Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Keldryn" data-source="post: 5574828" data-attributes="member: 11999">This is something that I think gets overlooked about how thief skills originally worked.  I know that in those early days, we missed the whole point that a thief's abilities are extraordinary.  I think this is in part because the "Basic" D&D sets had very brief descriptions of thief skills and didn't really emphasize that they represented extraordinary capabilities.From the AD&D Player's Handbook:The thief's ability to find and remove traps is primarily about finding small traps on doors or chests, and represent very specialized knowledge and skill.  Anybody can find pit traps, trip wires, pressure plates, floor spikes, and the like by using some common sense and logical thinking.  The mechanisms by which these types of traps are triggered are understandable by someone without specialized knowledge -- such as the players themselves, who can describe how they go about looking for such traps.A thief is able to move with near complete silence, which is not the same thing as moving quietly so as to avoid being noticed.  Anybody who is not a clumsy oaf or who is not wearing noisy metal armor can move quietly and avoid detection when there is some amount of ambient noise.  Only a thief can sneak past an observant guard in a quiet area, moving across wooden floors or dried leaves without a sound.Anybody can hide where there is appropriate cover -- a thief can make use of the environment to essentially hide in plain sight, so long as she isn't being observed while doing it.Mundane thievery might not even need to be checked much of the time.  If there is sufficient noise in the environment, the party can move without being heard.  Anybody can hide around a corner or behind a large piece of furniture.  Anybody can find a pit trap or trip wire by probing.  In the case of traps, it's on to the DM to place them where they make sense and not in random locations just to catch PCs off guard; they should be protecting something valuable, they should be set up at the entrance of an area to delay/deter invaders while warning the inhabitants, and they should not be where inhabitants will accidentally trigger them.If the fighter strips off his heavy armor and puts on soft shoes, he can move quietly enough to avoid detection if total silence is not required.  He can't move across a squeaky wooden floor without making noise unless he's wearing Boots of Elvenkind.  He can hide where there is adequate concealment, especially if he has a few moments to squeeze into a tight spot, but only a thief can flatten his back against the wall in a split second and avoid being seen.  There is a fair bit of room here for the DM to make a judgement call as to just how stealthy the fighter can be, and the fighter's dexterity score can be taken into account.  However, thieves will always be better at these "mundane stealth" attempts; perhaps the fighter needs to make a dexterity check of some sort, but the thief should be able to succeed automatically.</blockquote>

Verification