I would love to see a video on the history of the Paladin. I remember how hard it was to meet the requirements and then keeping the oath in 2e ADnD. The detect evil intent was cool though. And oh my word, if your DM ever let you have a holy sword, especially a Holy Avenger, then you were an unstoppable force of righteous indignation upon all evil.
Although the thief had poor HD (d4 originally) it was not uncommon for them to have the most HP in the game since they were often twice the level of the other PC's since their XP requirements to gain a level were the best in the game. Similarly with their "to hit" tables, although being worse than a Cleric, again, because they were a higher level, they often were closer to the fighter. Where the thief really let the player down was in damage, since the thief had no spell options and couldn't benefit from dash-strength like the fighter and fighter subclasses.
Yup, this is what I was thinking during the entire first part of the video. They leveled so quickly, and also had no max level for non humans, so they were frequently the only option for high level non human PCs
I'm... quite skeptical about the claim that a thief would have twice the level of other PCs, at least in any situation where the PCs have adventured for a comparable length of time and amassed similar amounts of experience (unless we're talking about the literal first few levels, where the thief could conceivably be twice the level of someone else due to fac that it's easy to be twice the level of a level 1 or level 2 PC). Thieves generally, in pretty much all of the old editions, require around 1200 experience, give or take (1200 in Basic, 1250 in AD&D 1e and 1250 in AD&D 2e). This is roughly half of what a wizard requires, and 0.6 times what a fighter requires (again, give or take, depends on the editions and usually skews a bit after the first few levels). So yes, their levels generally require only about half of the experience of the stronger classes, give or take, but the way D&D experience works means that you will usually only be one level in the lead, since the experience requirements grow exponentially. For example, a level 5 wizard requires 20000 experience. A thief who has 20000 experience will be level 6, exactly. To reach level 10, a Wizard in Basic requires 450,000. That amount of experience would make the thief only level 11, and halfway to 12. So no, comparably-experienced thieves will not have TWICE the level and hit dice of stronger classes, they will have somewhat more, usually one or two, and slightly more at higher levels where that will actually matter less. Add to these the fact that a thief is one of the most likely classes to die (because they will be checking for traps and possibly springing them, and the fact that their survival, especially at low levels, will be very poor in combat), and I'm really dubious about these claims. (NOW, this matter *is* somewhat complicated by the fact that the higher levels transfer from an exponential growth to a linear growth, but even then, lookin at the charts, you won't be impressed. When a Wizard is level 20, a comparably experienced Thief will be level 24. And at that point, I can guarantee you those few extra levels will not be all that impressive, not when compared to a fighter, a cleric or a wizard of similar experience amounts. Although this talk of characters with levels in the dozens tends to be theoretical rambling anyway).
@@goblinrat6119 Fundamentally what you're saying is true, HOWEVER, you must also consider that thieves gained 10% on earned experience for a high prime requisite further accelerating their advancement. Of course other classes had similar, since rogues required fewer XPs to gain in level, the 10% bonus was more valuable.
@@captcorajus I'm not sure how the 10% is more valuable, since if you assume the PCs are gaining about the same amount of experience, and assume all PCs potentially benefit from this due to prime ability bonuses, any increase is also about the same, meaning there's no proportional increase in experience gained compared to others, thus no change to the fact that a thief's lower experience limits will at best put them one or two levels above the others (which IS a definite perk at lower levels, but definitely not a huge DOUBLE LEVEL advantage as alluded). Say that a thief and a fighter have both gained 5000 experience points over their careers. Now assume both have the 10% increase to experience gained due to having very good stats. That means both have earned 5500 experience and it's still the exact same situation, due to the simple fact that that 10% increase is just accelerating everyone eligible's experience gains, not somehow being MORE beneficial to some of them. And honestly, that 10% increase won't exactly make for a great boost even if the thief was the ONLY person in the party who had it. 10% increase is a nice bonus, but considering the exponential xp requirements, that means very little in practice and will at best make for a nice "Yay, I leveled up this session instead of being just a few points short!" -scenario. That 10% change is more or less the difference between a fighter and a paladin or a ranger (who usually require 2200 or similar amounts), and it has never made a noticeable difference. For example, assume that a thief who has that 10% is compared to a wizard who doesn't have it. Say both have 10,000 experience points amassed. That 10% bumps the thief up to 11,000. So, the wizard is now level 4, and the thief... is still level 5, like my earlier example. Doesn't change much even if we assume that the numbers are ten times bigger, since the requirements are exponential as well. At 100,000 experience for a wizard, the thief will have 110,000 experience. The wizard is now level 7, halfway to 8, the thief is now a bit over level 8. 10% here or there is honestly quite miniscule, and the more I look at it, the more I'm struggling to see how the thief's somewhat lower experience requirements are anything more than a nice little pat on the back for sucking a whole lot. Admittedly, they count the most for the lowest levels, since you will get to level 2 and 3 faster, which is at least nice since you have at least a little bit of protection from being one-shotted by an angry badger. (I won't take the possibility of varying stats and experience amounts amassed into account since that argument can be turned any which way and is completely dependent upon the campaign and circumstances.)
In 2020 we are so used to the whole party being the same level we might forget it was not always so. XP based on GP value of loot, none for passing challenges. These days a DM will often arbitrarily level the party up, especially in a published module. In early D&D if your PC died, you had to roll up another victim - and always at level 1.
Also the fact that it was hard to survive meant that the players who played thieves a lot became really clever and tricky and would spend time plotting about how they would get around obstacles and challenges. The thief was the class for people who wanted to outsmart the game world, not mechanically overpower it.
I played a Thief in 2E. My main memory of the character, an Elf with the Burglar kit, was dropping to zero hit points often, or failing my Thief skills. I also played a Rogue in 3.5. I was playing in organized play, and for some reason the authors of those adventures never included an opportunity for stealth. The few times I tried stealth it was nerfed by the DM. In my opinion the best Rogues are the ones from the 4E PHB. They have utility powers which aid in stealth, do lots of damage, and are basically ninjas.
Yes. If you play the game and modules as written, and follow the rules to the letter, which is what the books tell you to do, then the game has a lot of issues. We only learned that house rules were essential to make the game work, after more than a decade, and when the internet allowed us to contact other players. Especially the difference with how the game was played in America was immense.
There was another problem with the Thief class of yesteryear-- the types of players that played them. Players who played Thieves tended to cause more headaches for the table than other classes. They were the types to split the party, argue about loot, betray the group in petty ways, anger npcs for no reason etc. All that exists today, sure. Original Thieves were magnets for player drama (the bad kind) far more than Rogues today. In the same way that there is a high correlation between a BMW owner and someone who doesn't know how to use a turn signal, there was a high correlation between a Thief player and an entitled jerk trying to do something he shouldn't for shortsighted selfish reasons.
There was a lack of things for thieves to do. I always liked the class but a good dungeon should have something the thief and only the thief can do. A good DM will have the thief do some things better - and be more perceptive in some situations... e.g. streetsmarts.
It makes sense as to why 4th editions sneak attack is less due to the feat you have to take to become an assassin. The feat was called Backstabber and it buffs your sneak attack up from d6s to d8s.
You neglect the biggest issue with the Thief class..... the damned.. "I'm gonna go away and steal stuff" 1-3 hour long diversions during the campaign where every other player wanted to just off the rouge and get back to the actual game.
I'm pretty sure that in the lore of Neverwinter Nights 2 I would be The Damned, period. Mostly because of events like: the party wanting to leave the Thief's Warehouse in order to speed up an access into Blacklake (and save the Sword Coast) while Neeshka and me spended HOURS fiercely diving into every crate in our eternal mystical search for MORE shiny thingies.
As a DM, I have to balance the rogue's scouting/thieving missions with the story and the other players. I have a good group, so they actually enjoy letting each player have time to shine. But, it's well known that running off solo is a good way to get overwhelmed and killed. I don't pull any punches with that. When the thief has infiltrated half the level before getting spotted, there will be a running fight trying to get back to the party as more and more enemies figure out what's going on. They've learned not to get too far from the party and not to pull the whole dungeon at once. Had one TPK that way and many cloase calls.
My group call this "Chicken Chasing" because.... well our Rogue literally chased chickens for a good 2 hours. But yeah. Rogues have a built-in "narrative problem" of being the class that fucks off and does side shit. It's on players who play Rogues to be conscientious of everyone's time and sharing the DMs attention. Also it is up to the DM to clamp down on that shit and stop it from happening. Any player can hog the DMs time with stupid diversions, not just Rogues, and its up to the DM to be aware that its happening.
Because I enjoyed the literary roots of the Thief class, I liked to play them. However, I had to gauge the type of DM/players I was with. If the goal was telling a good story and a willingness to massage the rules, I'd pick a Thief. If I was surrounded by D&D lawyers, then it was either a magic user or one of the tanks who kept him safe.
I love this channel so much. I would love if you guys took more looks ar some older campaign books like you did in some of your first videos :). Those are personally my favorite
As you touched on, early D&D didn't utilize symmetry in their XP system. It wasn't a surprise to the devs that the 2E classes were unbalanced and that the rogue was the weakest, but if, with the same XP, the party rogue is always one or two levels higher than the fighter or mage, it did help to offset matters. Did the fighter have more health and a higher Thac0? Sure, even after adjustment for level a 7d6 hitpoint rogue is squishier, especially given AC, than the 5d10 hitpoints of the fighter, but it isn't that much less, and given the added skills of the rogue, I felt it was viable. Also, while those 2E thief skill charts may have needed balancing, I miss them. They offered so much customization to the thief. I knew a guy who put all his points into open locks and detect traps. His character would bristle at being call a thief. He was a lock smith! By higher levels he had over a 100% chance to pick locks, so even with -100% chance to do so, he could open a door that didn't even exist it was joked! I do agree that combining move silently and hide into a single stealth check was a good idea though, especially since, back then you couldn't get your sneak attack nearly as easily as you can in more modern editions.
I homebrewed the thife skill " Stalking " a long time ago because I thought thieves needed the ability to move silently and hide in the shadows at the same time . I also allowed thieves to use it while " Stalking " someone through the streets without being noticed .
Hide in shadows and move silently are better off as seperate skills imo. You could fail move silently, notice a creature react to noise, and then hide in shadows.
AD&D Thief's jobs: Check for traps. Go scout ahead (also most likely way for a thief to die). Draw the map (with the rest of the party kibitzing that it needed to be perfect in case there's a secret room despite your character would have no reason to own graph paper). Search for secret doors (often using racial skill). Pick locks. Climb walls and set up ropes , make sure the fighter makes it up safely, go back down, and keep watch until everyone else made it up. Fighting? Forget it, with your crappy combat skills and hit points and good luck getting in a backstab. Even if you were jinned up with bracers and rings of protection, you couldn't hit the broad side of an orc. Pick pocket skills moved up to ridiculous levels, but what you really needed was Put in pocket. Double class Thief wizards were half stringed wizard with lockpick - we won't talk about thief/fighters.
Not in the first edition of AD&D, the progression of "to hit" was too slow, so you missed a lot. Magical Slings also only went up to +1, which was a bit silly. However cold iron and silver coin sling bullets were a thing (what else do you do with silver pieces?)
You guys by far have my favorite channel on UA-cam. Your choice of clips and obvious attention to detail is what I live for. Thanks so much for keeping up with things during such a hard time.
I want to give the editor or whoever was on desgining the text on this video a big shout out to using Theif style text while talking about the Theif/Rogue. It is little but shows the dedication to detail that help already good video great. Loved this and hope to see more on classes and adventures!
Great stuff! This got me thinking, maybe something on the history of multi-classing? Whenever you hear about something completely broken, it's usually multi-classing. Through this entire thing, as soon as you talked about thieves being underpowered, my mind automatically went "...and then you multi-class them".
I'd say the thief class was fine conceptually, but it just needed some fine tuning and it wasn't for every group. While I normally defend third edition, I actually see the rogue as one of its missteps because you kinda get forced into the role of "fantasy ninja". The old school thief had ways to generate money where nobody else had. They could circumvent combat encounters and do some sequence skipping by not having to procure the key for a door first. With the style of old school D&D, resources are really scarce, especially on early levels. I mean a level 1 magic user could cast one spell per day. So getting your hands of resources without exhausting any of your own and the ability to make use of scrolls make a pretty cool character - especially since scrolls could prepare you for situations that were too rare to waste a spell slot on. Conceptually, that's pretty great.
A really great re-work of the thief is the Specialist in Lamentaitons of the Flame Princess. It's more of a true "skill monkey" in that there's way more skills, but you choose which to level and besome useful much more quickly.
Balancing games as a science didn't come about until a lot later, so it's unsurprising to see such a large disparity in class value. I think house rules were probably as common (or moreso) in that era of D&D too, so any given group would just adjust these sorts of oversights to their own tastes. Not worrying about balance did have its benefits, as it got ideas into the hands of the players quickly without concern for putting out the perfect supplement. I like things better as they are now, but I can appreciate how things were then too. Thanks for the awesome in-depth analysis!
We followed the rules in the books to the letter. No house rules for most of the decade we played ADnD and ADnD 2E. It led to a lot of bad results, the rules were quite poor in a lot of places.
I would also argue one of the greatest advancements to the Thief Class was multi/dual classing. It wasn't the most powerful of classes but it leveled up quickly and has access to some easy class based XP rewards (like xp for gold earned). If your already playing a wizard multi classing into a thief really had no disadvantages and helped you a bit with hit dice, saving throws etc. Add to that you could wear full armor as a any class paired with a thief with almost no penalty unless you wanted to perform an actual thief skill. Armor that can go up to Chain before the penalties get really sevre, and Elvem chain existed as well
Excellent channel. Addressing all aspects of the topic by going from the beginnings of D&D to the recent editions without inserting useless filler materials just to make the video longer is great. Talking about the old stuffs is very nostalgic with you all and I fell that your reasonings behind your presentations are well thought out. Mostly watching your channel videos has broadened my own way of playing RPGs. Thanks for making these.
In my experience, the PC thief characters that made it into campaigns tended to be multi-class non-humans, particularly fighter-thieves. This had the positive of better HP, and THACO woith the extra skills of the thief. Also, non-humans had level limits on most classes, but the thief class was unlimited in level, so the character could still gain thief levels after the other class was maxed out.
@Manek Iridius Would you rather hear from someone who had extensive experience with all of these rules, or some kid who bought some dusty old books and reads straight from them with no clue how the game was actually played?
As some one who mostly played 2nd edition thieves had the worst of both worlds. Multi class thieves were better, as were demi-humans. Unfortunately they did have level limits in most cases. Which was beyond stupid and really hurt the game to find you couldn't progress beyond say 10th level or so. Sure it's pretty high, hard to achieve in 2nd. But also when things just really start to get fun. Never mind the races that limit you to like level 6 or something.
Was a assassin in 2e I enjoyed playing the class until he found a d20 that had strange effects like the deck of many and he got pulled into the dark cloudy sky after rolling never to be seen again still waiting on him to pop up someday 28 years later still waitin...
The worst class from a Power Gaming perspective? Yes. The best class from a Role Playing perspective? Also yes! Why? Because you had to be damn creative to survive with weak stats and crap skills in a world full of murder hobos and magically powered super heroes.
The pic at 21:15 inspired my first and only non-standard character, Thymm Smith, the gnoll rogue. Artists out there never know how far their creativity goes.
Very good video. I think the thief abilities, as lame as they are, brought about the "multi-class character movement". A fighter thief or a magic user thief offered a little more "umph" than just a straight class. As @Treantmonk's Temple pointed out, moving up as a thief was fast because the XPs needed were far less than other classes. The fewer XPs needed to move up also gave the thief an easy in when it came to a second class. Most people I knew would call themselves a fighter thief, when in fact, their thief level ,more often than not, was higher than their other class. As for thieves being useless, nothing but trouble, or a pain to the group of adventures, it happened. But a sly thief could make you and everyone else think they were anything but a thief. :)
The type of traps that concerned the thief weren't traps like pitfalls and trap doors, they were "treasure traps", miniscule mechanisms on locks and chests that shot out a needle or released poisonous gasses. The larger traps are called "room traps" and anyone can spot or disarm those by using the fiction Eg. "I piton the trap door so it can't open" or "I tap the floor ahead with a ten foot pole, checking for pitfalls" So it's not like the thief was taking away from the other classes ability to interact with traps, they were just the ones looking for the really small and intricate ones, thus the need for the detect traps roll AND the disarm traps roll.
That lockpicking mechanic is so hilariously bad. Pathfinder 1e deliberately has overly high lockpicking DCs, but that's because you can _always_ try again. It's expected that if you aren't under time pressure, you always spend 2 minutes taking 20 to open a lock. If you _are_ under time pressure, the party having to fend off enemies while the rogue works a lock can be a good dramatic moment.
Loving your videos so far! I'm glad I found a channel that speaks about D&D history in a comprehensible manner. I'm something of a D&D scholar myself but doing research on older editions is kind of clunky with a lot of conflicting sources. I'd love to see a video about the history of Psionics/Mystics, as they're the true "fish out of the water" class in D&D, and never found a way to truly fit among the other classes.
Hey I just want to say fantastic video man, you do good work. Though rogues/ thieves that are in the early editions were far from perfect, I feel they were much more vital to a core dungeon faring party than even the wizards. Thieves could use there abilities at a whim and were hardly limited to the constraints the rules had given them, at least from my own personal experience. Though they are hardly combat junkies like you see now, thieves had so much more in the way of 'out of combat' features that made them shine brighter than most of the other classes in that department. Just my personal thoughts being a 2e fan. Also I noticed a small tidbit about magical traps in early systems. Thieves could disable magical and invisible traps before 3rd edition. At the tail end of the AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook description of 'Find/Remove Traps' reads the following Prompt. "This skill is far less useful when dealing with magical or invisible traps. Thieves can attempt to remove these traps, but their chances of success are half their normal percentages." Only know this because I had to fight the DM for my rogue to disable a wizard's explosive rune a year back. Anyways, this will probably get lost in the comments, but just want to say again this was a great video. Keep up the good work!
Played the basic box sets in the 80s. My youngest brother played a thief character. He was the master of the backstab. He had the uncanny ability to make all his rolls
I loved playing the thief in second edition using thieves handbook to play very fun characters who might have similar skills but different outlooks in how they aproached problem solving. Still my favorite class in every edition I have played.
Same here . One of my favorite thieves was played in the style of Indiana Jones because of the aincent history , ancient languages and a few other non weapon proficiencys to make him like Indie
I played since 1982 and I never once heard the "thief skills are magical feats" argument. I do not think the word feats was tossed around until the year 2000.
I played a Thief from level 1 to level 13 in ADnD 2nd edition. And I fully agree with this video. I played him every week for a decade, and I only used backstab ONCE. And I rolled a 1 for the damage. It became even worse with Combat&Tactics supplements, and the fatigue mechanic.
Ahh yes, the old skool thief. My very first RPG character was a thief because our DM made us roll 3d6, down the line, and my highest score was a '9' in Dexterity. Because I qualified for a class, he wouldn't let me reroll. Needless to say, I sucked and died at level 2. Surprised I stuck with RPGs after that initial experience.
Well initially in 1st Edition, it was what I guess in modern RPGs is a prestige class, they were a multiclass first taking at least 5 levels of fighter but no more than 7, then 5 levels of thief but no more than 8 and then become a druid at that point they would be considered bards.
Ironically rogue in Pathfinder had a similar, but far rougher, story to the first thief. Right from the start its job was "save the spellcaster some spells each day" with its exclusive ability to disarm magical traps. While it was better at combat with a d8 hit die and 3E's sneak attack (with more things it could hit) it was still far less effective than most other classes at combat due to an accuracy problem and only having good reflex saves instead or fort or will. Rogues only got BAB for improving their accuracy while other classes had BAB and either spells, some neat tricks, or both. Then later on other classes either got archetypes or were just plain introduced with the ability to unlock magical traps without needing to be a rogue, and thus being more effective at combat usually at the cost of 2 skill points per level, which was pretty cheap of a cost in Pathfinder compared to 3E. This all culminated in the release of the Advanced Class Guide which introduced three classes that were all basically rogue+. Investigator handled the skill side of rogues better without being useless in combat and having a good will save, Slayer kept the stabby stabby side alive while not having the accuracy problem and having a good fort save, and Swashbuckler let you be that smartmouthed finesse master much more effectively with the ability to boost a save per day so when you had to make a fort or will save you were usually covered. Thankfully in Pathfinder 2 rouge is in a much better place now.
I played a Thief from level 1 to level 13 in ADnD 2e. We played every week for nearly a decade, and I only got to use backstab ONCE. I rolled a 1 for my damage. It got even worse with the Combat&Tactics supplement, especially the fatigue rules. We followed the rules to the letter. The most frustrating thing was that the Ranger in the party was basically better at everything I could do, and the other things the 2 Wizards excelled at.
@@rogerwilco2 all theif seems to be good at in d&d is early level dungeon dwelving and leveling up SUPER fast. I just don't have fun playing it in a party because I feel useless compared to others. Same with bard tbh
My first D&D (BECMI rules) character was a thief ... and everything this video says conforms to my experience. I can say it was only "one of the best classes" in the sense that it was certainly in the top 7. :-/ It was a fun persona to roleplay, but in the thick of the adventure, I had wa-a-ay more fun with my cleric alt.
@@rogerwilco2 neither ranger nor wizards could pick locks , find/remove traps , pick pockets , climb walls but you must be talking about 5e thieves where 90% of all thief skills are available to everyone and it's not the thife class to blame for you only being able to back stab once then rolling a 1 on damage . Because in AD&D thief skills were quite useful to the party . Need a locked door or chest opened get the thief to do it , need an area of the dungeon to be scouted get the thief to do it , think that the Chevy might be trapped get the thief to see if it is then have him remove the trap then unlock the chest . The thief isn't the worst class the fighter is because all a fighter does it fight that's all he has no skills besides weapon and armor training
You wrote the year for Unearthed Arcana as 1975...it was 1985. Also, the Thief-Acrobat was first put forth in Dragon Magazine in 1983...it just wasn't codified and official until 1985's UA.
power fantasy homebrew idea: the thief rolls are an auto success chance, before handling the situation like any other class would have before thief existed.
I can't speak for the old school thief but I was lucky enough to take an elective course that was about reading the original Appendix N book list and "Fafrd and the Grey Mouser" stories and "Cudgel the Clever" (Eyes of the Overworld) are some excellent reading for anyone interested but in earnest, the whole list is really great. The 5e list is good too but that is a hell of a lot of reading and a good amount of it is part of the continuing morphology of fantasy and 'sword and sorcery' after the '70s, so part of building the genre as we know it instead of the quasi-foundational books in the original Appendix N.
Actually, all those other situations where a non-thief could have a better chance (or really, often automatic success if a good plan was devised) could also be done by the thief in the same way. The thief just had a chance to in a sense cheat the normal problem-solving by just succeeding at a roll, and could at least sometimes find hidden traps that wouldn't be visually identifiable to anyone else. How terrible were thieves? Well, my sister wouldn't play anything else.
18:31 Thief's Cant, there are lots of examples of this. Cockney Rhyming Slang was a secret language developed in the east end of London. It is whimsical and has survived in a broken form today. It used word substitute rhymes such as meat pies for feet, where only the second non riming word was used. Polari was also an incomprehensible secret language, that originated with traveling folks, migrated into traveling carnivals and circuses and from there into Vaudeville and then the theater industry and finally amongst the gay community in London's west end. Others example include pig Latin and various forms of slang and thick undecipherable accents.
AD&D 2nd edition not only included racial bonuses to thief skills, but also bonuses to thief skills from high dexterity and certain equipment. This enabled thieves to get skills much higher than 15% at first level.
I started playing in 1979 with “Holmes Basic” which was just a repackaged OD&D. I played solidly through the 80’s with the various Basic incarnations and AD&D 1st edition. No one I knew played a thief….at least not for long. I can remember looking at the Holmes blue book and seeing the beginning stats for the thief skills and how slowly those skills progressed and being confused by how bad the class was. The only real advantage was you leveled up really fast.
New subscriber, I really enjoy the video, good editing, great naration and facts are shared in an amusing manner. Looking forward to more of your take on the history of tabletop gaming!
in the context of the usual "some dudes meet at a tavern to plan a dungeon raid" adventure, i really like the idea of this specialist character that is weaker than the others, but knows more about navigating cramped, unknown lairs full of traps and squatting monsters
But the Thief did not. The Thief was really poor at these things, until quite high level, often higher level than the max level most races could attain in the class.
I liked thief in my early 80s group as we often played the "you could play a whole evening barely rolling dice" style. Of course, any class was fun doing that.
The other huge problem with Thieves was the fact Backstab was kind of built towards single targets in a game more common to throw large groups of weak enemies you. So you had to waste a round to hide, then you attack (just once per round). Worse after that attack you would most likely have to hide again, unless your DM is nice. Mine tended to rule that if you killed your target in one blow you remained hidden. Still one attack a round, that takes a round to set up was pretty awful. Never mind atk bonuses like Strength would generally not apply to the dmg multiplier. At least all DM's I ever had just used the raw dice roll and not magic or strength bonuses.
Great video as always, perhaps for the next one about DnD history you could do history of the planes, since there were a lot of changes between additions. Especially the 4th one as always.
imho this is really roll playing vs roleplaying issue. Roll playing wise thief certainly have never been the beefiest if gm does pure hack n slash dungeon crawling, but if gm is decent enough to expand on the roleplaying side of things + offer the thief situations to use all those skills - they really do get to do some shining nvm the version of dnd.
And the most awkward place for thieves to be bad was video games. Baldur's Gate had soooo many thieves, and they were largely terrible, but you needed them because they loaded the dungeons with brutal traps (presumably because with no traps and, to a lesser extent, locks, you wouldn't really want a thief at all). I still have PTSD over lightning bolt traps in ridiculously narrow hallways.
yup without homebrew rules, thieves were really bad. Video games made this very noticeable. Even the goldbox games made it extremely noticeable. especially since thieves couldnt even use bows before in first edition (prior to expansions)...
Hmm, a dungeon without traps, less obvious contribution indeed. The Thief is "the worst" because they are constantly dying while trying to disarm traps. The thief wasn't an original probably because the original game evolved out of war gaming.
My only thief character in AD&D was a 2nd edition gnome illusionist/thief who used illusions to set up backstabs. I played that character for a couple years and got to level 10 (illusionist)/11 (thief). Good times, but he was certainly weak in combat.
In a short campaign, I ran an elf thief that died but was reincarnated as a troll. Was a bit problematic as he had to hide under a tarp in the party wagon or wear burlap rags (think Azeem in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) and if we had any meeting with a NPC we had some 'splainin' to do. He took some penalties because of his new size (hiding was still fairly easy since I pumped a majority of my points in stealth) but it was pretty easy of him to climb. He really shined in combat and most of the time just used his claws and being able to regenerate he fought well with the fighter.
Very interesting video. I think one thing that may of been mentioned was the oddity of the thief's XP in AD&D which in itself I've seen had led to the thief trying to steal from the actual group
I still adore thief cause that's the most interesting class to play regarding the storyline. My first character was thief, then I left playing with it for a couple of years, but returned to it as for me personally that's the best class that brings joy, spark and humor to campaign. I just love how differently thief could be played. Glad that in 5e thief was finally somehow balanced.
The greatest thing about Thieves is you had to be clever to play them. The modern rogue can muscle their way out of things, where as the old school thief had to constantly be careful
@@carso1500 I wouldn't say they were made of paper because they could wear some types of armor that didn't interfere with their skills . Granted They only had a D6 in HD they kind of made up for it by advancing at a higher rate in AD&D then other classes . So by the time the fighter and cleric gained 2 levels the thief was on his 3rd level . They wernt frontline combatants they were ranged combatants who sniped from behind the party adding ranged support to those up from fighting like the fighters and clerics
2:35 : Holy cats, I grew up in Santa Monica. I remember visiting Aero Hobbies many times! I clamored for the 4th Edition of _Champions_ there when it first came out. (And not JUST because my name appeared in its list of contributors & playtesters!)
Regarding 2nd edition Proficiencies: One interesting fringe case is that the Ravenloft boxed set Grim Harvest, as well as the Masque of the Red Death boxed set, converted Thief skills into Non-Weapon Proficiencies. I personally loved this method, and used it a few times outside of Ravenloft as I really liked how it increased the base chance of success dramatically and also allowed non-thieves to have these skills (albeit at a steep cost). One other note: in 2nd edition AD&D, Thieves could hide during combat using the Hide in Shadows skill. This was noted in the rulebook because combat was Chaotic, and a combatant couldn't spend all of their time observing the thief, giving them a chance to slip away. Lastly, it's interesting to note that Thieves' Cant in 5th edition has the extremely odd caveat that it takes 4 times as long to speak in Cant than in a more usual language. This seems to be a misunderstanding by the designers of how real life Cant operated (Thieves' Cant is basically slang/jargon) - there doesn't seem to be a mechanical purpose for making it take longer.
Huh, I double checked the 5e rogue, thieves cant DOES take four times as long to say things! That's a rule I'm continuing to ignore for sure, it's supposed to be all about abbreviations, slang, an the like!
I think the idea is that Thieves' Cant is weaving the slang into normal speech rather than saying it directly... but yeah that seems like a rule best ignored.
Conceptually I just love the thief ... sneaking, climbing, burglars tools, grappling hooks, picking locks ... But not picking pockets of fellow party members!!
I blame Gary Gygaxx for inadvertently fostering that mentality among thief players. Why? Simple, D&D players are usually friends with each other and were the only people likely to give a fellow party member a break when it comes to those sorts of antics. Monsters tended to be much less tolerant of a puny thief, go figure. This, the thief's crappy skill set and fragility often meant other players were the safer option.
35:23 The superior result here is obviously 1, because now the DM has to think of a way to explain how your attempt to stab a sleeping Kobold in the back instead managed to strike your Fighter in the kidney from ten feet away.
There are not one but two episodes of the Night Gallery (1970s anthology show that is basically just The Twilight Zone in color) where a character sneaks around in the night (or hires someone else to do so for them), planning to murder another person, only to accidentally target *themself* instead. Maybe your character didn't actually roll a fumble, he just had a DM with a taste for karmatic irony.
I know Monks and Assassins were added in Blackmoor, which was the first ever D&D supplement, but I'm not sure if that was the first time classes were added once Thief was. EDIT: Sorry, Blackmoor was the 2nd supplement after Greyhawk (I commented on this before I started watching the video due to not having time to earlier). Apparently Paladins and Thieves were both detailed in the Greyhawk supplement ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyhawk_(supplement) ) so it looks like Paladins were the 5th class.
Makes you wonder about the first time an Adventuring party with a Wizard, Fighter, Cleric met and joined with a Thief. I can imagine the smokey tavern table right now.
i find it quite interesting that the thief was my favorite class in Mentzer's D&D but stopped playing this class when it was renamed to rogue and lost it's niche. It still had the most skill points, but until that point the thief was needed in every group and from 3rd Edtion on the thief skills could be used by other characters as well and the thief lost it's use and became just another fighting character.
Great video! As someone who played a 2E Ranger for 14 years, you should look into them. Sounds good on paper, but in reality they have the hardest requirements to play, the worst XP table, and are at best a weak fighter.
All the Thief abilities are useful. In modern Dungeon Crawl Classics there are skills like Handle Poison, and Disguise Self, so you can find little moments in the game when that might be highly useful. You disguise yourself as an Orc, and infiltrate the Orcs, or at least enough to bypass an encounter. Then later you find a Cobra or two you kill, and now you can use Handle Poison to make yourself a lethal dose to apply to your weapon (s). Read Languages is another overlooked awesome power, plus the ability to read Magic Scrolls, and thus use them or cast spells. Then you have the ability to Forge Documents. I have a Scribe Thief who has exceptional ability to Forge Documents and Read Languages, rather than the normal Hide in Shadows and Move Silently. (due to using Thief My Way, a supplementary rules expansion that allows you to choose what you are good at, and what you are not good at, rather than strictly going by alignment). I'm not as good at those normal thief things like Sneaking and Hiding, but if we need documents to get inside someplace and masquerade as someone who we are not, including Disguise Self, then that character is your Boy. He will hook you up. I found it fun to play the Thief, and from the outside, before playing, it doesn't look as appealing perhaps, but once you do, and if the gameplay especially involves situations where these skills come in very useful you will think 'wow I love the Thief'. Plus you have Backstab, and the DCC game allows you to deal more damage or effect so a Dagger does d4 dam, but backstab it does d10 damage. I can Climb on the Wall but better yet get the Wizard to cast Spider Climb on me and I can over above the door and wait for someone to walk through it. Backstab surprise attack. It's so awesome Imagine for a second you are playing a game like Call of Cthulhu and have Read Languages skill. You can potentially read any language from Eldritch forgotten languages to ancient Sanskrit or Egyptian, or anything else. What you can read Chinese too? Yup, because I am a Thief sir (or madam). ------ The maker of this video lists another example of LOTR influence, as the Hobbit (Halfling) could only got to 4th level unless they became a Thief, and then they could go Unlimited, as the speaker in the video states 'what else would you make Bilbo'. Exactly, but on the flip side, to those who had that original idea, what about Mary and Pipin, and Samwise, were they also Thieves? They could as well been Fighting Men so were they capped at 4th level. Personally, when Halflings move into 1e ADnD and can become Druids, it made sense to allow them to become Rangers, and if you look at the chart and other classes, it made sense to allow them to be up to 8th level Ranger. Halfling Ranger Halfling Druid Halfling Thief and why no Halfling Assassin. You can be a Gnome Assassin. You can be a Dwarf Assassin. It would be like taking real world Midgets and there are some who are stubby like a dwarf, others that are more Gnome like, and some who are like real world Hobbits in their stature, but could they all not be Assassins. That was highly illogical and I'd add Halflings can be up to 8th level Assassins too. Then your dream of becoming a Ranger/Assassin or Druid/Assassin can be fully realized, all in the pint sized Hobbit.
I would love to see a video on the history of the Paladin. I remember how hard it was to meet the requirements and then keeping the oath in 2e ADnD. The detect evil intent was cool though. And oh my word, if your DM ever let you have a holy sword, especially a Holy Avenger, then you were an unstoppable force of righteous indignation upon all evil.
I second this, and also want to throw the Bard in on the fun as well
My old DM loved to corrupt anyone foolish enough to become a Paladin 😆.
I'd also love to see a history of the Paladin- for much the same reasons. ^ ^
The ad&d paladin is mainly inspired from Poul Andersons Three Hearts Three Lions
Although the thief had poor HD (d4 originally) it was not uncommon for them to have the most HP in the game since they were often twice the level of the other PC's since their XP requirements to gain a level were the best in the game. Similarly with their "to hit" tables, although being worse than a Cleric, again, because they were a higher level, they often were closer to the fighter. Where the thief really let the player down was in damage, since the thief had no spell options and couldn't benefit from dash-strength like the fighter and fighter subclasses.
Yup, this is what I was thinking during the entire first part of the video. They leveled so quickly, and also had no max level for non humans, so they were frequently the only option for high level non human PCs
I'm... quite skeptical about the claim that a thief would have twice the level of other PCs, at least in any situation where the PCs have adventured for a comparable length of time and amassed similar amounts of experience (unless we're talking about the literal first few levels, where the thief could conceivably be twice the level of someone else due to fac that it's easy to be twice the level of a level 1 or level 2 PC).
Thieves generally, in pretty much all of the old editions, require around 1200 experience, give or take (1200 in Basic, 1250 in AD&D 1e and 1250 in AD&D 2e). This is roughly half of what a wizard requires, and 0.6 times what a fighter requires (again, give or take, depends on the editions and usually skews a bit after the first few levels). So yes, their levels generally require only about half of the experience of the stronger classes, give or take, but the way D&D experience works means that you will usually only be one level in the lead, since the experience requirements grow exponentially. For example, a level 5 wizard requires 20000 experience. A thief who has 20000 experience will be level 6, exactly. To reach level 10, a Wizard in Basic requires 450,000. That amount of experience would make the thief only level 11, and halfway to 12.
So no, comparably-experienced thieves will not have TWICE the level and hit dice of stronger classes, they will have somewhat more, usually one or two, and slightly more at higher levels where that will actually matter less.
Add to these the fact that a thief is one of the most likely classes to die (because they will be checking for traps and possibly springing them, and the fact that their survival, especially at low levels, will be very poor in combat), and I'm really dubious about these claims.
(NOW, this matter *is* somewhat complicated by the fact that the higher levels transfer from an exponential growth to a linear growth, but even then, lookin at the charts, you won't be impressed. When a Wizard is level 20, a comparably experienced Thief will be level 24. And at that point, I can guarantee you those few extra levels will not be all that impressive, not when compared to a fighter, a cleric or a wizard of similar experience amounts. Although this talk of characters with levels in the dozens tends to be theoretical rambling anyway).
@@goblinrat6119 Fundamentally what you're saying is true, HOWEVER, you must also consider that thieves gained 10% on earned experience for a high prime requisite further accelerating their advancement. Of course other classes had similar, since rogues required fewer XPs to gain in level, the 10% bonus was more valuable.
@@captcorajus I'm not sure how the 10% is more valuable, since if you assume the PCs are gaining about the same amount of experience, and assume all PCs potentially benefit from this due to prime ability bonuses, any increase is also about the same, meaning there's no proportional increase in experience gained compared to others, thus no change to the fact that a thief's lower experience limits will at best put them one or two levels above the others (which IS a definite perk at lower levels, but definitely not a huge DOUBLE LEVEL advantage as alluded).
Say that a thief and a fighter have both gained 5000 experience points over their careers. Now assume both have the 10% increase to experience gained due to having very good stats. That means both have earned 5500 experience and it's still the exact same situation, due to the simple fact that that 10% increase is just accelerating everyone eligible's experience gains, not somehow being MORE beneficial to some of them.
And honestly, that 10% increase won't exactly make for a great boost even if the thief was the ONLY person in the party who had it. 10% increase is a nice bonus, but considering the exponential xp requirements, that means very little in practice and will at best make for a nice "Yay, I leveled up this session instead of being just a few points short!" -scenario.
That 10% change is more or less the difference between a fighter and a paladin or a ranger (who usually require 2200 or similar amounts), and it has never made a noticeable difference.
For example, assume that a thief who has that 10% is compared to a wizard who doesn't have it. Say both have 10,000 experience points amassed. That 10% bumps the thief up to 11,000. So, the wizard is now level 4, and the thief... is still level 5, like my earlier example.
Doesn't change much even if we assume that the numbers are ten times bigger, since the requirements are exponential as well. At 100,000 experience for a wizard, the thief will have 110,000 experience. The wizard is now level 7, halfway to 8, the thief is now a bit over level 8.
10% here or there is honestly quite miniscule, and the more I look at it, the more I'm struggling to see how the thief's somewhat lower experience requirements are anything more than a nice little pat on the back for sucking a whole lot.
Admittedly, they count the most for the lowest levels, since you will get to level 2 and 3 faster, which is at least nice since you have at least a little bit of protection from being one-shotted by an angry badger.
(I won't take the possibility of varying stats and experience amounts amassed into account since that argument can be turned any which way and is completely dependent upon the campaign and circumstances.)
In 2020 we are so used to the whole party being the same level we might forget it was not always so. XP based on GP value of loot, none for passing challenges. These days a DM will often arbitrarily level the party up, especially in a published module. In early D&D if your PC died, you had to roll up another victim - and always at level 1.
Probably more hair was pulled in working up the home brew rules for the thief than any other thing in the game.
Thief, despite being the "shittiest" class, was my favorite to play. You level so fast it's addicting.
@Manek Iridius There isn't a "right reason" to play DnD. So idk wtf ur on about. People like to have fun, let them have fun
Also the fact that it was hard to survive meant that the players who played thieves a lot became really clever and tricky and would spend time plotting about how they would get around obstacles and challenges. The thief was the class for people who wanted to outsmart the game world, not mechanically overpower it.
@Manek Iridius is improvement not a goal in D&D?
Please cover the Ranger next if you haven’t done so
And no party could do without one. Old school dungeons were trapped heavily.
I played a Thief in 2E. My main memory of the character, an Elf with the Burglar kit, was dropping to zero hit points often, or failing my Thief skills.
I also played a Rogue in 3.5. I was playing in organized play, and for some reason the authors of those adventures never included an opportunity for stealth. The few times I tried stealth it was nerfed by the DM.
In my opinion the best Rogues are the ones from the 4E PHB. They have utility powers which aid in stealth, do lots of damage, and are basically ninjas.
Leor Blumenthal - ... and anything that’s basically ninja, is fundamentally awesome!
Yes.
If you play the game and modules as written, and follow the rules to the letter, which is what the books tell you to do, then the game has a lot of issues.
We only learned that house rules were essential to make the game work, after more than a decade, and when the internet allowed us to contact other players.
Especially the difference with how the game was played in America was immense.
@Manek Iridius We were GM in turn, and we followed the instructions in the books to the letter, as this is what the books told us we should do.
There was another problem with the Thief class of yesteryear-- the types of players that played them.
Players who played Thieves tended to cause more headaches for the table than other classes. They were the types to split the party, argue about loot, betray the group in petty ways, anger npcs for no reason etc. All that exists today, sure. Original Thieves were magnets for player drama (the bad kind) far more than Rogues today.
In the same way that there is a high correlation between a BMW owner and someone who doesn't know how to use a turn signal, there was a high correlation between a Thief player and an entitled jerk trying to do something he shouldn't for shortsighted selfish reasons.
My thief guy actually the chill one.
The fighter was going berserk over anything he viewed as insult
There was a lack of things for thieves to do.
I always liked the class but a good dungeon should have something the thief and only the thief can do.
A good DM will have the thief do some things better - and be more perceptive in some situations... e.g. streetsmarts.
Kudos on the BMW reference.
Well, that's anecdotal, it sucks you had players like that but I'm sure a lot has changed since then.
...said the Paladin.
"The Original Worst D&D Class" or "Gary Gygax didn't really think the game through"
It makes sense as to why 4th editions sneak attack is less due to the feat you have to take to become an assassin.
The feat was called Backstabber and it buffs your sneak attack up from d6s to d8s.
You neglect the biggest issue with the Thief class..... the damned.. "I'm gonna go away and steal stuff" 1-3 hour long diversions during the campaign where every other player wanted to just off the rouge and get back to the actual game.
Pretty sure that's just you guys.
The mad is an appropriate title name
I'm pretty sure that in the lore of Neverwinter Nights 2 I would be The Damned, period. Mostly because of events like: the party wanting to leave the Thief's Warehouse in order to speed up an access into Blacklake (and save the Sword Coast) while Neeshka and me spended HOURS fiercely diving into every crate in our eternal mystical search for MORE shiny thingies.
As a DM, I have to balance the rogue's scouting/thieving missions with the story and the other players. I have a good group, so they actually enjoy letting each player have time to shine. But, it's well known that running off solo is a good way to get overwhelmed and killed. I don't pull any punches with that. When the thief has infiltrated half the level before getting spotted, there will be a running fight trying to get back to the party as more and more enemies figure out what's going on. They've learned not to get too far from the party and not to pull the whole dungeon at once. Had one TPK that way and many cloase calls.
My group call this "Chicken Chasing" because.... well our Rogue literally chased chickens for a good 2 hours.
But yeah. Rogues have a built-in "narrative problem" of being the class that fucks off and does side shit. It's on players who play Rogues to be conscientious of everyone's time and sharing the DMs attention. Also it is up to the DM to clamp down on that shit and stop it from happening. Any player can hog the DMs time with stupid diversions, not just Rogues, and its up to the DM to be aware that its happening.
dude, your B-roll of old video games is amazing
Because I enjoyed the literary roots of the Thief class, I liked to play them. However, I had to gauge the type of DM/players I was with. If the goal was telling a good story and a willingness to massage the rules, I'd pick a Thief. If I was surrounded by D&D lawyers, then it was either a magic user or one of the tanks who kept him safe.
I love this channel so much. I would love if you guys took more looks ar some older campaign books like you did in some of your first videos :). Those are personally my favorite
As you touched on, early D&D didn't utilize symmetry in their XP system. It wasn't a surprise to the devs that the 2E classes were unbalanced and that the rogue was the weakest, but if, with the same XP, the party rogue is always one or two levels higher than the fighter or mage, it did help to offset matters. Did the fighter have more health and a higher Thac0? Sure, even after adjustment for level a 7d6 hitpoint rogue is squishier, especially given AC, than the 5d10 hitpoints of the fighter, but it isn't that much less, and given the added skills of the rogue, I felt it was viable. Also, while those 2E thief skill charts may have needed balancing, I miss them. They offered so much customization to the thief. I knew a guy who put all his points into open locks and detect traps. His character would bristle at being call a thief. He was a lock smith! By higher levels he had over a 100% chance to pick locks, so even with -100% chance to do so, he could open a door that didn't even exist it was joked! I do agree that combining move silently and hide into a single stealth check was a good idea though, especially since, back then you couldn't get your sneak attack nearly as easily as you can in more modern editions.
I homebrewed the thife skill " Stalking " a long time ago because I thought thieves needed the ability to move silently and hide in the shadows at the same time .
I also allowed thieves to use it while " Stalking " someone through the streets without being noticed .
Hide in shadows and move silently are better off as seperate skills imo. You could fail move silently, notice a creature react to noise, and then hide in shadows.
AD&D Thief's jobs: Check for traps. Go scout ahead (also most likely way for a thief to die). Draw the map (with the rest of the party kibitzing that it needed to be perfect in case there's a secret room despite your character would have no reason to own graph paper). Search for secret doors (often using racial skill). Pick locks. Climb walls and set up ropes , make sure the fighter makes it up safely, go back down, and keep watch until everyone else made it up. Fighting? Forget it, with your crappy combat skills and hit points and good luck getting in a backstab. Even if you were jinned up with bracers and rings of protection, you couldn't hit the broad side of an orc. Pick pocket skills moved up to ridiculous levels, but what you really needed was Put in pocket. Double class Thief wizards were half stringed wizard with lockpick - we won't talk about thief/fighters.
Not in the first edition of AD&D, the progression of "to hit" was too slow, so you missed a lot. Magical Slings also only went up to +1, which was a bit silly. However cold iron and silver coin sling bullets were a thing (what else do you do with silver pieces?)
In 5e ranger can do this
not only forget combat, but forget ur own skills too. Pick locks? good luck... check for traps? rest in peace....
You guys by far have my favorite channel on UA-cam. Your choice of clips and obvious attention to detail is what I live for. Thanks so much for keeping up with things during such a hard time.
I want to give the editor or whoever was on desgining the text on this video a big shout out to using Theif style text while talking about the Theif/Rogue. It is little but shows the dedication to detail that help already good video great. Loved this and hope to see more on classes and adventures!
Great stuff! This got me thinking, maybe something on the history of multi-classing? Whenever you hear about something completely broken, it's usually multi-classing. Through this entire thing, as soon as you talked about thieves being underpowered, my mind automatically went "...and then you multi-class them".
I'd say the thief class was fine conceptually, but it just needed some fine tuning and it wasn't for every group. While I normally defend third edition, I actually see the rogue as one of its missteps because you kinda get forced into the role of "fantasy ninja".
The old school thief had ways to generate money where nobody else had. They could circumvent combat encounters and do some sequence skipping by not having to procure the key for a door first. With the style of old school D&D, resources are really scarce, especially on early levels. I mean a level 1 magic user could cast one spell per day. So getting your hands of resources without exhausting any of your own and the ability to make use of scrolls make a pretty cool character - especially since scrolls could prepare you for situations that were too rare to waste a spell slot on. Conceptually, that's pretty great.
A really great re-work of the thief is the Specialist in Lamentaitons of the Flame Princess. It's more of a true "skill monkey" in that there's way more skills, but you choose which to level and besome useful much more quickly.
I wouldn't mind if you just did a deep dive on the history of all the modern classes...
You can dream.
Artificer would be a short video.
Balancing games as a science didn't come about until a lot later, so it's unsurprising to see such a large disparity in class value. I think house rules were probably as common (or moreso) in that era of D&D too, so any given group would just adjust these sorts of oversights to their own tastes. Not worrying about balance did have its benefits, as it got ideas into the hands of the players quickly without concern for putting out the perfect supplement. I like things better as they are now, but I can appreciate how things were then too.
Thanks for the awesome in-depth analysis!
We followed the rules in the books to the letter.
No house rules for most of the decade we played ADnD and ADnD 2E.
It led to a lot of bad results, the rules were quite poor in a lot of places.
I would also argue one of the greatest advancements to the Thief Class was multi/dual classing. It wasn't the most powerful of classes but it leveled up quickly and has access to some easy class based XP rewards (like xp for gold earned). If your already playing a wizard multi classing into a thief really had no disadvantages and helped you a bit with hit dice, saving throws etc. Add to that you could wear full armor as a any class paired with a thief with almost no penalty unless you wanted to perform an actual thief skill.
Armor that can go up to Chain before the penalties get really sevre, and Elvem chain existed as well
Excellent channel. Addressing all aspects of the topic by going from the beginnings of D&D to the recent editions without inserting useless filler materials just to make the video longer is great.
Talking about the old stuffs is very nostalgic with you all and I fell that your reasonings behind your presentations are well thought out.
Mostly watching your channel videos has broadened my own way of playing RPGs.
Thanks for making these.
Mages: GIGANT METEOR
Thief: runs on a wall to not die. Gets nerfed for being to unrealistic.
Sure???
In my experience, the PC thief characters that made it into campaigns tended to be multi-class non-humans, particularly fighter-thieves. This had the positive of better HP, and THACO woith the extra skills of the thief. Also, non-humans had level limits on most classes, but the thief class was unlimited in level, so the character could still gain thief levels after the other class was maxed out.
@Manek Iridius Would you rather hear from someone who had extensive experience with all of these rules, or some kid who bought some dusty old books and reads straight from them with no clue how the game was actually played?
As some one who mostly played 2nd edition thieves had the worst of both worlds. Multi class thieves were better, as were demi-humans. Unfortunately they did have level limits in most cases. Which was beyond stupid and really hurt the game to find you couldn't progress beyond say 10th level or so.
Sure it's pretty high, hard to achieve in 2nd. But also when things just really start to get fun. Never mind the races that limit you to like level 6 or something.
Was a assassin in 2e I enjoyed playing the class until he found a d20 that had strange effects like the deck of many and he got pulled into the dark cloudy sky after rolling never to be seen again still waiting on him to pop up someday 28 years later still waitin...
sounds like the DM just wanted your character gone. you should roll a d20 and have him appear again.
The worst class from a Power Gaming perspective? Yes. The best class from a Role Playing perspective? Also yes! Why? Because you had to be damn creative to survive with weak stats and crap skills in a world full of murder hobos and magically powered super heroes.
The pic at 21:15 inspired my first and only non-standard character, Thymm Smith, the gnoll rogue. Artists out there never know how far their creativity goes.
Very good video. I think the thief abilities, as lame as they are, brought about the "multi-class character movement". A fighter thief or a magic user thief offered a little more "umph" than just a straight class. As @Treantmonk's Temple pointed out, moving up as a thief was fast because the XPs needed were far less than other classes. The fewer XPs needed to move up also gave the thief an easy in when it came to a second class. Most people I knew would call themselves a fighter thief, when in fact, their thief level ,more often than not, was higher than their other class. As for thieves being useless, nothing but trouble, or a pain to the group of adventures, it happened. But a sly thief could make you and everyone else think they were anything but a thief. :)
The type of traps that concerned the thief weren't traps like pitfalls and trap doors, they were "treasure traps", miniscule mechanisms on locks and chests that shot out a needle or released poisonous gasses. The larger traps are called "room traps" and anyone can spot or disarm those by using the fiction Eg. "I piton the trap door so it can't open" or "I tap the floor ahead with a ten foot pole, checking for pitfalls"
So it's not like the thief was taking away from the other classes ability to interact with traps, they were just the ones looking for the really small and intricate ones, thus the need for the detect traps roll AND the disarm traps roll.
My first character was a thief (1st ed.). After he died on 2nd level I went caster and never looked back.
This was fun. Well done on the video! Thank you for the nostalgia!
That lockpicking mechanic is so hilariously bad. Pathfinder 1e deliberately has overly high lockpicking DCs, but that's because you can _always_ try again. It's expected that if you aren't under time pressure, you always spend 2 minutes taking 20 to open a lock. If you _are_ under time pressure, the party having to fend off enemies while the rogue works a lock can be a good dramatic moment.
Loving your videos so far! I'm glad I found a channel that speaks about D&D history in a comprehensible manner. I'm something of a D&D scholar myself but doing research on older editions is kind of clunky with a lot of conflicting sources. I'd love to see a video about the history of Psionics/Mystics, as they're the true "fish out of the water" class in D&D, and never found a way to truly fit among the other classes.
Hey I just want to say fantastic video man, you do good work. Though rogues/ thieves that are in the early editions were far from perfect, I feel they were much more vital to a core dungeon faring party than even the wizards. Thieves could use there abilities at a whim and were hardly limited to the constraints the rules had given them, at least from my own personal experience. Though they are hardly combat junkies like you see now, thieves had so much more in the way of 'out of combat' features that made them shine brighter than most of the other classes in that department. Just my personal thoughts being a 2e fan. Also I noticed a small tidbit about magical traps in early systems. Thieves could disable magical and invisible traps before 3rd edition. At the tail end of the AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook description of 'Find/Remove Traps' reads the following Prompt.
"This skill is far less useful when dealing
with magical or invisible traps. Thieves can attempt to remove these traps, but their chances of success are half their normal percentages."
Only know this because I had to fight the DM for my rogue to disable a wizard's explosive rune a year back. Anyways, this will probably get lost in the comments, but just want to say again this was a great video. Keep up the good work!
One of the few channels I've actually "smashed that bell" on, haha
Played the basic box sets in the 80s. My youngest brother played a thief character.
He was the master of the backstab. He had the uncanny ability to make all his rolls
Really masterful editing. Thank you for the video.
Man, I loved your monk video, but the whole time I was thinking about my 1st character, a rogue and how horrible it was. Love your videos
I loved playing the thief in second edition using thieves handbook to play very fun characters who might have similar skills but different outlooks in how they aproached problem solving. Still my favorite class in every edition I have played.
Same here .
One of my favorite thieves was played in the style of Indiana Jones because of the aincent history , ancient languages and a few other non weapon proficiencys to make him like Indie
Oh. The memories. Heh. But I had a player who liked it.
I played since 1982 and I never once heard the "thief skills are magical feats" argument. I do not think the word feats was tossed around until the year 2000.
Thieves got the ability to read scrolls at a certain level
I played a Thief from level 1 to level 13 in ADnD 2nd edition.
And I fully agree with this video.
I played him every week for a decade, and I only used backstab ONCE. And I rolled a 1 for the damage.
It became even worse with Combat&Tactics supplements, and the fatigue mechanic.
But was it fun?
@@Silentskip001 probably not. feeling useless isnt fun
Just started watching your vids, thought the channel was dead, looking forward to more module videos.
I assume you get hundreds of requests for modules but will add mine anyways.
I would love to see you cover Isle of Dread. Or Isle of Giant Apes.
Ahh yes, the old skool thief. My very first RPG character was a thief because our DM made us roll 3d6, down the line, and my highest score was a '9' in Dexterity. Because I qualified for a class, he wouldn't let me reroll. Needless to say, I sucked and died at level 2. Surprised I stuck with RPGs after that initial experience.
Thank goodness we shifted from Gygax vision, imagine being this bad, good gracious thieves had it rough early on.
Yea gygax might have been an innovator in the field but way way better people created more sensisical game systems
I'd love to know more about the connections of the bard. How it swayed between druid and rogue.
Well initially in 1st Edition, it was what I guess in modern RPGs is a prestige class, they were a multiclass first taking at least 5 levels of fighter but no more than 7, then 5 levels of thief but no more than 8 and then become a druid at that point they would be considered bards.
Sorcery mainly..
And fighter
Horrible mess the original bard
Ironically rogue in Pathfinder had a similar, but far rougher, story to the first thief. Right from the start its job was "save the spellcaster some spells each day" with its exclusive ability to disarm magical traps. While it was better at combat with a d8 hit die and 3E's sneak attack (with more things it could hit) it was still far less effective than most other classes at combat due to an accuracy problem and only having good reflex saves instead or fort or will. Rogues only got BAB for improving their accuracy while other classes had BAB and either spells, some neat tricks, or both. Then later on other classes either got archetypes or were just plain introduced with the ability to unlock magical traps without needing to be a rogue, and thus being more effective at combat usually at the cost of 2 skill points per level, which was pretty cheap of a cost in Pathfinder compared to 3E. This all culminated in the release of the Advanced Class Guide which introduced three classes that were all basically rogue+. Investigator handled the skill side of rogues better without being useless in combat and having a good will save, Slayer kept the stabby stabby side alive while not having the accuracy problem and having a good fort save, and Swashbuckler let you be that smartmouthed finesse master much more effectively with the ability to boost a save per day so when you had to make a fort or will save you were usually covered. Thankfully in Pathfinder 2 rouge is in a much better place now.
Jesus christ, even that Thief font you use makes my heart skip a beat
Gnome acrobat was my first ever character when I was 7! I wondered what happened to that class.
I feel bad for people who didn't play thieves back in the old days. one of the best classes out there.
I played a Thief from level 1 to level 13 in ADnD 2e.
We played every week for nearly a decade, and I only got to use backstab ONCE. I rolled a 1 for my damage.
It got even worse with the Combat&Tactics supplement, especially the fatigue rules. We followed the rules to the letter.
The most frustrating thing was that the Ranger in the party was basically better at everything I could do, and the other things the 2 Wizards excelled at.
@@rogerwilco2 all theif seems to be good at in d&d is early level dungeon dwelving and leveling up SUPER fast.
I just don't have fun playing it in a party because I feel useless compared to others. Same with bard tbh
My first D&D (BECMI rules) character was a thief ... and everything this video says conforms to my experience. I can say it was only "one of the best classes" in the sense that it was certainly in the top 7. :-/ It was a fun persona to roleplay, but in the thick of the adventure, I had wa-a-ay more fun with my cleric alt.
@@rogerwilco2 neither ranger nor wizards could pick locks , find/remove traps , pick pockets , climb walls but you must be talking about 5e thieves where 90% of all thief skills are available to everyone and it's not the thife class to blame for you only being able to back stab once then rolling a 1 on damage .
Because in AD&D thief skills were quite useful to the party .
Need a locked door or chest opened get the thief to do it , need an area of the dungeon to be scouted get the thief to do it , think that the Chevy might be trapped get the thief to see if it is then have him remove the trap then unlock the chest .
The thief isn't the worst class the fighter is because all a fighter does it fight that's all he has no skills besides weapon and armor training
Ever heard of the spell Knock? And wizards are arguably the best at hiding with Invisibility.
You wrote the year for Unearthed Arcana as 1975...it was 1985. Also, the Thief-Acrobat was first put forth in Dragon Magazine in 1983...it just wasn't codified and official until 1985's UA.
Nice history lesson
I didn’t start until 1AD&D, with a d6 for hit points, I thought they were fun.
I am so stoked to see another DM It All video!
Another excellent historical survey! Keep 'em coming, these are great!
Please continue do all of the classes!!!!!
power fantasy homebrew idea: the thief rolls are an auto success chance, before handling the situation like any other class would have before thief existed.
That’s generally how I’d do it. Thieves do Thiefy things well. It’s only when things are exceptionally risky or rushed that we put it to the dice.
I can't speak for the old school thief but I was lucky enough to take an elective course that was about reading the original Appendix N book list and "Fafrd and the Grey Mouser" stories and "Cudgel the Clever" (Eyes of the Overworld) are some excellent reading for anyone interested but in earnest, the whole list is really great. The 5e list is good too but that is a hell of a lot of reading and a good amount of it is part of the continuing morphology of fantasy and 'sword and sorcery' after the '70s, so part of building the genre as we know it instead of the quasi-foundational books in the original Appendix N.
Actually, all those other situations where a non-thief could have a better chance (or really, often automatic success if a good plan was devised) could also be done by the thief in the same way. The thief just had a chance to in a sense cheat the normal problem-solving by just succeeding at a roll, and could at least sometimes find hidden traps that wouldn't be visually identifiable to anyone else. How terrible were thieves? Well, my sister wouldn't play anything else.
18:31 Thief's Cant, there are lots of examples of this. Cockney Rhyming Slang was a secret language developed in the east end of London. It is whimsical and has survived in a broken form today. It used word substitute rhymes such as meat pies for feet, where only the second non riming word was used. Polari was also an incomprehensible secret language, that originated with traveling folks, migrated into traveling carnivals and circuses and from there into Vaudeville and then the theater industry and finally amongst the gay community in London's west end. Others example include pig Latin and various forms of slang and thick undecipherable accents.
AD&D 2nd edition not only included racial bonuses to thief skills, but also bonuses to thief skills from high dexterity and certain equipment. This enabled thieves to get skills much higher than 15% at first level.
Didn't expert to see Asmongold died in a dnd video
That Nightmare Creatures ost ending 😍 I love your channel
Great to see you back. Real fun video.
I started playing in 1979 with “Holmes Basic” which was just a repackaged OD&D. I played solidly through the 80’s with the various Basic incarnations and AD&D 1st edition.
No one I knew played a thief….at least not for long. I can remember looking at the Holmes blue book and seeing the beginning stats for the thief skills and how slowly those skills progressed and being confused by how bad the class was. The only real advantage was you leveled up really fast.
I love hearing about the history of things like this. Very nice. 🤘
New subscriber, I really enjoy the video, good editing, great naration and facts are shared in an amusing manner. Looking forward to more of your take on the history of tabletop gaming!
in the context of the usual "some dudes meet at a tavern to plan a dungeon raid" adventure, i really like the idea of this specialist character that is weaker than the others, but knows more about navigating cramped, unknown lairs full of traps and squatting monsters
But the Thief did not.
The Thief was really poor at these things, until quite high level, often higher level than the max level most races could attain in the class.
I liked thief in my early 80s group as we often played the "you could play a whole evening barely rolling dice" style. Of course, any class was fun doing that.
The other huge problem with Thieves was the fact Backstab was kind of built towards single targets in a game more common to throw large groups of weak enemies you. So you had to waste a round to hide, then you attack (just once per round). Worse after that attack you would most likely have to hide again, unless your DM is nice. Mine tended to rule that if you killed your target in one blow you remained hidden. Still one attack a round, that takes a round to set up was pretty awful.
Never mind atk bonuses like Strength would generally not apply to the dmg multiplier. At least all DM's I ever had just used the raw dice roll and not magic or strength bonuses.
Great video as always, perhaps for the next one about DnD history you could do history of the planes, since there were a lot of changes between additions. Especially the 4th one as always.
imho this is really roll playing vs roleplaying issue. Roll playing wise thief certainly have never been the beefiest if gm does pure hack n slash dungeon crawling, but if gm is decent enough to expand on the roleplaying side of things + offer the thief situations to use all those skills - they really do get to do some shining nvm the version of dnd.
MOAR class- history breakdowns please!!! Fucking love these.
Great video and amazing analysis. Well done!
And the most awkward place for thieves to be bad was video games. Baldur's Gate had soooo many thieves, and they were largely terrible, but you needed them because they loaded the dungeons with brutal traps (presumably because with no traps and, to a lesser extent, locks, you wouldn't really want a thief at all). I still have PTSD over lightning bolt traps in ridiculously narrow hallways.
yup without homebrew rules, thieves were really bad. Video games made this very noticeable. Even the goldbox games made it extremely noticeable. especially since thieves couldnt even use bows before in first edition (prior to expansions)...
Hmm, a dungeon without traps, less obvious contribution indeed. The Thief is "the worst" because they are constantly dying while trying to disarm traps. The thief wasn't an original probably because the original game evolved out of war gaming.
@Sixgun Symphony fighters and rangers made better missile characters.
My only thief character in AD&D was a 2nd edition gnome illusionist/thief who used illusions to set up backstabs. I played that character for a couple years and got to level 10 (illusionist)/11 (thief). Good times, but he was certainly weak in combat.
I think a series on each of the classes and their roots would be cool.
In a short campaign, I ran an elf thief that died but was reincarnated as a troll. Was a bit problematic as he had to hide under a tarp in the party wagon or wear burlap rags (think Azeem in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) and if we had any meeting with a NPC we had some 'splainin' to do. He took some penalties because of his new size (hiding was still fairly easy since I pumped a majority of my points in stealth) but it was pretty easy of him to climb. He really shined in combat and most of the time just used his claws and being able to regenerate he fought well with the fighter.
Tell it preparedness. Even poor statistics you CAN have super natural stealth capacity...
Very interesting video. I think one thing that may of been mentioned was the oddity of the thief's XP in AD&D which in itself I've seen had led to the thief trying to steal from the actual group
I still adore thief cause that's the most interesting class to play regarding the storyline. My first character was thief, then I left playing with it for a couple of years, but returned to it as for me personally that's the best class that brings joy, spark and humor to campaign. I just love how differently thief could be played. Glad that in 5e thief was finally somehow balanced.
The greatest thing about Thieves is you had to be clever to play them. The modern rogue can muscle their way out of things, where as the old school thief had to constantly be careful
Well yeah as far as it's described it could very well be made of paper
Now granted, modern rogues are kinda broken
@@carso1500 I wouldn't say they were made of paper because they could wear some types of armor that didn't interfere with their skills .
Granted They only had a D6 in HD they kind of made up for it by advancing at a higher rate in AD&D then other classes .
So by the time the fighter and cleric gained 2 levels the thief was on his 3rd level .
They wernt frontline combatants they were ranged combatants who sniped from behind the party adding ranged support to those up from fighting like the fighters and clerics
Or roll a cleric or wizard and be able to be smart AND useful, crazy
2:35 : Holy cats, I grew up in Santa Monica. I remember visiting Aero Hobbies many times! I clamored for the 4th Edition of _Champions_ there when it first came out. (And not JUST because my name appeared in its list of contributors & playtesters!)
Regarding 2nd edition Proficiencies: One interesting fringe case is that the Ravenloft boxed set Grim Harvest, as well as the Masque of the Red Death boxed set, converted Thief skills into Non-Weapon Proficiencies. I personally loved this method, and used it a few times outside of Ravenloft as I really liked how it increased the base chance of success dramatically and also allowed non-thieves to have these skills (albeit at a steep cost).
One other note: in 2nd edition AD&D, Thieves could hide during combat using the Hide in Shadows skill. This was noted in the rulebook because combat was Chaotic, and a combatant couldn't spend all of their time observing the thief, giving them a chance to slip away.
Lastly, it's interesting to note that Thieves' Cant in 5th edition has the extremely odd caveat that it takes 4 times as long to speak in Cant than in a more usual language. This seems to be a misunderstanding by the designers of how real life Cant operated (Thieves' Cant is basically slang/jargon) - there doesn't seem to be a mechanical purpose for making it take longer.
Huh, I double checked the 5e rogue, thieves cant DOES take four times as long to say things! That's a rule I'm continuing to ignore for sure, it's supposed to be all about abbreviations, slang, an the like!
I think the idea is that Thieves' Cant is weaving the slang into normal speech rather than saying it directly... but yeah that seems like a rule best ignored.
i loved you used some footage from projared plays
great to see him back in action
Conceptually I just love the thief ... sneaking, climbing, burglars tools, grappling hooks, picking locks ...
But not picking pockets of fellow party members!!
I blame Gary Gygaxx for inadvertently fostering that mentality among thief players. Why? Simple, D&D players are usually friends with each other and were the only people likely to give a fellow party member a break when it comes to those sorts of antics. Monsters tended to be much less tolerant of a puny thief, go figure. This, the thief's crappy skill set and fragility often meant other players were the safer option.
I think it would be cool if we could see a history of a monster class like say the beholder or the orc. How they changed throughout dnd
To be honest, I want you guys to go over the psionicist next. Please be sure to mention heads exploding a whole lot.
Just found your channel. Im loving the content.
35:23 The superior result here is obviously 1, because now the DM has to think of a way to explain how your attempt to stab a sleeping Kobold in the back instead managed to strike your Fighter in the kidney from ten feet away.
There are not one but two episodes of the Night Gallery (1970s anthology show that is basically just The Twilight Zone in color) where a character sneaks around in the night (or hires someone else to do so for them), planning to murder another person, only to accidentally target *themself* instead. Maybe your character didn't actually roll a fumble, he just had a DM with a taste for karmatic irony.
This history lesson leads me to one burning question: if the thief was the fourth class added to the game, what was the fifth?
I know Monks and Assassins were added in Blackmoor, which was the first ever D&D supplement, but I'm not sure if that was the first time classes were added once Thief was. EDIT: Sorry, Blackmoor was the 2nd supplement after Greyhawk (I commented on this before I started watching the video due to not having time to earlier). Apparently Paladins and Thieves were both detailed in the Greyhawk supplement ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyhawk_(supplement) ) so it looks like Paladins were the 5th class.
That would have to be the Paladin who was in the same Greyhawk supplement as the official Thief.
28:02 Mistake: the way you describe Evasion is how it can be improved at level 10 or higher, not the base ability which the video shows.
aye '.' base allowed them to take 0 damage from things that do half even on a success on their success. fireball & co. being broke
Makes you wonder about the first time an Adventuring party with a Wizard, Fighter, Cleric met and joined with a Thief. I can imagine the smokey tavern table right now.
Now for the info on all the other classes.
i find it quite interesting that the thief was my favorite class in Mentzer's D&D but stopped playing this class when it was renamed to rogue and lost it's niche. It still had the most skill points, but until that point the thief was needed in every group and from 3rd Edtion on the thief skills could be used by other characters as well and the thief lost it's use and became just another fighting character.
Great video! As someone who played a 2E Ranger for 14 years, you should look into them. Sounds good on paper, but in reality they have the hardest requirements to play, the worst XP table, and are at best a weak fighter.
aye good job, love the quality of the videos. I subscribed
All the Thief abilities are useful. In modern Dungeon Crawl Classics there are skills like Handle Poison, and Disguise Self, so you can find little moments in the game when that might be highly useful. You disguise yourself as an Orc, and infiltrate the Orcs, or at least enough to bypass an encounter. Then later you find a Cobra or two you kill, and now you can use Handle Poison to make yourself a lethal dose to apply to your weapon (s). Read Languages is another overlooked awesome power, plus the ability to read Magic Scrolls, and thus use them or cast spells. Then you have the ability to Forge Documents. I have a Scribe Thief who has exceptional ability to Forge Documents and Read Languages, rather than the normal Hide in Shadows and Move Silently. (due to using Thief My Way, a supplementary rules expansion that allows you to choose what you are good at, and what you are not good at, rather than strictly going by alignment). I'm not as good at those normal thief things like Sneaking and Hiding, but if we need documents to get inside someplace and masquerade as someone who we are not, including Disguise Self, then that character is your Boy. He will hook you up.
I found it fun to play the Thief, and from the outside, before playing, it doesn't look as appealing perhaps, but once you do, and if the gameplay especially involves situations where these skills come in very useful you will think 'wow I love the Thief'. Plus you have Backstab, and the DCC game allows you to deal more damage or effect so a Dagger does d4 dam, but backstab it does d10 damage. I can Climb on the Wall but better yet get the Wizard to cast Spider Climb on me and I can over above the door and wait for someone to walk through it. Backstab surprise attack. It's so awesome
Imagine for a second you are playing a game like Call of Cthulhu and have Read Languages skill. You can potentially read any language from Eldritch forgotten languages to ancient Sanskrit or Egyptian, or anything else. What you can read Chinese too? Yup, because I am a Thief sir (or madam).
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The maker of this video lists another example of LOTR influence, as the Hobbit (Halfling) could only got to 4th level unless they became a Thief, and then they could go Unlimited, as the speaker in the video states 'what else would you make Bilbo'. Exactly, but on the flip side, to those who had that original idea, what about Mary and Pipin, and Samwise, were they also Thieves? They could as well been Fighting Men so were they capped at 4th level. Personally, when Halflings move into 1e ADnD and can become Druids, it made sense to allow them to become Rangers, and if you look at the chart and other classes, it made sense to allow them to be up to 8th level Ranger.
Halfling Ranger
Halfling Druid
Halfling Thief
and why no Halfling Assassin. You can be a Gnome Assassin. You can be a Dwarf Assassin. It would be like taking real world Midgets and there are some who are stubby like a dwarf, others that are more Gnome like, and some who are like real world Hobbits in their stature, but could they all not be Assassins. That was highly illogical and I'd add Halflings can be up to 8th level Assassins too.
Then your dream of becoming a Ranger/Assassin or Druid/Assassin can be fully realized, all in the pint sized Hobbit.
only thing I dislike of this channel is so few videos