My stab at an alternate thief

I was in the middle of doing this exact same thing, porting the thief back to 3LBB, as Greyhawk already starts to feel a lot more AD&D to me.

Forgive my newness here, therefore I'm not familiar with exactly your play style...

I'm curious why you don't allow Humans to be thieves as well, that would seem more in line with the LBB letting Humans be anything and the other humanoid races be also-rans. (Reading it a second time, it seems you may mean only OTHER race besides humans, otherwise why not build the +1 to listen into the chart.)

I would think the d20 with adjustments roll for Climb Walls would be more 3LBB consistent than the %.

I think your 13+ line makes them quite powerful at an early level, but I'd have to playtest it to try it out. I'd cut it off at their named level.

I really like how you've essentially made it into a single stat for most skills, allowing you really to break it down into just Thief Skills (open/remove/listen/pick pockets), Sneak, Climb and Backstab.

I also really like the Sneak vs. Move Silently change. It brings the usefulness into context, i.e. "Do this before combat, player!", instead of having this % that just sits there.

I might also roll their Read Languages roll into their Climb Roll check as well, essentially breaking breaking it down into the "%" column, but making it instead into a check against attribute column.

To keep in line with the reaching of the highest named level at level 10 (Master Thief), I might break it into 3 level chunks instead of 4 levels (which I know breaks from the GH talk of every 4 levels, but I was already breaking away from GH anyhow).

Level  Skills  Sneak  Climb/Read  Backstab
 1-3    1-2     +1        -1       +1/x1
 4-6    1-3     +1        -2       +1/x2
 7-9    1-3     +2        -3       +1/x3
 10+    1-4     +2        -4       +2/x4

The numbers under Climb/Read are adjustments to d20 rolls against dex or int/wis. The Backstab I added a bonus +1 "to hit" at level 10 to make that jump an even more special jump.

Again, this is all mental play, I'd have to playtest these to see how attractive or not this made Thieves.

I love the simplicity of the table, a lot. You've given me a great jumping off point for my own experiments.

I would think you'd just add the bonus on top of what you'd add for any other character. So if you've allowed a 3 or 4 in 6 for a normal character, the thief would be 4 or 5 at low levels and 5 or 6 (automatic) at higher levels, which seems to fit the comments in your blog.

I don't think you need to eliminate the player thinking portion and description of the gameplay at all to include thieves into the mix. Just give them a bigger bonus than you would if there were a group that doesn't include them (thus removing the problem of the crating a dungeon that has traps, etc. and just assuming or not assuming a thief will be in the group).

My other thoughts on the Thief to make him not just an out of combat character is to essentially make him a dex based combatant, this should capture the feeling of the Robin Hoods, Zorros, and Sinbads type Thieves. I'll have to think on it some more, because I want to retain the 3LBB feel to my Thieves when I make them...

I've gone 'Thief-less' with my OD&D campaign, but I added delving tasks, influenced by the basic ones (open doors, find secret doors, listen at doors, etc) included in the LBB, which cover a lot of these Thiefly skills and use d6's only. Anyone can perform these tasks imc.

I do think that your example of an OD&D Thief is really good, though!

imc, I lump find secret doors into a catch all task, Search, which is just that, and can also reveal the presence of traps. I notice you have no such skill for your Thief. Any reason?

The only skill that jumps out at me has been mentioned by previous posters, that being Climb Walls. All those %'s look out of place! I like Coffee's 2d6 idea.

If my players scream for a Thief, I might just borrow this one!


PS - I love the idea for Sneak as a catch-all stealthy approach to gaining Surprise. Would this only function when the Thief was alone? When does the proposed Thief get to backstab?

I did indeed mean halflings and humans are allowed to be thieves.

I would definitely consider making the climb walls a d20. I was picking percentages for it that weren't all that different from the Greyhawk percentages. It would be trickier to make similar percentages with 2d6, but that idea has appeal, though I will be using d20 <= attribute for off the cuff attribute checks, so d20 for climbing isn't so bad.

As to other's sneaking, I'm up in the air on that one. I guess I could see circumstances where I'd allow a non-thief a +1 to surprise, in which case, sure, a thief who takes the same precautions should get that bonus AND his thief bonus.

For backstack, my thought is that I will allow backstabs similar to how 3.x allows sneak attack, though perhaps with not quite such an automatic (like the opponent could choose to face the thief and give the fighter just a +2 to hit for attacking from behind). I haven't really decided, but backstab should be way easier that the way I used to play it where thieves had to work hard to ever get it. Backstab is the thief's contribution to combat.

Trap finding I figured would be up to player description just as per the rules. I suppose hard to find traps might require some kind of roll to find. I wouldn't want to give the thief an improved ability to find secret doors being that is a significant reason to have an elf along (though thieves would never get to "notice" secret doors, and dwarfs of course get to "notice" certain kinds of traps).

Surprise bonus would only work when thief is alone, though perhaps in certain circumstances the thief could grant it to the others (for example, helping the party set up an ambush).

Frank

The point of the exercise was that many that played and enjoyed OD&D felt like Greyhawk was a step towards the dark side... to whit, skill checks for thieves. When rolling dice became a substitute for roleplaying (read thinking, not acting), something changed. Frank's excellent effort was done at a time when this board was heavily exploring the idea of porting the theif back to a more 3LBB ideal, instead of a GH feel.

This board is pretty cordial, so I'll just close with making assumptions about new school was probably a careless thought, but the point of this exercise is very definitely NOT a new school thing, quite the opposite actually.

The opposite, skill checks can easily replace role-playing, if lazy.

There's a ton of thief threads from around the time period of this original post, do a google site search for thief and you should be able to see more of them. The thief is one of the most controversial topics on the board, really. Some people love em, some people hate em. There are easily 10 or more different alternate takes on the thief class.