I'm re-discovering my love for my Rules Cyclopedia version of BECMI - this is clearly the tightest and most functional edition of 'core' D&D, and would be my hands down favorite if it had better art.

That said, I am at a loss as to how anyone could play a thief in this edition without going crazy waiting to get a skill or two up to a useful percentage. For the first ~5 levels of experience, thieves have incredibly low chances to succeed at core activities, and there is no mechanism for jacking up the odds to some reasonable level (i.e., no racial or attribute based bonuses, as in 1E AD&D). They are basically useless characters unless you do something to up their abilities.

I'm struck with the idea of treating thief skills as just like any other skill in the BECMI skill system. It would be in keeping with the basic structure of the game, at least. But that would radically increase the odds of success and mostly divorce chances of success from level advancement, which seems bad.

How do the rest of you deal with this?

I think that it is a great idea.  This will allow you to also modify the rolls based upon circumstance, difficulty, gear, and etc.

I'd adopt a thief skill system that better suits you from one of several compatible retro-games. LotFP uses 1d6 and loses granularity but leads to quicker growth. AS&SH's is 1d12-based, which actually strikes me as a neat compromise. ACKS uses the ever-popular 1d20 roll-high.

One of the methods I've seen lately is the use of the B/X Thief skills progression table used with a higher Level Progression. The Level progression goes to 20+ but the Thief skills cap out at L14.

The problem with RC Thief was the fact they were trying to spread the skill progression over 36 levels which just broke the Thief completely IMHO. By using the B/X progression, the Thief is still viable at lower levels, and they will cap their Thief skills at 14 instead of actual Level cap.

I like my house rules to be pretty minimalist, as I feel like most totally novel mechanics end up being at least as broken as what they were meant to fix.

So, I was thinking of treating Thief skills a special set of skills, where instead of having your success chance equal your stat on a d20, it equals half your stat (round properly) plus your level, with suggested modifiers that more or less equal what we might today call the level of the challenge (e.g., a trap in a '5th level dungeon' might be -5 to spot or remove).

What I like about this idea is that it is rooted in the skill system you already use for every character in BCEMI, but allows for level progression and starting chances that are more or less in the range of chances for fighter attacks, etc.

The only thing that would require a serious tweak is how you resolve climbing; i.e., if your chance to succeed at a climb is ~50 %, the penalty for one failure shouldn't be instant death. Maybe the penalty for a first failure is just that you give up or can't make more progress unless you make a second risky effort, where that second effort leads to a fall if it fails. Or something like that.

My take is to jettison the self justifying bitches and make thief a background option.

Quote from: YourSwordisMine;745970The problem with RC Thief was the fact they were trying to spread the skill progression over 36 levels which just broke the Thief completely IMHO. By using the B/X progression, the Thief is still viable at lower levels, and they will cap their Thief skills at 14 instead of actual Level cap.

Agreed. Just using the B/X progression is the easiest fix. It's also important to keep in mind what Thief skills are, and aren't. For example, Move Silently isn't your chance of quietly getting close to someone (that would be a Surprise roll), it's the chance of being completely silent. Similarly, a Climb Walls check isn't for climbing a tree, rope, or sloped rock face, it's for climbing sheer surfaces. Open Locks is for when you don't want to bash through a door, or smash open a chest. Find Traps is for the stuff you didn't or can't find through player interaction, making it like an extra saving throw. Keeping this in perspective helps ameliorate the pressure on the Thief who is probably only going to make ~20% of their low-level checks. You can also grant bonuses to the chances for some tasks that are particularly easy, but still within the purview of only the Thief.

The other thing that helps a low-level Thief is avoiding catastrophic consequences for routine checks. For some checks this is unavoidable (e.g. Climb Walls), and others have specific stipulations (e.g. Pick Pockets and the victim's level/chance to notice), but not every failed check should end in disaster (e.g. failing Find Traps doesn't trigger the trap). Also try to avoid stacking multiple checks into a single operation just because; the worst offender for this, in my experience, is Move Silently and Hide in Shadows to surprise or Backstab someone, leaving a 1st level Thief a 2% total chance of success. That's just bad DMing, as most circumstances aren't going to require both (or possibly either; for example, a previously hidden Thief attacking from the rear against an opponent engaged with the rest of the party).

The last important piece of the puzzle is making sure the Thief player understands the capabilities and limitations of their character. Trying to Hide in Shadows to surprise and Backstab an Ogre when scouting alone is a foolish proposition. Climbing a 40' wall is risking certain death. Choose options that have reasonable chances for success and consequences for failure that you can live with. And, above all, get support from the rest of the party.

Keeping the points above in mind, you can actually play a BECMI Thief RAW. It's hard, certainly, but quite doable. I still get the desire to "fix" the Skill percentages, and B/X is the most straightforward way of doing so.

I've heard that Frank Mentzer is currently working on revising the thief's skill progression.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;745979My take is to jettison the self justifying bitches and make thief a background option.

What is this supposed to mean?

Quote from: Larsdangly;745998What is this supposed to mean?

It means that the class only exists if you tell the other classes that only thieves can do thief stuff.  The thief was the unfortunate beginning of the character sheet defines all mentality.

Bobblah summed things up fairly well. The core activities of the thief were available to the other classes to a great extent. Once these were codified and assigned probabilities, a large portion of the player base interpreted that as a transfer of those abilities to the thief instead of the thief having a bit of an edge in those areas-which IMHO isn't enough to base an entire class around.

Only by denying the other classes of those abilities does the thief class have a place at the table, thus it is a self justifying class.

That's fine, but there actually aren't any rules to speak of that cover what the thief does, other than the rules for the thief class. There is a surprise die roll, but that isn't really the same thing as a move silent attempt. There are no climbing rules. There are generic saves vs. traps but no spot or remove trap rolls that are explained outside of the thief class. So, while I agree that any character should be able to attempt anything they want, the game is actually mute on most of these points. You can make it all up by house rules, but that is sort of a stupid point — you could say the same thing about any subject you wish.

Quote from: Larsdangly;746011That's fine, but there actually aren't any rules to speak of that cover what the thief does, other than the rules for the thief class. There is a surprise die roll, but that isn't really the same thing as a move silent attempt. There are no climbing rules. There are generic saves vs. traps but no spot or remove trap rolls that are explained outside of the thief class. So, while I agree that any character should be able to attempt anything they want, the game is actually mute on most of these points. You can make it all up by house rules, but that is sort of a stupid point — you could say the same thing about any subject you wish.

This is a wordier way to say "anything not expressly forbidden is permitted", which was the standard for the game as originally published.

+ Dexterity?

The axiom that anything not forbidden is permitted is a fine philosophical stance, and I value that D&D grognards hold onto this idea, but it is not a useful quotation to throw around when thinking about the way the game actually works. It basically says that you are allowed to tip toe or climb a wall or whatever, regardless of your class. But HOW are you supposed to resolve these things? The game says nothing. Of course you can make it up; I can make up anything I want any time I choose. But that is a crappy rationalization for bad game design. You could say the same thing about attack rolls and saves vs. death rays and so forth, and the game provides plenty of rules for those. Basically, the original designers of D&D kind of shit the bed when it comes to core rules for things other than fighting - even very simple things that come up all the time - and for whatever reason they never went back and tidied it up when the opportunity presented itself. Compare the way Basic D&D was evolving ca. 1978-80 to what Chaosium was presenting in its games. Runequest gives you a simple mechanic in a few easy pages that covers all this stuff. It would have been so easy to do right!

I think perhaps that if you don't actively enjoy making up things for the parts where the rules are silent.....then maybe you're trying to crawl into bed with the wrong game.


You mention something along the lines of "thinking about the way the game actually works".  The way the game actually works is "enjoy making up stuff for where the rules are silent".

You either like doing that or you don't.  If you don't, don't torture yourself.  Find a more fitting game.