Why do we need thieves??

[Thomas Shey]

We live in a technological world but most people know nothing about how that technology works.

Maybe in a magic heavy world magic items would be more common, but actually use magic?

“Why won’t my bag of holding work?”
“Grandpa, I keep telling you, it’s inside out.”

It would probably turn on how common/easy it is to do enchantment, but really, until you do the magical equivelent of mass manufacture, its going to be hard to have common magic items and not have a fair number of people who know (at least in general, like any craft there will be matters of degree) how to make them.

 

[Bill Zebub]

It would probably turn on how common/easy it is to do enchantment, but really, until you do the magical equivelent of mass manufacture, its going to be hard to have common magic items and not have a fair number of people who know (at least in general, like any craft there will be matters of degree) how to make them.

All true. Prior to mass manufacture people at least knew how to fix things, if not make them from scratch.

I guess the claim I'm pushing back on is that it's logical that in a world with dragons and fairies lots of people would know how to use magic. It's not illogical, in the sense that it's magic, and it's fiction, and you can rationalize whatever you want. But to assert (unless I'm mis-reading) essentially that "everybody else's simplified, dice-based simulation of a make-believe world is illogical, but mine is logical, because..." is about as big of an eyeroll as I can think of.

 

[1QD]

"everybody else's simplified, dice-based simulation of a make-believe world is illogical, but mine is logical, because..." is about as big of an eyeroll as I can think of.

Literally the worst take on this I can think of. No where near the mark.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Literally the worst take on this I can think of. No where near the mark.

If I mis-read then I apologize.

 

[Retros_x]

Well, honestly, you can do all of it with skills if you want to. Or at least skills and separately acquired talents and the like. Sometimes I think people coming from the D&D sphere are overly focused on handling everything with classes.

Yes, because it is a class-based game. You could do everything with skills, but then its a different game. So the easy answer is we have a fighter and a thief because the distinction of character mechanics is done in D&D via classes.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yes, because it is a class-based game. You could do everything with skills, but then its a different game. So the easy answer is we have a fighter and a thief because the distinction of character mechanics is done in D&D via classes.

Yes, but this thread isn't dedicated just to D&D. If you prefer, you can adjust my statement to "Everything is not about D&D, you know." Neither the original post nor where this thread is should make someone think that, even if there's some D&D terminology in use.

 

[Retros_x]

Yes, but this thread isn't dedicated just to D&D. If you prefer, you can adjust my statement to "Everything is not about D&D, you know." Neither the original post nor where this thread is should make someone think that, even if there's some D&D terminology in use.

I did oversee that, but it doesnt change anything about my answer. Class-based games - like D&D - have the thiev as class because the distinction of character mechanics is done via classes. Skill-based games don't have this "problem" because they don't have any classes at all. It is a non-problem. I don't understand what gets discussed here. Class based games have classes, skill based games don't.

 

[Jahydin]

@Retros_x
I'm with you here. The entire premise of the question doesn't make sense when talking about classless systems...

@1QD
If this is the case, then I suggest name dropping some specific systems and examples for us to answer your question better since leaving it open to "all systems" is too vague to help you.

In my experience, labels like Thief and Warrior in classless systems don't matter since you're building your PC exactly how you want and labeling it exactly how you want.

Class/Job based systems do differentiate Warrior and Thieves in many ways - the skill set is just one. In what other ways is going to depend on the system. For instance, Hackmaster, Thieves are the only class that gets to burn off Luck Points to increase their die rolls. That's a pretty distinct feature!