Thieves and finding traps

MerricB · Oct 2, 2014

I occasionally visit Jon Peterson's "Playing at the World" blog, and I was very interested to see that he recently posted the original presentation of the thief class - published in a fanzine courtesy of Gary Gygax, before it was released in Supplement I: Greyhawk.

Of particular note was that Gary gave an example of how the thief worked, and seemed to imply that the thief automatically found traps; given the low chance of removing said traps (10%, also in Greyhawk), this seemed quite sensible.

The other note was that thieves were meant to stay out of combat - which certainly explains their lack of combat skills!

I've written a little more about the thief (and its latest incarnation) on my blog, but I was wondering how you deal (or dealt) with the thief and his finding of traps.

It's funny: 10% seems low, but when you use AD&D's method, the thief has only a 4% chance of finding AND disarming a trap.

Cheers!

Jan van Leyden · Oct 2, 2014

I used no hard rules for it but granted the player a bonus on his description. When a thief was looking in the right place the player would get a substantial bonus or automatically detect smething fishy.

It makes sense to focus on the disraming part, because this would be a calculated risk; no one forces the thief to open the trapped treasure chest.

Come to think of it, when I would start an AD&D game today, I would perhaps use the Find Traps chance as fallback option only and would take the player's description as decisive element. Only problem with this approach is that one would have to create the details of each and every trap.

GMMichael · Oct 2, 2014

MerricB said:
Of particular note was that Gary gave an example of how the thief worked, and seemed to imply that the thief automatically found traps; given the low chance of removing said traps (10%, also in Greyhawk), this seemed quite sensible.

The other note was that thieves were meant to stay out of combat - which certainly explains their lack of combat skills!

I've written a little more about the thief (and its latest incarnation) on my blog, but I was wondering how you deal (or dealt) with the thief and his finding of traps.

Automatically finding traps takes some of the fun out of them, no? You could require your thief to say "I look (here) for traps," and add the constraint that it takes a certain amount of time...and a chance for a random encounter. (Which would be great, with the thief not being intended for combat!)

Is that the 1st level thief you're talking about, with the 4% chance to disarm a given trap?

MerricB · Oct 3, 2014

DMMike said:
Automatically finding traps takes some of the fun out of them, no? You could require your thief to say "I look (here) for traps," and add the constraint that it takes a certain amount of time...and a chance for a random encounter. (Which would be great, with the thief not being intended for combat!)

Yes, I'd use that.

Is that the 1st level thief you're talking about, with the 4% chance to disarm a given trap?

Yes - 20% chance, and two rolls required. 20% * 20% = 4%. Not good odds!

Cheers!

Scrivener of Doom · Oct 3, 2014

MerricB said:
I occasionally visit Jon Peterson's "Playing at the World" blog, and I was very interested to see that he recently posted the original presentation of the thief class - published in a fanzine courtesy of Gary Gygax, before it was released in Supplement I: Greyhawk.

Of particular note was that Gary gave an example of how the thief worked, and seemed to imply that the thief automatically found traps; given the low chance of removing said traps (10%, also in Greyhawk), this seemed quite sensible.

The other note was that thieves were meant to stay out of combat - which certainly explains their lack of combat skills!

I've written a little more about the thief (and its latest incarnation) on my blog, but I was wondering how you deal (or dealt) with the thief and his finding of traps.

It's funny: 10% seems low, but when you use AD&D's method, the thief has only a 4% chance of finding AND disarming a trap.

Cheers!

You might want to read Old Geezer's posts at rpg.net as well. He played in Gary's games and has commented about how the thief could basically do most things automatically and the percentages only applied to extreme cases. Of course, it's better if you read his explanations rather than my paraphrasing.

ExploderWizard · Oct 3, 2014

MerricB said:
I've written a little more about the thief (and its latest incarnation) on my blog, but I was wondering how you deal (or dealt) with the thief and his finding of traps.

It's funny: 10% seems low, but when you use AD&D's method, the thief has only a 4% chance of finding AND disarming a trap.

Cheers!

What was unspoken regarding the thief class was that the various ability percentages represented the ability of the the thief training over and above the chances that any character gets to do these things.

So a 20% chance seems pretty crappy for a specialist until you consider that this was a fallback percentage in case the player failed to accomplish the task by normal means. It was in effect, a 20% saving throw to do this stuff that no other class got.

The interesting thing about the whole mess, is the assumption that no one but the thief can even try any of these functions. What happens then, is that the thief truly does become a joke, as that 20% chance now becomes the thief's only hope of accomplishing anything!

As deadly as OD&D combat was, are we to believe that no stealth of any kind was ever employed by the other three classes until the thief joined the lineup? Of course not. The thief and it's poorly communicated function of how it operated was one of the earliest instances of the assumption that anything without a rule in place is impossible to do, which has sadly become a staple attitude about the game ever since.

Starfox · Oct 9, 2014

ExploderWizard said:
What was unspoken regarding the thief class was that the various ability percentages represented the ability of the the thief training over and above the chances that any character gets to do these things.

This is very important the early old-school method everyone could use 10 ft. poles and a lot of other tricks to detect traps. Describe what you did right, and it worked. It was less of method acting and more "this is you in a dungeon, figure it out".