Why do we need thieves??

[Willie the Duck]

My first post in this community came off as spam. It was communicated to me that people were less interested in hearing about my advertising....er uh...game, and that I should contribute more to the community. I however am mostly a hermit. Online communities are new ground for me, and I have stumbled several times during this process.

Thank you for this explanation. To help explain to you some of the pushback you are receiving, I'll state that you've stumbled into a pattern not dissimilar from a type of low-key troll personality that pops up on online communities with regular frequency.

^^^ See this guy? Without getting into the political specifics of the real person, they were someone who went to campuses and challenged people to debate them (on a topic they knew would raise the ire of many college students). However, they had no intention of having their mind changed, had a mental catalog of rhetorical runaround responses prepared, and were actually doing this activity to get video of less-well-prepared college students stumbling and fumbling and raging at them to serve the message that people against their opinion were laughable fools. Assuming good faith on their part was the first mistake and engaging with them the second. This has become an internet shorthand because online communities are rife with that kind of behavior (especially places where people simply commenting on your comment gives you points of some kind which allows access or gives cachet of some kind and can thus be monetized).

Your initial post posited a position where one was unnecessary (if you simply wanted different opinions and justifications for thieves as a distinct class, you could have simply said 'I'm having trouble understanding the need for a distinct class to cover these skills, and wondering what other people think.'). I also ended with a stilted 'debate me.' This comes off as someone not really interested in having their mind changed, or really engaging in their own topic in good faith.

The thief class was initially introduced (in D&D) because the overall system did not have a skill subsystem at the time (and certain parts of the audience wanted hard and fast systemic rules for the tasks covered). Once a (/any) class-based game has a universal skill system, a thief class isn't strictly necessary. Of course, most classes aren't strictly necessary (even fighter and caster could be gated by what you choose to pursue in-game rather than at class-choice, depending on the rest of the mechanics), so it really is an open and far-ranging topic. Your basic question and premise is not absurd. I just think you could have had less issue and more helpful responses with a more collaborative approach.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Incoming red text....