D&D General Nostalgia : Thief Percentages

[Dormammu]

I do not miss the percentages. Low level thieves in 1e sucked, quite frankly. There were a LOT of problems with the class in 1e overall, many of which weren't fixed in 2e, though at least a player could push their percentage points around and have a couple of skills that didn't totally suck when they started adventuring.

This is all true, but I was disappointed in the way they changed Thief to Rogue starting in 3E. The “high DPS” archetype for Rogue has always seemed uninspired to me. They gave them more skills to replicate the older Thief, but none of them were mandatory. Most players would take Stealth at least (because class fantasy), but ultimately the Thief archetype kind of disappeared.

I guess there’s no solution in a world where everyone wants to be balanced for combat specifically, but I like that older versions of D&D weren’t balanced for combat. Many players chose to play Thieves, knowing they’d be less effective in a fight than a Fighter.

I suppose this is why OSR is a thing. But I do think “everyone must have an equivalent combat value” is a pernicious failing in modern D&D that breeds many unfortunate outcomes.

 

[Hoffmand]

Sometimes I miss the thieves percentages for the various skills (pick pocket, etc). In 2e the player received points and decided which skills he wanted to raise. It gave the thieves a unique flavour.

But the chance of success were incredibly low at level 1. If I was a master thief and my apprentice had only 30% (av.) of pick pocketing after training, at level 1, I would kick him out if the guild as incompetent and waste of my time.

Do you miss percentages? Do you see yourself using those with a post 2e edition of D&D?

Yes. I miss percentage skills the way they were in 2E. I would often go with a high F/R traps and open locks at first level. I find the current method disingenuous as progression is an illusion because they just raise the DC on the trap or lock so that you really aren’t getting better. Sometimes the opposed roll is a joke that means you don’t really get better.

 

[Laurefindel]

Sometimes I miss the thieves percentages for the various skills (pick pocket, etc). In 2e the player received points and decided which skills he wanted to raise. It gave the thieves a unique ...

As a DM, I still catch myself asking players for a move silently check (or a Will save for that matter).

I don't miss thieves skills as much as I miss thieves being, well, thieves. I don't think I've seen a single rogue pick someone's pockets in fifth. Mind you, that invariably put the whole party in trouble back then, so perhaps it's a good thing...

Thieves skills had the advantage of reminding payers what they were, and what they could do. Ability checks and skills now allow pretty much everyone to do everything and that is a good thing, but sometimes I miss the narrower focus of ADnD characters.

 

[cbwjm]

Yes. I miss percentage skills the way they were in 2E. I would often go with a high F/R traps and open locks at first level. I find the current method disingenuous as progression is an illusion because they just raise the DC on the trap or lock so that you really aren’t getting better. Sometimes the opposed roll is a joke that means you don’t really get better.

That's not really the way it works in 5e though. A DC 15 lock is always going to have that DC whether or not you're 1st level or 20th, the same with traps. That doesn't mean that there aren't higher or lower DC locks out there, that's no different to 2e which had adjustments to open locks if a lock was higher quality, it just means that their difficulty doesn't arbitrarily increase as you gain levels.

 

[Hoffmand]

That's not really the way it works in

As a DM, I still catch myself asking players for a move silently check (or a Will save for that matter).

I don't miss thieves skills as much as I miss thieves being, well, thieves. I don't think I've seen a single rogue pick someone's pockets in fifth. Mind you, that invariably put the whole party in trouble back then, so perhaps it's a good thing...

Thieves skills had the advantage of reminding payers what they were, and what they could do. Ability checks and skills now allow pretty much everyone to do everything and that is a good thing, but sometimes I miss the narrower focus of ADnD characters.

i have seen that as an optional rule. I don’t think it is in the PHB and have never seen it used. If it was it was rare. And I have every module ever published from that era.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Those are some giant-sized assumptions. I was playing about 1979 onward, for whatever that’s worth. I referenced Basic Role-Playing, which was clearly based on D&D stats with percentile skills added, and Rolemaster, which literally began as options modules for D&D before become its own system. Neither of these games had any noticeable elements of war gaming. They didn’t even have rules for map-based conflict and had completely abandoned early D&D’s usage of tabletop scale for distances.

My apologies for making too many assumptions - you are correct, and your points are well-made. I'm just a bit skeptical about the Thief-BRP/Rolemaster connection being so direct when the percentile concept was clearly bouncing around (and very widely used, oddly - more widely used than a lot of D&D-style mechanics).

When I say wargame, I'm including skirmish/squad-level games, not sure if I confused the issue by not mentioning that.

Champions did at least utilize hex maps, so I could see an argument for a wargame influence there. And perhaps building a character from points is derived from building army lists by points? It didn’t feel like a wargame, but I wouldn’t be shocked if the designers were wargamers.

Champions/HERO screams "squad-level tactics game" specifically. The entire rules-set seems like it's perfectly designed for simulating a small-ish number of troops (say, 4-12) going up against a similarly-sized squad in a 20th century combat, and using it for superheroes feels to me like an odd repurposing. It works in a sort of literal fashion, but it feels like "what if superheroes were real and engage in squad-level combat?" rather than a game actually about comic-book superheroes.

At least it's a cogent game that actually works though! Superhero 2044 is a total mess (despite being the first professionally produced RPG - Lou Zocchi clearly had more resources available than some!).

Re designers, I mean, we can look into the backgrounds of various designers of the era if you feel that would be helpful? I think it's fair to say most of them are going to have a background in playing or designing wargames, just like Gygax and Arneson (I suspect this is true of a large proportion of pre-'90s RPG designers, and a significant proportion post-'90s even).

I agree with your point that RPGs rapidly reached into communities which didn't wargame, to be clear. You can particularly see that as the '80s wears on.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

1. Constitution (chance of survival is %).
2. XP Modifiers for abilities.
3. Chance to know common lanaguage.
4. Formula for dispal magic.
5. Contact higher plance (chance to know, veracity, insanity).
6. Sticks to snakes (% chance for poisonous).
7. Chance for magical research.

-Men and Magic.

OD&D very much used a hybridized system; it combined a lot of emphasis on d6 with a combination of d20 and d00 incursions. The actual implementation of any given resolution system was scattershot; for example, the original turn undead table, with the d6 emphasis, is probably an Arneson legacy.

Thank you! Makes sense, because I had presumed that this stuff would be in there.

 

[wingsandsword]

Sometimes I miss the thieves percentages for the various skills (pick pocket, etc). In 2e the player received points and decided which skills he wanted to raise. It gave the thieves a unique flavour.

But the chance of success were incredibly low at level 1. If I was a master thief and my apprentice had only 30% (av.) of pick pocketing after training, at level 1, I would kick him out if the guild as incompetent and waste of my time.

Do you miss percentages? Do you see yourself using those with a post 2e edition of D&D?

On rare occasion I think of them with a vague bit of nostalgia (they crossed my mind just the other day), but ultimately I don't miss them.

Thief skill percentages were just another inconsistency in AD&D. They're on the long list of reasons I'd never go back to 2e.

If you want to climb a wall, roll percent. . .but if you want to swim, roll a d20. . .and a non-thief even asking to climb something or listen for something was a headache for the DM (there was a rule for it, I vaguely recall, but it wasn't well documented at all).

If you wanted to learn to make locks, that's a Nonweapon proficiency you can take as you level up. . .but if you want to learn to pick locks, well, sorry, you're not a Rogue so you can't learn that at all.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

People only consider 1E and 2E thief %'s in terms of modern D&D mechanics and style of gameplay. That makes the earlier mechanics seem rather too inexplicably wacky, especially 1E.

In 3E if you come across a trap all the PC's roll a d20 against their search or spot skills to find it, a roll is made against disable device skill to remove it. If you come across a lock then only if you have training in the open lock skill can you roll to pick it. All these "thief-ey" interactions begin and end with die rolls. That is NOT the case in 1E and was never intended to be.

In 1E those interactions all BEGIN with interaction between the players and DM. The players state what kind of traps their PC's are looking for and where they look for them. If their declarations match whats there then the trap is found. No die rolls. ANYbody can do that with equal "skill". Same with locked doors and chests. The players BEGIN by telling the DM how they intend to open the door or chest - look for keys, remove hinges, break them open by chiseling the wood or with a heavy blow from a hammer, slip a stiff but thin sword through a crack between planks in a door and lift the bar on the other side, or whatever the case may be. No die rolls. ANYbody can do it with equal "skill". And it's a GROUP endeavor. If any player comes up with a good enough idea that they can convince the DM will work - it works.

Now why is that? It's because Thief (rogue) was not actually even a class when the game was first written. That clearly didn't mean that no locked doors or chests were ever opened did it? No, it meant that they were opened by players trying all those interactive methods described above or whatever other clever ideas they came up with. When the Thief class WAS finally introduced, with those LOW LOW chances of success it didn't invalidate all the existing ways and means of finding and removing or getting around traps. It just gave thieves an ADDITIONAL way to solve what might otherwise be insoluable because the players just didn't come up with a winning idea. It was a low chance, yes, but it wasn't THE ONLY CHANCE.

With 2E we see that how players thought of thief abilities were to be used in gameplay was already beginning to change. You don't START with interaction with the DM. You start with thieves just cutting through all that with their class-ability short-cuts. And because they can SPECIALIZE in those skills they can ensure that they work more often than not - and all the tedious player/DM interactions to open locks and deal with traps, AND climb walls, AND hear noises, AND simply hide well enough to not be noticed... All those things were headed down the same path. If you wanted to succeed at it - or do it at all - then you had to put skill points into it or else it was YOUR fault as a player for failing to do that. And it would even get so far as to make having a thief in the party a seeming REQUIREMENT because otherwise how could you possibly do ANYTHING with locks and traps and stealth? And it always starts with a die roll, NOT interaction with the DM.

Low % thief skills in 1E only fail to make sense when you no longer play the game the way it was played when 1E was written. AS WRITTEN and as INTENDED to be used, there is absolutely nothing wrong with thieves having low % chances of success. You CANNOT evaluate 1E rules by 3E or 5E standards and styles of gameplay.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

My apologies for making too many assumptions - you are correct, and your points are well-made. I'm just a bit skeptical about the Thief-BRP/Rolemaster connection being so direct when the percentile concept was clearly bouncing around (and very widely used, oddly - more widely used than a lot of D&D-style mechanics).

When I say wargame, I'm including skirmish/squad-level games, not sure if I confused the issue by not mentioning that.

Tékumel (Empire of the Petal Throne) heavily used percentiles, as did many early contemporaneous games.

The thief table has no causal connection on the use of percentiles in either D&D, or RPGs in general.