Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="T. Foster" data-source="post: 3590377" data-attributes="member: 16574">The thief class wasn't part of original D&D (they were added as an option in Supplement I in 1975) and the game worked fine without them -- traps were found by dwarfs, player cleverness, or the cleric find traps spell and were avoided rather than disarmed, locks were opened by keys, by force, or by the magic-user knock spell, and being "sneaky" and "roguish" were role-playing matters -- a fighter or elf with a high Int, high Dex, high Cha, and neutral or chaotic alignment who relies on speed and stealth and who attacks with missiles or by ambush covers the "rogue archetype" every bit as well as the D&D thief class (who, based on his skill-set, is actually more of a mechanic or trapsmith than a dashing swashbuckler-type). The Gray Mouser is acknowledged as the main literary model for the D&D thief class, but IMO he doesn't even particularly fit the class -- except for the way he dresses, the weapons he uses, and the fact that he's called a "thief" he doesn't (that I can recall) use any of the D&D thief-skills (picking locks and pockets, disabling traps, etc.) and is much too good a fighter (equal in ability to Fafhrd and thus one of the two best fighters on the entire planet of Nehwon). Bilbo Baggins, Cugel the Clever, Shadowjack, Kickaha, and Ali Baba are all considered "thief archetypes" as well, but again their thiefliness comes more from matters of style and attitude than any demonstrated skillset -- Bilbo's stealthiness is reflected in the hobbit racial writeup, all of the other guys could just as easily be fighters (and with Kickaha, like The Gray Mouser, you have to deal with the fact that he's way too good at fighting to be a straight D&D thief -- there's no way either of these guys has d4 hit dice and attacks on the cleric table!).There are two issues (beyond pure interia and sacred-cowedness) that cause people to want the thief class in D&D: 1) players like to play dashing/roguish "trickster" characters who rely on quick wits and a clever tongue rather than brute force (like all of the characters listed above, plus Han Solo, Odysseus, and tons of others), and 2) an expert mechanic/trapsmith/locksmith/"skill guy" is a valuable asset to a party in a traditional dungeoncrawl. The thief class in D&D represents #2, but people play it because they want #1, even though the fit is awkward at best, if not downright contradictory -- the ostensibly free-spirited, unfettered trickster character meticulously checking every 5' square for traps while the rest of the party stands around waiting. IMO these two concepts need a divorce -- roguishness/tricksterishness should be a matter of role-playing and feat selection (to maximize speed and stealth-rlated special maneuvers), trapsmithery should be a matter of skill selection and racial bonuses (for dwarfs and gnomes) and, honestly, is probably a more suitable role for an NPC henchman or hireling "guest star" than an actual long-term PC -- if you're going into a dungeon where you expect you'll encounter lots of mechanical traps and locks, you bring along a dwarfish Expert NPC who can't fight or do anything else for crap but is ace at spotting and disarming traps and cracking locks.</blockquote>

Verification