Celebrim
Legend
Whereas I agree many tables pushed the rogue into a DPS role, I think this statement is more about playstyle than the game itself.
No, it's about the game.
The game, IMO, doesn't emphasize combat over exploration.
That's true, but it's not true of the design of classes.
For example, in our games exploration is probably more than combat, and thieves in 2e really shined as skill monkeys in that regard (2e allowed you to distribute your points to your skills how you saw fit, rather than flat progression of 1e).
No, 2e thieves are lousy as skill monkeys. Yes, the 2e Thieves Handbook is one of the best RPG supplements ever written, but it never addresses the basic problems with the class.
1) Leaving aside that the NWP system is welded on to the 2e framework rather than a strong integral part of it, it remains true that the NWP system is the best skill system 2e had. Yet, the thief had the worst access and progression to NWP of any class. Maybe if the thief got a NWP every level or every other level, you could argue for the thief in the skill money role, but it didn't.
2) The thief skills represented only a very narrow fixed band of skills, and they suffered from a huge problem in utility. At low levels, thief skills were so unreliable that in effect the thief was not skilled at all. Failure rates for most skills were in the 60-70% range, and the skills were such that failure penalties were usually very high - often death or immediate risk of death. Don't try to solve 'Tomb of Horrors' using skill checks. I've always said that you can tell how skilled the player of a AD&D era thief is, by the fact that the skilled ones almost never use their thief skills for anything. They are best treated as a sort of 'saving throw' rather than an actual skill. By high level though, when your thief skills were starting to get to be reliable, virtually every other class had a more reliable means of solving out of combat problems - spells. The cleric was a vastly better trap finder than you, and so was a wizard with a wand. The cleric was better at moving silently than you were. The wizard was vastly better at hiding than you were, seeing as he didn't need shadows and could freely move around while hiding. The wizard was also a vastly better wall climber than you (he didn't even need a wall!). And your skills were still so unreliable, you were probably better off in the long run letting the fighter just trigger the trap than checking for it. The abilities to distribute your points as you saw fit, didn't make you a skill monkey - it meant only that there was at least 1 skill you could be sort of reliable in at low level, before magic made your job obsolete. By the time you had reliable skills in limited areas, you had to really work to make them relevant.
Doesn't 5e directly address this, with feats like Lucky that are available to anyone?
No. Then you are just a lucky member of some other class.
In fiction there is a whole range of characters which either don't make sense when translated to D&D or are very lackluster when translated to D&D. Consider the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings. How are they a member of the party? Are they just 1st level henchmen? Why are they so valuable? Just handwaving the problem aside as power of plot actually highlights the problem rather than solves it. Or consider Tika Waylon from Dragonlance? She's a fighter (at first) only because nothing else makes sense. Probably the most obvious example of this is Saka from 'Avatar: The Last Airbender'. There are actually 'fighters' in the setting, who can compete with magic wielders on equal or almost equal terms. Saka however isn't one of them. Sure, he levels up in fighter in the third season under the tutelage of a new master, but most of the time Saka's contributions are more ineffable. Yet, he clearly is as important member of the team as anyone else in it, despite being the ordinary on a team of demi-gods. Some game systems can handle that; D&D isn't one of them.