Wait, I thought Voadam was saying Thieves were bad. Either way, I will argue that they definitely are not good, having played a lot of them.
Voadam can weigh in there, but I thought he felt they could do too many things. Personally I liked 2E thieves much better than 3E thieves.
If you don't like 2E thieves, that is fair. I mean this is all about preference and I certainly have encountered the criticisms you make here. I do want to take them each though just to explore a different perspective.
People will bring up their rapid level advancement, but they got so little out of their levels it was sad. Second worst at everything, hit points, armor (the penalties for daring to wear anything outside of leather were extremely prohibitive), and attack progression. Even with their level progression, they don't compare well to Clerics or Fighters in combat.
Exactly they aren't meant to be great in a fight. They are a class that shines more out of combat and in certain moments of combat.
So you might say that "well, they're not a combat class" so let's look at their skills. The weighting for Dexterity is ridiculous; a 16 nets you a 5% bonus to one skill, a 17 basically puts you 0.5 levels ahead compared to a Thief with less Dexterity, an 18 is basically a full level of progression, and a 19 is actually 1.5 levels.
A lot of AD&D classes benefited from higher end Ability scores, but using the default 3d6 method those are pretty hard to land, so I fold this in with balance over time. Also with this method you often don't know what class you are going to make until you roll your abilities. It isn't like later editions where people often start with what class they want to play. So you always have the option, if you get a Dex of 14, of not playing a Thief, and holding out until you roll a character with a 16 or higher. But the whole approach to balance here is different from 3E (and again I am not knocking 3E, but it achieves something very different). There is greater weight given to things like differences in XP progression, randomness in generating things like ability scores, and not all characters were expected to be equally good. This is an edition where one player might have horrible rolls and another might have great rolls and so those are the results until you make a new character after your first one dies. It is a very different approach to play and to balance than came after the WOTC era.
Then we get to the values themselves; if you go by 2e rules which let you optimize important abilities and ignore less useful ones for adventuring (like say, Pick Pockets), a Halfling Thief with a 19 Dexterity can get, at best, a coin flip (50%) to use, say, Move Silently and Hide in Shadows.
I would say these work pretty good. Also, my math may be off here but I think a Halfling Thief who puts 30 points into Move silently and has a Dexterity of 19 has 65% (10% base, 10% for being a halfling, 15% for the 19 and 30% for the 30 points).
However even if that were just 50%, I would argue being able to move silently 50 percent of the time at first level, knowing you can also increase that over time as you get 30 points each level (and can spend 15 on a given skill), is actually very good. Again the spirit of the game is different. In a lot of ways, 3E characters feel more like they start out 2nd or 3rd level compared with AD&D characters. But I much prefer it set closer to 50, and that is only if they max out on it. Again, you aren't a master thief at first level. You are a first level nobody. So you aren't going to succeed the majority of the time there.
This is preference, so if you don't like it, you don't like it. But for plenty of people these numbers work pretty well over time. It is all fairly contained too.
With a Kit, you might be able to do better, but the ones in the Thieves' Handbook are very conservative (some of the better ones are the Dwarven Locksmith and the Gnome Mouseburglar).
Personally I liked the brown books that were more conservative in this regard. This is one aspect of 2E, I kind of prefer to 3. There are some notable exceptions but generally speaking, I think the kits didn't have as big an impact on the game as the options in the 3E complete books in terms of mechanics (which could be a con, but one benefit is it meant the core book feel was largely preserved).
If you're trying to help out in combat with a bow, you're ok, but backstab is a complete waste of time, not only is it's use highly restrictive (target must be unaware of you, you must strike from behind, you must be able to reach a vital area), you multiply the damage of, at best, a long sword or broadsword, and can totally fail to kill the thing you just stabbed at which point now you are in a solo combat since you are no doubt nowhere near your party.
Definitely they aren't as good in combat. But backstab is something I rather liked. First they get a big bonus to attack when the circumstances are right (so it isn't just about damage but also about hitting a foe that might be harder to hit). I also like it because it encourages more out of combat backstabbing than in (still can do it in combat but people are more alert). You definitely might not kill the thing you are attacking though, depending on its HP and HD. But the multipliers go from x2 at the early levels to x5 at the higher ones. You still aren't a damage machine. But that can be a good way to start a big battle with a foe.
Even at level 5, you can be struggling to do all the things your party needs you to do, such as finding all traps, opening all locks, scouting ahead, and providing more damage than a wizard throwing darts, lol.
Rogues still get better weapons than a wizard. But yes it is still a big challenge at 5th level, though how challenging each one is is going to depend on where you spend those points. Again this isn't a system where the rogue is expected to walk through and always catch every trap. That just isn't the game it was meant to be. It is still way better though to have a thieve with modest chances of success than no thief, and someone who devotes half their points into Find/Remove Traps, by 5th level can get something like a 95% chance of success without factoring ability or race modifiers (which I think was the cap for all skills). Obviously that is a very specialized thief, but you can walk around with a big chance of success to find traps, and put the rest of the points into open locks (which has a 5% higher base than find/remove as well), and be quite good at both by 5th level. However being that good comes at the cost, a very reasonable cost I think, of your other thief skills falling behind.
My experiences with the class have been miserable, as a single class. Multiclassing is really the only way to go, where you're down one level compared to a straight Thief, so at least you have something useful to do until you hit level 6-7 when you're actually competent.
That is fair, but I think it really does come down to preference. For 2E thief and wizard were my two favorite classes to play. And I had plenty of players in my campaigns who thrived on thieves. Again though 2E isn't about everyone shining in combat, and it is a bit more gritty at times.
