Knights & Knaves Alehouse

blackprinceofmuncie wrote:

geneweigel wrote:Its the Best of Dragon hardcover that got overcooked and left raw in some parts.

Yeah, if given the choice I'd much rather have my Dragon Mag Archive to pick and choose from than the "official" UA.

Thats true, although I like to go through the actual magazines without the electric bias because its better for where I remembered stuff. However back in the day the lack of Dragons was wild. I remember paying for photocopies of relevant articles but some people didn't have all the contacts that I had to do that so they went without unti UA came along and was everywhere. Back in 1981, most people thought that I made up my half-ogre they didn't even know the race was created by Gygax in 1979 and reprinted in BEST OF DRAGON II at that time. I didn't understand why he could be included in BEST OF DRAGON II by Gygax and dissed in UNEARTHED ARCANA by Gygax and replaced by (what I see as as) fruitier race options. However this was explained to me by Gary that behind the scenes there was a growing counter culture of "anti-tough" at TSR (hence DRAGONLANCE) I thanked him heartily for clearing that up.

He also gave me full permission to go back in time and include the 1/2 ogre...

[quote="Matthew] I have similar misgivings, but for the most part I find the class okay. The biggest tweak I have made is to dump discrete thief abilities in favour of a general "thieving ability" score as an analogue to "fighting ability", which is basically the level of the thief, and let the player try whatever he thinks is most thief-like with that as a guide to setting a probability of success. I give them slightly better combat abilities as well (instead of 2 points every 4 levels, 1 point every 2), and rarely worry about weapon restrictions.

[/quote][/quote][/quote]

I like this idea of a general thieving ability score. You say it would be based on level. How would that work, if you don't mind me asking?

"Everything in the ADVANCED DUNGEONS 8 DRAGONS system has purpose; most of what is found herein is essential to the campaign, and those sections which are not - such as subclasses of characters, psionics, and similar material - are clearly labeled as optional for inclusion." (from Gary's preface to the PHB, emphasis mine)

"The Dungeon Master may have restrictions as to which races are allowed in the campaign due to the circumstances of the milieu." (page 13 of the PHB)

The above words lead me to believe that an AD&D game can certainly exclude all PC options other than the following:

human cleric
human fighter
human magic-user
human thief

Geoffrey wrote:human thief

I believe it also says in the DMG page 235 under the GenCon ad:

"P.S. WHOAH!!! The prudent DM in regards the milieux of thieves MUST NEVER INCLUDE THEM! Best Wishes, E. Gary Gygax"

No wait thats pencilled in by me in crayon...

Gene, of the four I listed, the thief is easily the ifiest. I don't like thieves, myself. Clerics, fighters, and magic-users are plenty for me.

IMO, if you're going for a Swords & Sorcery feel, the easiest to dispose of is the Cleric. If it weren't for the (ultimately, disadvantageous IMO) rules that mandate really slow natural healing of HPs, the Cleric would be superfluous and I would gladly get rid of the Cleric role in favor of the Thief any day.

Remember that the thief class was inspired by a phone call Gary had with a D&D fan in California (possibly the late Gary Switzer, longtime owner of Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica) and was originally published in a draft version in an amateur fanzine ("The Great Plains Game Players Newsletter") in mid-1974 with a caveat that "these rules have not been tested and should be treated accordingly" (though since the class abilities changed a bit between this version and Supplement I it's presumable some testing did occur at some point).

blackprinceofmuncie wrote:IMO, if you're going for a Swords & Sorcery feel, the easiest to dispose of is the Cleric. If it weren't for the (ultimately, disadvantageous IMO) rules that mandate really slow natural healing of HPs, the Cleric would be superfluous and I would gladly get rid of the Cleric role in favor of the Thief any day.

Yeah, at the level of least granularity, I see classes like this:

• Men of Action - Obviously, this is the Fighting Man. A Thief would fit here, too (I think I might like the Thief better as a sub-class of Fighter, actually).
• Men of Magic - This is the Magic User, and variants or sub-classes like the
  Illusionist.
• Men in the Middle - This is the Cleric.

The Cleric strikes me as a class that was designed with game mechanisms in mind, rather than designed with swords-n-sorcery source/inspirational material in mind. The Cleric is half man-of-action and half man-of-magic. He can do both, but he's not as good at fighting/action as the Fighter, and his spells are fewer and generally less impressive than the magic user. They're more "supporting role" spells.

Yes, that too regarding the cleric if you're going to have thieves then have them be thieves (not button pushers) but in regards the cleric, its something about the fact that he's promoting ridiculous behavior in the game that turns me off rather than any button pushing. Plus the healing for priests is unnecessary as its easily relayed to other npcs.

T. Foster wrote:Remember that the thief class was inspired by a phone call Gary had with a D&D fan in California (possibly the late Gary Switzer, longtime owner of Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica) and was originally published in a draft version in an amateur fanzine ("The Great Plains Game Players Newsletter") in mid-1974 with a caveat that "these rules have not been tested and should be treated accordingly" (though since the class abilities changed a bit between this version and Supplement I it's presumable some testing did occur at some point).

Wow, didn't know that Gary Switzer was responsible for the thief class (possibly). Learn something new every day.

- Wheggi

Grodog posted the original, pre-Gary thief over on Fin's OD&D boards. Unfortunately, he was asked (not by Fin) to take it down. I regret not downloading it when I had the chance.

Strange. What, is someone planning to offer it for sale?

Flambeaux wrote:Part of why I don't run AD&D these days is because I can't stand the thief class. Never did like it or see much point in having one.

ETA: I should elaborate...every game in which I have played in the last 15 years or so that had a thief PC (usually multiples) went down the same way: everyone (players) sits around bored while the thief sneaks around doing stuff. Eventually, something might happen. Maybe. If the thief doesn't steal everything first.

I'm currently in a game with 5 hyper-active thieves. Oy! We're doing very little but waiting on them. I have no doubt there will be no treasure for my cleric at the end of the dungeon crawl.

OK now I see where your coming from. Doesn't the same thing happen though when you don't have a thief but have a designated guy taking point (maybe wearing light armor, carrying little and saying he's trying to detect traps or guards ahead)? Like W, I can't imagine an AD&D game without the snarly human thief. I'm sure every person thats played 1E feels the same way you do at some point. We always delt/deal with it by having a watchful DM (making sure time is evenly spread) and players who 1. when playing thieves are respectful to the other players (this is easy enough, just throw an empty mountain due can at their head) 2. having non-thief PCs good at sneaking around closer behind then the armored main group, and 3. thieves tend to have high mortality rates in our games (espl. those that annoy the DM, or those that push their luck trying to hog the lime light, usually one in the same). Great treasure is often found from the dead body of a thief near the end of the game. To deal with stealing thieves, suggest they will be searched at some point down the line, and if they have goodies they didn't start with you'll hang'em. A smart thief will steal much less this way (espl. knowing the group cleric has detect magic and will see you glowing suddenly if you have some newly aquired goodie).

But still, your right. Even in the best of circumstances, thieves do see everything first, and usually from at least 60' distance from the group. In that case you could play a thief, or a cleric/thief, or maybe an MU (being sneaky)? The thief is such a critical part of the 1E experience, I wouldn't suggest leaving them out. I mean, what would the game be without those love-able scum bags. And as Whegie mentioned, they are the stars of the PH cover.

blackprinceofmuncie wrote:IMO, if you're going for a Swords & Sorcery feel, the easiest to dispose of is the Cleric. If it weren't for the (ultimately, disadvantageous IMO) rules that mandate really slow natural healing of HPs, the Cleric would be superfluous and I would gladly get rid of the Cleric role in favor of the Thief any day.

To me, if I were to remove classes to define the S&S feel, I'd keep the thief, and dump the Cleric and Magic-User, pointing at Conan, and Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories as my favorite examples of the genre. Once you get past the "spell" Mouse cast to take down his girlfriend's old man, there is no example of spell use by the protagonists in either body of work, whereas you see direct application of D&D style thief skills going on.

crub90706 wrote: I like this idea of a general thieving ability score. You say it would be based on level. How would that work, if you don't mind me asking?

Any way that seemed appropriate to model the probability of success, such as rolling different sized dice against the number (so, for example, a 1d4 might be used for lesser tasks, making a level 4 thief certain of success, and increasingly large dice for ones with a greater degree of difficulty). Alternatively, the number could be multiplied by another, again depending on the difficulty, and added to a base percentage, so say you start with 30% and add (4 x thieving ability) or something of that ilk. Whatever seems reasonable at the time, really. In the heat of play, I quite often defer to 30% + (Thief Ability x 5), as that scales up from 35% to 90% over the course of twelve levels (the most commonly played range in my campaigns).

Philotomy Jurament wrote: Yeah, at the level of least granularity, I see classes like this:

• Men of Action - Obviously, this is the Fighting Man. A Thief would fit here, too (I think I might like the Thief better as a sub-class of Fighter, actually).
• Men of Magic - This is the Magic User, and variants or sub-classes like the
  Illusionist.
• Men in the Middle - This is the Cleric.

The Cleric strikes me as a class that was designed with game mechanisms in mind, rather than designed with swords-n-sorcery source/inspirational material in mind. The Cleric is half man-of-action and half man-of-magic. He can do both, but he's not as good at fighting/action as the Fighter, and his spells are fewer and generally less impressive than the magic user. They're more "supporting role" spells.

I used to think similarly, but even as early as Chain Mail the division is fighter, magician, and fighter/magician. Those are really the three basic classes (or two classes and one combination class), to which the cleric and thief are added with no real basis in the mechanisms of either of their predecessors. Whenever I think "thief", I think "Zamorian thief", and those guys are definitely not any kind of fighting-men in my book.