The state of Post-OSR content

[EOTB]

DMs abstracting cities is another place that hurts the playability of thieves. They should shine in cities like a blazing beacon. But if city play is mostly handwaived, then they're left with the dungeon and wilderness. Dungeon is still good for them, but takes an inventive player, and a detail-oriented DM. That said, I've played human thieves in the dungeon and had plenty of success

 

[EOTB]

Also: human thieves are prime candidates to dual class, as the INT and DEX requirements play nice with one another. Very much worth grabbing 3-4 levels in MU and then switching over to thief, if the player does want the thief to long-tail in the career path.

 

[squeen]

DMs abstracting cities is another place that hurts the playability of thieves. They should shine in cities like a blazing beacon.

That is a really good point I had never considered.

We never did a whole lot of human-city play "back then" (just subterranean towns)...but in my current campaign my players seem to gravitate towards it (and for lack of precedent I feel like I'm on the high-wire without a net). As I've noted elsewhere, I particularly struggle to evince the hustle-and-bustle of such a dynamic environment.

Nevertheless, in the urban setting the thief has been their go-to guy (although the capers inevitably start out with the magic-user making him invisible).

 

[Beoric]

If thieves are only playable with the right player (actually, players, the attitudes of the other players makes a big difference) and the right DM in the right environment not using theater-of-the-mind, I think it is at least arguable that there is a problem with the design of the class.

 

[squeen]

You paint a dire picture, but (bow-usage aside) I just haven't seen a problem---the opposite in fact. The "broken" argument will get no traction with me (but I think EOTB is whom you are really addressing). "Fixing the thief class" honestly never once occurred to me---I never saw a need.

Eliminating the paladin class...on the other hand...was like one of Bryce's songs on perpetual repeat.

 

[EOTB]

If thieves are only playable with the right player (actually, players, the attitudes of the other players makes a big difference) and the right DM in the right environment not using theater-of-the-mind, I think it is at least arguable that there is a problem with the design of the class.

That proceeds from an unstated assumption good design supports that style of play as a matter of course. From my perspective - wanting a design that doesn't cater to the needs of the a theater-of-the-mind style where players can succeed roughly similarly whether they support each other or not - that 1E makes design choices unencumbered by its requirements is good design.

The result of following what you say to its logical conclusion is all games are designed to accommodate what you want, and none are designed to hit all the notes I want. Because hitting the notes I want is "bad design".

 

[Beoric]

@EOTB, I am not suggesting that good design needs to support every playstyle, but I am suggesting that it should support the common varieties of playstyles that are suggested by the game. Certainly it is poor design to support only one playstyle, and not make it clear what that playstyle is, AND make functionality so very dependent on the individual characteristics of the participants in the game. Particularly when the game was intended to be mass marketed and a commercial success, and was trying to break out of a limited niche of former wargamers.

My concerns are not limited to me, it was others posting on this thread that raised the issue with thieves. But sure, take it personally if you want.

 

[squeen]

@Beoric: Why go there? Sure The Heretic asked the question "Why play thieves?"...but it wasn't he that tried to lead us to a conclusion that the game he is using is broken and demands fixing. That's your song and dance. Just keep ignoring any and all opposing evidence and testimonials. The game works. Thieves work. Thousands have played it with the rules as written (err...I'm trying). Heck, @The Heretic just played it and enjoyed it.
The edition progression was motivated by many desires---but none of them were that the game was unplayable "as is". That line of thinking is a non-starter. You think there's room for rules improvement---so be it. You like to tinker and mix editions---cool for you. (I used to think home-brewed rules were a great idea too, but I no longer do---see Commandment #1.) But you also know, as sure as the sun rises each morning, EOTB (and I) will defend the legitimacy of the game we both enjoy playing week-in and week-out. Similarly, it's your right so say 4e rocks your world and you find 1e boring. He's not wrong to defend his chosen game, even if he brusquely invalidates what you just said.

So, again, why go down the path of trying to elicit agreement-by-logical-proof that 1e is brokenbad and imply we have to move on? Instead tell us how you do like to play---that's what I always start out posting (and revived this dead thread), but we always end up in an entrenched edition bicker-brawl. Is my old-school joy so offensive?

 

[The Heretic]

DMs abstracting cities is another place that hurts the playability of thieves. They should shine in cities like a blazing beacon. But if city play is mostly handwaived, then they're left with the dungeon and wilderness. Dungeon is still good for them, but takes an inventive player, and a detail-oriented DM. That said, I've played human thieves in the dungeon and had plenty of success

I'm not sure how much adventuring in the city would help the class. Sure, they have a great climb walls percentage, but if they tried to use their pickpocketing skills they'd probably get into trouble. (Or maybe that's the point)

That's the one thing I liked about the opposed roll rules introduced with 3e. Instead of a 21% chance to pick pockets at 1st level, their chance of success would be balanced out by whose pockets they're trying to pick.

But of course, the new opposed roll and skill check rules created issues of their own.

 

[The Heretic]

I think this might be a basic disagreement over the philosophy behind game design.

The newer approach seems to be to let everyone have a chance to shine. Wizards are crappy at melee, but get in a few good spells and they get the spotlight for a short while. Same with clerics and healing, etc. If you try to port this approach back to older versions of the game you fall flat. It doesn't work at low levels. The chances of a 1st level thief successfully moving silently and hiding in shadows to get in position to do his (one time) double damage backstab attack are at about 2% (rough approximation, I think LL had MS 21% and HiS 13% 1/5 times 1/10 equals 1/50 equals why bother?).
Eventually, if you survive to high levels, you can get pretty awesome as a thief. But in those low level ranges you kind of suck.

Magic-users had the same issue. One and done. Bring some extra daggers with you so you can at least toss them at people (ineffectively) after you've casted your one spell.

The old style of play seems to accept a lot more metagaming than you'd think would be tolerated. The thief in my group knows his odds aren't good with hiding, finding and disarming traps, etc. He has two hit points. So for the first session he took this metagame knowledge and hung back. He assumed the cowardly thief archetype. At this level they'd probably prefer to have another fighter, but I guess that's what the henchman abuse is for.

 

[The Heretic]

Also, I think I should add that our ability to analyze the powers of the classes has become much more sophisticated as the years have progressed.

In 1st edition's heyday, the thought of playing 'the sneaky thief' had an appeal. Sure, game mechanicwise you SUCKED at it, but at least it was something you could do that no one else could do. If you actually survived a few levels, you could get to be badass.

Now, and with *ahem* certain MMORPGs pointing the way, we're a lot more aware of dps ('damage per second') than we were back then. The thief's 'dps' sucks. Maybe you'll get a hit in with your d6 short sword, but you only get your "proc" (x2 damage) to work if you pass both your skill checks. Fighters would seem like a much safer bet. You get more hit points, you're harder to hit, you have a better chance hitting your opponent, and you do more damage. The only thing you lack is stealth as a character concept. Viewed in this lens, the Thief looks like garbage.

But of course there is more going on in D&D than DPS. If you like how 1e thieves work, more power to you. If you think they're awful, nothing wrong with that. Like 3e or 4e rogues better? More power to you.

(also, personally I am a very risk adverse person, so thieves *never* had an appeal to me. Magic users had the aura that I was going for, mysterious, powerful, not to be trifled with, but I think in the older (and even newer) editions I finally gravitated towards clerics. Good armor, good hp, reasonable combat skills, carebear healing making you SOOPER important, awesomeness of the highest degree. The fact that no one else seemed to want to play them was icing on the cake)

 

[squeen]

Agreed --- clerics are a nice compromise, but honestly a nice mixed party is best IMO.

 

[The Heretic]

Agreed --- clerics are a nice compromise, but honestly a nice mixed party is best IMO.

It's true. But also that list bit doesn't work that well from a roleplaying standpoint. Sure, you got this crappy thief who hangs around that you don't necessarily trust, and from a metagame standpoint it makes sense to defend him and help him level, but from the roleplaying side my reaction would be to throw him to the dogs and get another fighter. Traps on chests etc? Use a ten foot pole. Locks? Break 'em. At least you won't have to worry about this shifty guy over here deciding to ditch you with all your loot.

 

[The Heretic]

To get things back to the lighter side, the one PCish death of the night was comedy gold.

<moktar advance on group, with a pit trap he knows about in the way. I decide he tries to hit the cleric with a -2 to hit since he's also trying not to trigger the pit trap>
"The moktar tries to smack the cleric. He rolls a...18" <shit! 2d4 damage and this cleric has like 4 hp?>
<frantic thinking. /roll d4>
"1." <that's not too bad>
<don't back out now! this is meant to be lethat!>
"Oops, I rolled that wrong. <rolls another d4> 4. The total damage is 5. Did he survive?"
"Nope, he falls down. Dead."

 

[EOTB]

I'm not sure how much adventuring in the city would help the class. Sure, they have a great climb walls percentage, but if they tried to use their pickpocketing skills they'd probably get into trouble. (Or maybe that's the point)

That's the one thing I liked about the opposed roll rules introduced with 3e. Instead of a 21% chance to pick pockets at 1st level, their chance of success would be balanced out by whose pockets they're trying to pick.

But of course, the new opposed roll and skill check rules created issues of their own.

The other item that hampers the thief is how so many DMs supply the idea that if you have a 21% chance of success, that means you have a 79% chance of a negative outcome.

Picking Pockets: Failure allows additional attempts. The victim might
notice and allow the thief to operate anyway in order to track him or her
back to the place he or she uses as a headquarters. Up to two attempts at
picking a pocket can be made during a round.

Getting a 23% just means you didn't pick the pocket. It doesn't mean the target noticed you attempting to pick their pocket. Maybe the DM gives some small chance of being noticed.

The same misconception is usually applied to the other low thief percentiles. failing to remove a trap DOES NOT MEAN YOU SET OFF THE TRAP. Opening a trapped item is how you set off a trap. But if you found a trap you couldn't remove there are many ways to open a known trapped item with little risk. Failing a hide in shadows check doesn't mean you're seen. Failing a move silently check doesn't mean you're heard. By that logic, since other classes have 0% in all of those scores, sneaking up on someone is impossible - but that's not the case.

As is plainly stated in PLAYERS HANDBOOK, this is NEVER possible under direct (or even indirect) observation.

So it is not possible to go from visible to essentially-invisible while your visible self is observed. But this is to achieve a state that is near-invisible even if observed. That does not mean people automatically observe those in dark corners. Only that if they're suspicious and look to see, they can see. But really, do you go peering at every dark corner to see what might be there? That would quickly become counter-productive.

The thief has, at worst, the best non-preternatural chance to hide you'd extend any other non-thief character who tried not to be seen. And at best something they could never hope to emulate. But it is not a 15% chance to not be seen. It is a 15% chance to defeat active suspicious looking.

People don't like to play thieves because DMs are afraid of being easy DMs and tend to being DMs of NO, far beyond instruction. The proper way to DM a thief is to ask yourself: if there were no thief in the party and some fighter asked to do this - would that have a reasonable chance of success? If yes, the thief might be able to go far beyond that to success even in unreasonable conditions for a fighter.

As for town thieves - what benefits do you give the thief for belonging to a guild? If that isn't a long list of urban bennies, in directed info-gathering, free hot tips, rope-jumping, corrupt watch, compliant merchants, smuggling favors, etc., then yeah, the thief is being shorted again.

Backstab TSR tightened too much. It should have simply stayed as expressed in the PHB - all that is necessary for the damage multiplier was position and an unaware target, and you get an extra, additional +2 to hit if they are surprised - which could be more easily accomplished through use of such skills as HiS or MS. Requiring surprise went too far. (And note that neither the PHB or the DMG state you must roll a MS or HiS necessarily - they were often done to make achieving surprise easier, that is all)

 

[EOTB]

The old style of play seems to accept a lot more metagaming than you'd think would be tolerated. The thief in my group knows his odds aren't good with hiding, finding and disarming traps, etc. He has two hit points. So for the first session he took this metagame knowledge and hung back. He assumed the cowardly thief archetype. At this level they'd probably prefer to have another fighter, but I guess that's what the henchman abuse is for.

1st edition requires metagaming. Not accidentally, but purposefully and overtly. There is no admonition against metagaming in 1E - instead "superior players" are those who've learned how to metagame well.

 

[EOTB]

@EOTB, I am not suggesting that good design needs to support every playstyle, but I am suggesting that it should support the common varieties of playstyles that are suggested by the game. Certainly it is poor design to support only one playstyle, and not make it clear what that playstyle is, AND make functionality so very dependent on the individual characteristics of the participants in the game. Particularly when the game was intended to be mass marketed and a commercial success, and was trying to break out of a limited niche of former wargamers.

My concerns are not limited to me, it was others posting on this thread that raised the issue with thieves. But sure, take it personally if you want.

I'm not taking this personally; I post strong rebuttals because otherwise things get lost in a conventional wisdom after the fact that isn't really true.

Example: do you honestly believe that 1E didn't make it very clear what play style it recommended, and that the recommended play style was not what most people associate with RPGs? It doesn't surprise me if that is so, and I'm not saying its a failure if someone presumes 1E has similar premises to the editions that followed. Example: the Heretic is surprised at how much metagaming 1E presumes. That's not some failing of his - why would someone presume 1E encouraged what every edition after discouraged? Wasn't the basic form of RPGs conceptualized as they are now from the foundation? This is the normal way of thinking - what is now encouraged was always so.

But the only way to bust through that/those misconceptions is to flatly deny them. Not dance around them or pretend their validity goes back further than it did. When 1E says superior players will make use of their increased player knowledge, that is a direct contradiction. Knowing that is better than wondering why metagaming is treated entirely differently in 1E than later versions.

AD&D wasn't trying to break out of the niche of wargaming. It was attempting to extend the basic conventions of wargaming to a fantasy-type more people held than that of being the Duke of Wellington for a day, so it could be a more popular form of that style of mechanics. It also was attempting to apply basic wargaming structure to individuals as opposed to units, but without changing the basic wargaming structure.

To later-TSR's credit, they recognized that most of the people attracted to AD&D actually wanted the game to go far greater lengths in leaving behind war gaming, which most RPG gamers weren't really interested in at all: to retain the individual concept but ditch the meta-gamey wargame structure nearly entirely and focus on fantasy immersion. 2E tried to do that without changing a jot of the rules more than necessary, largely through a revamped narrative framing around the rules. Later editions continued in that direction (and later modules in 1E had already fully made the narrative transition even while the original core books were unchanged).

 

[The Heretic]

Example: do you honestly believe that 1E didn't make it very clear what play style it recommended, and that the recommended play style was not what most people associate with RPGs? It doesn't surprise me if that is so, and I'm not saying its a failure if someone presumes 1E has similar premises to the editions that followed. Example: the Heretic is surprised at how much metagaming 1E presumes. That's not some failing of his - why would someone presume 1E encouraged what every edition after discouraged? Wasn't the basic form of RPGs conceptualized as they are now from the foundation? This is the normal way of thinking - what is now encouraged was always so.

To tell you the truth, I knew I was wrong when I said that. I had an inkling that 1e and earlier did encourage metagaming to some extent, but the future editions' emphasis on *not* metagaming has left its imprint on me.

I can understand how Gary hated the D&D thespianism or whatever he used to rail against. That's his opinion, I'm fine with that, but I tend to embrace this 'thespianism' myself. For my kind of D&D, the lethality in OD&D doesn't work. I want heroes that grow in time, not prematurely killed in their first ever encounter through sheer bad luck. But that's me. It's the prerogative of other people to prefer OD&D or 3e or 4e or whatever.

I haven't read the 1e DMG in years, but I am very familiar with it. My copy is worn out, pages falling out. Gross with dead, greasy teenager skin cells. Gary was a good writer. The 1e DMG was him at his best. He had a distinct voice as an author in that book. I'd enjoy reading it again now, but I wouldn't necessarily want to play with that ruleset.

 

[Beoric]

But the only way to bust through that/those misconceptions is to flatly deny them.

No, the way to bust through alleged misconceptions is to support your argument with evidence. All you do is make bald statements. And your arguments are not balanced, you accept no criticism of 1e and treat it as a perfect whole. When I defend 4e, I accept, and sometimes even point out, valid criticisms. It is your treatment of the 1e core books as interpreted by you as scripture that drives me bananas.

 

[squeen]

On the whole meta-gaming vs. role-playing debate, Joe M. at Grognardia kepts referring to a new D&D book called "The Elusive Shift". I wonder if the title refers to the shift towards role-playing.

For the record, I've always meta-gamed. We never put much into "only knowing what your character would know", unless it was severely game-damaging. In the previous example I mentioned the party recognizing a dangerous opponent (the drow) from a previous TPK event. There's no way their current PCs would have that knowledge---but who cares. In our style, the PC is just a vehicle for the player's actions....the thespian stuff always felt weird to me/us (back in the day)---I'm also sure that my kids would have stopped playing after the first few sessions if I had required that. It's apples and oranges. All I know is that this older-style works fine and is loads of fun. We don't seem to ever "exhaust" D&D nor get bored "fighting orcs in a hole", or crave new classes/races to quicken our jaded souls. The other way may be great too---I've never tried it because it was always so weirdly off-putting...but, honestly, "I'm good".

In general, I feel more "at home" with nerdy left-brained wargammers than touchy-feely artists.

On the most extreme side of meta I've ever done, there's a dimension-hopping stone troll (henchmen) that behaves as if he's modern-world savvy but is just an eco-vacationer "slumming it" in their back-water D&D dimension. He's got his own one-shot "panic button" that he can use as a last resort to return (himself only) home. They like having his fire-power in the party, so the game-able aspect is that they have to worry about him getting bored and taking off. They met him in a wizardry's sanctuary, where he was free-loading, and he doesn't pay attention sometimes because he's texting home. Got the idea from Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures series. I'm a shameless hack.