Location: Urbana, IL Karma: 26
Re: Thieves: Pro or Con? « Reply #26 on Feb 13, 2008, 10:26am »
More and more I am coming around to the conclusion that I find thieves to be self-justifying, at least in dungeon-focused games. If I run OD&D without the thief, I put in fewer traps and locked doors and locked/trapped chests. I don't eliminate them altogether, but I put in a lot fewer than when I build a dungeon under the assumption that thieves will be in play. Thus the existence of the thief drives me to change my dungeon designs in a way that doesn't happen with the other three classes. So what happens when the party doesn't have a thief or when the low level thief blows his rolls, which I think we can all agree start at pretty shoddy percentages? The parts of the dungeon made for the thief end up slowing down play and interrupting an otherwise smooth flow of game events.
Thus I am led to the conclusion that thieves are not a necessary part of the dungeon experience, at least the way that I referee dungeon expeditions. Though to put my opinion in context, I will admit that there's very little in the Supplements that I consider useful for OD&D play. If I'm going to start adding that stuff in, I'd rather just play AD&D 1st edition.
Joined: Jun 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 505 Karma: 15
Re: Thieves: Pro or Con? « Reply #28 on Feb 13, 2008, 11:28am »
Jeff, I tend to agree with you about the self-justification of thieves. However, they are clearly a popular class to play.
Perhaps this does mean we need to find a good way to "fix" the thief.
We certainly do need to work on preventing the thief from bogging down play. I think it would be easy to run the game such that we don't have the pickpocket/robbery scenario in town that goes wrong and results in an entire session of play revolving around the thief. Some of the in dungeon stuff should be able to be avoided also.
As to their combat ability, I'm inclined to borrow a bit from 3rd edition, and make the backstab ability more reliant on objective tactical positioning and not the "mother may I" situation we had back in the day. Perhaps not quite so automatic and simple as flanking, but still make it much easier.
Stonegiant Level 5 Thaumaturgist member is offline
100% in Liar
Joined: Jul 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 240 Location: St. Augustine Beach, FL. Karma: 9
Re: Thieves: Pro or Con? « Reply #29 on Feb 13, 2008, 11:26pm »
Quote:
More and more I am coming around to the conclusion that I find thieves to be self-justifying, at least in dungeon-focused games. If I run OD&D without the thief, I put in fewer traps and locked doors and locked/trapped chests. I don't eliminate them altogether, but I put in a lot fewer than when I build a dungeon under the assumption that thieves will be in play. Thus the existence of the thief drives me to change my dungeon designs in a way that doesn't happen with the other three classes. So what happens when the party doesn't have a thief or when the low level thief blows his rolls, which I think we can all agree start at pretty shoddy percentages? The parts of the dungeon made for the thief end up slowing down play and interrupting an otherwise smooth flow of game events.
Thus I am led to the conclusion that thieves are not a necessary part of the dungeon experience, at least the way that I referee dungeon expeditions. Though to put my opinion in context, I will admit that there's very little in the Supplements that I consider useful for OD&D play. If I'm going to start adding that stuff in, I'd rather just play AD&D 1st edition.
One of the problems with the thief is that his ability chances do suck. Imagine if a Magic-User had only a 15-25% chance that their spell would work at 1st level. One thing that would make the thief a more important aspect of the party would be if they were able to actually have a better chance of doing their thiefly stuff than the fighter standing their flipping a coin saying yes or no there is a trap their.
![[Home]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/home.gif "[Home]")
![[New Topics]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/topics.png "[New Topics]")
![[Help]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/help.gif "[Help]")
![[Search]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/search.gif "[Search]")
![[Login]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/login.gif "[Login]")
![[Register]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/register.gif "[Register]")
![[Search This Thread]](http://images.proboards.com/search2.gif "[Search This Thread]")
![[Share Topic]](http://images.proboards.com/new/buttons/share.png "[Share Topic]")
![[Print]](http://images.proboards.com/buttons/print.gif "[Print]")
![[poll]](http://images.proboards.com/poll_icon.gif "[poll]"){kind=icon}
Poll
Author
![[avatar]](http://www.criticalgamers.com/archives/pictures/DnD.5.6.06.jpg "[avatar]")
Logged![[avatar]](http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m109/Rhuvein/KEEPavatar.jpg "[avatar]"){kind=avatar}
![[avatar]](http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j166/stonegiant96/avatar.jpg "[avatar]"){kind=avatar}
![[avatar]](http://toddthevikingking.googlepages.com/21712102a.jpg "[avatar]")
![[homepage]](http://images.proboards.com/buttons/www_sm.gif "[homepage]")
![[avatar]](http://content.turbine.com/sites/compendium.ddo.com/images/uploaded/a/ac/Mindflayer.png "[avatar]")
![[avatar]](http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa152/jrients/BnM_Mogar.gif "[avatar]")
![[avatar]](http://www.freeyabb.com/trolllordgames/images/avatars/trolllordgames/49541430946ca706f3ab62.gif "[avatar]")