I think the major pressure point with thieves is likely the Find/Remove Traps.
For the first three levels, it's 10%, 15%, and 20%. And traps are deadly in the TSR era.
Which means that you are unlikely to find them, and even if you do, you are probably going to die removing them.
Climb walls is just slightly worse, with the ever-present chance of falling and taking damage that might kill you. That said, I do like Moldvay's take on it better, which is that you only have to check once per 100' (I would relax that to once, period) but that the fall occurs halfway through.
In other words, it's not just that certain thief abilities are bad. After all, you can miss on hearing noise, hiding in shadows, moving silently (although I truly think that hiding and moving should be combined into one roll, because, c'mon!), open locks, or pick pockets.
But climb walls and FRT will kill you dead.
Yeah, the math if you need to pass at both Find AND Remove Traps is absurd.
In my current game the Thief decides to Hide/MS and scout ahead. She failed the check of course due to sucking at her job, 6 Goblins got the jump on her and she died. Luckily her sister was nearby to take her place.
A key thing to understand when adjudicating Hide in Shadows and Move Silently is that you are rarely rolling both of them. Hiding is for when you're stationary. Moving Silently is for moving.
As with Find/Remove Traps, if you need to roll them both your odds go from bad to absurdly bad.
I'm pretty sure they all suck at the start. The fighter is barely better at hitting things than a cleric, and that only happens at level 4, then the fighter is even with the cleric again until level 7!
The Fighter also has more HP and can use all the magic weapons on the charts, where the Cleric can only use 6.25% of those on the Basic charts (the Mace +1), and 6% of those from the Expert charts. The Cleric can obviously use a bunch of other items, but in terms of combat prowess it's hard for them to even get a magic weapon, where Fighters will normally expect to have at least one by 2nd level, and their ability to use magic swords is almost a class ability.
I can't buy into the "they all suck at the start" argument. IMO it's a false equivalency. Everyone is fragile, sure, but everyone else has stuff they're legitimately good at. The Thief is actively terrible at their own specialty, and more fragile than anyone except the guy who's routinely carrying a "nuke an encounter" button.
I strongly prefer low level stuff anyway, so there's no reason not to pick a dwarf over a fighter in that case. It's why I keep messing around with alternate to-hit/thac0 tables. Favorite concept lately is to give fighters a damage bonus that grows over the levels. Definitely makes them better at hitting and damaging things than a cleric. I think though, that if I do those things, it might be prudent to split the fighter's thac0/to-hit from the demihuman's ones. I'm also a big fan of smoothing the tables.
Definitely with you there on smoothing the attack progressions. Dwarves are a bit tricky in terms of being not much more XP than a Fighter for everything they get and the minimal amount they lose. Giving Fighters a damage bonus or Cleave or something is nice. Or the Sweep rule (attack 1x/level against 1HD or less creatures) or the upgraded version which isn't purely capped at 1HD critters (attack a number of times = monsters' HD divided into your level).
LL uses a different tier. Possibly from BECMI? Plate is 250. Best starter you can get is AC 4 at about 75 gold plus another 10 for a shield for AC 3.
Yes, LL has armor prices based on AD&D, which I'm less fond of.
Tunnels and Trolls also did this where they had a Rogue class (sub-class?) that was a Rogue Wizard. I forget the specifics but I am sure someone could fill in the blanks.
All Rogues are that way in T&T, taking after Vance and Leiber. They can learn spells but don't have a guild to teach them, so they have to find them.
This is why my favorite way to run the thief is that their skills are Supernaturally Beyond what anyone can attempt.
Anyone can hide, a thief can hide in shadows - in plain sight, no cover.
Anyone can climb a wall - a thief can climb a sheer surface. A thief can climb a perfectly smooth, sheer glass wall with no handholds and no tools.
And so on and so forth.
Any time a thief tries to do the mundane version of those actions - such as climbing a wall with handholds and gear, they automatically succeed.
Was it Jason Cone AKA Philotomy Jurament, of Philotomy's Musings fame, who originally came up with this interpretation?
