OSR This tells me OSR is alive and well.

[DarkCrisis]

B/X is my favorite version of official D&D. I haven’t looked into Labyrinth Lord. What changes do they make, if any?

Yeah. That’s a thing. There’s a lot of fixes out there. The already mentioned Dolmenwood is a great one.

Aside from a few minor changes to avoid any lawsuit or whatever, not much is different. It’s biggest selling point is that it is free.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

That said, I'm sure everyone has their own take on thieves. I base mine on d12 rolls, with Climb Walls starting out at 10-in-12 and everything else at 4-in-12. Having thieves start out at the equivalent of 2-in-6 to their basic functions puts them on par with demihumans when it comes to things like hearing noise and finding traps (and it neatly sidesteps the weird hiccup where a very low-level thief's Hear Noise ability is even worse than the basic 1-in-6 accorded to everyone else normally); but it doesn't ramp things up so high so quickly that you lose out on the reason those thief skills are supposed to fail more than they succeed at low levels in the first place (namely, that dungeons are supposed to be able to stand up to repeated delves from many different parties; they're an environment for sustained, long-term exploration, not a gauntlet of content meant to be blown through once and experienced in full the first time through).

I think the major pressure point with thieves is likely the Find/Remove Traps.

For the first three levels, it's 10%, 15%, and 20%. And traps are deadly in the TSR era.

Which means that you are unlikely to find them, and even if you do, you are probably going to die removing them.

Climb walls is just slightly worse, with the ever-present chance of falling and taking damage that might kill you. That said, I do like Moldvay's take on it better, which is that you only have to check once per 100' (I would relax that to once, period) but that the fall occurs halfway through.

In other words, it's not just that certain thief abilities are bad. After all, you can miss on hearing noise, hiding in shadows, moving silently (although I truly think that hiding and moving should be combined into one roll, because, c'mon!), open locks, or pick pockets.

But climb walls and FRT will kill you dead.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I think the major pressure point with thieves is likely the Find/Remove Traps.

For the first three levels, it's 10%, 15%, and 20%. And traps are deadly in the TSR era.

Which means that you are unlikely to find them, and even if you do, you are probably going to die removing them.

Climb walls is just slightly worse, with the ever-present chance of falling and taking damage that might kill you. That said, I do like Moldvay's take on it better, which is that you only have to check once per 100' (I would relax that to once, period) but that the fall occurs halfway through.

In other words, it's not just that certain thief abilities are bad. After all, you can miss on hearing noise, hiding in shadows, moving silently (although I truly think that hiding and moving should be combined into one roll, because, c'mon!), open locks, or pick pockets.

But climb walls and FRT will kill you dead.

That is so bad!

In the old days we just knew they sucked but played anyway because we thought they were cool.

But really it was only after playing other games did it stick out as quite as absurd as it is..

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

That is so bad!

In the old days we just knew they sucked but played anyway because we thought they were cool.

But really it was only after playing other games did it stick out as quite as absurd as it is..

IME, and IMO, what eventually happens is that thieves just don't use some of their abilities.

Which ... yeah. The thief is definitely the worst designed class of the TSR era, and I don't think it's close.

 

[DarkCrisis]

I think the major pressure point with thieves is likely the Find/Remove Traps.

For the first three levels, it's 10%, 15%, and 20%. And traps are deadly in the TSR era.

Which means that you are unlikely to find them, and even if you do, you are probably going to die removing them.

Climb walls is just slightly worse, with the ever-present chance of falling and taking damage that might kill you. That said, I do like Moldvay's take on it better, which is that you only have to check once per 100' (I would relax that to once, period) but that the fall occurs halfway through.

In other words, it's not just that certain thief abilities are bad. After all, you can miss on hearing noise, hiding in shadows, moving silently (although I truly think that hiding and moving should be combined into one roll, because, c'mon!), open locks, or pick pockets.

But climb walls and FRT will kill you dead.

In my current game the Thief decides to Hide/MS and scout ahead. She failed the check of course due to sucking at her job, 6 Goblins got the jump on her and she died. Luckily her sister was nearby to take her place.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It's not for nothing that the thing nearly all OSR games tweak is the thief class. RAW, the TSR versions of the class are just set up to predictably fail for many, many levels.

 

[Retreater]

Thieves survived in our games back in the day because we simply didn't use traps or dungeons.
(I know, because I usually played the thief.)
Really, the only way to survive in OSR games is to fudge.

 

[bmfrosty]

I've ran 5E since it came out and rarely have I had "Oh 5E? Have room for another player?"

For the last 2 weeks I've been running B/X (via Labyrinth Lord) and each time we've played (once per week) I've had an older gamer come and ask "Oh are you playing Basic? Have room for 1 more?"

Brings a damn tear to my eye.

Not to say this means anything negative to 5E I'm sure if someone is at the store for D&D they probably already have a group. It's of course easier to find a 5E group than just wandering a game store. Just saying there are people out there wanting old school D&D.

And let me tell you, I've been enjoying the heck out of a B/X dungeon dive. Though I think the Thief needs help. Man do they suck at the start. Need to figure out how to make the Thief useful at level 1.

I'm pretty sure they all suck at the start. The fighter is barely better at hitting things than a cleric, and that only happens at level 4, then the fighter is even with the cleric again until level 7!

I strongly prefer low level stuff anyway, so there's no reason not to pick a dwarf over a fighter in that case. It's why I keep messing around with alternate to-hit/thac0 tables. Favorite concept lately is to give fighters a damage bonus that grows over the levels. Definitely makes them better at hitting and damaging things than a cleric. I think though, that if I do those things, it might be prudent to split the fighter's thac0/to-hit from the demihuman's ones. I'm also a big fan of smoothing the tables.

 

[DarkCrisis]

I'm pretty sure they all suck at the start. The fighter is barely better at hitting things than a cleric, and that only happens at level 4, then the fighter is even with the cleric again until level 7!

I strongly prefer low level stuff anyway, so there's no reason not to pick a dwarf over a fighter in that case. It's why I keep messing around with alternate to-hit/thac0 tables. Favorite concept lately is to give fighters a damage bonus that grows over the levels. Definitely makes them better at hitting and damaging things than a cleric. I think though, that if I do those things, it might be prudent to split the fighter's thac0/to-hit from the demihuman's ones. I'm also a big fan of smoothing the tables.

I find the combat fine. AC is definitely king. You don't want to get hit. And most of the front liners get to AC 3 pretty quick if not start out that way. Add in Dex bonus and/or eventually plate and they are fairly topped off at level 1 until they start finding magic gear.

 

[overgeeked]

I find the combat fine. AC is definitely king. You don't want to get hit. And most of the front liners get to AC 3 pretty quick if not start out that way. Add in Dex bonus and/or eventually plate and they are fairly topped off at level 1 until they start finding magic gear.

Last time I ran B/X for people new to it they were surprised plate was so cheap. Start with 3d6x10 gold and plate is 60 gold. Yeah. Pool a few coins to kit out the fighters so they can keep everyone else alive.