thief abilities: should they have been NWPs?

vivsavage · Jul 15, 2018

In 2e, do you like that thief abilities are essentially restricted to thieves only, or do you think they should have been NWPs, with thieves automatically gaining and improving them (as the ranger gains & improves tracking)?

Ath-kethin · Jul 16, 2018

I never thought about it, to be honest.

Now that I am, I think they could have been NWPs, except that the proficiency system in 2e was optional. A DM who didn't use proficiencies would seriously undercut a thief's effectiveness, so the abilities had to be baked-in. I guess starting with 3e they changed to skills, more or less the way you suggest, but it wouldn't have worked in 2nd.

(Psi)SeveredHead · Jul 16, 2018

I have seen D&D books covering thief skills as NWPs. I think it was Skills & Powers, but that was long ago, and I never actually owned that S&P book, so I can't be entirely sure.

Prior to 3e, D&D had lots of non-unified mechanics and sometimes odd takes on niche protection. I vaguely recall reading that only rangers could Track, but maybe it was everyone but rangers took a large penalty to tracking [was it -6?] while rangers got bonuses over levels. I vaguely recall reading that elves who weren't rogues or rangers could use their elven Move Silently bonus, which I think was only +5% or +10%, so there's some precedence of using those skills outside of the class. Unfortunately you couldn't improve those in the core rules.

billd91 · Jul 16, 2018

No - not when 2e's main purpose was to regularize the rule sprawl that 1e had become.
If anything, the attempt to enable anyone to track but still leave it a special purview of the ranger was a botch. Not only did non-rangers have to spend 2 slots for it, they suffered a -6 to their Wisdom stat when trying to roll under it. Why make it a generally available proficiency if the only character who's going to not suck at it (without it being prohibitively expensive) is a ranger? Just keep it a class-based ability.

Celebrim · Jul 16, 2018

Sort of. If I was redoing AD&D using what I've learned since 1e, there would be NWP's that would allow you to get thief abilities to some degree but they would still use their own separate rules for percentage chances of success because NWP's aren't very flexible and thief abilities need to be.

trancejeremy · Jul 16, 2018

Honestly, if anything, I think NWPs should have been d100% like thief skills

You actually saw this in the Buck Rogers RPG< which was basically 2e in space. Basically you had skill % plus related ability score (like a 15 dex would give a 15% bonus) plus a class bonus, and then multiply by difficulty (2x for easy, 1/4 for impossible and various in between).

However, I think that's probably too complicated for most gamers. I mean, West End Games had to come up with an alternate version of their D6 rules because they found people had trouble counting up a handful of d6s. So asking someone to do multiplication or division is probably out of the question.

cbwjm · Jul 16, 2018

I think they should have been, on the off chance that I ever get to run a 2e game again that is what I'll make them. It wouldn't even matter if NWP weren't used, thieves would still get them.

ccs · Jul 16, 2018

vivsavage said:
~ or do you think they should have been NWPs, with thieves automatically gaining and improving them (as the ranger gains & improves tracking)?

That's essentially what we did sometime in 1e when the NWP proficiencies came along in the Oriental Adventures, Dungeoneers & Wilderness survival guides.
If you weren't a Thief (or an Assassin) you could spend 1 NWP slot & pick up any one of the Thief skills at LV1 % chance of success (dex/race/armor mods applied as normal). You could increase your base % by spending additional NWP slots. So for ex, if you wanted to pick locks as well as a 3rd lv thief? Then you'd have to spend 3 NWP slots.

For the Thieves and assassins? They got all of their listed skills automatically (so no change) & if they did nothing would automatically increase their % as listed whenever they gained levels (so no change).
Like any other character they could choose to spend NWP slots on these skills. So a 1st lv Thief who invested 2 NWP in say Pick Pockets? Would increase their % to that of a 3rd lv. When they gained 2nd lv? Then their PP would increase to 4th lv %s & all their other skills would increase as usual.

We did something similar with the Rangers tracking.
Rangers remained unchanged - unless they invested NWP.
Other characters simply gained the rangers base % per NWP invested.
This almost never came up.

So when 2e arrived? We just kept doing it this way. I forget how many %pts we assigned to each NwP & what mods we applied to tracking.

digitalelf · Jul 16, 2018

2nd Edition AD&D did use the proficiency system for thieving skills at one point. Thief skills as proficiencies were in the Ravenloft setting of "Masque of the Red Death".