After reading a few blog posts (no link on hand) about how older editions of D&D didn't do the thief class justice, I think I understand what the problem was.  The author lamented that thief skills are unlikely to succeed at low levels, whichprompted him to house rule that thieves succeed on their skill tests automatically (with a few caveats here and there).  For instance, he ruled that thieves can pickpocket any creature of their HD or less but fail against creatures with more HD than them.

I think he's doing it wrong to run into this problem in the first place, no doubt due in part because of the contradictory and confusing nature of the rules.  The way I approach this problem is simple: does it make sense for a non-thief to be able to use a thief skill?  If so, then any class can attempt to use the skill.  What do thief skills represent, then?  (3e attempted to answer this question but did so poorly.)  The Hear Noises skill, for instance, must represent something other than the ability to listen at a door. because anyone can do that.  My personal interpretation is that thief skills represent special training that indicates a chance of automatic or heightened success.

For example, take pickpocketing.  The starting thief has something like a 13% chance of success.  I would rule that this 13% is his chance of pickpocketing without being noticed.  Should he fail the roll, he may still try to pickpocket, but his mark has an opportunity to notice him doing so.

This isn't spelled out in the rules, but I think that it is a better use of the skill system than how most DMs choose to implement it.

The 1st ed. rule for pick pockets is that a roll >20% over your base chance means detection; the 2nd edition rule is much more generous, with the skill % only being your chance of getting the item, and a separate roll made (only 3% per target level) of being caught.
 
For 2E both Climb Walls and Detect Noise have base percentages that apply to non-thief characters (IIRC 40% and 15% respectively) so anyone can do these, just that the thief is better.

The thread title and OP don't jive to my mind.  It just sounds like the blogger is just bitching about an old meme, the Whiff Factor, and created some House Rules to deal with it for his table.

This applies not only to skills but just about any action in the game.

The problem isn't the actual rules but rather the rules culture. You get a vastly different game even when using the same rulebook depending on the rules culture adopted to run the game.

It is a divide that has been the source of many a conflict about how rpgs are run over the years.

The largest conflicts are to be found in the common sense vs. character sheet rules cultures. The common sense culture uses the approach that if something is not prohibited via the rules then it will be possible to some degree or another. The character sheet culture requires rules that explicitly allow something in order for it to have any chance to succeed.

The thief abilities are a great example of how rules culture can influence play.

Lets say an AD&D fighter wants to try and sneak past some guards quietly.
Approaching this from the common sense perspective, it is certainly possible. Anyone can try and move quietly. It will be a matter of how noisy is the fighter (armor worn, etc.) and the level of attentiveness of the guard (is he dozing off, hard of hearing, etc.) The DM weighs the factors and determines probability of success.

Approaching this from a character sheet perspective, it will simply fail. The fighter has no such skill and will fail at any attempt at stealth. This will protect the niche of the thief who actually has this ability.

Same set of rules, but a vastly different approach to implementing them.

So what good is a thief if the common sense approach is taken?
This is the next question which always follows. No sense in playing a class with abilities everyone can just do. This would appear to be a problem but it really isn't. Anyone can try and be sneaky but the thief has an ability called move silently. Move silently isn't just 'stealth'. It means what it means. So a thief trying to do what the fighter tried can do so like any other character (and certain factors will tend to make success more likely) but in the event of a failure, a check against the thief's move silently ability can negate that failure.

Likewise with hearing noise. Anyone can try and listen for things but a thief has a chance to hear things that other characters can't.

Back in the day, it was not uncommon for DMs to have completely different ways of interpreting or houseruling the thief skills. The laughably low percentages were always a thorny issue.

I remember the thief skill Whiff factor to be a major reason that many of our RPG club players switched to RuneQuest and Palladium Fantasy. Our groups dissatisfaction with AD&D let to me running several awesome Stormbringer campaigns.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;561484Approaching this from a character sheet perspective, it will simply fail. The fighter has no such skill and will fail at any attempt at stealth. This will protect the niche of the thief who actually has this ability.

Same set of rules, but a vastly different approach to implementing them.

I agree with you that the conflict exists. My view of the situation that it is a silly one and born of forgetting one of central tenets of roleplaying games.

QuoteThat it is a game where the actions of the characters are adjudicated by the referee.

It is understandable why it exists. It been ingrained in people that games have rules that must followed. That you don't make up shit in the middle of playing a game (at best saving it for a future game using the new idea). Roleplaying games do have rules but they address an inherently fuzzy concept.

QuotePlayers acting as their characters within a imagined setting.

Because of that you run into the issues like that you can only emulate things to a certain level of detail before the game ceases to be playable. The number of situations you can write advice about is limited while the number of situation players can get their characters into is effectively infinite. At some point the referee will have to make a judgement call to resolve what the players want to do with their characters.

The solution can only be solved through the culture of the game. Publishers have to pound on this point in their products, how they advertise, promote, with how they present their adventures, and run their events.

The Old School Renaissance was lucky in that the Old School Primer came out early on. While not every agreed with everything it states it largely defines the attitude of much of the OSR. Particularly its mantra of "Rulings not Rules."

Quote from: estar;561492Because of that you run into the issues like that you can only emulate things to a certain level of detail before the game ceases to be playable. The number of situations you can write advice about is limited while the number of situation players can get their characters into is effectively infinite. At some point the referee will have to make a judgement call to resolve what the players want to do with their characters.

Not specifically addressed at you Estar but your post does lead me to thinking about this. More recent games do seem to be attempting to use rules to cover every imaginable situation; rules are designed to "stretch" to any imaginable situation, not always successfully.

In particular, there seems to be a trend toward handling everything with skill checks and making sure each Skill covers a huge amount of ground that irks me. For the GM, most situations then become just a matter of assigning a DC, but it returns odd results. 3.5 had this to an extent - it had weird results occasionally generated by  the universal system like elderly characters having the best hearing  because Listen is Wisdom-based, or ogres getting a bonus to Pick Pockets  [sleight of hand] because of their racial bonus to Dexterity, problems  that didn't appear when these were covered by highly specialized thief skills.

Pathfinder and 4E both continued in this direction with more skill consolidation, covering even more design space (i.e. Perception now covers smell, instead of just Listen/Spot, so the oldies are better at that too).
In a recent Pathfinder game, I had a barbarian PC who (due to low Intelligence) had to buy a Linguistics rank to speak the language of the local area (there were regional languages, not just Common), and later on, because Pathfinder rolled 'Decipher Script' into Linguistics, he was also the only party member who had a chance to attempt to decode some ancient inscriptions we found. Looking over their skill list, they did they same with Gather Information/Diplomacy, so the paladin can get gossip at the local taverns better than other PCs.

Anyway, my complaint is not that a 'universal rules system' can't handle every eventuality, but that most of those I've seen generate weird results in doing so - potentially worse than not having the rule and just using common sense.

QuoteFor 2E both Climb Walls and Detect Noise have base percentages that apply to non-thief characters (IIRC 40% and 15% respectively) so anyone can do these, just that the thief is better.

I remember the running gag at our 2e table was the description of the Juju Zombie and how it could climb walls with a ~90% success rate due to its' 'human-like dexterity'.  So we would all cite our characters apparently subhuman dexterity, and joke about which maladies led to our many failures in climbing things that anyone with the 'human-like dexterity' we lacked could certainly succeed at.

QuoteIn a recent Pathfinder game, I had a barbarian PC who (due to low Intelligence) had to buy a Linguistics rank to speak the language of the local area (there were regional languages, not just Common)

This seems like an odd DM ruling more than anything.  Are you saying that your Barbarian couldn't speak his own language because you only start knowing Common?  

Most races in Pathfinder have specific languages eligible as bonus languages from high INT, as well, so all non-humans or half-elves would have needed to spend ranks on Linguistic to know that language as well.

Also the the DC for deciphering the 'simplest of messages' is a 20, and then you need to make a Wisdom check for that message to not be misleading, so a Barbarian having a 5-10% chance to decipher only simple message (he can translate 'Speak Friend and Enter' but translating any part of a book or an ancient cartouche is completely beyond him) and then having a ~20% chance of unwittingly translating that simple message incorrectly in the highly likely event of your failure seems not particularly absurd to me.  The rest of the party is smart enough to know that they aren't smart enough to translate ancient texts.  Not the Barbarian though.  A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

QuoteGather Information/Diplomacy, so the paladin can get gossip at the local taverns better than other PCs.

There are better places to gather intelligence than taverns and I don't see why a diplomatic and charismatic Paladin wouldn't be particularly good at this task.  I don't really see why it would naturally follow that an undiplomatic sketchy guy, or a panhandling street corner musician would always be the most 'in the know' regardless of the topic at hand.

Of course your points still stands when you use the Sorcerer instead of the Paladin as your example, but probably only because most fantasy settings have all of the social niches of an ersatz medieval society with magic users tacked on as atomized, roleless individuals.  I'm sure someone could come up with some bright ideas as to why a Pathfinder-type Sorcerer would be well suited to being the guy 'in the know' without the use of magic.

All in all I think that 'broader' is better, and that sufficiently broad skills work more like 'background' know-how, which makes more sense.  This obviously doesn't work with things like Athletics (which for all intents and purposes is just a Strength check) or Perception (neither of which can really be properly be called 'skills' in the first place), but it does for things like Nature or Thievery in 4e.

Quote from: Spinachcat;561486Our groups dissatisfaction with AD&D let to me running several awesome Stormbringer campaigns.

All's well that ends well!

Quote from: Wolf, Richard;561754I remember the running gag at our 2e table was the description of the Juju Zombie and how it could climb walls with a ~90% success rate due to its' 'human-like dexterity'.  So we would all cite our characters apparently subhuman dexterity, and joke about which maladies led to our many failures in climbing things that anyone with the 'human-like dexterity' we lacked could certainly succeed at.

Ha! Good stuff.

QuoteThis seems like an odd DM ruling more than anything.  Are you saying that your Barbarian couldn't speak his own language because you only start knowing Common?  

Most races in Pathfinder have specific languages eligible as bonus languages from high INT, as well, so all non-humans or half-elves would have needed to spend ranks on Linguistic to know that language as well.

The GM was using a homebrew world with sections basically corresponding to most of the different D&D settings (there's a Ravenloft area, a Krynn area, the deserts of Athasia, and so on). My character was a vishkanya barbarian with Int 9 from the jungles around the Masaharpa [India] area, which had 'Mahasarpan' as the dominant language rather than 'Common' - so that replaced it as his free language in additional to his racial tongue.  Having been enslaved and dragged off to the Krynn region he needed that to function as well, background-wise. If he'd had a bonus language from Int [12 or better] he wouldn't have needed the skill rank to speak Common (could have picked it up as a bonus language) and wouldn't have been able to do the Decipher Script thing since its trained-only.
It admittedly wasn't a good chance, but it was a chance, and I thought it was weird at the time. Your idea to explain it is interesting but seems a bit rationalizey, sorry.

QuoteAll in all I think that 'broader' is better, and that sufficiently broad skills work more like 'background' know-how, which makes more sense.  This obviously doesn't work with things like Athletics (which for all intents and purposes is just a Strength check) or Perception (neither of which can really be properly be called 'skills' in the first place), but it does for things like Nature or Thievery in 4e.

I don't entirely get this? My preference is normally narrower skills since otherwise you end up unable to build a concept due to the categories being too broad; there's no distinction in 4E between types of thieves as there would be in 2E for instance, since all the skills are just uses of Thievery. Its like going back to the dark ages of 1E where you couldn't customize thief skills

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;5616853.5 had this to an extent - it had weird results occasionally generated by  the universal system like elderly characters having the best hearing  because Listen is Wisdom-based, (...)

Then maybe the problem is that the Ability bonus is too big/too influential, covering a range between -3 and +3 (or even -4 and +4).
It could be cured by using OD&D's -1 and +1 and leaving all other ranks to actually learning that skill.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;561805Then maybe the problem is that the Ability bonus is too big/too influential, covering a range between -3 and +3 (or even -4 and +4).
It could be cured by using OD&D's -1 and +1 and leaving all other ranks to actually learning that skill.

I do think that the redesign between 2E and 3E led to attributes becoming more influential, and perhaps too much in many cases (especially hit rolls, and many checks which previously had no modifiers). I'm not sure Listen is a roll that should get a modifier from stats, or if it does not Wisdom.
 
 At the same time though, there are some situations where even that modifier range probably isn't enough - +4 bonus on a Strength check from an 18 isn't enough to reliably open a door or win an arm-wrestling contest with opposed d20 rolls against a guy with a 10 Strength. This scaling issue is another problem that I don't think universal systems usually handle well.

When it comes to thief skills, I always treated the % chance to succeed as a baseline to be multiplied, rolled straight-up, or divided depending on the situation. For example, a low-level thief should focus on picking simple, crude locks; sneaking up on or pickpocketing drunks, using camouflage to hide in shadows, wearing soft shoes to move silently and so on. Under these conditions, the thief's puny chances could (and in my opinion should) be doubled or tripled. I use this sliding scale:

Very easy (x3)
Easy (x2)
Standard
Difficult (half)
Extremely difficult (quarter)
You gotta be kidding me! (10% of base score)

As thieves gain experience and hone their skills they can attempt harder tasks like picking complex locks, moving silently in full gear and so on.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;561786I don't entirely get this? My preference is normally narrower skills since otherwise you end up unable to build a concept due to the categories being too broad; there's no distinction in 4E between types of thieves as there would be in 2E for instance, since all the skills are just uses of Thievery. Its like going back to the dark ages of 1E where you couldn't customize thief skills

I'd prefer a skillset to come from some kind of background, and I don't really have an issue with how broad Thievery is.  I don't see the point in building the rogue that can disarm traps but not pick locks for example.  I can see a point in being able to spring locks but not be able to pick pockets, but I don't think it's really a great loss of customization.

As far as all thief skills go, Thievery is only Disarm Traps, Open Locks, and Sleight of Hand.  You still need Stealth to sneak, and Athletics to climb.  There is also Streetwise, Dungeoneering, and Acrobatics which are Thief niches to varying extent.

4e, like 1e is less accommodating for more creative archetypes, and really expects a Thief is a Thief is a Thief (except in this case it's a Rogue, but whatever) but that's not something that is a hard fix.  

Being a thief is its' own thing, and that should be a skillset in itself, but there isn't anything that you can't have a skill like 'Sailor' that implies a broad set of skills; anything that relates to being a sailor, in the same way that you have Thievery, and instead of Streetwise you could have some equivalent skills for those who know the ins and outs military institutions, or the dynamics of pirate subculture.  4e doesn't do this because there is no 'Pirate' class, and the system doesn't support playing outside their archetypes without homebrewing (which is easy enough to do).

That's what I mean by 'broad'.

QuoteThen maybe the problem is that the Ability bonus is too big/too influential, covering a range between -3 and +3 (or even -4 and +4).
It could be cured by using OD&D's -1 and +1 and leaving all other ranks to actually learning that skill.

This is rarely a problem because skill ranks generally dwarf ability modifiers.  You occasionally wind up with bizarre situations where there is a lot of synergy between a class's primary attribute and skills that aren't normally associated with that class.

Like a high level Cleric with a fully jacked WIS can have perception checks comparable to Rogues despite it being a cross-classed skill for Clerics.  High level Clerics can likewise be great at tracking, despite it not being a trope of the class, and not having Survival as a class skill.

Then there is the Sorcerer again, but that's almost a completely different topic.

If thief skills would have just started at a higher base level and maybe improved a little slower from there, pretty much all the bitching about thieves being useless would never have happened.