I'm pretty sure I've been clear on my feelings concerning the Thief as a class. In case I haven't, I'll sum them up: I hate it. Not for itself, it's nothing personal. I hate it for what it represents. It represents the beginning of the end of the "any character can try anything" mentality of old-school style play.
Guess what? Through a comment on the latest post at Tenkar's Tavern, I saw
this post at B/X Blackrazor. The sheer awesomeness of this is off the chart. It solves two huge problems I have with the thief:
- It keeps low-level thieves from sucking so loudly. It really is insane that a class that is devoted to doing Thiefly
Shit™ should suck so horribly at it.
- Since thieves auto-succeed at mundane Thiefly
Shit™ it makes it easier to allow non-thieves to attempt "thief actions" in mundane circumstances.
For me, the thief has gotten to the point that whenever I look at a new RPG that has any relationship to D&D, the first thing I do is check for a thief class. If it's there, I then start to consider the effects of exorcising it from the available classes. This one simple blog post may have saved the thief for me.
WOW!
Glad I could be of assistance!
ReplyDeleteYou might also want to check out this link if you have not seen it already:
http://web.fisher.cx/robert/infogami/On_thief_skills_in_classic_D&D
Yes, indeed. A thousand thanks, kind sir. I just don't have time to read all the blogs I would like to, and I definitely missed the B/X Blackrazor post. This one I've seen. I liked it, as far as someone else's house rule, but not for my house rules. I do appreciate the pointer to it, though.
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