Celebrim
Legend
I'm always fascinated to hear about how different tables played the game, but what triggered the conversation is your claim that that way you were playing as the game was intended to be played. That claim is a claim of objective fact, and you have the misfortune of making it to two people who are historians of the game. I've read my Gary Fine and my Jon Peterson, and I myself go back to 1981 (starting with the red box) and had a cousin (sadly no longer with us) who went back to at least '76. I've often talked with Rob Kuntz and Sandy Peterson about their recollections.
With respect, you've explained nothing about how your ideas for fixing the thief actually worked. Instead, you've thread crapped about how thieves never were even necessary, because back in the day people could just reliably pick pockets or hear noise by describing how they did it. You've claimed that this procedure of play was the one intended by the game and everyone else was just messing things up by even adding percentile chances of success.
OK.
I'm beginning to see it now; you have no idea how anyone else plays.
I agree that anyone - even someone who isn't a thief - can hear noise through a thin door, or if something raucous is happening on the other side. You don't need especial skill for that. No one needs to roll for that. You just tell the party, "You can hear the sounds of laughter and muffled voices through the door in the left wall." The whole point of a skill test, regardless of what edition you are playing, is that the thing is doubtful. Do you really think over the 40 years I've been playing I've forced players to make Hear Noice or Listen at Doors checks when the door is thin and/or the noise is loud? In case it isn't obvious, every one of these thief skill tests is for something that is HARD to do, not something that is easy. For things that are easy, yes there is no roll, but that is itself not a system. It answers no questions. Or in more 3e terms, if the DC is 0, then the noise is automatically heard by anyone with average hearing ability. 3e saves word count by not explaining that the DC to walk across a smooth floor is -5, because even toddlers can generally do it unless they try to run.
This is what I call the "Kindergartner Rule". If you can imagine an 5-year-old attempting to do it, then any PC ought to be allowed to try it. If you can imagine a 5-year-old succeeding in it, and it's not something to do with fitting into a tiny space, then any PC certainly could do it.
You aren't adding anything to discussion with your grognardery. My beard is as gray as yours. I can grumble just as loudly. Enough of the "These kids these days". You are only 5 or 10 years older than me.
So I get it. But this doesn't really address anything. Yes, anyone can hide behind the sofa. This is the chance you hide in shadows. Yes, anyone can hear a reasonably loud noise through a thin door. I get it.
But a pick pocket check is pretty much always challenged - even if the person is sleeping. A move silently check is pretty much always challenged. Climbing a sheer surface is pretty much always challenged. If climbing is so simple that it anyone can do it, then yes the thief certainly can too. For example, yes, a ladder gives you like a +100% chance on climb checks. The thief (and probably everyone else) doesn't need to check to climb a ladder. Maybe you check for a particularly clumsy fighter wearing plate and a great helm during a wind storm. But those easy cases aren't particularly interesting to document. It's like the DC of walking over a smooth floor. No need to check if you can climb a ladder in normal circumstances.
This is why I said earlier that I both understand you and don't understand you. Because yes, I get that you don't always need to roll, but certainly for a typical dungeon lock or door you are intended to. The game explicitly forbids retrying until you get it right. The roll assumes you made every effort. Certainly, for a typical dungeon wall you are intended to make a climb check. If it's somewhere between shear and a ladder, maybe you note that.
And sure, it might be easier than normal to pick the pocket of a sleeping person, but it's not uncontested. The trouble with your "system" is that it is no system. It gives me nothing to go on ahead of time. Let's say that since the person is asleep I give a +60% chance to move silently and pick pockets. Is that enough that the ranger can do it? If I don't have percentile checks, is that enough that the thief can do it? You seem to think that I'm against "Mother, may I?" as a resolution system because I'm an abused player. No, I'm a DM lifer. I'm against it, because I don't like being put in that position of just deciding whether I want something doubtful to work. There is no drama in that. There is no neutrality in that.
No one has made that interpretation.
I'm not sure how many things you can manage to get completely backwards in one post. We are quite aware just how powerful and how dependent the game was on DM fiat back in the day. We aren't minimizing that. Indeed, much of my point is that as I grew older I became less and less satisfied as a GM with handling so much of the game through just fiat. I became greatly dissatisfied with the procedures of play that were described in the game rules, the incoherence of the rules, and the fact that so much the required codification was codified badly, and that so much of the game required inventing rules on the fly. My classic example of this is that the complete lack of any rules for swimming despite reams of detail on it, resulted in the flooding chamber room in module C1 "The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan" having to detail for that one encounter an entire fiddly rules system to determine if someone could swim which was as fiddly as it was unrealistic and incomplete. It's not just the fiat I object to; but also what you call the "tournament rules". You had to fiat because the "tournament rules" were bad. And this was by no means unusual. Lacking any sort of coherent system, every single encounter in published modules more complex than "orc and pie" required its own rules statement that largely could not reference any standard ruling. So every trap worked differently. Every skill test was unique. And every hazard and terrain had to be individually described with its own rules system.
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