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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 9396520" data-attributes="member: 6779310">The 5E Rogue has a number of class abilities that make them better than normal proficiency at the classic older thief skills. Or other skills. And those skills weren't stable over time; 3.x was the first simplification... AD&D and BX added "Find Traps" to the OE list of Pick Pockets, Climb Nearly Sheer Surfaces, Remove Traps, Move Silently, Hide in Shadows, Backstab, and Hear Noise. Of those, Backstab is a simple addition to the combat mechanics, and hear noise modifies the rules in OE Bk3. The others are carveouts... EG: Where many might have used Dex checks to move silently, now it was a reserved special... and it was handled multiple ways after... some ignored the new rule, others changed the new rule to a modifier to their house rule, others still considered the numbers and let everyone try at either level 0 or level 1 numbers (noting that level 0 required some math), some made the raw dex check go from 1d20 to 1d100, some just said, "No, unless you're a Thief, you can't."I've never found the D&D thief/rogue a good fit for anything, not because it plants new rules in Snarf's "Negative Space"¹... but because it's too damned broad, incorporating bits of Conan, Fafhrd, The Grey Mouser, Sinbad, Cugel the Clever...And I'll note that the other games in the 76-79 area took different approaches...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">T&T (1974) was (through the 5th ed, until 1995) almost purely attribute based, and decried thief as just a descriptor of behavior. It's classes are based solely upon casting abilities. Anything else eventually falls to saving rolls on attributes. Levels increase attributes. 7th ed changes it by adding a skill system.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">En Garde! (1975) due to the setting, playing a thief is right out... No provisions at all. Many don't consider it an RPG, either. Only weapon skills get trained up.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Traveller (1977)... it has only two clearly criminal skills: Bribery and Forgery... and many cultures object to Bribery being so labeled. Every skill's routine operations are assumed successful; each has a special case or two with unique mechanics per each. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Starships & Spacemen (1978) no thief archetypes even fit. But, it's attribute driven. (Class determines what earns experience points, not what you can do.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">RuneQuest (1978) - skills and attributes do different things, and skills are mostly percentile. A few look more like modern feats... </li> </ul>The debate still rages - the OSR crowd vs the D&D 5 Crowd, and both of them vs a variety of others...I've always preferred game rules to have a broadly applicable method of covering the negative space...... and while 1d20 ≤ Att should seem obvious for BX, until I got S&S (1984), it just hadn't occurred to me. In the between time of those, I got into Traveller (1983, using '81 version).-=-=-=-=-=-¹: good term for it, just to be clear. Scare quotes because it's jargon, not because it's bad jargon.</blockquote>

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