OSR OSR Gripes

Tony Vargas · Jul 11, 2019

Celebrim said:
I don't fully agree with that. My take is that casters hit tier 1 in 3e because a) they made the decision to remove a lot of the fiddly restrictions on when you could cast so that getting casting interrupted became unreasonably hard and b) because when they finally invented difficulty they made the mistake of applying it to the magic system as well as the skills system in a way that was extremely over aggressive and c) because they from experience in 1e they erroneously thought the only real balance problems with magic was probably things like fireball.

Frankly, reversing all those mistakes wouldn't topple 3e casters from Tier 1. Retaining fiddly restrictions on casting, giving everyone all-good saves and nerfing save-DC-inflating loopholes, and nerfing spells like Polymorph et al, would /still/ have left the Tier 1 prepped casters super-versatile relative to the feat-specialized fighter, rage-specialized barbarian, and skill-specialized Rogue.

I need to dig up Len Lakofka's write up on the thief, but the its somewhere between what you are thinking and what Garthanos is thinking. In brief, yes the thief is meant to give you abilities that are otherwise impossible.

I'm surprised that didn't make an impression on me back in the day.

But it's not meant to make impossible what is an act of ordinary skill.

The experience of the game was /so/ varied back in the day. I can only say my experience was it did exactly that: oh, the Thief has these % abilities, other characters don't, these tasks must be the Thief's raison d'etre, that's why it's attack & save matrixes are so bad, why it's HD are low, why it can't wear armor or use many weapons... because those few skills, at such low % are /just that valuable/, and, to protect that niche, /must/ be exclusive.

2e, BTW, did seem to cross that line, and imply that NWPs could duplicate Thief special abilities, and with a much better chance of success. I'm not sure anyone ran with that implication, but I remember being perplexed by it and ultimately not using NWPs, in part, because of that. (I went for a variant that let characters define one skill that they were exceptionally good at, instead, and assumed broad competence with level outside of that.)

lowkey13 · Jul 11, 2019

*Deleted by user*

Monayuris · Jul 11, 2019

Garthanos said:
From what has been explained to me the 15 percent thief technique was only supposed to be needed if the task was impossible for other methods. Now I do not think that was well presented if that was actually the intent and it feels a little weird how does that work you make a d20 vs dexterity check and if that fails then roll the thief percentages?

Anyone else here of that thinking?

Yes that is the original intent for the skill as I have come to understand it.

In fact, supplement I: Greyhawk introduces thieves with the following abilities:

Thieves: All thieves are either neutral or chaotic — although lawful characters may hire them on a one-time basis for missions which are basically lawful.
They are not as strong as other classes in hit dice, but thieves have many distinct
advantages which are enumerated below. Thieves can employ magic daggers
and magic swords but none of the other magical weaponry. They can wear
only leather armor and cannot employ shields. While they cannot learn spells,
thieves of the highest levels are able to read those spells written on scrolls. Basic
abilities are:
– open locks by picking or foiling magical closures
– remove small trap devices (such as poisoned needles)
– listen for noise behind closed doors
– move with great stealth
– filch items and pick pockets
– hide in shadows
– strike silently from behind
– climb nearly sheer surfaces, upwards or downwards

The thief skill represented the ability to climb sheer surfaces without need for rope. I always thought anyone can climb with the proper gear and with time. It was thieves who have an almost supernatural ability to do so.

Same thing with move silently and hide in shadows. These were literally the ability to move completely silently and to hide from sight within a shadowy corner.

I always assumed thief skills were borderline supernatural and did not prevent other characters from attempting similar actions.

My theory is that over the editions the thief ability became morphed (probably an editorial judgement) to appear more and more mundane with each new edition... losing the original intent of the ability in the process and sparking the whole debate.

Celebrim · Jul 11, 2019

lowkey13 said:
Pointing this out again, although others have already done so.

You are on a forum. A forum where, among other things, we have people that write columns sharing their experience writing the books from back in the day (h/t James Ward). Where we have the archived words of EGG.

And where we have, for better or worse, various Grognards milling about who played and DM'd these games. Not cousins. Not people who may or may not have used Unearthed Arcana (because, to these Grognards, Unearthed Arcana was an abomination late in the 1e lifecycle).

Given that, perhaps it is best to approach this from a position of, "Hey, this is my understanding, which may or may not be universal." As opposed to telling other people that their assumptions are entirely wrong because of what you think you know from your cousin and therefore can extrapolate it to the practice of all the people who used to play.

TLDR; the whole introduction of the Thief class was a tired debate in the late 70s, it's odd that someone would state, now, that they perfectly understand that this wasn't a debate because they knew how DMs would approach the problem, despite not having been there.

Your experiences are your own, but try not to universalize them on to other people, especially if you didn't actually experience it.

You seem to be continuing some debate I wasn't a part of based on the idea that I am continuing it. But did I say I didn't know such a debate happened? Where do you get that of all things?

You aren't saying anything I don't know. I'm just not sure how what you are saying is applicable or why you think it is.

If in fact you have the archived words of Gygax where he says something useful on this subject, share them.

If in fact you encountered some sort of consistent universally applied skill system preexisting the introduction of the thief which wasn't just DM fiat, please explain how that worked. I'd love to meet that mythical beast. Let's add another bit of evidence to that. I've been on the boards what 17 years now, and in that time not one OD&D player has advocated for a skill system as opposed to DM fiat, despite the fact we've had plenty of grognards that play "the one true system". So yeah, it's an assumption by me that such a skill system didn't exist, but I think it's a pretty strong assumption.

And if you hadn't in fact encountered that consistent universally applied skill system used even by anyone much less a majority of the community, then you aren't actually contradicting me and you whole post amounts to nothing more than, "Oh yeah. Well shut up."

Tony Vargas · Jul 11, 2019

Monayuris said:
My theory is that over the editions the thief ability became morphed (probably an editorial judgement) to appear more and more mundane with each new edition... losing the original intent of the ability in the process and sparking the whole debate.

Honestly, none of those things, as described in your quote from the original, sound innate fantastic. "Special" Ability still seems a misnomer after reading them.

But, reminding myself how wildly varied impressions, variants, and play were back in the day:
/Given/ that some folks experience of the Thief was that it represented nigh-supernatural ability on the impossible end of tasks described by it's special abilities, from climbing sheer surfaces to picking pockets and opening medieval locks, a question for any such folks who ever tried 3e.

What was your reaction to the 3e Rogue getting a bunch of skill ranks and the classic Thief special abilities being 'demoted' to mere skills? (And, we might as well note the exception of Trapfinding, which remained niche-protected for Rogues and Clerics casting Find Traps.)

Sacrosanct · Jul 11, 2019

OK, some clarifications here, although I feel like I'm talking into the void, because some of the things I mentioned as corrections are having people repeat the same error after I've given the correction, so...

The first published skill system was 1976 in Dragon Magazine #1 by Wesley Ives. Literally the 1st Dragon magazine had an article on it. However, that system was extremely cumbersome to use, so shortly after, DMs because using "roll d20 and if you get under your stat, you succeed." That was extremely common, and IIRC was also in an early dragon magazine (trying to find it). But to say it wasn't common is not true.

Now, for the thief, it was, since the beginning, meant to have skills and do things other characters couldn't do (like picking magical locks). Not that it replaced other PCs trying to hide, but to give the thief superhuman abilities to attempt what no one else could. (the 1e PHB infers this as well, as I pointed out earlier) And at higher levels, automatically succeeded. Reference the original thief class as it appears in Gen Con 1974:

Celebrim · Jul 11, 2019

Monayuris said:
My theory is that over the editions the thief ability became morphed (probably an editorial judgement) to appear more and more mundane with each new edition... losing the original intent of the ability in the process and sparking the whole debate.

Well, the debate definitely preexisted the evolution of the idea of skillfulness in D&D.

In general, it was mostly climb/find traps/remove traps that I think presented the biggest ideological problems. I've never heard anyone suggest for example that characters were assumed to have skill in picking pockets or picking locks. I think people easily accepted that picking pockets or opening locks were skills most people didn't have.

Remember, you have to look at this through the lens of the Braunstein inspired ruleless open ended game versus the modern notion of a universal fortune system. How did people check for traps before 'check for traps'? Well, they proposed the character carefully inspecting and looking at the object, and if they looked at the right thing carefully enough they maybe convinced the GM that they found the trap. I don't think this process usually involved a fortune test, because when I've witnessed this debate in the past the grognard side normally hates the whole idea of a fortune test. There idea is that by careful play by the player you find the trap and that is how it was done back in the day.

Similarly, I wasn't just pulling out of the air the whole take off your boots and armor thing. That's how I've been told stealthy movement was done back in the day. Again, I don't think the system was, "If you take off your boots and armor and you roll under Dexterity then I'll let you move silently." The judge simply decided whether or not the plan was good enough work and if it did it didn't and if it wasn't it wasn't. If the fortune system preexisted the Thief and was in any way widely known and accepted, my expectation is that the thief would have referenced it instead of having its own table of skills by level and we would have gotten the idea of a NWP way before we did. Nor have I heard anyone, Jordan Peterson included, describe such a nascent skills system.

The problem of course that you always ran into as a DM is that you know had this system for adjudicating extraordinary actions but it only applied to thieves. You had no system for adjudicating extraordinary actions for non thieves and more importantly you had no system for adjudicating ordinary actions. For rather ordinary actions, you still basically had the old Braunstein system of deciding for yourself if something was climbable. Climb a ladder? Yes. (No check.) Climb a dressed stone wall? No. (No check.) Climb a tree? Err.... Yes? Maybe? Not this tree?

And that's where the system started failing. Yes and No were easy answers but the thief skill system still really didn't address the in between cases well. Remember, we wouldn't have a notion of difficulty built into the system until 3e. So how much easier was it to climb a tree than the nearly sheer wall the thief was climbing? How much harder was it to climb a nearly sheer wall of ice? Rules smiths and module writers and other DMs started having to try to work with the system as it was, and as you might expect - just with other attempts to jury rig a skill system - the suggestions that they made were all over the place.

Celebrim · Jul 11, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
What was your reaction to the 3e Rogue getting a bunch of skill ranks and the classic Thief special abilities being 'demoted' to mere skills? (And, we might as well note the exception of Trapfinding, which remained niche-protected for Rogues and Clerics casting Find Traps.)

You have no way to imagine how much I loved the 3e Rogue. I nearly cried when I read the rules.

So, on one hand, you are right. The baseline difficulty of climbing a nearly sheer wall in 3e is DC 20, and a 1st edition 1st level thief would have probably had a better chance of success at it than a 3e 1st level Rogue. But, neither would have been able to do it reliably at that point, and the 3e rogue would hit the point where they had a +19 bonus on climb and could not only reliably climb a nearly sheer wall but dare climb walls much less climbable. And before then you'd hit the +14 point where you could climb rough walls and the +9 point where you could climb things with hand holds.

And yes, you were no longer the only character that could climb walls so you weren't 'special', but you were outright the most skillful character with the most skills. And by contrast, to show you how crapped on the Thief was in AD&D, when they introduced NWP's as the first proto-skill system, the Thief got the fewest of them and earned the fewest as they increased in levels.

The 3e skill system wasn't perfect. It was IMO still too conservative, and the authors were still too obviously afraid of allowing mere skills to do useful things, but it was an amazing step in the right direction both in terms of the viability of the rogue archetype and in terms of adjudicating all these actions as a DM.

The niche-protection remained a problem.

Garthanos · Jul 11, 2019

Monayuris said:
Yes that is the original intent for the skill as I have come to understand it.

In fact, supplement I: Greyhawk introduces thieves with the following abilities:

The thief skill represented the ability to climb sheer surfaces without need for rope. I always thought anyone can climb with the proper gear and with time. It was thieves who have an almost supernatural ability to do so.

Same thing with move silently and hide in shadows. These were literally the ability to move completely silently and to hide from sight within a shadowy corner.

I always assumed thief skills were borderline supernatural and did not prevent other characters from attempting similar actions.

My theory is that over the editions the thief ability became morphed (probably an editorial judgement) to appear more and more mundane with each new edition... losing the original intent of the ability in the process and sparking the whole debate.

By 4th edition when wizards were casting invisibility and flying spells around the rogues abilities are hitting that supernatural element.

Tony Vargas · Jul 11, 2019

Celebrim said:
You have no way to imagine how much I loved the 3e Rogue. I nearly cried when I read the rules.

So, on one hand, you are right. The baseline difficulty of climbing a nearly sheer wall in 3e is DC 20, and a 1st edition 1st level thief would have probably had a better chance of success at it than a 3e 1st level Rogue. But, neither would have been able to do it reliably at that point, and the 3e rogue would hit the point where they had a +19 bonus on climb and could not only reliably climb a nearly sheer wall but dare climb walls much less climbable. And before then you'd hit the +14 point where you could climb rough walls and the +9 point where you could climb things with hand holds.

Climb was also STR-based in 3e, so the Rogue was unlikely to have the highest raw check...
...though perhaps likely to be higher than the Fighter after armor penalties.
And, perhaps amusingly, a raging barbarian could /really/ climb. ;P
(Unless you deemed that climbing required some finesse so couldn't be done while raging.)

And yes, you were no longer the only character that could climb walls so you weren't 'special', but you were outright the most skillful character with the most skills.

Had the most skills is a world of difference from the only one with special abilities, that were either the only way to accomplish that range of tasks - or the only way to accomplish 'impossible' examples of those tasks.

It's the latter I'm curious about.

In 3e, the Thief's Trapfinding feature made him able to find traps (with DCs over 20) that non-thieves(non-dwarves-searching stonework, non-clerics-casting-find-traps) couldn't. It looked, to me, like it was a bit of niche-protection - inn the past, only the Thief could look for traps, at all, others could, at most, probe ahead to set them off hopefully while out of danger, now there was a defined line letting them find some easier traps.
From this other point of view I'm hearing about, now, it was a sole example of things staying the same: that, before, everyone could perform every Thief special ability, to a mundane level, though no mechanics were generally forthcoming, but the Thief's facility was truly special in every case, "now" (in 3e) only Trapfinding was special.

And by contrast, to show you how crapped on the Thief was in AD&D, when they introduced NWP's as the first proto-skill system, the Thief got the fewest of them and earned the fewest as they increased in levels.

Not surprising.

The 3e skill system wasn't perfect. It was IMO still too conservative, and the authors were still too obviously afraid of allowing mere skills to do useful things, but it was an amazing step in the right direction both in terms of the viability of the rogue archetype and in terms of adjudicating all these actions as a DM.

The niche-protection remained a problem.

So, were you on the original-Thief Special Abilities were nigh-supernatural, do-the-impossible things, or just considering it as one way of looking at it? Because 3e would seem quite the let-down if you were committed to that viewpoint at the time.