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ShortQuests -- Pocket Sized Adventures! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed for 1-2 game sessions.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9877826" data-attributes="member: 4937">Let's be very clear on this.  I do not think you been polite this whole thread, right from your very first post.  You asserted knowledge of the intention of the game that was superior to its acknowledged designers, and which superseded the rules and published statements.  That is one of the least polite thing you could do.What did or did not happen at your table has never been a point of contention, and that you continue to retreat to this straw man fallacy is part and parcel of your rudeness.  I do not care much about trigger words or forceful language, but when you assert one thing ("This is how the game is supposed to be played...") and then retreat to defending a completely different thing ("This is how I played the game...") and then act as if you are being abused, I find that very annoying indeed.And as for that, Gygax is a primary source.  Rob Kuntz is a primary source.  Mike Carr is a primary source.  Who the heck are you to assert primacy of understanding over the game's earliest players and writers?   One of the problems with your assertions is that you are using mid-80's language to describe procedures of play that would have to date to prior to 1974 in order for your assertions about the intention of the game to be believable.  Nor for that matter have you clearly ever explain how the way you played worked in the general case.  It appears in your latest post that you are asserting essentially that the thief doesn't have to check to sneak past a guard that is looking the other way, and that non-thieves made "ability checks".  But leaving aside the question of whether you used that particular language in whatever year you were playing in (Did you actually play before 1974 or not, and if so with whom?) , you do realize don't you that this procedure of play makes the thief weaker and not stronger right?  You're describing situations that make what the thief brings to the part less special.  You're describing a rather common practice that amounts to weakly challenging the the thief in order to make the challenge easy enough that not only the thief could succeed in it - something equivalent to giving all party members a +70% chance of success. That doesn't even fix the problem with thief skills, much less fix the problem with the thief.No one is doing this.  Your matryrdom thing is tiring and is not nearly as polite as you think it is.  No hate is being directed your way nor to anyone playing OD&D.  What got my interest if you would was your asserting you understood the intention of the game better than the writer's of the game, and that Gygax had messed the game up.  That implies knowledge of the game from before 1974, or else a whole lot of arrogance on your part.The idea of the thief automatically succeed in skill usage "unless challenged or in a challenging situation" is not offensive.  It's just neither useful for balancing the thief, nor very workable since if the situation the thieves in weren't challenging I'd not be asking for a roll either.  So you seem to miss the point that your novel idea isn't actually that novel.  What you don't seem to understand is that "challenging" is a fiat term with no objective quality.  What makes something "challenging" in this context beyond the GM saying it is "challenging"?  And my attempt to restate the issue in terms of assigning a difficulty or in an attempt to explain why making it so the thief automatically succeeds "unless challenged" doesn't actually strengthen the thief you've ignored in favor of the whole "you are picking on me" thing.As for actually balancing the thief, your suggestion does nothing to deal with at 1st level you are 2 THAC0 behind a fighter, but at 10th level you are 7 THAC0 behind the fighter.  It doesn't deal with the fact that at 2nd level you have h.p. comparable to a fighter, but by 10th level you have half the h.p. (most likely), an AC that is probably 5 or more lower, do 1/4th the damage per round, and can't match the post UA fighter in damage output even if you backstabbed every round.  It doesn't deal with the fact that you start with better saves than the fighter but by 10th level you are 4 or more behind in just about every category and will only fall futher behind.  It doesn't deal with the fact by that point, an M-U or cleric that devoted spell slots to solving the problems a thief can solve would not only be able to do it better with things like Invisibility, Knock, Fly, Find Traps, Polymorph, etc, but would in a typical day solve those problems and still have utility left over like Fireball.  You are not addressing the fundamental problem of being a linear class that RAW improves by 2/5th of a level every level as opposed to 1 level per level like the fighter, yet your lower XP doesn't make up for that by giving them more HD.  Nor are you addressing that the thief has no "end game" of doing things he couldn't do before (beyond a 75% chance to read scrolls which is really only useful if you don't have in your party someone with a 100% chance of reading scrolls).Has anyone asked you to change?  If not, is the above statement even honest?  If not honest, how is it polite?</blockquote>

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