What is a rogue to you?

[JRRNeiklot]

One rule I hope to see: If you can't SPELL rogue, you can't play one.

 

[Kzach]

One rule I hope to see: If you can't SPELL rogue, you can't play one.

U can't handle teh rouge!!!11?!

 

[The Human Target]

I may have already posted this but I can't recall and can't be bothered looking back through all the posts but... I think everyone is confusing player problems with class problems.

I played thieves the vast majority of time I ever played AD&D and that was over many years with many, many groups. My character was always a miscreant and a troublemaker who often got the party into trouble at bars and taverns for his pick-pocketing or swindling, but he never stole from his brothers-in-arms; he wouldn't dare risk losing the people who would jump into the fray to save his sorry arse when he got caught with his hands in the Lord Regent's pockets...

Point being is that my thieves were a valuable member of the party and a beloved character by all, not a game-destroying nuisance that had everyone at the table asking me to leave. The amount of times his hidden hair-pin lock picks or belt-buckle knife or bag of caltrops or blinding powder or sleep darts or knife-in-the-back (of an enemy) or trap-finding/disabling or climbing saved the day, in addition to the ROGUISH way in which I played him, made him an enjoyable and fun character for EVERYONE at the table.

A dick player is a dick player, no matter what class they play.

True enough, but can you agree the Thief was generally the class preferred by such players because its kind of geared toward them?

 

[Kzach]

True enough, but can you agree the Thief was generally the class preferred by such players because its kind of geared toward them?

No.

My experience with P&P gaming has almost universally involved me putting together groups through every means possible, web, clubs, game boards at game stores, friends of friends, etc. Throughout twenty-three years of doing this, I've put together quite literally hundreds of people and therefore experienced the gamut of gaming personalities.

I say this to qualify what I'm about to say: dick players don't have a preference in class, only play-style.

 

[KesselZero]

dick players don't have a preference in class, only play-style.

Agreed. Let's not forget that the lawful-stupid paladin who insists on constantly berating his fellow party members, getting them into trouble by charging pell-mell at every foe, and generally acting superior in and out of character is just as much a dick as the thief who steals from and backstabs his party, and uses the exact same excuse: "I was just acting in character." And the two classes couldn't be farther apart in terms of their in-game flavor.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Anyone who thinks the 1e thief is a poor combatant has likely never played one. Striking from surprise gives a 1st level thief double damage. A thief likely has a good dex, so his surprise modifier is pretty good. Even if you assume as I would, that their are no negative surprise modifiers, a thief
could have 5 segments of surprise if he's lucky - monster rolls a 1, thief rolls a 6, has a 17 dex. You get your normal number of attacks per round per surprise segment, so that's 10 backstabs. With a 17 dex, he has no penalty to his main weapon and only -2 to the offhand, so with the +4 from behind, he's probably using twf. That's 10 backstabs. And that's before initiative is rolled. Assuming longsword and dagger, that's a potential 10d8+10d4. 120 damage max with no strength modifiers. There's your one shot, one kill. At first level.

 

[Mattachine]

IIRC, a thief in AD&D only gets backstab damage when actually striking from behind with surprise, not just with surprise.

In the games I ran, that only happened in one encounter out of 3 or 4, and then usually only once.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Right. But he's not likely to have surprise walking up in front of an enemy.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

IIRC, a thief in AD&D only gets backstab damage when actually striking from behind with surprise, not just with surprise.

In the games I ran, that only happened in one encounter out of 3 or 4, and then usually only once.

It happened even less than that for us, because I believe the exact wording was "the enemy has to be unaware of your presence" or at least, I think that was the wording in 2e.

I know some DMs allowed you to hide in the middle of combat and then run behind an enemy and attack from behind for backstab damage. Other DMs interpreted this to mean if you were in a dungeon and the alarm had been raised that every monster in the dungeon was now "aware of your presence" and therefore none of them could be backstabbed. Still others took a middle ground which said if you were hiding before the enemy saw you, you could get behind them and backstab them. Although there was debate amongst our DMs about whether leaving your hiding spot and moving to a location behind them was possible without the enemy becoming aware of your presence and therefore the backstab failing. Some said if you managed to Move Silently you could do it. Others said that once you weren't behind cover anymore, you couldn't hide and therefore the enemy could SEE you even if you were moving silently.

Even with all that, the most common scenario in a dungeon is "We open a door to a room and there are monsters behind it". And in that scenario the enemies see you right away, and therefore backstabs are impossible.

I found that my Fighter/Thief got a backstab in maybe once or twice during the entire 2 years I played him.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Obviously you can't just open a door and backstab someone. But you can sneak up on the guard outside the door, or wait for those inside to leave, or hide and have a party member make a noise and ambush an enemy when he investigates it. There are numerous methods of gaining surprise from behind. Of course, kicking in the door and killing everything in sight isn't one of them.