How Thieves work in OSR D&D
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- čas přidán 19. 06. 2022
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Ah, finally... somebody who understands how "perception" worked under the old system without non-weapon skills! It is all in the surprise roll. Well done and thank you for the time and effort spent on this!
This is really excellent. Looking forward to more!
I wonder if this video showed up in my feed because you commented? Love your channel!
Thanks, much appreciated. Love your channel!
Questing Beast!
One thing that has been missed here is that all the classes gained XP at different rates, and required different amounts of XP to level up - thieves being the lowest - this was abandoned with 3e when they tried to make a universal levelling system.
Many players today do not understand that when old adventures said "characters level 4-7 or thereabouts" this was not just a case of saying every player should be level 4 (or level 7) but that your Wizard or Cleric might be level 4, your fighter level 5, but your thief level 7. Old school effectively encouraged that mismatch of levels but this is routinely forgotten about - and many old school DM's seemed to perpetuate the forced equivalence even before 3e codified it - hamstringing Thieves.
If adventures had instead said "for characters of XP 25,000 to 50,000" it would have been more readily understood - but very confusing to the casual.
If you really think about it, its alot easier to scale the power of certain archtypes like a knight or cleric given they have historical hierarchys that both can climb, emboldening there status and power, which you cant really do for the archtype of a thief seeing as they lack similar hierarchys
This quite a young channel but it seems to already have the air of some rather well done critical thinking. I adore it, and I hope to see more
Something that came up in a conversation I had with Bruce Heard (the RC's Project Coordinator) regarding thief skills: they are *absolute*. If a thief succeeds on a Move Silently check, he is *completely* silent, and no one can hear him. If he succeeds on a Hide in Shadows check, he is effectively invisible. That's why there aren't modifiers for any opposition -- if a 1st-level thief rolls lucky on sneaking, even a 36th-level master thief can't hear him.
I like dat.
so? most of the time being hidden from whatever monster or guard youre sneaking past is just as good as being "effectively invisible"
@@trollge3712 this is important, because - as shown in the video - you don't require Thief skills to, in certain circumstances, remain undetected. But, you need to be a Thief and successfully roll, in order to hide in a dark corner, even if there's no cover, or to move silently to a degree it's impossible to hear you.
@@trollge3712 The DM can judge what the enemy guards do. She can randomize that yes, the guard will look into a barrel. If an elf butler decides to check a barrel and there's a dwarf inside, they just spot a silly-looking dwarf. But a thief can pull off feats like Hiding in Shadows on the bottom of a dang barrel and looking like a shade.
Guards also make their own Listen checks if the player characters are moving about quietly after failing to Move Silently. They have the same chance as any non-thief, but they can get lucky and hear that some bums are up to funny business. It's not actually a great chance, if sir Bob the fighter moves carefully he has a decent chance to do so. But enough decent chances and one will fail eventually.
This is really good. Feels like modern versions of D&D have leaned harder into bombast and spectacle, and subtle nuances like this are increasingly being lost.
Is that really a surprise though?
Most people are not nerds, maths and nuances take away from the game for most people.
To be successful one must often round down to the lowest common denominator.
One thing which I miss is the extent to which older systems relied on "common sense."
Simple rulings like how characters couldn't just "Roll hide" while standing out in the open, or how they wouldn't need to roll anything if the enemies never got line of sight on them.
It encourages players to be more mindful of the environment and basic equipment instead of their character abilities. It's not so much about having a "good stealth skill," since poor choices prevents a character from even being able to use that good skill in the first place.
@@cogsworther1639 100% this. I had players treat table top as a video game where they can pick things up instantly like a video game, attempt the same persuasion check over and over again or just try and crouch anywhere and walk up to somebody without being noticed despite being in an empty brightly lit hallway with guards on either side. When I ran a game those same people tried that on me asked questions such as "how or where are you hiding in this open space" or "The merchant already distrusts you after your first failed attempt to swindle him as well as being an outsider and refuses to buy anything from you" and the players would become visibly upset or insist on being able to roll or get away with their action anyway.
They always rely on just rolling or whatever magic they happen to have on hand but never their own gear or team work. Unless that team work is just using the "help" action outside of combat without explaining how they are helping or even if the two characters share the same skill or would even be able to co-operate such as a wizard doing research and a paladin who hates arcane magic working on arcane checks...
@@bigblue344 Yeah, from my experience lots of people complain about the older systems being punishing. However, I think that it's just a different approach. While the stereotype of the "evil GM" who kills characters by the bushel is a common in-joke, these old-school rules can actually be more forgiving than the newer rules.
As best as I can tell, it's possible to bypass a lot of challenges in old-school systems without ever touching dice. "Common sense," could be used both for and against the players. A cunning approach could trivialize what would otherwise be a meat-grinder.
I wouldn't call this system subtle or nuanced. It's got things that only thieves can do alongside things that everyone can do, like climbing and having a sense of hearing. And the way thieves hear is different from the way everyone hears and involves incompatible different-sized dice.
I played AD&D first ed many years ago, and the distinction between *move silently* and *hide in shadows* was well understood. It made a ring of invisibility the Holy Grail of any player with a thief.
I started with 2nd ed, improved invisibility but the same mostly
I started with 1st edition and the thief was well understood. I also understand English and the words alone, without 1ed should tell one the differences. If I would have not watched this I would not have known there was confusion.
Thanks
If only 3e stated that you had to stay still in order to use hide, there wouldn't have been so much confusion about the two skills. I never thought of it this way.
It never bothered my group so much, but then again I'm currently in my mid 40s & my group was my old man & his friends who were all kind enough to include an obnoxious kid in their playing, & they started playing with original 1st edition. So, this was exactly how they ran it & when 3rd came out they really didn't shift the play style much.
@@mikeycrabtree123 I started with 3e, and while I had prior knowledge of AD&D from extensive hours of Baldurs Gate II, it never made sense to me how the two were split up, I only ever thought of it as a sort of nerf of the overabundance of rogue skills, splitting the them in two separate skills meant you HAD to invest in both skills to be efficent at it and the DMG didn't really help make sense of it either. We ended up grouping both skills (and both perception skills as well) way before Pathfinder was released. And now every modern system seems to do this.
isnt there a -20 when trying to use this skill whilst moving?
@@Bandanko -20 is when you attack, -5 if you move at full speed, and no malus if you move at half-speed.
Call of Cthulhu/BRP also had two stealth skills. Hiding and sneaking, where the second is limited by the former. BRP sometimes had skills where skill x can never be greater than skill y.
They also had specific skills for using disguises, or for hiding stuff on your person. All these skills were rolled like skill contests, cross-reference your hiding skill with the detection skill of the enemy on a chart and get a percentage.
You could play a thief or an NSA bag man in Call of Cthulhu, sometimes people didn't expect Lupin III to come along to fight deep ones. Mean mythos monsters can't fight you if they can't see you.
You're the man. Simple and to the point, that's all people are looking for when they seek clarity lol.
Wow, this is the first explanation that has made any sense in terms of how the original manual portrays these mechanics. I hope you make more content on how this system is run.
Very good explanation of how thief skills work. Thank you. Love your videos on OSR D&D.
So clear, ran bx with some 5e friends and these questions all came up - glad I’ve got this video to reference now!
Nice clarification on those old rules, the examples really helped! I try to adapt the intentions of older games into the new, especially when it comes to players describing their actions rather then just "I do the thing".
It would have been nice if you were my DM back in 2nd edition. I usually played the Thief class and felt I got screwed over constantly.
For Climb Walls, everyone else just had to make either a Strength or Agility test. The Thief HAD to use Climb Walls. Pick Pockets was something a Thief did for their tavern drinks money, since the skill was useless on anyone with the coin worth stealing. Open Locks was used to save spell slots for the Mage. Find/Disarm Traps was also a spell slot saver as well as a hit point saver, though; usually just for the hit points of the thief. Hear Noise again was a standard Intelligence/Wisdom check (dependent on the DM) for non-Thief characters, and Import ant to note that most groups I played in were the 4d6 drop lowest, arrange as liked. So 18 Int Mages and 18 Wis Clerics were common.
Hide in Shadows and Move Silently were especially brutalized. I could count the number of times on 1 hand I was allowed the change to actually hide. Usually, the DM would say there are no shadows, or it's too dark so infra/ultravision kicks in, so hiding is impossible even the rare instants an ambush or escape was even allowed. On the other side, it was never just a move silently roll. All the DMs I encountered overvalued the sense of sight on everything. So they'd require both a Move Silently to start to sneak to not be heard, and then a Hide in Shadows not to be seen. And the particularly sadistic ones would still give every monster an 'Awarness' check comparing what would be the % of a d20 roll to the Thief's actual % roll. Needless to say, it was near impossible to sneak pass anything, and truly impossible it the monsters possessed something like better than human sense of smell.
And to this day, I don't know what the hang-up about backstab was. It usually took 3 times as long to setup, worked on a very narrow ranged of targets (i.e. didn't even work on giants) and most DMs wouldn't allow for anything more than knives, daggers and maybe short swords as the weapon. Meaning even under the best of circumstances, a backstab did less than an equivalent level Fighter's round of damage.
Basically, Thieves were in the party to soak non-combat damage and help save spellcaster spell slots. It's so weird to me to see what the Thief/Rogue as turned into over the decades.
I try to be generous with backstab. A lot of surprise attacks where you can reach the target with a short dash can be interpreted as a backstab. Standing behind a door and jumping a target when they pass is an automatic chance at a backstab, rolling Move Silent when you're not moving and Hide in Shadows when you have a door would be silly. Jumping down from the rafters or some other prepared position at a target is a backstab if they didn't think to look up and see you. Sometimes thieves can try to extract themselves from combat, come up at another angle and make a second backstab if they have something to conceal themselves with. The "setup" to backstab someone is rarely more than one turn and one roll, sometimes none. The only thing you always need is the attack roll to hit. Backstabbing let you take down sentries and people with a d4 HD fast when they didn't expect someone to be able to reach them.
One of my friends even let thieves "backstab" with a ranged weapon when we playtested some rules, like a marksman. My thief would get a powerful crossbow, move to a vantage point and shoot someone. It required some setup but the crossbow let my thief snipe targets inside a group of enemies. We mostly used it to shoot magic-users and others bowmen who stayed out of reach for the heavy lads in plate AC. During a large fight, it was even possible to keep moving and reposition, firing from a new spot every second or third round (with reloading a light crossbow).
lol open locks was a spell saver. And would fail pretty much most of the time anyway lol. so the magic user would still bring the spell with them xD
And yeah, as written, thieves were pretty much useless back in the day. Even in video games inspired by D&D. in final fantasy, dragon quest, bards tale, wizardry, etc. Thieves were pretty much pointless.
now a days they deal massive crit damage in most table top and video games. And are practically invisible. i much prefer the modern thief/rogue
The other sods have no Scale Sheer Surface. They can't do it. Most of the time, thieves will be climbing with a rope like everyone else. Scale Sheer Surfaces is for situations when someone needs to get there first and fasten the rope, or when there's no time to get a rope in place. Then a thief can try to desperately freeclimb-scurry up a dang brick wall away from a guard.
This explanation of OSR rules is a great inspiration for homebrew i write. Thank you!
It's always great to look back at older systems. I never had a chance to play D&D in my youth, so I love going back and learning how the earlier editions worked.
It's hard to find OSR content on CZcams so I'm glad this exists
RIP Gary R Switzer, who called Gygax and told him all about how his gaming group (Dan Wagonner, et al.) had invented a new (4th!) class for D&D. Gygax published it in a supplement call “The Thief Addition.”
^This. One of Daniel Wagner's players was a dwarf with low strength who couldn't bash doors and asked Dan if he could pick the lock with his dagger instead. Switzer told Gygax in a phone call and Gygax wrote his own thief based on Fritz Lieber's the Grey Mouser, a rogue wizardling who used a rapier, daggers, sling and dabbled in magic, hence those weapons and M-U scroll use.
Back when you had to really pay for long distance calls! Lol, thanks, Ilya!
I started out with the original 3 booklets in a box, and have played ever since. VERY WELL DONE explanation. 100%
In systems with only xp for gold, thieves might still have a lower xp requirement than others. It equalizes the levels a lot but a thief is sometimes a level or two above the others.
In AD&D 2e we also found that thieves race ahead. Even when we decided that thieves only gain xp for their personal share, they level faster. Their way to xp was also less risky than a fighter, who has to actually fight and vanquish increasingly threatening enemies. And not as slow as wizards, who needs to use their few spell slots per day or pour time and money into magical projects.
Good follow up after the "worst class" video from DM It All
I do wonder how often thieves made Gygax angry, because there are a lot of factors stacked against them.
I feel this idea applied to a lot of players who didn't like the idea that higher level Thieves were loaded with skills that could short circuit a lot PC classes if used against them and could be highly disruptive. And to be fair, many jerk players often did that with their Thief characters. So, DMs naturally made Thief skills weaker to keep players in line.
@@SaturmornCarvilli tbf, many thief players did that stuff because the class was ass and we want to be able to get away with something. literally anything before the character dies lol
@@sonic-bbI believe in thieves (and other rogue-ish fellows) supremacy
This shows some of the issues behind thief skills. I've also heard that they were expected to just succeed, or have significant bonuses, when performing normal actions. That a thief would just succeed when trying to climb normal surfaces with tools or hide in places where anybody could hide or just move quietly instead of silently. And over time people started assuming that only thieves could do these things since they had skills for them and that they needed to roll every time. Which resulted in the incompetent thief perception.
Yes, one of the big issues is that DM's forced attribute checks too often, and then later with proficiencies (to become skills at 3e) it became very much a crutch to skill wall particular challenges.
AD&D2e added bonuses and modifiers (armour, racial etc) and added skill points to be added at each level which helped break the incompetence factor a little - but it still took a DM to be constructive in their games, to give value to trying to pick pockets etc over fighting every monster.
To that end, AD&D awarded XP specific to classes - i.e. fighters got XP for defeating monsters, where thieves gained it for using thief skills and gaining loot.
some of the main reasons for this is, it's just easier to say the thief succeeded lol. especially if, yesterday, the thief scaled 3 walls. All 3 walls were over 100 feet tall. But today that same thief cant climb a 20 foot wall? so it's just easier to say the thief succeeded. And other members of the party wouldnt even need to try.
The other problem is, a lot of players would shortcut the game. Even video games inspired by d&d or are direct adaptations of D&D modules would shortcut certain things. For example: to get into a castle, the party needs to climb a wall and sneak past assumed guards to open the gate. obviously the thief isnt gonna solo the castle or dungeon. So he has to find a way to get the party in. But youve done this many times already and are tired of acting it out. The DM, and even video games, would just require the PARTY (the thief) succeed a skill check. And as i said before, the thief obviously should succeed cause he climbed a taller wall yesterday. So we just say the party enters the castle through the front gates lol.
And in video games, u just succeed the roll and the whole party gets in. Even tho only the thief probably succeeded.
Well done these explainations are well formed and I will be using them to adjudicate from on out. Thanks and cheers!
I remember play at the table in the 80s where I picked a pocket and failed and had to argue the rules with my best friends older brother (DM) that I shouldnt be cought as it wasnt double... OOH the drama!!! Seperate comment; I really love the d6 for all thief skills per LotFP (and non thief skills too see also Wolves and winter snow). Miseries & Misfortunes uses a more deeloped version of this with increasing die types with incleasing skill. The D20 thief skills are good too (like in Lion and Dragon). Im less a fan of the bell cuve 2d6 resolutions even though its a little more predicdable and nuanced the speed and faux drama the d6 gives is my personal sweet spot.
Wow! Amazing video. This really clears things up. Extremely helpful 😎
Glad it was helpful!
Very clear and illuminating examples. Thanks :)
Excellent, very lucid explanation of "Thieves" abilites
Nicely summarised!
-How thieves work?
-They don't.
An outstanding explanation! Subbed!
Great stuff!
I think the Thief skill rulings are very clear if there's A. No movement by the thief or B. No chance of being seen (no light and no infravision). In case A, it's a simple Hide in Shadows roll. In case B, it's a Move Silently Roll, which, if failed, is followed by a Hear Noise check from the enemies.
Where things get interesting is if the Thief wants to sneak up on enemies that have *some chance* of detecting them by sight or smell or whatever. Say the thief is creeping alone through a stalagmite-ridden cave that's lit dimly by bioluminescence. His foes lack infravision. The normal surprise rules would apply, but I'd be inclined to give the thief some bonus to the standard 2-in-6 chance, due to his greater stealthiness than a typical character. How best to do that though, is left to the Referee
the same holds true for the hide in shadows. if the thief fails, if there is still something obstructing vision to the thief, enemies still have to make a roll to spot the thief.
I am not a big fan of infravision, so I usually let thieves Hide in Shadows from most things they encounter. I prefer the Veins of the Earth approach where no-one has darkvision. They are just as blind in the dark as you are, or use senses like touch and taste and smell.
I spend the whole afternoon trying to understand BX Thief. Finally I do xD
Very good explanation. I feel like once you understand these rules it's actually much simpler and more logical than modern rules.
I got here because I wanted to understand 'Hide in shadows' and instead learned so much about how to play this game in general!
Yeah, the OG thief (& monk) class were very "broken". (in the UNDER-powered sense)
This was mostly due to the fact that they were "slapped on" almost as an unintended "afterthought".
Never really played one myself (though a fellow player played a Halfling, but rarely exploited his stealth/ perception talents much).
Great video explaining workable ways to play. Wish I had seen it decades ago. lol
The old rules were certainly slapdash, as you say, but you must remember that this was uncharted territory. D&D grew out of historical minis wargaming one step at a time. Originally, everyone was a “fighting man,” lol. Then came fantasy additions like wizards and dragons and healing priests. Then came dungeons where you played one mini instead of a whole army. People only then realized that they had invented role playing games lol. Then came classes more suited to dungeons and role playing.
@@jimsleestak8012 The dudes making the first thief describe an issue arising in their group. There was only rules for breaking down doors, and one player with low Strength suggested that they could try picking the lock instead of smashing it down.
@@SusCalvin that sounds like Dan Waggoner. I was friends with the DM, Gary, for decades, but was too young to have played these early D&D games.
@@jimsleestak8012 Other methods I can think of is hired goons. Hire a locksmith in town, the same way you hire engineers and labourers and alchemists for odd projects in the field. The hired locksmith probably won't fight for you, but neither will all your teamsters and labourers.
One thing that people get wrong about "old D&D," is that it was NOT a role playing as they are now. No personalities, no background stories, no social interaction. It was maybe start in a pub to get a map, and from then on it was just one dungeon to the next. Maybe do a quick buy and sell magic items between adventures, but that was just straight prices out of the book. Don't expect any "merchant" dialogue. There wasn't one. So anyway, the thief never had any time to pick pockets, etc. while in a town. Thief skills were meant to be used in the dungeon. Pick pockets was against OTHER PLAYER CHARACTERS. Move quietly and hide was to get behind the monster and get x4 damage from behind. Climbing was used to attach the rope that the rest would climb up. Spot traps was just that, first in line in the dungeon blonking their ten foot collapsible pole at the ground in front of them to avoid ubiquitous trap doors. And at higher levels thieves could read magic scrolls, ala the Gray Mouser.
You can do that but there are no rules for it and most of it is optional. But the focus is on going out into the wilderness and finding locations to explore.
There was the Sanctuary boxed set from Chaosium. When they wrote it, the characters had attributes for a whole ton of games available at the time. Grey Mouser's D&D stats next to his BRP stats and Tunnels & Trolls stats.
this really all depends on ur group
Oh boy did we do thieves wrong back in the 80's using Basic D&D :) Great explanation and video!
need more OSR content on youtube! Nice video. Even though I'm only thinking about try that systems, this video can help with Pathfinder 1e
Very good explanation.
I don't play OSR, but I've heard the arguments about thief skills and them ruining the game. This feels a lot cleaner and easier to understand.
I think constructing a special skill system only the thief uses made things complicated. Everyone has a climb chance hidden away in 2e. Sometimes they can attempt a thief skill, but roll an x-in-6 instead of a percentile.
we always talked about the picture in your thumbnail. The thief with the extra long arm lol
And at last I see the light.
I played both "Basic" and "Advanced" D&D and would often end up playing a thief or thief multiclass when allowed. Most campaigns were pretty dungeon-heavy back then and a thief was often a necessary class second only to clerics for their healing abilities. Not to mention thieves were great in cities especially when nobles controlled most of the wealth or had their own hoard of valuable magics. Of course this was a game of high stakes, but also great rewards if it could be pulled off.
Did u normally play at lvl 9?
Cause otherwise, I don't see how a thief was all that necessary
@@sonic-bb We always started from level 1, I don't think many of my thieves made it past level 3 or 4. Because I mostly played clerics or fighters. But going into a dungeon without a thief was just asking for trouble. We almost always had a capable thief along with us, and the few times we didn't, we paid dearly for it. The real difficulty was finding a thief you could trust. B'cos the temptation for a player to steal from the party was definitely there, and it happened more than once.
@@AccessAccess the people I played with were total rules sticklers. So like our thieves sucked azz lol. I'm salty about it cause it was the first class I ever played and it was useless. Couldn't open any locks successfully. And def wouldn't be able to steal from the party cause of all the low percentages. Hiding and sneaking percents were too low. Pick pocket chances were low then would get challenged against the player characters wisdom or intelligence checks...
@@sonic-bb Most DMs played where locks and traps had their own difficulty, for instance a crude lock made by goblins or kobolds may have a modifier to the roll to make it easier to open while a lock on a noble's safe may be more difficult to open. Also every DM I played with allowed multiple attempts, provided there was enough time. But failing by double the percentile when attempting to pick a lock meant the lock had seized up or jammed and further attempts would always fail. Stealing from the party required some trickery, for instance steal from them while they are asleep. Another thing a thief could do was pretend to fail.. ie. say the party comes across the treasure room but a locked door blocks the way. The door is too sturdy to bash through (without something like a battering ram) and the walls to the left and right of the door are also reinforced. The thief may pretend to fail when picking the lock, or "realize" the lock is beyond his ability. So after discussion the entire party decides to return to town and bring back a door-breaking team, with the aid of a few strong laborers and a battering ram to knock down the door. But as they spend the night in town, planning to set out the next day, the thief slips away in the night, sneaks back into the dungeon, picks the lock, takes all the treasure, and then skips town. In the morning, the party can't find the thief but thinks nothing of it, and when they return to the dungeon with the door breaking team, the door is already open and all the treasure gone. I was in a party where this almost happened, but instead we found the bloody body of the thief on the floor of the treasure room.. he successfully picked the lock but afterward failed a detect traps roll and was impaled by a really nasty blade trap.
@AccessAccess are there any adventures manuals where lock tiers are introduced? Cause as far as I know, the dungeons master guide and player handbook says nothing of this. And also it says that u can't reattempt a lock until level up. Which sucks.
Like I said, the people I played with were strict on following the rules. We aren't old enough to have played ad&d in the 70s or 80s. But we found d&d in a closet at our church and all decided to play from there. And it was 1st edition. But we didn't have adventure manuals. So I'm unaware of what tips they gave dms. But our dm, being a church guy, was like really strict on following the rules of the game.
Also that's a cool thief story. Never really thought about doing that
Excellent video!!! More!!!
Nice coverage of this subject matter, and I especially love that you're just covering it G-rated-ly... not a word there, but you know what I mean. Lol 🤓👍Subbed, and looking forward to more stuff!!
Much appreciated!
i love the thumbnail picture-i totally remember that from when i was a kid
WOW so a thief was layered in a way.
How I play thief skills with my kids (both are thief/other class elves): basically the idea is that the rolls are so difficult, success must mean an extraordinary feat - beyond the pale of anyone but a seasoned thief. These are exceptionnal characteristics, so I make them roll the dice for their skills before they attempt sneak action (behind the DM's screen) - both HiS and MS. Success gets impermeable silence or "invisibility", according to type, failure means everything goes fine, as normal for a thief, but something will glitch at some point along the way (my discretion). That way they get adventurous - they wanna test the roll they made. The adventure moves on. A situation is created.
D&D (basic, no frills) rules!✌
I usually let Climb and Hide in Shadows default to dex as a percentile, and the others at a level-0 score (take the difference between 1st and 2nd, and subtract it from first, to find the default).
I enjoyed this video.
Great video!
Thats so awesome that logic beats dice
Thank you! These are great!
I came hoping for some clarification on the backstabbing mechanic as well as any menyion of the mechanics for thieves setting traps (I dont think this is even in the PHB!)
But this was all so useful! ...I was playing wrong all those years ago!
in original, the thief can get a backstab multiplier from just hitting an enemy from behind while they were engaged with another player. In 2nd edition, they basically made it so that the thief can only backstab once per encounter. Because if the enemy was aware that the thief even existed, you cant backstab them... even when backstabbing them... of course this is only true if you decided to play the rules as written and not homebrew
Thanks, for the help
I loved 3rd at the time but it's clear it was the writing on the wall for class homogenization.
Good video
I liked how the thieves had skills in these areas that no one else did
Now anyone can do it
Notice that most PCs could do anything a thief could do, they just had to specifically state what they were doing. A thief PC had a better chance of success than level 1 PCs and their skills grew.
It was a nice way to train players how to use the thief class.
@@mr.pavone9719 I think that added to the confusion. The thief had an entirely separate percentile skill system no one else used. You have to dig out that everyone in 2nd ed has a climb chance to see if they can race up a rope.
It's not like BRP where everything and everyone uses the same percentage skill roll for everything they want to do, including hitting a bloke.
For larger groups of searching enemies I would suggest simply giving them a bonus to their roll to spot the PCs rather than a flat chance or rolling individually for each searcher.
Theives are the people you need but can afford to have.
-5% chance to pick pockets per level the target is higher than the thief is how I remember it without going and digging out my books. At least for AD&D.
Great video
Thanks!
I love od&d but even with these explanations I feel the thief is lackluster. I like to home brew the percentages as "saving throws" vs failure. So if he's trying to be sneaky and the monsters pass their surprise roll the thief can roll his skills to succeed anyway.
I think that's the intention as well. Everyone can move quietly. Then the monsters on the other side of the door make a Listen check just like a non-thief adventurer would. Which is not a great chance, but it's there. But a thief Moving Silently doesn't even let them try! A thief that fails to Move Silently is still moving quietly, they're not stepping on a comical twig. It just means the monsters must make their Listen checks. The thief skill adds a second step where the thief can guarantee success. Everyone can hide behind a low wall, but only the thief can Hide in Shadows and squeeze up in the little shadow if an orc decides to look over the wall. Ralph-Gandalf just looks like a nerd in a robe trying to duck behind a fence then.
Same with Detect Traps. Anyone can fondle a chest to check for dart holes and find them if they specify where to look. But if sir Bob doesn't think to check, he goes straight for a save v poison when the dart hits unless he's also taken precautions like heavy kevlar needle-search gauntlets. But Nimh the thief can make the same mistake and have that Detect Trap chance before moving to the save. It's definitely not a replacement for scraping suspicious holes and seams with a thin metal wire and feel it tap against some needle or glass vial but it adds one more chance for a saving grace.
In 1st edition, it was rather difficult for thieves to Pick Pockets in my group. I tried giving everyone pieces of paper to slip me underneath my DM screen, but that was practically worthless as I'd have Magic- Users checking everything after a passed note 😄
honestly it was difficult for thieves to do anything :/
@@sonic-bb Except for dying, they did that fairly well 😄 ... oh and speaking of that, I was at a gaming convention in the 80's and I was part of this one gaming session. We all got to randomly choose these pre-rolled characters. Lucky me chose a 1st level Magic-User and when I rolled for hit points ... yup, you guessed it, I rolled a big fat "1" 😄
Sometimes the best thief is the one who does not use her skills. Putting yourself at such an advantage that you don't need to test your skill is the ideal position. Stealing a suitcase when the owner is at the loo so you don't need to Pickpocket it, going through a door when the patrolling guard has passed so you don't need to Move Silently. A thief who can lasso a rope up and climb using it does not risk even the small chance to fail and plummet with Scale Sheer Surface.
literally any character could do this tho. Early thieves were quite literally useless
@@sonic-bb No one wants to take risks at level 1-3. Fighters can fight, but one or two hits can kill you. Wizards can instantly resolve an encounter with a spell, but you got one per day.
@@SusCalvin the thing is, a thief isn't even good at what they are supposed to be good at
@@sonic-bb Fighters are about +1 better at fighting than some level 0 chump.
A thief probably don't want to rely on their skills too hard at first level. How are they at higher levels, when they start to have an okay chance at different things?
@SusCalvin if ur thief is lucky enough to survive to lvl 9 lol. Then yeah, they become pretty decent at thief skills. But see, a fighter can win fights at lvl 1-3. A thief will most likely fail picking a lock, sneaking, disarming, etc until lvl 9. And when s thief fails, they could die.. when in combat, they will most likely die... when when conversing, if failed, could also die
What always bugged me is that the book says Thieves Cant. But it never states what they can't do!
GROAN!
@@MsGorteck 😁
The rules don't say "use 1 in 6 instead" for 1-2 level thieves to find traps, which leads me to believe that this interpretation isn't what was intended. Another conclusion is that the thief gets to roll the normal-person chance AND the thief skill and needs to succeed only with one or the other. Still another possibility is that the thief's find traps ability works automatically anytime the thief is near a trap. Both options make the thief better at what they do, answering some of the complaints that the thief is an underpowered character in old-school D&D, especially at low levels.
Or small/magical traps can only be detected by a thief using the find traps skill
@@KyriosHeptagrammaton I agree w/ both of you. If a dangerous trap was about to be sprung on my players, and like, they weren't being careful, I'd definitely kinda hint at the thief player to look at his character sheet. He'd probably get it, and start looking for a well hidden trap, thus getting a roll.
Likewise he'd get a roll for any magical trap, although the actual disarming of a magical trap would be at my discretion.
@@jbeub8029 Sometimes the thief gets semi-magical abilities like the ability to use a scroll or wand.
I don't even play dnd but this type of vid is still interesting to me bc it's basically just RPG mechanic history. Hide in shadows sounds basically identical to shadowmeld from WoW
i belive any skill a Thief can do anyone can do. the reason why they are "thief skills" is because the thief can just do it all better in more extreme/exaggerated circumstances. like climbing a 90° wall with only your hands and no tool. standing perfectly still in darkness so you blend in the terrain, and of course moving more so quiet no one suspects you are there
I usually define thief skills as above and beyond normal hobo competence. Everyone can climb a rope, but a thief can attempt to freeclimb a dang brick wall.
If an olympic athlete can do a thing, I can be argued to make it a thief skill. I would not mind a Jump skill, if someone says they want to vault over a wall or jump a chasm.
Thief skills should be noted as extraordinary, which was poorly explained in all the books, but implied. This helps with all skills except find and remove traps.
Find and remove traps pretty much only works for small traps that one would find on let's say a treasure chest, and as a saving throw as per Mike Mornard. So let's say a thief would rush to open the chest while casting aside caution, you would roll "Find traps" to see if the thief notices before he starts poking around in there. If he does, he can then opt to try and remove the trap to make it safe or use their own ingenuity in order to dodge the trap.
You can use Find Traps as an extra saving grace if the players fail to examine something and are about to trigger a trap. Sir Bob can fondle a mysterious chest and try to see if it has hidden holes for darts. But if he starts to jimmy it open, overconfidently failing to check for gas ampoules, he skips right to a save vs poison. But Nimh the thief gets to roll a Detect Traps and if that fails go on to the save. Nimh is still better off if she uses a wire to scrape inside the lid and feels it tap against a glass ampoule. No skill roll for that.
I tend to be generous and allow thieves to roll and detect room and corridor traps as well.
Hide in shadows is all about being still.
Move silently is all about moving. Silently.
I figured it was hiding in literally just a shadow. You don't even have a barrel to duck behind, you just stand there like a stage-acting villain holding an opera cloak. It would be silly for Bob the fighter to just stand there but thieves can attempt to do it.
Otherwise, thieves just hide like everyone else and duck behind a barrel. The gnomes spot you if they think of looking behind the barrel, otherwise they don't.
11:57 I don't see why they "must" be exclusive. Moving silently while hiding in shadows is practically Batman's whole deal. No reason you can't do both at the same time at the risk of failing at one or the other and either being heard and caught or seen and caught.
Edit: Just saw the explanation you gave to another, clears up the confusion nicely.
"The hide in shadows rules tell us the outcome if the enemy looks directly at the thief whilst hiding. Remember that "shadows" does not mean total darkness, hiding is certain in total darkness. In your example, the thief would not be detected if the enemy does not look in his direction whilst he sneaks, but if they do, they would see movement in the shadows and investigate. "
I think that was part of the confusion. If you dig around in 2nd ed, you find that everyone has a climb chance to see if they can rush up a rope. It's just lower than a thief's basic chance, and they can't put additional percentiles into it.
If I remember right I think if you tried moving when hiding you reduced your percentage by 5% or 10%, so you could do both at same time but there was a penalty, also I thought having a high dex also allowed you to add bonus % to the skills as well (but that might have been 2E)
I thought there were also modifiers for high/low Dexterity as well as racial and armor modifiers.
I read this as OSRS
Hmm, so free climbers like Alex Honnold would have made great thieves, being able to climb castle walls?
The one thief skill *I* think is low is lockpicking-but I know a little something about lockpicking. For any non-anachronistic lock for a medieval setting, the chance would be 100% for a thief at level one, assuming the lock didn't contain some form of trap or magical ward. But okay, we kind of assume locks in D&D are somewhat more modern in design than that. Maybe akin to something from the 19th century, say?
Okay, locks from the 19th century were often still pin-tumbler designs, not all that unlike those in common use today. If you don't have a mis-spent youth, a criminal background, or work somewhere in a security-adjacent industry, you might not know what that means. When I explain it though, I think you'll agree that if a lock is of this type, a thief should be highly proficient even at level one in opening this kind of lock. There were others in use at the time, but they were actually even easier to open! So I'll describe the pin/tumbler design.
Inside the lock body is something called a locking lug. You basically need to depress it or slide it or some motion that can be done as a result of turning a key. Generally in front of that locking lug there's a big hole bored through much of the lock body. That hole is plugged by a turny-bit you can stick a key into, called a "cylinder" (because it's a turny-bit, obviously!) In addition to the keyhole, a cylinder has a line of holes drilled into the side of it. Each of these holes will mate with a hole in the lock body itself when the cylinder is in the "unturned" position.
What stops it from turning? "Pin stacks". Each of those holes has a key pin, a driver pin, and a spring. the spring pushes the key pin and driver pin into the cylinder. A key cut to the correct depth for each pin stack will lift the key pins so that they end just at the edge of the cylinder, forcing the driver pins into the lock body against the springs. This creates an unblocked "sheer line" so the cylinder can be turned by the key. If the key cut is too deep, the stack won't be lifted high enough. If it's not deep enough, part of the key pin will block the sheer line in place of the driver pin. It's gotta be pretty close to exactly the right depth or the cylinder can't turn.
How do you pick it? You stick something into the key slot that'll let you try to turn the lock without a key, and you put tension on the lock. Then, you reach in with a tool and feel for the key pins. At least one of them will be "binding". You have to manage your tension so that you can feel the binding pin, but still push it with your tool. You push the pin until it clicks, letting you know that the driver pin has been pushed out of the way. After you've done that, the pin will feel like there's nothing pushing on it (because nothing is), try the others. When all the driver pins are lifted, the lock will turn and it's open.
You and I might not be able to do this our first try, and certainly not in six seconds. But a thief should have it open in under a minute if this is all there is to opening the lock.
Bonus! Some 19th century pin and tumbler locks are even easier! You might be able to reach through the cylinder and manipulate the locking lug directly as you could in an old warded padlock. (Warded padlocks are the kinds that a "skeleton key" might be able to open. Thieves tools would doubtless include a couple of those!) Or if the lock has room enough for the driver AND key pins, you can always lift all the pin stacks completely out of the cylinder, key pins and all. If you think both of these flaws are stupid and nobody would sell a lock like that, let me tell you about a brand called MASTER LOCK … Yes, they sell some locks that contain one or the other of these flaws in 2022 for some stupid reason.
Can you make a lock more secure than that? Yes! The lock can be made of tougher metal so it's harder to brute force and have more precision machining of the parts so that it requires more skill and practice to open. The 20th century and into the 21st have seen innovations in pick resistance now that information on how to do it is widely available on the Internet. Some really tough-looking or very expensive locks can be opened with the stupidest low-skill exploits, and there's this plastic toy padlock made by Abloy in Europe that requires more skill to pick than literally every padlock Master has *EVER* made. Even better, the toy has a picture of trolls on the side. 🤣 (Hello fellow LPL fans…)
Consequently, I feel the need to house rule this. You need tools, and the quality of your tools will affect your rolls. Thieves tools cannot simply be bought in a place that does honest business, though a thief of a certain level with the appropriate skills should be able to fashion their own. A non-thief could learn the skill … but who'd teach it to them? A thief's roll for picking a mundane lock should factor in the lock's difficulty and result in a number indicating how long it'll take the thief to open it. Seconds? A minute? Unless it's something they can carry away and work on when they have downtime, there's realistically an upper limit to how long they've got to open this thing. If they roll badly enough, it's just going to take longer than they've got.
A Turn in AD&D is 10 minutes. LPL would be absolutely disgusted if it took him 10 minutes to open an average lock, particularly a medieval style one. A less talented lockpick might take a bit longer, but even with fairly basic training and tools 10 minutes should be plenty of time to open most locks. If such a person DID take 10 minutes to open a lock, then just assume they rolled a 20, unless there's something about the lock that prevents repeated attempts. Which is certainly possible, but wouldn't be the case for an average lock.
As for tools, just consider some of the tools LPL has used. For the most part, a couple of ordinary pieces of wire should be enough to do the job. You might want to fashion a special set of tools which would be useful for more difficult locks, and that would probably require a trained blacksmith as well as a well trained thief to design them, but you shouldn't need anything like that to defeat an average lock.
Thanks for this great explanation!
I have looked a little bit about lock-picking but somehow have missed LPL. Seems to be a treasure trove =D
By the way the company name "Abloy" comes originally from "Ab lukko Oy", where:
- Ab: Aktiebolag (Swedish, roughly equivalent to Ltd)
- Lukko: lock
- Oy: Osakeyhtiö (Finish, roughly also equivalent to Ltd)
Had a great time reading your explanation but I do have an objection. A level 1 thief is probably someone with very little previous experience, so giving them a 100% chance seems a bit much. Maybe it's someone who started figuring out how locks work but doesn't know the inside and outs yet. In a medieval setting instruction manuals and instructional books on how locks work would be either non existent or very hard to come by, so everything the thief knows is from experience
@@jacopoabbruscato9271 If you are given lock picks with no training I bet you could open a medieval lock in 5 minutes or less. It's unbelievably easy to pick basic locks.
I figured that tools were necessary. A thief without tools cannot pick a lock.
You can hide stuff on your person, every character can do that. Say that you are have the tools in a case at the bottom of the bag or under your hat or whatever. Then it's up to the DM to decide how thoroughly the sentries search people.
We've had backup bribe money and small tools and sometimes even a small blade sewn into clothes, or belts that were disgused silk ropes.
I was attempting to play a half elf Wizard/thief in 5 E . With no wisdom I am miserable at spotting traps . So I had a skill at opening locks. I had skills of arcana / stealth / investigation. I got lock picks and some open locks skills when I changed over to rogue.
All that said I am now am 8th level wizard and third level rogue/arcane trickster. So I'm effectively a 9th level wizard with a few thieving abilities but my low wisdom and poor perception makes me crap at detecting traps. We have a cleric who has taken lock picks and has high wisdom and perception as a cleric and is good at open locks and great at finding traps.
In retrospect if I had understood 5E going in I'd have never bothered being a rogue or been keener on perception as a skill.
The actual disarming trap thing is seemingly a little moot in 5E. There isn't an Indiana Jones with some skills trying to match the weight of the golden screaming head with a bag of sand. I have no idea what skill is actually good for disarming traps beyond the need to be dexterous.
I think it depends mostly on how your DM uses traps in their game. If traps are rare, it's kind of a wasted skill. In terms of disarming, it depends on the kind of trap, but it mainly means finding the triggering mechanism and disabling it so the trap doesn't go off. It could be the Indiana Jones idol, or a pressure plate in the floor, or a spring-loaded lock on a door or a chest, or whatever. But this involves a sort of more specialized knowledge or maybe a mechanical affinity, beyond just dexterity.
Isn't Investigation the skill to find traps? That's an Intelligence check
Short answer: they didn't work well
Yes , this sounds like a very akward class
Could you make another video on how clerics work in OSR? I don't get how Turn Undead works.
And other rule explanations for newbies like me. There are a lot of obscure rules that are absolutely impossible to understand for people just getting into the OSR, and the old guard of people who've been playing since forever just assume that it's clear.
That's a good idea, I will see about doing a cleric/turn undead video in the near future.
Describes in detail how useless several thief skills are, at least at level 3, then declares them useful
There would be no thieves if the real world worked like these rules, as most of them would be caught the first time they tried to pick a pocket, and the ones who weren’t would almost all be spotted immediately upon trying to hide in shadows
Any that remain free die by falling from walls
:/
If sir Bob the fighter tries to just stand in a shadow against the wall with no other concealment, it's going to automatically fail. Some thief skills are things no other character can do.
Something we did was to use thief skills as backup. Thieves don't just freeclimb walls because they can, they can just lasso a rope like everyone else and skip their climb roll. You dared a skill roll when you were stuck in a barricaded room, they're trying to bash the door and the only way down is to freeclim the tower wall.
You can shoplift with no skill roll if you pick stuff up when the clerk has a toilet break, or steal the bags from guys at a train station when they are busy interpreting a map.
@@SusCalvin but as a thief in the old editions, why would you attempt to take the bags or shoplift with a 15% chance of success?? you would just wait, which every character can do. Why wouldnt the thief have a rope? even in that situation, the thief could and should just use their rope to climb down the tower wall. Bob and a thief with no concealment would both fail automatically. At least according to Gary gygax and according to the rules in 2nd edition when they tried to explain in detail that hide in shadows was not meant to be super natural. So basically literally, any character can attempt to hide in shadows...
the thief was pointless
@@sonic-bb Was the chance for pickpocketing success and detection different? Like you could fail to grab an item, but they didn't automatically notice the attempt. If you pickpocket someone with higher level like a militia sergeant that's going to be harder.
I usually make a similar interpretation. Thief skills are not magic. There are people who can freeclimb a wall with only a little toehold, or stage magicians who can pick someone's watch off their wrist. Non-thief adventuring bums are not among these people.
A bunch of dwarfs can decide to hop into barrels and sit there quietly, that's no skill roll. If someone opens the barrel, tries to pick it up and jostle it etc they notice a dwarf is in there. Thiefs have a chance to hide with a minimum of concealment, like a shadow.
@@sonic-bb You need to be clever as low-level chums. No level 1 nerds are going to be ready against the horrors of the world.
You could break in after night. I allow thieves to reroll lockpicking by taking a turn, even a low-level thief will eventually defeat a mundane lock. It's just a matter of time and how many turns you want to spend there sweating and cursing while the torch burns down and a rag-man could come around the corner any moment.
If there is no one present, you can shoplift pretty freely. Scope out the place, see if the clerk has any dead angles on goods. Make note of when the clerk has a break and how fast replacements show up. When running a thief game I assume that people aren't constantly vigilant for hours. They go to the loo, they chat with eachother, they read a spicy novel.
You can count on detection and plan for it. Smash the front window with a brick, grab stuff and leg it before the militia or the street gang can show up. Have a goon with a crossbow threaten the clerk. That dude is just a level 0 townie in my world.
What version are you quoting from?
I don't blame anyone for not knowing how this worked back in the day. The fact that moving quietly and moving silently are two distinct things is completely asinine.
A lot of the book is strangely worded and written by people who had more enthusiasm than editorial skill. It's often the language I have a hard time explaining to new players. The mechanics themselves are easy to use when it all clicks. None of my friends have enjoyed reading the 2e PHB.
1:19 sheaeear surfaces
I really like classes that lean into real-life, practical ingenuity. It's a shame that the game seems to get further away from that idea with every edition.
First edition and old school d&d heavily focused on dungeons. The thief really suffered back then
LoL.
Videotitel: how thieves Work
Meanwhile on the Videopictures is a Robber Not an Thieve
Title for level 3 Thief is 'Robber'.
@@tertia0011 You got to be a thief at level 9. Level 9 is usually where you start to get nudged into domain rules, and to plan for a thief gang of your own.
Tim Kask said that coming up with synonyms for "thief" was the hardest job of the class design process.
@@SusCalvin
Yes. In AD&D Level 9 title is Thief. Character class title is Thief. A Robber (level title) is a Thief (class title). Likewise, a Thief (level title) is a Thief (class title). Also, a Rogue is a level 1 Thief. A Thief is a Thief is a Thief. What they all have in common is high dexterity & stealing.
'Thieves are principally meant TO TAKE by cunning & stealth.'
'The primary functions of a thief are: 1) picking pockets .. Picking pockets (or folds of a garment or a girdle) also includes such activities as pilfering and flitching small items. It is done by a light touch and sleight of hand.' Thieves, of whatever level, are Thieves.
'Any thief character of 10th or greater level may use his small castle type building to set up a headquarters for a gang of thieves, and he or she will accordingly attract 4-24 other thieves.'
I have been aware of domain type play since early OD&D & AD&D. I have been playing D&D (including campaigns) since 1975/6.
@@SusCalvin
Thieves first appear in original D&D with the Greyhawk supplement written by Gygax & Kuntz, with 'Special Thanks to Alan Lucian, Mike Mornard, and Jeff Key for Suggestions.' No mention of Arneson or Tim Kask.
@@tertia0011 Domain play is something I miss. It's strange when players assume they're always going to be penniless outcast hobos even when a level 5 hobo has amassed more personal wealth than a wealthy burgher. Before you even reach domain play, you're likely walking around with a retinue of goons, porters, mule drivers and pathfinders.
What got me interested in testing Blades in the Dark was how domain play starts from char gen itself. You are a bunch of scoundrels, your gang is a joint venture where all of you are lieutenants in it. You have gang assets, goon squads and gang resources. Mutant Year Zero touched on aspects of domain games, with how you built up your little village through projects. Some NPCs get the honour though.
There was Birthright I guess. TSR's shot at mystical domain play, with a terrible amount of bookkeeping to track revenue. Birthright thieves are in charge of economy, they run the legal above-ground guilds of the world, they set up trade routes with lands afar. Your job in the barony is to rake in cash the baron can tax.
Ironically, they don't work at all like the thumbnail you presented from the old school illustrations.
I find the old system was better than modern rogues
Is this sage invisible?
"You cannot move silently while hiding in shadows"
I'm still confused on this part.
Say there was a heavily shadowed wall, but it's within 10 feet of an enemy where it's otherwise brightly lit.
If the thief tried to sneak past the group, what would happen?
Assume he made the hide silently check, but was moving slowly and stealthily.
Any normal character they would see on that side of the wall (even in the shadows) Is the thief detected if he makes his hide in shadows roll?
Pathfinder consolidated these into Stealth, which I think was the right call. So even if you go the OSR route, there's no reason you can't have a House Rules document.
@@jrytacct I don't necessarily mind them breaking apart noise with the visibility aspects, but they have to be clearer on how it works is all.
The downside to pathfinder is that you use half the skill points in this as you would otherwise, giving everything else an artificial boost. Stealth might be powerful enough to demand twice the point use.
@@sirellyn I disagree. I see it as not being *double charged* for what should only be a single skill.
@@jrytacct We'll probably disagree on these, but some skills in 3e were gold while others were nearly never taken as they were pretty useless. While it's futile to make things perfectly balanced (a lot of the fun is finding the advantageous parts) Stealth and things like perceptions are far too useful, vs things like profession farmer. or even compare stealth to weaker rogue skills like sleight of hand.
The point is looking back to AD&D rules I often find there were good reasons (albeit often incomplete) for making the decisions they did.
So I'm happy when someone tries to explain the original reasoning, I just want to ensure it's fully thought out.
If somebody is watching the shadows and the thief moves, the thief will be seen. The hide in shadows rules tell us the outcome if the enemy looks directly at the thief whilst hiding. Remember that "shadows" does not mean total darkness, hiding is certain in total darkness. In your example, the thief would not be detected if the enemy does not look in his direction whilst he sneaks, but if they do, they would see movement in the shadows and investigate. I hope that is an understandable explanation. Obviously, as with many old-school rules, the DM should judge on exceptional cases.
Why do you say that a Thief cannot hide in shadows and move silently at the same time?
It would be a simple thing for a Thief to move through a forest while doing both or move through a warehouse full of boxes and such.
Moving along a wall while keeping in the shadows is a staple of the Thief.
You might give them a minus for one or the other depending on terrain but it most surely is not impossible to do both at the same time.
Simple to do both?
Accept that it wouldn't be .. hiding in shadows in the original rules required you to be motionless, it's very clearly stipulated in the ability description in the original rules, you're essentially supposed to be taking advantage of shadows etc to effectively camouflage yourself in plain view and any motion instantly breaks the effect.
Just as a perfectly camouflaged motionless faun or a leveret that's otherwise invisible to you sat in (but not obscured by) long grass directly in front of you in a field becomes instantly visible if it moves .. 🤔 I can only presume your appreciation of this reality has been spoiled by experience playing with one or other of the newer rules 🤗
You can attempt to move silently when they're not looking at you but if you try it while they are looking in your direction then your hide in shadows is negated by you moving and they will see you unless their line of site is blocked by something.
That's simply how the original rules are written and how they were intended.
@@pelinoregeryon6593 First of all, I haven't played anything higher than 2nd edition and we used very little of that.
Now, assuming someone is staring right at you is one thing. Sure, you really can't move a muscle.
However, that is not every situation. And moving through dark shadows, even within sight of observers is not impossible, especially if they aren't looking for you.
The DM must judge each situation and can easily make allowances. Bonuses for camouflage, minuses for other factors.
Take for instance the "Backstab". You would think from the term Backstab that it always has to be from behind. But that is not necessarily true.
If you were to distract say a merchant, talking to him and gaining his confidence. How hard would it be to slip a knife into your hand and gut him like a fish?
A surprise attack, even from the front could be considered a "Backstab". And that is the key word here, surprise.
The DM would take into account the various factors to determine surprise in order to accomplish the dirty deed.
@@CaptCook999 At the end of the day those were the rules, that was how it was written and that was how it was meant to be used .. if you didn't like them and your dungeon master (or you if that was you) altered them with some home brew then that's fine .. but that's no argument for that's wrong that's not how it should be" 🤗 .. those were the rules, if you used others you used others 🤗 doesn't mean yours weren't right for you but they were not the official ones .. there is no argument to be had there .. and as someone who has hunted and spent a little time with the TA (camouflage basics, ambush and patrol etc) I am more than confident the old original rules were the more realistic of the two versions 🤗 but that doesn't matter because it's a game, you use whatever rules work best for you or the game group you're with and reality be damned 😉
Now let's look at your if someone isn't looking right at you .. if they are not looking at you you do not need to hide and can just move (silently or not) so what even is your problem there? 🤗😉😁 .. if your moving your liable to be seen if anyone looks directly in your direction, if they're not looking you don't need to hide .. same goes for night or day, the big difference at night is how far they can see (for anything outside an area of illumination), it's real easy to sneak up on or around someone at night who can't actually see anything more than a few score yards away (depending on how bright the night is), but you're not hiding, your standing there in plain view, there's just not enough light for them to see you, their vision is even more compromised if they are carrying a light of their own of course .. in game is one thing .. out of game is another .. and the old rules were 'closer' to the real world than the new ones.
And if you only played second edition then you pretty much played first edition, the only major thing that really changed from first in that was adding the non weapon proficiencies direct to the core rules, dumping the optional 0 level magic user cantrips that previously appeared in a supplement and replacing them with a first level spell, a few other minor changes but mostly it was just a cash grab (new art work and a reprint of basically the same rules and call it version two) because no one was buying the books because they already all had them and they wanted sales 🤗
I have both sets at home, practically all the original rules and supplement rules other than the orientals book and the second edition players and DMs .. and the second edition hide in shadow rules are essentially the same as first edition rules, no movement allowed and you can't hide in total darkness.
@@pelinoregeryon6593 A bunch of OSR games didn't bother and just decided on a single, unified stealth skill. It can still incorporate ideas from the original thief skills, like what is an exclusive thief ability and what is something everyone has a shot at.
Call of Cthulhu/BRP had their own stealth jank. Characters have both a Sneak and a Hide skill. Then it's relatively simple. If you duck down and hide, you Hide. If you want to move as you Hide, roll with half your skill. Unless you want to move silently, then you roll the lowest of Sneak and Hide. And if you want to hide a pistol in your pocket or disguise a hole in the wall, you roll Conceal.
What is "OSR"?
"Old school renaissance" or "old school revival", the people who try to write up new games with much more inspiration from OD&D, original Traveller, Tunnels & Trolls etc.
@@SusCalvin At ok. I get it. Thanks for explaining!
OG thief is so infuriating to play. The least fun class to actually play 😌
I always used to let a non-thief attempt anything from the thief skills .. if racial, dexterity and worn equipment modifiers actually gave them a chance of success then they got a roll to see if they had succeeded, if those modifiers gave them 0% or less chance of success it was an automatic fail (but I would call for a roll anyway to disguise this from the player) .. naturally they could never improve any of these skills if they weren't thieves and their chance of success was cripplingly low for practically all of these abilities without the addition of the thieves first level chance of success to add to the modifiers.
After all, how else are you going to represent an encounter with a bunch of fresh 0 level thieves guild recruits out on their first training class 🤗
I think of level 1 thieves as fresh little Oliver Twist types. I could build an encounter where a bunch of them are lookouts for the senior thieves or a distraction from the real action. A bunch of these kids run up, knock over your hat and when you're busy with that an older thief with a bonus to Pickpocket from the distraction lifts your purse. Or a few of these are posted at a street corner, and suddenly whistle and scamper before you turn a corner. And left around the corner is a half-jammied window and absolutely no senior thieves.
I don't know if the rules even had level 0 thieves. A level 0 has no class abilities at all. Then you're a hangaround of a thief gang, and you probably only run errands for them. Every gang will have some people who are not thieves. Complete Thief had some ideas of who could find a spot in a street gang.
@@SusCalvin Yes a "0'level thief" is just a 0'level character, or any other class of character with no thief training, that was assumed in what I was saying 🙂 if you're not trained in a class you're 0'level in it.
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The mage had some interesting bits in Unearthed Arcana .. cantrips (the 0 level spells not the 2nd edition 1st level spell of that name), as a trainee mage progressed they could memorize 1 then 2 and then 3 cantrips a day, on reaching 1st level they could memorise 4, but every 4 cantrips in your book counted as 1 first level spell towards the maximum (on the intelligence table) they could know so it was suggested you dumped them and forgot them in favour of knowing more first level spells .. I took that and said OK non mages can train under a mage to learn up to 3 cantrips by either sacrificing xp or NWP slots for it but can't progress further unless they're 0'level or they qualify to become multi or dual classed... a cantrip like present, key, mute or change* are really useful for thieves and if the training could be had they'd definitely go for it 🙂
*mute and change, one effects only organic and the other inorganic material, both as good as a key cantrip but more versatile you can change the shape of a small amount of material, the metal of the lock or the wood of the door around it, so you can push the lock out, same result as a key cantrip but you can do other things with it as well, present can be used to pick pockets from a distance but is probably best used on tills after the cashier has closed it because there's no saving throw or automatic failure from trying to effect a sentient being that way, might also be used to conjure a key within range into your hand, like your cells key hanging on the far wall behind the dozing jailor perhaps .. those cantrips had a lot more utility for the little things than some might have thought .. and letting 0'level characters have them could make an otherwise mundane 0'level NPC able to do something the players didn't expect and interesting on occasion.
The sprout cantrip was one O'level characters who were farmers might be interested in .. it's also good for deep dungeons, a handful of seeds is a lot lighter to carry than a sack of vegetables or even iron rations 😁
Little magics someone who wasn't a mage might have, hedge magic, I really liked having that option when it turned up in that book..
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I've gone a bit off topic haven't I 😁
rolling a 100 on the open locks wouldn't be a "critical" success for the 3rd level thief to open a lock. you want to roll under the check, the lower the better.
So many rules and numbers...so far from the point. Who cares? Make it fun, make rolls when it makes sense. It's not Hasbro's game...its yours! Make it yours!
this one wasn't even hasbro's in the first place basic dnd was published by TSR
That's usually how it goes. OSR blokes look at the old rules and try to figure out what makes them interesting.
Then it helps a lot to play with and understand these rules. Sometimes you play a game just out of historical curiosity and to figure out what these designers 40 years ago could be thinking.
I like the prevalence of hirelings for example. The morale and random encounter checks. Xp for gold.
Actually, the skills, with a lot of their quirky seeming specifics, make more sense if you look at their roots. Their roots, going back to Basic and Advanced D&D, is in maps and miniatures. Linear turn-based step-by-step movement, not the more fluid environment of role-playing, are the basic foundations of where the skills originated. Their porting-over to the purely RPG environment is where a lot of questions and complexities start to arise.
Great video