The Return of the Sneaking Man

[JRRNeiklot]

I would like to see the return of a true thief. One who doesn't get tons of sneak attack damage to balance his damage output with the fighter. Let the fighter have his damage. The thief can shine in other ways. Climbing, sneaking, a devastating, but hard to pull off backstab, etc.

 

[Raith5]

Aren't all PC, most of the time, thieves? I rarely see a PC respect the property rights of a dead orc!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The Auld Grump, we call it 'alchemy', we use lead to get gold....

Nice!

 

[mkill]

I remember playing with the AD&D Complete Thief's Handbook a lot, and back then there was a lot of variety to the class. You could play your Thief as a cat burglar, an acrobat, a pick pocket...

This stuff is older than 3E. It's fine if you have your interpretation of the class, but that's just one way to play one and it's been like that for a while.

 

[mkill]

I would like to see the return of a true thief. One who doesn't get tons of sneak attack damage to balance his damage output with the fighter. Let the fighter have his damage. The thief can shine in other ways. Climbing, sneaking, a devastating, but hard to pull off backstab, etc.

I disagree. A damage-focused fighter should dish out similar damage to a rogue. The fighter should be better at tanking, the rogue better at damage avoidance and mobility. In the same way, Fighters should be useful out of combat too, be it in swimming, climbing, jumping, logistics, smithing, caring for horses, knowledge of warfare and nobility, or whatever fits the PC.

 

[Incenjucar]

I would like to see the return of a true thief. One who doesn't get tons of sneak attack damage to balance his damage output with the fighter. Let the fighter have his damage. The thief can shine in other ways. Climbing, sneaking, a devastating, but hard to pull off backstab, etc.

Exactly how many times per four-round encounter should the thief deal meaningful damage? Once? So, like the 4E assassin?

 

[underfoot007ct]

I want my sneaking man to be able to leave and return to the party with information on a single successful stealth roll. I want a stealth failure to mean that the thief returns to the party without proper intel instead of being discovered and caught at least some (or most) of the time.

I want the thief to be able to take on skilled mailed fighters if they can fight on their own terms, crippling their opponent's ability to fight back with blinding powder, precise knifework, and dirty fighting.

So you want rewards on a success yet no penalty for a failure. Is that fun for the other players? Why not just tell the DM you auto success?

Then being an equal or better than a fighter. Why would fighters exist if Thief could best them one vs one?

I found that the thief who goes solo then returns to the party has fun, but every other player at the table get very bored.

 

[hanez]

So you want rewards on a success yet no penalty for a failure. Is that fun for the other players? Why not just tell the DM you auto success?

Then being an equal or better than a fighter. Why would fighters exist if Thief could best them one vs one?

I found that the thief who goes solo then returns to the party has fun, but every other player at the table get very bored.

I agree..... but thats central to the whole archetype of what a theif IS. D&D has always had times when:

the bard having the fun charming a princess to get some vital info while the party lounges

the rogue is having fun, slicing throats while the party waits

the fighter is having fun, charging straight at the big boss, or intimidating weaklings in the tavern while the party supports and heals him

the wizard rains fire down on the enemy minions, while the party waits and stays away from the fireball

This is central to D&D. Sure there are times when thats annoying but its the DMs job to MANAGE it. There are sooo many ways to manage it. Maybe you invite the theif player to come an hour early one night, or maybe you tell the party, he guys, this is his moment to shine, have some nachos, dont worry theres some you moments soon. Or maybe you "timeslice" and make sure theres some thing interesting for everyone.

What you DONT DO is completely change a central tenant of the game by
making everyone equally useful at all times, and rejig the game based on assumptions that its a miniatures game that everyone can autoheal to stay in combat. We tried that it was ok, but it didn't feel like D&D to a lot of people.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Exactly how many times per four-round encounter should the thief deal meaningful damage? Once? So, like the 4E assassin?

Depends on your definition of meaningful. If you mean comparable to the fighter, then none. If he opened from surprise, the thief should do a ton of damage the first round. After that, he should do decent damage, but poor compared to the fighter.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I want my sneaking man to be able to leave and return to the party with information on a single successful stealth roll. I want a stealth failure to mean that the thief returns to the party without proper intel instead of being discovered and caught at least some (or most) of the time.

I want the thief to be able to take on skilled mailed fighters if they can fight on their own terms, crippling their opponent's ability to fight back with blinding powder, precise knifework, and dirty fighting.

I like rogues just fine, but I do agree with the premise that a thief or rogue should interact with stealth rules in a way to facilitate recon.

I remember there was a great discussion of the dilemma of stealth in a group game on roleplayingtips.com. Some of the ideas that came out of that discussion were:

* The party trails at a safe distance and the thief uses hand signals or some other comm method like like modern recce
* A non-stealthy PC has expertise that's needed wherever the thief is going
* A multi-pronged approach is required for entering a forbidden location (a la Mission Impossible)
* Security is so tight the thief needs a distraction from his buddies
* The rest of the party gains a time-limited invisibility or equivalent

I'd love to see what in 4e prevented this kind of thing. None of this should have perfectly hard-and-fast structured rules. It is a matter of character skill, player creativity, proper preparedness, etc. All of which can for instance be modeled with a decent skill challenge (not even a particularly difficult one to set up for that matter).

I've run a number of scenarios of this type, they work really well in 4e. In fact better than in previous editions in general because the 4e PCs have enough individual resources to deal with problems and enough hit points and survivability to have some chance of getting out of a jam.

AD&D was particularly BAD at this stuff. Thief skills rarely had the level of reliability to base a plan on, especially one where you were likely to be risking your AC5 low hit point butt out of quick help from the rest of the party.

The 4e skill system admittedly is a bit less detailed than the old style thief abilities. Skill powers and various things did fill in a decent bit of that, but there are still a few oddities. Climbing is a bit too dependent on strength and lumping all the 'deft hands' type talents under Thievery loses a bit. Still, the overall result is pretty solid and IMHO has some significant advantages over the old style thief, which was really pretty lackluster.