AD&D 1E Redesigned and Rebalanced Thief for 1e AD&D

[Mannahnin]

If you weren't there, how in the world do you know what did or did not happen?

Weren't where? We certainly weren't at your table, and we've all acknowledged that. We've directly and explicitly expressed interest in learning more about it. Celebrim asked whom you played with and learned the game from, since you've implied that you were playing it before the 1974 original published rules and have knowledge of the "original intention". I've asked if you remember any written sources your group got the "roll under ability score" procedure from, crediting you that you're being honest when you report using this mechanic several years before TSR put it in print.

My mistake was assuming that others would know how it used to be played (which...obviously was not only wrong to assume, but even more unexpected is that people who weren't even there are trying to dictate and state things about how a game they didn't even see or participate in was played, or trying to find something unrelated (racial ability of listening at doors as the same thing as Hear Noise...is not something that I have ever really played as...and yes...that was a statement in this thread someone made) to nitpick my memories and try to use that to claim that my experiences from the past must be bad/wrong.

Ok, let's look at this. You're continuing to assert "how it used to be played", but you refuse to answer interested questions about where exactly it used to be played that way, or where this was written down.

You're claiming here that the racial ability of listening at doors is not the same thing as Hear Noise, but they are exactly the same thing in the 1970s rules we all have access to. Please feel free to go look at them. I've given the page numbers. You implied that I haven't even taken a look at them after I referenced a rule and gave a page number from them, but I've been more respectful to you, assuming instead that you HAVE read them.

The official Thief ability is defined in the class entry in Greyhawk as "listen for noises behind closed doors" (Greyhawk p.4). That's abbreviated to the more general-sounding "Hear Noise" in the charts, but the only KIND of hearing noises which the 1970s D&D rules actually talked about was listening at doors.

Same in the 1978 Players Handbook (p.27), where among the "secondary functions" of the Thief class it defines the ability as "1) listening at doors to detect noises behind them." (italics present in the original). The brief little expanded notes on the ability in the 1979 DMG (p19) also only talk about the ability in the context of doors. The more general rules for it in the DMG (p60) are also specifically about doors, not about listening more broadly (say, like the 3E Listen skill). Same with the sections on Movement & Searching and Detection of Unusual Circumstances, Traps, and Hearing Noise on pages 96-97.

It's not until Moldvay's 1981 Basic that we see the text generalize the ability as follows:

Hear Noise (rolled on 1d6) may apply to listening at doors or hearing something coming from any direction (such as a wandering monster). To use this ability, the thief must tell the DM that he or she is being quiet and trying to hear noise. During a battle, however, there is too much noise for anyone to hear anything unusual.

So when you assert that they're completely unrelated things we're left to wonder where that's coming from. There are a few possibilities:

1. That was written somewhere in a playtest document or a fanzine as a logical expansion of the rules which actually got published. Super interesting possibility, and I'd love to see the document!
2. That was a house rule at your table(s). Also totally possible, but not support for your claim that it was the original intent.
3. Your memory has slipped (as all of ours tends to do) and you're confusing later updates to the rule, from the 1980s and later, with the original 1970s rules.

But @Celebrim may have a point. I DON'T fully understand how these younger people play today...and that's what divides us. Because now days it's a different type of player out there than it was back in the day. What I thought would be a useful idea (just play it how we used to play it. The thief automatically succeeds in their skill usage unless challenged or a challenging situation) is apparently very offensive (and I still don't understand why...but as was said...it may be that I just don't understand you guys as players).

Something that may seem as a helpful suggestion from me, is instead seen as a very offensive idea (and once again I still don't understand why you feel the need to be so offended by the idea...but...I'll accept it and say...I just don't understand what you are after or want and I'm sorry about that). You do you.

I don't think the process you've sort of described is entirely at odds with how Celebrim or I adjudicate Thieves. I'll only reference the check if it actually matters. If there are no listeners present when the PC tries to move silently obviously it's irrelevant. Or if the monsters are distracted by their own conversation or argument or noisy activity.

No one's offended by you saying how you remember you used to play it.

But when you make assertions about the 1970s rules which are directly contradictory to the written text, you understand why we're skeptical, surely?

When you claim that some kind of auto-success was how it was "originally intended to be played" and that "by the time AD&D 1e rolled out, this idea of automatic success was no longer being held by many groups and it's THAT which nerfed the thief", and "When it was originally written, that's how it was. The original write up didn't even have percentile chances or other items, that was (I believe) added by Gygax later" we naturally want to know where you're getting that from. Because it's simply not written that way in either the 1974 original published rules or the 1975 first official rules for the Thief. Which do feature percentile chances.

Gary's 1974 first unofficial Thief rules ("The Thief Addition", from the Great Plains Games Players Newsletter) also feature percentile chances. It's been documented that Darrold Daniel Wagner's original version of the class from the Aero Hobbies D&D group in Santa Monica used a more spell-like mechanic, with automatic successes but limited uses of the abilities, but that seems to have been limited to just that group, before Gary Switzer from that group told Gygax about their Thief class, which prompted him to make his own version (with percentile skills). I've talked to Darrold myself about that a couple of times.