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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7633271" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Well, first of all - and this was still a problem - you weren't the only one. A M-U could after all just cast Invisibility to hide.</p><p></p><p>And secondly, you are looking at this very differently than I ever looked at it. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You're looking at this in a rather binary way, of either the thief could do nigh-supernatural things or else he was just ordinary. It's a false contrast I never really had in my thinking. All I thought is, "The thief should be good at climbing walls.", or "The thief should be good at stealth.", or what have you.</p><p></p><p>And the 1e way of looking at being good at something was equally binary. Either you could do something or you couldn't do something. It had no consistent idea of difficulty, no idea of default values. Something was either easy or it was impossible. The thief skills were the first attempt to deal with "hard but not impossible" and it was a step forward however stumbling that step was. So in 1e everyone could do things that were easy, like climb a climbable wall. And no one could (without magic) do things that were impossible, like climb a wall made of glass. And the thief who was good at climbing could climb things that were 'nearly sheer' (and even with some difficulty things that were actually sheer). </p><p></p><p>So no system. So of course no consistency between tables.</p><p></p><p>By no means was 3e a 'let down' in the respect you are talking about. Being valuable to the party doesn't mean jealously hording what you can do. I did make some tweaks in things but here we had a strong commitment to making the thief good at things. And I would say the class has been very successful both in my 3e RAW play and in my homebrew version of 3.X play. It's popular with the players and has a lot of roles it can fulfill. </p><p></p><p>When I said 'niche protection' remained a problem, I meant exactly things like 'Trap Finding' meant that no matter how good a non-thief was at noticing things it was impossible to notice a trap. That was locked back in the binary thinking of 1e. It was a less advanced way of looking at things. I had no problem with the rogue being especially good at noticing traps, but the fact that they niche protected that meant problems. It isn't the way I would prefer to have done things (which is closer to how Pathfinder has dealt with the issue). Likewise, when spells granted skills, it bothered me how cheaply they valued skills relative to a spell. So if you were to see my versions of Knock and Spider climb, you'd see how much I elevate acquisition of skill in order to balance spellcasting and skill use so that spellcasters no longer can cheaply acquire skill by minimal expenditure of spell resources.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7633271, member: 4937"] Well, first of all - and this was still a problem - you weren't the only one. A M-U could after all just cast Invisibility to hide. And secondly, you are looking at this very differently than I ever looked at it. You're looking at this in a rather binary way, of either the thief could do nigh-supernatural things or else he was just ordinary. It's a false contrast I never really had in my thinking. All I thought is, "The thief should be good at climbing walls.", or "The thief should be good at stealth.", or what have you. And the 1e way of looking at being good at something was equally binary. Either you could do something or you couldn't do something. It had no consistent idea of difficulty, no idea of default values. Something was either easy or it was impossible. The thief skills were the first attempt to deal with "hard but not impossible" and it was a step forward however stumbling that step was. So in 1e everyone could do things that were easy, like climb a climbable wall. And no one could (without magic) do things that were impossible, like climb a wall made of glass. And the thief who was good at climbing could climb things that were 'nearly sheer' (and even with some difficulty things that were actually sheer). So no system. So of course no consistency between tables. By no means was 3e a 'let down' in the respect you are talking about. Being valuable to the party doesn't mean jealously hording what you can do. I did make some tweaks in things but here we had a strong commitment to making the thief good at things. And I would say the class has been very successful both in my 3e RAW play and in my homebrew version of 3.X play. It's popular with the players and has a lot of roles it can fulfill. When I said 'niche protection' remained a problem, I meant exactly things like 'Trap Finding' meant that no matter how good a non-thief was at noticing things it was impossible to notice a trap. That was locked back in the binary thinking of 1e. It was a less advanced way of looking at things. I had no problem with the rogue being especially good at noticing traps, but the fact that they niche protected that meant problems. It isn't the way I would prefer to have done things (which is closer to how Pathfinder has dealt with the issue). Likewise, when spells granted skills, it bothered me how cheaply they valued skills relative to a spell. So if you were to see my versions of Knock and Spider climb, you'd see how much I elevate acquisition of skill in order to balance spellcasting and skill use so that spellcasters no longer can cheaply acquire skill by minimal expenditure of spell resources. [/QUOTE]
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