Original Post
The castrated thief
I know I've ranted on this before, here and in some news groups, but things haven't changed (with the noted exception of Thief). The thief class, for being one of the generic 4 classes in a fantasy RPG, has been gutted like a fish.
If you plan on employing a thief style character class or profession, or even a collection of 'thief' skills, please do something about this.
What does the thief class do?
1) They pickpocket or steal from friendly NPCs.
First, the pickpocket skiil ought to be atuomatically successful against all but the most important NPCs. Otherwise it's not worth the effort and risk for the few measly gold you acquire. And what happens if they get caught? Every NPC in town stands around screeching and pointing like invasion of the body snatchers. Guards show up by the truckload and attempt to kill rather than apprehend. Pcikpocketing friendly NPCs ought to be renamed 'suicide'.
2) They fight better than mages.
Big deal. My pet mouse fights better than mages. Theives get relatively crummy armor and weapons, mediocre combat skills, and mediocre at best hitpoints. And backstabbing? A poor attempt to correct a fundamental flaw of the D+D game system. If I want a warrior, I'll use a warrior.
3) They can steal in combat instead of killing.
Useless. If you kill them you get their stuff anyway. Send the warrior in instead.
4) Stealth. They can move around without being noticed.
Stealth generally translates to 1 free action before the enemy notices you and starts pounding your head in. If the player is given a party to run, this has very limited use, since 20 ft away the warrior is clanking along in his plate mail. If you employ a murder based experience system, don't bother with this one. Even in the quest based RPGs, most NPCs will stand around and gladly let you loot their house, stealth or not. This is not well used in most CRPGs.
5) They pick locks.
Oh joy. I've got a level 6 locksmith in my party. This is usually the one skill that thieves are needed for, even though the game designers often thwart even this skill by making doors that cannot be picked open. So given that this is the most important part of a thief's career, how do the game mechanics support this? After all, a warrior has to spend a lot of time choosing and acquiring the best equipment for killing, a mage gets to pick and choose which spells to learn and has to carefully balance mana resources at all times. So what does the thief get? Usually a single die roll. Pass, fail, set off trap. That's it. Rather anti-climactic I think.
6) Other skills that aren't really stealthy or thief-like.
These get included to make character types that are thief-ish, while avoiding the flaws that prevent thieves from being useful. This is not to say that a thief can't have other skills, but when the focus shifts away from basic stealing, you don't really have a thief anymore. Archery for the robin hood types, martial arts for the ninjas, musical 'spells' to make a bard, bartering for the merchant class.
7) Other skills that have been linked to thieves or stealthy classes but never get used in CRPGs.
Climbing walls. Detecting, recognizing, and disarming traps and alarms that are not connected to chests. Concealing items on your person. Knowledge about the black market and having contacts therein. Con artistry. Disguise. Cheating at games of skill and gambling. Clipping and shaving coins. Item appraisal.
So what can we do?
Well, you could avoid calling any category of class or skills 'thief' and stick with a variant (Archer, Bard, Ninja, whatnot) but this avoids rather than solves the problem. Otherwise, we need to make the thief a valuable character type.
Thieves should attract gold like a warrior attracts bloodstains.
Assume that a basic pickpocket skill is successful 100% of the time on all insignificant NPCs, and that the character always lifts a few gold coins when talking with them. Just as a high level warrior can walk through a horde of goblins and come out healthy, a high level thief should be able to walk across a marketplace and come out with bulging pockets.
Give them a bonus on the gold they find as they shave the coins.
Move identification of items away from the mages and into the thief realm. Ok, the mage might get to retain some of the skill, but any thief worth their salt will have learned some quick ways (read: cheap magic) to ID the loot they are trying to fence. Besides, mages already have a strong point, the fireball (or it's equivalent).
Provide a black market that has items and information from dubious sources at higher prices. This is good for things like rare or unusual magic reagents.
Make picking locks a rudimentary puzzle for the player. Have the character actually learn how different traps and locks are designed, building up a repetoire of knowledge that the player has available when they work the puzzle. Once the trap type has been solved a few times, allow the player to automatically bypass the system. Maybe have different types of esoteric lockpicks for different kinds of locks. Anything to make this a more interesting system instead of a single die roll.
Improve high level stealth to invisibility. Is this realistic? Of course not! But if warriors get to be powerful enough to slay dragons, the least we can do is make the thief invisible.
Create some areas where it is socially inappropriate to go fully armored. Like on a diplomatic mission. Or a convent. Or a kindergarten. The thief then becomes more useful.
Find a use for stashing things on people, the reverse of pickpocketing. I'm thinking of cursed items, mostly. I fondly remember a thief from a pencil and paper RPG that was always spiking drinks, planting evidence, dropping a few choice distractions into the pockets of others. Of course this is only useful if you have better NPCs, so it may not be worth pursuing.
Edited by - JSwing on 11/16/00 11:45:45 PM
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