D&D General Why the Great Thief Debate Will Always Be With Us

[CreamCloud0]

See, I don't read it that way at all. I would definitely still let a character without that feat attempt to mimic someone else; I just wouldn't let them add their proficiency bonus, and might make it a harder DC depending on circumstances. But there's nothing in that wording that excludes someone without the feat still trying to mimic a voice or sound. That's something all people can try.

Mimicry. You can mimic the sounds of other creatures, including speech. A creature that hears the mimicry must succeed on a Wisdom (Insight) check to determine the effect is faked (DC 8 plus your Charisma modifier and Proficiency Bonus).

The main of the actor feat is advantage on deception and performance checks, on top of the +1 charisma. In heavily social campaigns, it can be really good.

I generally don't read rules as exclusionary if they are describing special facility with something that, intuitively, anyone can attempt. But then, I don't take the rules that seriously, anyway. I'm certainly never going to prioritize a rule over what makes sense in the story.

yeah this is the sort of thing i was thinking of when i mentioned earlier in the thread-if there's a rule for performing a specific action from a feat or somesuch, apply the rule for people who don't have it, but at disadvantage, or without bonuses, or a higher target DC...

 

[Leatherhead]

The problem with the Thief isn't that rules exist for doing things, it's that the mere existence of the Thief as a class causes rules to be applied unevenly, no mater what level of abstraction you are using. The Thief has to justify it's existence by carving out a niche, which means steeling that niche from other classes that could have otherwise potentially filled it.

Which means this isn't actually about rules, it's about niche protection.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The thing is, it depends entirely on the implementation of the rule.

Agreed, but I find people are not giving any benefit of the doubt, thus making their position circular. They have set out to prove that the rules must work this way, and then refuse to ever see the rules as even possibly working some other way.

The example that was brought up was the Actor Feat, that allows you to Mimic other persons voices.
It is worded in a way, that makes it clear that without that feat, you can't mimic the speech of another person.

I don't at all see it that way. This is a guaranteed method, with predefined limitations. Anyone attempting to do this without that feat will be either taking a greater risk (e.g., rolling with disadvantage or a penalty), or getting less out of it, or having to accept the good with the bad, etc. Maybe you need multiple hours to really practice your voice, and even then, people get advantage on their opposed roll to know the sound is faked. Nothing in this text says it cannot be done. All it does is set out how it does work for an expert trained in this fashion. Naturally, an untrained rube with a dream is gonna be worse, but that doesn't make it impossible.

So anybody who took the actor feat would be rightly pissed, if another player could just make a "mimic speech" check now, because that is the main selling point of this feat.

If and only if they get identical ability, yes. If you use the existing rule as a template for what full training does, you can then extrapolate what untrained might look like. Each table, and possibly each individual instance, will come to slightly different expressions, but they'll all fit into a general shape because they're all riffing off the same source that identifies an upper ceiling that must be clearly avoided.

The "Arnesonian" space is not closed off. It is simply closed at one end.

5E does both with rules. You have closed rules - like a halfings nimble ability "you can move through the space of any creature that is a size larger than you". Just by reading that, you know "oh, not being a Halfling means, I can't do that". There is also the general rule in the combat section, saying that you can "only move through a hostiles creatures Space, if it is 2 sizes larger".

The general rule precedes halfling. Halfling provides a special exception, explicitly. This is not an exclusionary rule that somehow is what prevents anyone else from doing what halflings do. Halflings get to do a thing that was already impossible for anyone else.

A less obvious rule is everything about magic. There is no "negative" general rule that says "You can't do magic" - at least I didn't find one spelled out in the magic section of the 2014 basic rules. But just by having the current spellcasting rules it is clear that a character can't do magic, unless a feature grants him access to spellcasting.
Just by having the spellcasting rules in that form exist, made casting magic got impossible in the Arnesonian Space.

Except that I have already gone on record as saying I don't think that that is true, that I am willing to open negotiation for a magical effect under amenable or interesting conditions—they're just going to always have something more, something the character (and, most times, the player as well) wouldn't like to deal with if they didn't have to.

Example: Player A's beloved and devoutly religious (but not magic-using) character Sam has just died. the party has no access to revivify and is far too low level for raise dear, so Sam is just dead. Player B's jaded, cynical, atheist character (also not a spellcaster) Pat, who has slowly, quietly become fond of Sam despite Pat's gruff manner and "I don't need friends" attitude,makes a sincere, heartfelt plea: "If you're really there...if you really care about mortals like us...save Sam. Please. I...I didn't know how much I needed them."

There are so many things I can do with this as DM. Perhaps I ask for a roll, perhaps I don't. If I do ask for one, a bad roll might not even mean the request fails....it might instead mean that someone other than Sam's deity has answered the prayer, setting up a juicy conflict for later. Or it might mean that Sam comes back kind of wrong (now undead or partially undead). Or it might mean Sam's soul is now stuck in a custody battle between two deities who both now have some claim.

If I don't ask for a roll, that most likely means I'm going to do what Dungeon World does with Defy Danger partial successes: offer "a worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice."

Had Pat been a Cleric or had a scroll of revivify, there'd be no need for any of this. Sweet and simple. No fuss, no muss, just instant back in the action (well, sort of, revivify leaves you at 1 HP, IIRC.) Trying to call upon the favor of the gods when you have no training is dangerous and draws all sorts of attention you absolutely do not want to draw. That's why people don't do it, and especially not for minor or trivial things. But many of the gods love a good drama, and little is more dramatic than an answered prayer in one's most desperate hour of need.

Even the existence of magic rules does not negate negotiation. It simply sets a ceiling for what can be done, and a floor for what price must be paid.

And answering prayers for Non-Clerics would rightly upset Cleric Players, because they only get the feature at level 10 and only a 10% chance at that level.

Only if you do it wrong. Divine Intervention is cost-free. Begging the gods for aid in your darkest hour is absolutely not going to be cost-free. That's a cost that may define a campaign!

So again, all the God-Player interaction is deep in Gygaxian Space and closed of the Arnesonian Space and limited to High-Level clerics.

Nope. It is only there if you decide that the existence of a rule makes it impossible to negotiate...which means your argument is circular.

 

[Staffan]

The problem with the Thief isn't that rules exist for doing things, it's that the mere existence of the Thief as a class causes rules to be applied unevenly, no mater what level of abstraction you are using. The Thief has to justify it's existence by carving out a niche, which means steeling that niche from other classes that could have otherwise potentially filled it.

Which means this isn't actually about rules, it's about niche protection.

The problem with niche protection is that it's bad, at least when you have too many niches. Once you decide that class X is the one that does Y, that means that everyone else has to be at best bad at Y and at worst completely unable to Y. Alternately, you can decide that Y is something everyone can be OK at, but X more-or-less auto-wins at it – but for some reason, neither designers nor GMs tend to like giving PCs the ability to just say "I handle that thing".

I think that if I was in charge of a team of designers for the next major edition of D&D, I'd at least ask them to look into a version where backgrounds get expanded into something bigger, maybe call it "profession", and have that handle most non-combat abilities. Then make classes more strictly combat-focused. That way you could put "ranger" in the profession category, and have it deal with the "master of wilderness" aspect of the class. It could then be combined with both the fighter class for a more old-school tough-guy ranger, an archer class for the more modern sniper-style, or a skirmisher for someone who focuses on mobility in combat.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

it's possible you're looking at this from the two different perspectives of 'a rule exists which isn't applied to everyone, and so only the characters deemed worthy to access that rule can perform the action' and 'a rule exists which applies to everyone, and this standardises the action across everyone who performs it',

the difference between 'the rogue has rules for sneaking, so only they can sneak' and 'there are rules for sneaking, which everyone can use'

Eh. In this particular case, I'd have to say no, given prior precedent.

That said, what you point out is definitely part of the conversation. So allow me to extrapolate a little.

First, you have the initial issue- once a rule governs how something is done, that necessarily means that you cannot do that thing without the rule.

So this is easiest to think of in terms of the way it applies to a specific ability- such as the thief debate. Giving a specific character an ability means that other characters without that enumerated ability cannot do it.

But it also applies more generally; once you codify rules for spellcasting, it is the case that anyone without access to those rules cannot use magic. This should seem obvious, but if (for example) a Champions says "I cast fireball" that will likely be met with the same reaction as the Wizard who says, "I use action surge."

Now, from that point, you can then get to the second tier of possible proposed solutions. For example, the "great thief debate" is ameliorated in 5e because while, for example, stealth is a skill, any character can be "stealthy" without the skill- they just don't have a proficiency bonus. ... and if a skill doesn't cover an issue, you can just make it an ability check (or allow for the closest and most relevant skill to apply). Which solves the issue of characters being unable to do things by virtue of not having the appropriate skill, but creates it own complication- because of bounded accuracy and ability scores and proficiency bonuses being low until high levels, you often end up with characters that are unskilled in something being better at a task than those who are skilled at it. Which is weird and often seems contrary to the fiction- and has become the source of numerous threads here complaining about just that.

But put another way, to the extent that the rules specifically allow the general use absent the specific ability (such as with skills) a person would observe both that this is covered by the rules (Gygaxian space) and also that this tends to create mismatched between the rules and the fiction.

Which brings us to the next third tier issue- the more that a system uses rules to cover interactions with the fiction, the more that interactions with the fiction cannot be done outside of the rules. This might seem a little abstract, but think of D&D and combat. The rules for D&D in combat cover so much that many tables find it anathema to make any decisions regarding combat (or choices for characters) that aren't expressed by rules. To put it more plainly- when was the last time you saw a character in 5e use the "Improvising an Action" choice in 5e during combat? That's the catch-all RAW way to do anything "not covered by the actions in this chapter{.}" But ... in combat, can you improvise an action that is similar to a Battlemaster's Maneuvers? If it is similar to dodge, shove, or other similar rules (such as the specified rules for jumping on your opponent in Tasha's) can you improvise that, or do you have to use the express rule? Finally, if you have seen someone improvise an action, has this ever compared to the choices they could make with the defined rule, or does the choice of improvising necessarily lead to the GM limiting the power/efficacy?

This is a recurrent issue with all rules, and all rulesets; whether it's RPGs, or the original Kriegsspiel debate, or the whole "loose principles or specific language" that always recurs in multiple fields. And as I've repeatedly stressed, there is no right answer or even a correct balance to this. but understanding why the debate recurs is what is important - and why people stake out different positions.

 

[TiQuinn]

Which brings us to the next third tier issue- the more that a system uses rules to cover interactions with the fiction, the more that interactions with the fiction cannot be done outside of the rules. This might seem a little abstract, but think of D&D and combat. The rules for D&D in combat cover so much that many tables find it anathema to make any decisions regarding combat (or choices for characters) that aren't expressed by rules. To put it more plainly- when was the last time you saw a character in 5e use the "Improvising an Action" choice in 5e during combat? That's the catch-all RAW way to do anything "not covered by the actions in this chapter{.}" But ... in combat, can you improvise an action that is similar to a Battlemaster's Maneuvers? If it is similar to dodge, shove, or other similar rules (such as the specified rules for jumping on your opponent in Tasha's) can you improvise that, or do you have to use the express rule? Finally, if you have seen someone improvise an action, has this ever compared to the choices they could make with the defined rule, or does the choice of improvising necessarily lead to the GM limiting the power/efficacy?

So this is something that I’ve seen come up in games, and it can be a bit weird and tricky to navigate. I feel this is where “Rule of Cool” rears its head. Say the party is in a fight in a large hall, and the wizard PC sees the the BBEG is standing directly under an ornate metal chandelier - you know the kind, the one with a big pointy spike on the end of it like we’ve all seen in the movies. And if you’ve seen those movies, you know exactly what the player wants to do next, they’re going to cut the rope holding the chandelier, and have it come crashing down on them and impale the bad guy.

The player may be envisioning this as an amazing move that will surely do massive damage. The DM may be looking at this thinking what rule covers this, and more importantly, what damage to apply to it. Should an improvised move do as much damage as one of the actual abilities that the PCs have? The DM may think, no, it’ll do damage but not as much as a spell attack, or as much as if the Barbarian PC walloped the bad guy with his great axe and uses some improvised damage. The rest of the party is going nuts because they also think this is going to be awesomely damaging move.

The result? Because it’s kind of a “rules light” improvised thing in D&D, the DM in their caution makes the damage weak because they don’t want improvised rules to outshine the actual rules of the game. So now those players don’t use improvised maneuvers. Why would they? They know it’s not going to do as much as if they swung their sword, went for the backstab or cast a spell.

The flip side is the DM lets the crashing chandelier do a lot of damage, and NOW the players are always looking for ways to create maximal damage through improvised moves - the infamous “called shot to the eye” scenario, we called it - where now everyone wants to do something super cool above and beyond what the rules typically allow.

 

[Minigiant]

This is a recurrent issue with all rules, and all rulesets; whether it's RPGs, or the original Kriegsspiel debate, or the whole "loose principles or specific language" that always recurs in multiple fields. And as I've repeatedly stressed, there is no right answer or even a correct balance to this. but understanding why the debate recurs is what is important - and why people stake out different positions.

It's only a recurrent issue when you don't on what the game is about or what the game refers to.

Whether the new rule is permissive or restrictive or simply adjusts character is based on what the rule is coming from.

Adding a Wizard doesn't restrict or change anything until you decide its a Vancian Wizard, a Potterverse Wizard, a Greek Divine Wizard, a Classical Astrologer/Alchemist wizard,etc. Each type of reference turns on and off and alters the base rules to achieve the desired effect.

Games based on a specific IP don;t have the thief debate often.

 

[abirdcall]

So this is something that I’ve seen come up in games, and it can be a bit weird and tricky to navigate. I feel this is where “Rule of Cool” rears its head. Say the party is in a fight in a large hall, and the wizard PC sees the the BBEG is standing directly under an ornate metal chandelier - you know the kind, the one with a big pointy spike on the end of it like we’ve all seen in the movies. And if you’ve seen those movies, you know exactly what the player wants to do next, they’re going to cut the rope holding the chandelier, and have it come crashing down on them and impale the bad guy.

The player may be envisioning this as an amazing move that will surely do massive damage. The DM may be looking at this thinking what rule covers this, and more importantly, what damage to apply to it. Should an improvised move do as much damage as one of the actual abilities that the PCs have? The DM may think, no, it’ll do damage but not as much as a spell attack, or as much as if the Barbarian PC walloped the bad guy with his great axe and uses some improvised damage. The rest of the party is going nuts because they also think this is going to be awesomely damaging move.

The result? Because it’s kind of a “rules light” improvised thing in D&D, the DM in their caution makes the damage weak because they don’t want improvised rules to outshine the actual rules of the game. So now those players don’t use improvised maneuvers. Why would they? They know it’s not going to do as much as if they swung their sword, went for the backstab or cast a spell.

The flip side is the DM lets the crashing chandelier do a lot of damage, and NOW the players are always looking for ways to create maximal damage through improvised moves - the infamous “called shot to the eye” scenario, we called it - where now everyone wants to do something super cool above and beyond what the rules typically allow.

I think heroic inspiration solves this elegantly.

In general, I'm happy to rule favourably for taking advantage of a unique situation. It isn't just dropping a chandelier, it is dropping the iron one with the big spike in it. That will only happen once in the campaign so it's fine.

Even if they only end up doing average damage with it getting heroic inspiration would make it worthwhile.

The flipside is the new player thinking that describing things will make them be able to do it more. One example was a new player with a Barbarian character describing him lifting his great axe as high as he could and then bringing it down on the enemy. I said okay cool you hit. Then he said 'how much extra damage do I get?' Took me a while to figure out what he was talking about.

I could see the light in his eyes dim when I said no that isn't how it works. So yeah, there is a sweet spot for creativity I think. The game should reward it, as it does with heroic inspiration. I also don't want spotlight hogs to take up game time overly describing every mundane thing they're doing.

 

[Thomas Shey]

So this is something that I’ve seen come up in games, and it can be a bit weird and tricky to navigate. I feel this is where “Rule of Cool” rears its head. Say the party is in a fight in a large hall, and the wizard PC sees the the BBEG is standing directly under an ornate metal chandelier - you know the kind, the one with a big pointy spike on the end of it like we’ve all seen in the movies. And if you’ve seen those movies, you know exactly what the player wants to do next, they’re going to cut the rope holding the chandelier, and have it come crashing down on them and impale the bad guy.

The player may be envisioning this as an amazing move that will surely do massive damage. The DM may be looking at this thinking what rule covers this, and more importantly, what damage to apply to it. Should an improvised move do as much damage as one of the actual abilities that the PCs have? The DM may think, no, it’ll do damage but not as much as a spell attack, or as much as if the Barbarian PC walloped the bad guy with his great axe and uses some improvised damage. The rest of the party is going nuts because they also think this is going to be awesomely damaging move.

The result? Because it’s kind of a “rules light” improvised thing in D&D, the DM in their caution makes the damage weak because they don’t want improvised rules to outshine the actual rules of the game. So now those players don’t use improvised maneuvers. Why would they? They know it’s not going to do as much as if they swung their sword, went for the backstab or cast a spell.

The flip side is the DM lets the crashing chandelier do a lot of damage, and NOW the players are always looking for ways to create maximal damage through improvised moves - the infamous “called shot to the eye” scenario, we called it - where now everyone wants to do something super cool above and beyond what the rules typically allow.

There's some operational space around this, but its--tricky. You can let it do heavy damage but be unlikely to succeed (though 5e's excessively simple approach to this may not be enough). This still may well discourage its use--or alternatively produce a result where it doesn't discourage its use among someone which ends up annoying everyone else because they're constantly shooting for the bleachers even though the commonest result is "nothing". But its at least not a self-evidently pointless exercise. There are other options here (various defense banes for doing it come to mind).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Games based on a specific IP don;t have the thief debate often.

Depends on how you define "often". There are a non-trivial number of people who if not giant fans of a given setting may not be particularly tolerant of setting conventions for it if they penalize the character type they'd prefer to play.