Thief-acrobat - any idea who came up with the concept?

[Chainsaw]

I believe it is EGG's class. My players seem to enjoy the class on the rare occassions it sees play (I generally ban the UA).

Did you take special pains to create relevant terrain for your thief-acrobats? Or did your players find creative ways to use the abilities?

[Matthew]

Thankfully, most of his speaking was done in those trailer scenes. The rest is pretty much just him kicking people's asses (unlike later efforts, where he tries to show his 'range' ). I love that scene at the end where Fender and Gibson (love the guitar names, haha!) are roaring at each other in the rain, moving very robotically with their arms out, just like He-Man toys. Always makes me laugh.

Believe it or not, I have read that this movie was originally supposed to be a live-action He-Man film, but budget problems (or something, I can't quite remember) ultimately blew that up.

The female cyborg love-interest was at least a hottie! As to Masters of the Universe, that was a surprisingly good film!

[Chainsaw]

Matthew, you should also check out AVENGING FORCE if you like crappy 80s action flicks. It's a good one! Like Gymkata, it also centers around a manhunter game that the bad guys sponsor.

My friends and I would always watch this, then go "play it" in the yard. One of us would be the shotgun soldier, another the 'croc-master,' another the swordsman and so on. Fun!



Actually, here are the key fight scenes (because you will probably never be able to find this thing except on VHS, which no one has anymore).

[T. Foster]

EGG definitely suggested the class in the "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column in Dragon #64 and is the credited author of the write-up in Dragon #69 (which is virtually identical to what later appeared in UA). Who might have been influencing him behind the scenes isn't anything I'm in a position to say (and, unsurprisingly, no one else seems to be rushing forward to claim credit/blame for the class ). My guess is Gygax came up with the idea in a brainstorming session (along with all the other suggested classes from that Dragon #64 article, some of which we saw (cavalier, barbarian) others of which we didn't (jester, savant, mystic, mountebank)), threw something together fairly quickly for "open-beta" playtesting in Dragon #69, didn't get much feedback, and instead of realizing that the reason for that was that the class was so lame as-written nobody was using it in order to be able to provide feedback, must've decided "people aren't complaining, so it must be good enough as-is."

As mentioned upthread, Gord is a thief-acrobat (specifically described as such in the appendix to Saga of Old City) so he must've had some fondness for the idea of the class. Just to bad as-written it's so lame.

[James Maliszewski]

The thief-acrobat was definitely Gary's own invention and one about which he was quite proud, as I recall. He spoke glowingly of how the idea of a "split class" was a "first" in the annals of gaming, for example. As others have noted, the fact that Gord becomes a thief-acrobat is further evidence that the class is Gygaxian in its origins.

As to why he created the class, I have no idea. My longstanding guess is that Gary had ideas for new methods of character advancement that might have seen wider implementation in his version of 2e. The thief-acrobat was thus a testbed for the basic concept.

[Matthew]

Matthew, you should also check out AVENGING FORCE if you like crappy 80s action flicks. It's a good one! Like Gymkata, it also centers around a manhunter game that the bad guys sponsor.

My friends and I would always watch this, then go "play it" in the yard. One of us would be the shotgun soldier, another the 'croc-master,' another the swordsman and so on. Fun!

Awesome. You know, I just realised that films like this are what I summon to mind when I think of "America".

[Philotomy Jurament]

Like Gymkata, it also centers around a manhunter game that the bad guys sponsor.

And don't forget to combine Van Damme, mullets, *and* the "manhunter game" theme:

[Philotomy Jurament]

Actually, here are the key fight scenes (because you will probably never be able to find this thing except on VHS, which no one has anymore).

Oh man, the cheesy Hammerfall powermetal puts that right over the top!

[Chainsaw]

And don't forget to combine Van Damme, mullets, *and* the "manhunter game" theme:

Oh my god, I laughed so hard that my eyes actually teared up, heh.

[deathanddrek]

I always thought that the Thief-Acrobat was the best bit of Unearthed Arcana. *ducks, shields face*

It's underpowered rather than overpowered which makes a nice change.

Seriously though - I do have a soft spot for the T-A. Maybe one of my early 1e characters was a T-A.

[ScottyG]

The TA, like most of the UA character info, is a niche concept. Something that wasn't supposed to be part of another dungeon exploring party/campaign. Gary's view of the game expanded, and he started creating specialty classes for various locales. A lot of the UA-hate comes from players who takes these niche concepts and try to jam them into the standard adventuring party mold. That was never the intent. The TA is an urban specialist. If you try to play one in a campaign that bounces from dungeon to dungeon, and doesn't spend a lot of time with city adventures, then the TA is going to suck. In a standard D&D campaign, they're probably best kept as NPCs encountered in areas where common sense says they might operate.

[TRP]

I've to admit to stupidity now for never thinking of the UA classes in this light. As irregulars who are specialists for spot jobs, they might not suck.

The TA, like most of the UA character info, is a niche concept. Something that wasn't supposed to be part of another dungeon exploring party/campaign. Gary's view of the game expanded, and he started creating specialty classes for various locales. A lot of the UA-hate comes from players who takes these niche concepts and try to jam them into the standard adventuring party mold. That was never the intent. The TA is an urban specialist. If you try to play one in a campaign that bounces from dungeon to dungeon, and doesn't spend a lot of time with city adventures, then the TA is going to suck. In a standard D&D campaign, they're probably best kept as NPCs encountered in areas where common sense says they might operate.

[grodog]

Thief-Acrobats would definitely be a part of the all-thieves/thieves guild urban campaign that I will run, someday.

[AxeMental]

The TA, like most of the UA character info, is a niche concept. Something that wasn't supposed to be part of another dungeon exploring party/campaign. Gary's view of the game expanded, and he started creating specialty classes for various locales. A lot of the UA-hate comes from players who takes these niche concepts and try to jam them into the standard adventuring party mold. That was never the intent. The TA is an urban specialist. If you try to play one in a campaign that bounces from dungeon to dungeon, and doesn't spend a lot of time with city adventures, then the TA is going to suck. In a standard D&D campaign, they're probably best kept as NPCs encountered in areas where common sense says they might operate.

Ahhh this is bullshit Scotty. They are presented as general classes (why else give so much space to something you'd never use, we waited years for this afterall, the intent was to use them). And they are either totally idiotic concepts (Caviler and Thief Acrobat) or just horribly done (barbarian). There is no reason TSR couldn't have created a dozen knew classes that would have rocked. Hell any of us could have done that off the top of our heads when we were 16. This was a problem of "taste" (or more accurately a lack of taste) by "someone(s)" at that time.

[JCBoney]

Perhaps good for urban play... in the dungeon it's useless as tits on a boar hog.