D&D General Nostalgia : Thief Percentages

[atanakar]

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?

 

[Shiroiken]

I remember them. They were really the first attempt at a skill system. The 2E system was better, since you could distribute them, as opposed to 1E where they were linear. However, the biggest downside was that they restricted ANY of those thing to only the classes who had the ability, which severely restricted options. 2E's skill system was better overall (rolling under your ability score, with potential modifiers), and could have included them as well.

 

[Winterthorn]

I have too So as I am prone to tinker with ideas on how to add some interesting, flavourful complexity to 5E, I have looked at making a feature of the Thief subclass where the proficiency bonus is replaced by a special table that converts percentages into a "+" rounded down. The math is easy: divide the % by 5, so a percentage like 30% converts to +6 in lieu of using the proficiency bonus (say +2 doubled by Expertise to +4). This could be more powerful, but I'm not worried about bounded accuracy on skill checks as I am about combat. DCs can be adjusted when necessary, and this also guarantees Thieves will always be the best at what they do without magic use. Further mathematical analysis required - probably more number tweaking to make all work.

 

[Inanity]

Yeah there was a satisfying simplicity to those tables. However, the d20 can be broken up into 20 5% increments, each +1 representing a 5% increase(/decrease) to the chance of success/failure. So, percent tables are there is one want them (assuming that the checks/d20 roles one makes are such that a roll of a 20 would succeed and a roll of a 1 would fail.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Cant say its nostalgia since I wast playing the game them (not sure I was even born...) but I like how Lamentation of the Flame princess (an OSR retroclone) does it skills. You have a short list of skills with 1 in 6 chance of succeeding. At different levels, you can increases those odds by 1 in 6 (at 6 in 6

In 5e, I would to the same, but character would have a number of skills increases equal to Prof + Int mod. Expertise would offer 2 bonus skill increases. The skills list for 5e would be shorter:

Lore (mix of arcana, history, and religion)
Nature (mix of nature and geographical lore and survival in the wilderness)
Dungeonneering (survival underground, spot trap)
Thievery
Stealth
Prowess (mix of athletic and acrobatic)
Coerce (mix of bluff and intimidate, can be used with beasts if you PC cant communicate with it)
Empathy (mix of insight and persuasion, can be used with beasts if you PC can communicate with it)
Awareness (mix of perception and initiative: those that succeed on an init checks go before monster, the other after. Works well if you want to roll init each round also)
Craft (work a job, craft an object, use a tool)
Perform (sing, dance, play an instrument, create a work of art)
Healing ( medicine, spot poison and disease, anatomy)

 

[cbwjm]

I wouldn't even use thief skills if I went back to 2e or earlier versions of the game. I'd perhaps get rid of the thief class completely and make all the thief skills proficiencies that anyone could take. I'm not sure how I felt about them back when I was playing basic and 2e, I might have been fine with them and even liked that I could specialise a thief's skills in 2e, but now I don't think that having two separate versions of skills (thief skill percentages and proficiencies) is a good idea so I'd merge the two.

 

[opacitizen]

But the chance of success were incredibly low at level 1.

They weren't necessarily that terrible, if you built a specialized thief.

For example, in AD&D 2e, your lv1 half-elf thief with a Dex of, say, 16 could have a Pick Pocket skill of 60% (15 base + 10 HE + 5 DEX + 30 optionally distributable (of the 60 available, of which you could assign 30 to a given skill.))

Compare that to the chance a lv1 Fighter had of hitting their enemy, and it wasn't so bad.

Sure, you couldn't be a master thief right away, and if you wanted to be a jack-of-all-trades, your scores were considerably lower.

Also, failing your skill roll didn't necessarily mean a complete failure. For example, while your half-elf thief didn't succeed at picking his mark's pocket with a roll of 61+, he only got caught (his attempt noticed) if his roll was more than 100-(mark's level * 3). A bit complicated, sure, but workable. Say, his target is an lv.3 noble -- so his chance of successfully picking the noble's pocket is 60%, but he gets caught only on a roll of 91+. That's not that horrible for a 1st level character in a roughly appropriately designed D&D story, is it?

 

[Dioltach]

One of the big problems was with skills that you'd expect other classes to be able to at least try. "Climb Walls", "Detect Noise", "Move Silently": how do you resolve those if a non-Thief (or non-Ranger) wants to do a bit of scouting? Mostly it ended up with ability checks, and then it turns out that your Fighter with a decent STR (or DEX, whichever ability you chose) is better at climbing walls than your supposedly skilled Thief.

 

[Coroc]

It was quite diverse, but take into quotation that 2e used %dice quite a lot, also for other things. For the quickness of 5e it would not fit that well, also for things like stealth vs. perception

 

[Minigiant]

One of the big problems was with skills that you'd expect other classes to be able to at least try. "Climb Walls", "Detect Noise", "Move Silently": how do you resolve those if a non-Thief (or non-Ranger) wants to do a bit of scouting? Mostly it ended up with ability checks, and then it turns out that your Fighter with a decent STR (or DEX, whichever ability you chose) is better at climbing walls than your supposedly skilled Thief.

I think all classes should have used the same percentage system, with just thief getting higher percentages.

I had a DM that made a set of theif, ranger, fighter, mage,priest, assassin, and bard skills for 2e. It took up a new sheet. It worked fine but the proto-skills just added some much paper and slowed up leveling.