Quote from: Acta Est Fabula;537392I disagree.

Thief:  "If you're so bad, open that lock."
Mage: "Ah-ha!  I'll show you.  abracadabra!  There, it's open."
Thief: "Now do it again."
Mage: "um...I can't.  used that spell already."
Thief: "How about disarming that trap?"
Mage: "Sorry. Can't do it."
Thief: "how about sneaking into that area and spying on the chief?"
Mage: "Ha!  I totally can do that with silence and invisibility."
Thief:  "How long do those last again?  We need you to be hidden for about an hour."
Mage: "Um.."
Thief: "Ok, let's say you snuck in and opened the lock to get the map.  You're discovered and must fight, what do you do?"
Mage: "well, I would cast melfs acid arrow or sleep or something, if I didn't use my spells on knock and invisibility."
Thief: "So you bleed and die?"
Mage: ...

Well he might point out invisibility lasts for hours and hours ......
But a fairpoint and it works until they are about 6th level. Then the Wizard just uses Clairvoyance/clairaudience and we can all stay at home

Oh and you don't disarm traps you use unseen servant to trigger them. Since it has both a physical presence, last for hours and it can't be harmed its the perfect trap detector and its only 1st level.

Quote from: Benoist;537365Actual myth and legends.

D&D thieves and fighters are typically weaker than in most actual myths and legends. What do you think of when you think of myth and legend?

Quote from: jibbajibba;537382Only if you choose it to do that.

If I have I don't know spent 15 ranks in Stealth and I am a ranger and I am 15th level am I still worse than a 1st level thief?

If I make a stealth role to move 'quietly' how do you differentiate than in play from a thief moving 'silently' ?
You end up with 2 effects competing for the same design space

For the ranger I suppose it depend on what was opposing his stealth roll vs what chances the thief has to move silently.

If that ranger is sneaking past a guard with the perception of a turnip then he may well have a better chance than the thief. Despite being only 1st level though, if that thief makes the move silently check then he isn't noticed even by a guard with dog-level hearing because he doesn't make any noise.


Its like the old days with boots of elvenkind-they just work.

Quote from: jibbajibba;537398Well he might point out invisibility lasts for hours and hours ......
But a fairpoint and it works until they are about 6th level. Then the Wizard just uses Clairvoyance/clairaudience and we can all stay at home

Oh and you don't disarm traps you use unseen servant to trigger them. Since it has both a physical presence, last for hours and it can't be harmed its the perfect trap detector and its only 1st level.

Well, the point still stands (and besides, triggering traps often destroys whatever was in the box).  The mage might be able to replicate a lot of rogue skills, but only for a very limited amount of time, and you better hope to god nothing goes wrong.  Besides of which, if a mage came to my table as a player and I found out all his spells he memorized were to replicate the thief, he'd be kicked aside because he'd be absolutely worthless in combat and other areas.

That's a really, really stupid position to take.

I played a mage in a 3e game a couple years ago. I had ZERO combat spells. I boosted the fighters strength (which raised his damage), used wizard eye, clairvoyance and unseen servant, and basically made every dungeon easy to complete. The other players loved me, and the DM was frustrated, as I turned many of his "hard" encounters into easily winnable situations.

Quote from: Acta Est Fabula;537403Well, the point still stands (and besides, triggering traps often destroys whatever was in the box).  The mage might be able to replicate a lot of rogue skills, but only for a very limited amount of time, and you better hope to god nothing goes wrong.  Besides of which, if a mage came to my table as a player and I found out all his spells he memorized were to replicate the thief, he'd be kicked aside because he'd be absolutely worthless in combat and other areas.

Well possibly if the trap is on a box and not on a corridor or a door or a gate or a whatever.

And if a Mage came to my table with a load of Rogue replicating skills then we would have a great time playing the two off each other. We don't kick people aside because their PC design choices not mesh with the over all Team Tactics
But its always funny at high level when the thief tries to sneak and the mage suggests we just use mass invisibilty instead, or just teleport in using the clairvoyance spell to guide us.
By the time you get to about 9th level the wizard has access to close to 40 spells every day so he can do just about everything.

I should stress that rogues are my favourite character class by a long margin because they create so myuch room for role playing.

Quote from: Acta Est Fabula;537392I disagree.

Thief:  "If you're so bad, open that lock."
Mage: "Ah-ha!  I'll show you.  abracadabra!  There, it's open."
Thief: "Now do it again."
Mage: "um...I can't.  used that spell already."
Thief: "How about disarming that trap?"
Mage: "Sorry. Can't do it."
Thief: "how about sneaking into that area and spying on the chief?"
Mage: "Ha!  I totally can do that with silence and invisibility."
Thief:  "How long do those last again?  We need you to be hidden for about an hour."
Mage: "Um.."
Thief: "Ok, let's say you snuck in and opened the lock to get the map.  You're discovered and must fight, what do you do?"
Mage: "well, I would cast melfs acid arrow or sleep or something, if I didn't use my spells on knock and invisibility."
Thief: "So you bleed and die?"
Mage: ...

Mage: Charm Person -> thief... go do all that stuff for me!
Thief: Yes master!

Quote from: jibbajibba;537408And if a Mage came to my table with a load of Rogue replicating skills then we would have a great time playing the two off each other. We don't kick people aside because their PC design choices not mesh with the over all Team Tactics .

Let me clarify.  If a player showed up like that, they wouldn't automatically get kicked to the curb, but if there was already a thief in the party and a player memorized all those spells, there would be problems.  Mainly from everyone else saying, "We need you to act as artillery and crowd control.  We need you to identify items we can't.  Those are things we need you to do, and if you insist on just trying to be the thief, you should have played a thief because we already have one and don't need another one.  What we need is what we mentioned."

Not to mention, the vast majority of time spent playing (especially in 1e) was from level 1-7 or so, and spells were at a premium, and using up all those spell slots to do what the thief could do was a waste in most people's eyes.  Luckily, I've never had a player play a MU with the purpose of replacing the thief.

Quote from: Sigmund;537413Mage: Charm Person -> thief... go do all that stuff for me!
Thief: Yes master!

Yeah, that's a great way to keep players playing together.

Quote from: Sean !;537316It's easier and I understang what you mean about identikits but giving thieves twice the skills reinforces Fighters as less skilled than Rogues whereas I would prefer Fighters to be just as many skills - just not able to put off Rogue-ish stuff as well as Rogues.

Quote from: jibbajibba;537322But fighters get a slew of stuff they can do outside the skill space. Combat moves, specialisation etc etc .
Thieves only get their skill stuff.

Look at it practically. From 1e the thief at 1st level has 6 skills 4 if you compress them. Stealth (Hide in shadows/Move Silently), Pick Pockets, climb walls, Mechanics (Open Lock/Remove Traps). That really defines the class.
They have 2 Feats, Thieves Cant and Backstab.
They have horrible to hit tables and d6 hit dice and are restricted to Leather armour.

A fighter can already fight far better than a thief. If you give them 6 skills as well I think it unbalances the game and erodes the thief niche. Even if you say 'thief skills cost a fighter double' you get into issues with barbarian and ranger sub fighters.
A ranger should be able to move silently as well as a thief, a barbarian should be able to climb walls as well. etc etc ...

So the easiest was , remembering KISS, is to give the thief more skill points and let them spend them as they wilt. The majority of thieves will spread them across all their required skills so the ranger who spends skill on "stealth" will be just as good as most thieves who need to buy all their class skills.

In my heartbreaker I have gone a step futher and the GM builds templates under the 3 classes. These templates have access to differrent skill lists so the Ranger and Barbarian figther archetypes have access to a wilderness skill list that includes 'stealth' as a skill. The same stealth skill appears on other skill lists as well.  Now in my game the rogue bosses the 1/3 of the design base I term Skills (the warrior bosses combat and the Wizard bosses Magic) so they get access to more skills.
This seemed like the simplest design choice. Though I can accept that some players don't like a PC to have more than a handful of skills.

Catching up with this I agree with Sean! If a rogue's main ability is that they get lots of skills, then next design step is to go "no no no! these other classes don't get skills, that would be treading on the rogues' toes!". You do end up with the 3E fighter all over again - remember how they got all of three skills, which were basically going to cost you double if its anything other that Jump, Intimidate, Climb, or Ride? If you want to take some skills to support your character concept of being a peasant with Profession: Farmer who was conscripted into the war (sorry, cross-class skill), it would be multiclassing time. And that was the other problem, that people would be making fighter/rogues not to sneak or do anything particularly rogue related but so they could pump up some other skill (the point John Morrow brought up).

Skills that let other characters do fairly minor rogue  stuff is one solution, but not the only one. I'd be fine with making characters multiclass if they want extra Rogue abilities
Also, as far as making types of rogues go, they could always have some choice as to which class features they pick up.

Quote from: Halloween Jack;537400D&D thieves and fighters are typically weaker than in most actual myths and legends. What do you think of when you think of myth and legend?

Given than a OD&D Fighting Man is a Veteran at 1st level, a Hero and as such, acquires the fighting capability of four men at 4th level, and becomes a Superhero (not to mix up with the spandex supers) at 8th level with a fighting capability of eight men, I tend to disagree. The logic is the same in AD&D, where the 1st level Fighter in AD&D is a Veteran already, becomes a Hero at 4th, Superhero at 8th, compared to a world of 0-level combatants as the baseline of normality in the campaign. That's the problem with you people throwing around this kind of stuff: you're spewing total bullshit without relating it to any particular context, and when you do, you in fact have no fucking idea what it is you are talking about.

The "M.U makes the Thief redundant" argument has always been bullshit.

The spells that M.Us get that replicate thief abilities (or those of any other class really) are there to fill a gap in the party's ranks, not as competition, should you have a full compliment of classes.

Does a thief render M.Us redundant if they gain the ability to read scrolls?

Quote from: jibbajibba;537297x-posting for relevance from the D&D Next thread

Thanks for bringing this over.  It's more appropriate here.

To restore my links, parkour's Wikipedia page is here and the YouTube video I gave as an example of cool yet not superheroic parkour is here.

Quote from: jibbajibba;537297I don't think that makes sense.
Just to do their job Rogues needs additional skills
Hide in Shadows, move silently, pick locks, pick pocketc, etc etc ... A fighter with no skills can still do his job, ie hit stuff, and a wizard can do his job, cast spells. The Rogue is in effect a collection of their skills.

As someone who has played far more skill-based role-playing games than class-based role-playing games, I would argue that you are ignoring the fact that a fighter's combat abilities could also be considered skills, as can a wizard's casting ability.  All characters are a "collection of skills".  You have no problem with combat abilities of a fighter or the casting ability of a wizard being handled by a non-skill subsystem, but you insist that a thief's distinctive abilities be skills, which also implies that anyone could learn them.  The solution to keeping the Rogue's abilities distinctly Rogue abilities is to make them special class abilities rather than simply skills that anyone could learn if you didn't artificially starve them of enough skill points to be as good at it.

Later on, you argue that a 1e thief has essentially 4 skills.  Two of those skills are movement abilities of the sort I was talking about -- Stealth (the ability to move without detection) and Climb Walls (the ability to move up or across vertical surfaces).  The other two are not necessarily something every Rogue needs.

I'm going to back up a bit and repeat your last couple of sentences because they also link in with the next part of my reply.

Quote from: jibbajibba;537297A fighter with no skills can still do his job, ie hit stuff, and a wizard can do his job, cast spells. The Rogue is in effect a collection of their skills.

Also the rogue you outline is just one sort of rogue I want to have access to a myriad of rogues archetypes, from the deft acrobat to the fat greasy fence to the glib con man. Narrowing the class to just be uber competant at one aspect is something players can do for an individual PC but not something you do for the entire class.

Here, I'm also going to pull in one of your replies from the other thread where you list some more of your archetypes:

Quote from: jibbajibba;537284Again just one rogue archetype.

Sinbad, Aladin, Nift the Lean, The Grey Mouser, Locke Lamora, Cardinal Chang, Bilbo, Robin Hood, Dick Turpin, Silk, Jack of Shadows, Captain Jack Sparrow, The Scarlet Pimpernel, the list is endless and varied.

On the one hand, you complain about rogues being confined as a single narrow archetype out of many and then you turn around and confine fighters and wizards to single narrow archetypes, assuming that as long as they can hit things in combat or cast some spells, that's good enough and they don't need to do anything else.  I think that's nonsense.  What if I want to play a warrior scholar?  How about an investigative wizard?  How about a charismatic preacher cleric?  Without skills, I can't do that very well, so does it make sense that I'd need to dual class with Rogue to make those concepts work?  Or does everyone else have to one dimensional out of combat to carve out a niche for Rogues?

And not to put to much of a point on it but I would argue that several of your iconic Rogues look more like fighters to me, not Rogues.  By such an expansive standard, I would argue that the Three Musketeers would also be Rogues.  As for Bilbo, his "skill" is basically a magic ring.  He's about as much of a Rogue as any other random D&D peasant.

As for supporting the "fat greasy fence", I think that archetype is about as relevant to the typical D&D game as Friar Tuck would be as a Cleric archetype or David Copperfield would be as a Wizard archetype.  Nobody is taking a fat greasy fence into a dungeon.  In D&D 3.x terms, I'd represent the fat greasy fence maybe as an Expert, not a Rogue.  And if that's not convincing enough, I could provide you with dozens of potential Fighter, Cleric, and Wizard archetypes that your "they don't need skills" approach would also not support.

Quote from: John Morrow;537534Thanks for bringing this over.  It's more appropriate here.

To restore my links, parkour's Wikipedia page is here and the YouTube video I gave as an example of cool yet not superheroic parkour is here.



As someone who has played far more skill-based role-playing games than class-based role-playing games, I would argue that you are ignoring the fact that a fighter's combat abilities could also be considered skills, as can a wizard's casting ability.  All characters are a "collection of skills".  You have no problem with combat abilities of a fighter or the casting ability of a wizard being handled by a non-skill subsystem, but you insist that a thief's distinctive abilities be skills, which also implies that anyone could learn them.  The solution to keeping the Rogue's abilities distinctly Rogue abilities is to make them special class abilities rather than simply skills that anyone could learn if you didn't artificially starve them of enough skill points to be as good at it.

Later on, you argue that a 1e thief has essentially 4 skills.  Two of those skills are movement abilities of the sort I was talking about -- Stealth (the ability to move without detection) and Climb Walls (the ability to move up or across vertical surfaces).  The other two are not necessarily something every Rogue needs.

I'm going to back up a bit and repeat your last couple of sentences because they also link in with the next part of my reply.



Here, I'm also going to pull in one of your replies from the other thread where you list some more of your archetypes:



On the one hand, you complain about rogues being confined as a single narrow archetype out of many and then you turn around and confine fighters and wizards to single narrow archetypes, assuming that as long as they can hit things in combat or cast some spells, that's good enough and they don't need to do anything else.  I think that's nonsense.  What if I want to play a warrior scholar?  How about an investigative wizard?  How about a charismatic preacher cleric?  Without skills, I can't do that very well, so does it make sense that I'd need to dual class with Rogue to make those concepts work?  Or does everyone else have to one dimensional out of combat to carve out a niche for Rogues?

And not to put to much of a point on it but I would argue that several of your iconic Rogues look more like fighters to me, not Rogues.  By such an expansive standard, I would argue that the Three Musketeers would also be Rogues.  As for Bilbo, his "skill" is basically a magic ring.  He's about as much of a Rogue as any other random D&D peasant.

As for supporting the "fat greasy fence", I think that archetype is about as relevant to the typical D&D game as Friar Tuck would be as a Cleric archetype or David Copperfield would be as a Wizard archetype.  Nobody is taking a fat greasy fence into a dungeon.  In D&D 3.x terms, I'd represent the fat greasy fence maybe as an Expert, not a Rogue.  And if that's not convincing enough, I could provide you with dozens of potential Fighter, Cleric, and Wizard archetypes that your "they don't need skills" approach would also not support.

Okay a few points I will try to tackle them in order.

I agree that fighter's abilities could be classes as skills and so could the wizards. However, I think from a D&D paradigm that is going a step too far. I think one of the main faults of 4e was they ignored the differences between classes and it all became a wash. So I think combat is separate enough for it to merit its own methodology and I think Magic also is.

However, I think a thief rolling to pick locks is a skill check. You can dress it up you can claim its a core competancy but you can't deny its a skill check. If you highlight it as different then you have to do the same with skills innate to each class, ranger's tracking, bardic lore etc ... In a world of class propagation and D&D is always prey to that, every magical smith class, animal trainer class, dwarven miner class would have a separate subsystem for their specialist class skill. To me that is a bit daft.
I don't want rule bloat for its own sake and I don;t want to be hemmed in by the tyrany of the unique. My real reason for that is that I want to give the DM the toolkit to create their own sub classes and if every class has unique mechanics I can't do that.
I don't think you need to reduce fighters skills or a wizards. I think you need to give the Rogue more. So say a 1st level D&D figther gets 3 skill and they have a wilderness warrior template. they can pick tracking, survival, stealth, or riding, climbing and animal handling, or etc etc .... the first level rogue has 8 skills but they must pick 5 from the Rogue class of skills. they might have a wilderness scout template and pick the other three from the same wilderness list as the figther did. I haven't nerfed the figther I have just given the rogue more skills.

Okay I argued that a 1eAD&D thief had essentially 4 skills. Really 6. I was just demonstrating the stuff that makes them a rogue was all skill based. Now I would definitely expand that list for a new game. Forgery, Bribery, disguise, Informtaion Gathering (if you want to keep that type of skill personally I would drop it), Cytpography, Appraisal, should all be on that rogue skill list and te rogue shuld be able to spend their skills points in that rogue space as they see fit.

Now I think your rogue example is a narrow niche. The Dungeon Scout rogue if you will.  I don't think all rogues should be restricted to that narrow niche I want to play all the rogues I listed. I agree you could play a swashbuckler rogue like a musketeer, excellent idea. And Bilbo is a first level rogue surely? If we make him a PC at all.
I have played fat greasy fence characters, not in dugeons but in City adventures. High appraisal, excellent pick locks and forgery.

I would not allow multiclassing at all. I would allow classes to cross buy skills at a high cost. I think Multi-classing represents the very worst of min-max optimisation. However I can conceed that some players want to be able to optimise and min-max so an all inclusive D&D has to allow it.

Now I want a skill system I want Wizards and fighters to have skills as well. But the design ask was how can you play rogues with skills that define their class but not use skills in the wider system. I tried to cover that although I think that is limiting. I want my fighter Barbarian template/theme to have wilderness skills, I want my figther swashbuckler theme to have acrobatics, I want my Battlemage to have skills with artilery. However, I can see that for a OS feel a group of players might want not to have those skills and want they to be assumed in some way, like secondary professions. However, even a tough OS crew wouldn't deny the thief a check to move silently or hide in shadows would they?


These are all issues I have been struggling with in my heartbreaker. Trying to allow flexibility without rule bloat, keeping the base design simple but encouraging customisation. Allowing a fighter pirate or a rogue pirate each with a similar flavour but enough meaningful difference. Trying to see where magic fits into the design space and how much magic non wizard classes should have access to. Then trying to apply those base constructs to some of the iconic fantasy characters. I think I have something moreorless workable. If I ever get it written up I will share it although I expect little interest in the final result.

Quote from: Benoist;537525Given than a OD&D Fighting Man is a Veteran at 1st level, a Hero and as such, acquires the fighting capability of four men at 4th level, and becomes a Superhero (not to mix up with the spandex supers) at 8th level with a fighting capability of eight men, I tend to disagree. The logic is the same in AD&D, where the 1st level Fighter in AD&D is a Veteran already, becomes a Hero at 4th, Superhero at 8th, compared to a world of 0-level combatants as the baseline of normality in the campaign. That's the problem with you people throwing around this kind of stuff: you're spewing total bullshit without relating it to any particular context, and when you do, you in fact have no fucking idea what it is you are talking about.

I think he means that Achilles could not be damaged by physical blows, that Orpheus could use his music to charm Cerberus himself, that Galahad was immune to any form of corruption and could beat any man in battle, that Cuchulain  would never die unless he ate dogmeat, that Beowulf coudl beat a sea serpent in the sea armed only with a knife. You know myths and legends.

I think the idea when you reach 20th level or whatever is that you are becoming close to mythic figures. Mythic figures can do more than fight a dozen guards at once. They can fight unyielding for 4 days and nights, they can slip through walls, they can stand on a willow branch and leap 30 feet walls, they can wrestle with giants and beat antelopes in a foot race.
I hasten to add that that sort of Immortal Play is not for me but I think that is what WotC are alluding to.

Basically the discussion between John and Jibba highlights the problem with a pure class system, or a class system that attempts to add in a robust skill system.  On the one end, you have archetypes with mostly class powers, which leads to class bloat (why was the Barbarian created?  because the AD&D Fighter can't do Conan - and don't try to tell me it can, you're wrong ), or you have a skill system with some class powers, and the distinction between classes is minimized (which isn't too much of an issue for me, niche protection is childish specialsauce).

Rolemaster did the best I think at providing a robust and diverse skill system while still having effective differences between classes due to varying costs for those skills.