Thieves and Assassins Setting Traps

At last, a subject I've been too lazy to address.  Here, Tardigrade's comment earlier today was prescient:

"... By pointless I mean, situations where that skill is needed will hardly, if ever, come up. For example, in a funhouse style dungeon, traps are everywhere. In a magical 15th century setting, who in the world is building crossbow traps or putting needle traps in chests? Find and remove traps becomes a solution looking for a problem."

I can count the number of times I've had a player ask to set up a trap in a game on one hand.  If I add the times I've done it in someone else's game, double that number sounds about right.  Unquestionably, there ought to be players out there who would set traps up with every session, two or three times a session, if they had a mind for it.  Yet somehow, most people have an inherent sense that traps are a cruel and improper form of warfare; or they have a sneaking suspicion the trap's going to go off in their face and they'd rather not deal with it.

So, although I do mean to get around to substantively creating exhaustive rules on how to make traps, and exactly what sort of traps can be made with how much knowledge, I haven't had any call for it.  Players with the opportunity to pursue the ability don't.  When they have the ability they don't use it.  As such, Tardigrade's comment doesn't only apply to removing traps but setting them as well.

Which I find odd.  Since my beginning to play, there has been a love affair between players and traps that can be definitely be found in fetish land.  They're hardly covered in the original books, at least mechanically, but they're scattered everywhere in every dungeon environment like poplar fluff in late May.  The common examples like arrow traps, spear traps, falling blocks and doors, sliding walls, oil that pours out from the ceiling so that the trap can light it with a match, even illusionary walls, had to wait for pamphlets full of tricks and traps to explain how they worked, precisely ... and always in a way that would barely work with 20th century skills (remembering these ideas all come from the last century), much less the late 13th century, when most D&D takes place (that being the approximate era where Gygax's vision of combat, politics and social development coincide).

I've discussed this before, but briefly: traps are a problem.  It's nice if a trap pares a few hit points off a player, though in modern versions this is repaired with a fingersnap.  If a trap actually kills someone its a DM-Player relation problem.  It's not like a random encounter with a motivated tick ("enthusias-tick"), where the creature would probably have been dispatched early if the party hadn't been sloppy or unlucky.  Killer traps are designed to kill player characters, forcing us to ask, why does this trap even exist?  What game purpose does it serve?  Certainly not experience; and while traps might add a little tension, they're also a motivational wet blanket.  Take the trap out of the dungeon and players DON'T miss them; I've never had a party reach the end of a dungeon and tell me how disappointed they were it didn't have "more traps."

Which is why I feel the balance of traps ought to be in the player's hands; and like other skilled abilities, knowledgeable players ought to set up the same trap over and over with fail-safe capability.  A simple penalty can be imposed regarding how long it takes to set up a complex trap, how long to take it down and how the pieces have to be transported, as well as how much knowledge you have to have and how much the pieces cost.  This is only sensible.

And irrational traps that employ illusionary technology that doesn't exist in the books; or machinery that doesn't rust or seize up from dust; or heavy pieces under tension that just don't give even though the trap was set 8 years ago; well, either these things have to be explained "in game" by some form of magic, material or profoundly secret knowledge just not available to the common person.

Additionally, any one with trap setting skill ought to be able to "smell" a trap, within reason.  This constant "checking for traps" jargon is timewasting, dull and unneeded.  If skilled characters walk within 10 feet of a trap, whether or not they're looking, say, "Something is wrong."

"What?" asks the player.

"There are scratches around the door that no one else could see, but suggest to you that there's been some 'special work' done here.  You suspect a trap."

"Hm.  I look around the door."

I know.  DM's don't do this because, as ever, they think "the unknown" has this magic fairy dust that turns every straw campaign into gold.  But letting the players know up front that there's a trap draws their attention, gains their interest, makes them feel in control of their environment, which stuffs their chests full of pride and doesn't change a damn thing about still having to get past the trap without fucking up.  As I said with my last post, hiding information from a player is a bug, not a feature.

Thief Abilities

Please forgive me if this post covers old ground that I've written about before - as long as I'm here (p. 19 of the DMG), I feel it's best to be comprehensive.

Before getting into the individual abilities, let me address an overarching issue related to rolling dice for thieves' skills.  For those who don't know, the original rules relied on a pass/fail mechanic: you wished to "hide in shadows," you rolled a die.  If you succeeded, you disappeared; and if you failed, you didn't.  I'll talk more about hiding in shadows later.

Let's start with this quote from Gygax:

"Roll of the dice for any thief function must be kept absolutely secret, so the thief (or similar character) does not know the results."

This remarkable, firmly made statement is never properly explained in the original books.  Presumedly, thieves "can't know" if they've succeeded in hiding in shadows or moving silently, since they can't see themselves.  This doesn't quite work, however, since pickpockets will obviously know whether they've picked a pocket, while a wall climber will know if the wall was climbed.  However, it does say "ANY" thief function, which means it applies to opening locks, hearing noise, reading languages and — here's the kicker — finding & removing traps.

Now, this last is a thinking problem.  Let's say that I'm holding the roll secret as your DM.  You check for traps and I say you don't see any.  Aha!  You know that might mean there are no traps, or that you didn't find them.  For you, there's no way of knowing which.  Of course, you know that if you're a much higher level thief, there are probably no traps ... but since there's always some possibility of the die roll failing, you can never really know, not even if you're 17th level (where the thief table stops).

Okay, let's say there is a trap and you detected it.  You try to remove it and I roll the dice.  You ask, "Did I remove the trap?" and I answer, "You don't know."  See, the die roll must be kept secret.  You're not meant to know if you succeeded.  You're just supposed to trust to your luck.  Period.

On the surface, this sounds like a great mechanic.  It's really not bad ... the first time you encounter it.  The tenth time, or the hundredth time, the mechanic gets pretty frustrating.  Since it applies to every thieving ability, very soon it becomes the core reason that players don't want to play thieves — because if you play a thief according to the original rules, this mechanic is all you have.

Supposedly, the low amount of experience you need to go up a level compensates for this frustration.  Except it doesn't.  Eventually, you learn to hate the thieving skills, ceasing to rely on them except when absolutely necessary.  Eventually, you'll settle into the hear noise and open locks skills, which you'll overuse, because are the options in your skillset that won't bite you in the ass if they fail.

Pass/fail mechanics suck.  The exception is any rule that lets you try to pass repeatedly until you do, such as attempting to hit with a weapon, where you can make the attempt every round.  When you get one chance at something, however ... well, the pass/fail option better really, really matter, because when it is applied to stupid bullshit stuff like can you pick a pocket, and do it without being noticed and sparking the 95th chase of a thief through the streets of a town by the guard that's taken place in your world (in my early days, seemed like this was happening every session), then the mechanic just sucks.

It is not made better by keeping the mechanic a secret.  Imagine fighting a whole combat where every hit you make is a secret, but every hit the enemy makes is fully revealed.  Sound like fun?  Yes, yes, I know that some of you right now are pausing and saying, hey!  That really sounds ... accurate or realistic or cool.  You might even try it ... and I'd lay money that the first time, it would feel workable.

The tenth time, not so much.

Too many times game designers come up with mechanics they think really work ... because they don't have to spend hundreds of hours at the fucking forge, watching a green bar so you can strike the blade properly, until your eyes bleed.

A pickpocket in the real world gets to know precisely whose pockets can be picked and how hard it is to get something they've seen once out of a pocket they've identified.  It isn't a die roll.  It isn't even a 99 in 100 roll.  It is so close to certain that it's possible to do it for months at a time without being caught.  The balance is not "can the pocket be picked" but is that particular pocket worth the effort?  Since most pockets aren't with certainty, the pickpocket floats around areas of tourists, because tourists have lots of money and they usually carry it on themselves.  Pickpockets also frequent areas where people use cash to pay for gambling and hookers, so there's no record of where they've spent or lost their money, or how much they're earning.  Anyone who looks comfortable and at ease in such places are left alone; pickpockets target the uncertain, the uncomfortable, the ones that are nervous and sweating ... because they have money and they're not part of the local criminalized community.  There's a lot that goes into the practice.  Additionally, when a pickpocket gets caught, it isn't by failing to pick a pocket.  There's always a strategy for that, when it so very rarely occurs, such as making the pull near a place where the dupe can be pushed into an alley or either clubbing or stabbing the dupe before they can cry out for help.  No, a pickpocket gets pinched because someone else who knows how pickpockets work is watching.  They see the pull.  The dupe never does.

These realities surrounding the practice obliterate the pass/fail structure.  It doesn't make sense.  Similar arguments can be made about hiding in shadows and moving silently.  If I'm far enough away from you, I'm always "moving silently" in relation to you.  It always matters how near to you I want to be; and details like what surface I'm walking over or what I'm wearing, how much light exists and most importantly, who's listening and what are they doing?  We train people to pick their moment, pick their equipment and pick their target ... so it isn't a chance thing.  With enough experience and enough time to prepare, slipping up to a person silently is automatic ... unless the target has their own training and has made their own preparations.  Any flat method for calculating this that doesn't recognize these conditional issues is a dumb, ill-considered mechanic.  A single die roll that applies to ALL situations is idiocy in the extreme.

Sneaking up on a person or past them is a combination of many factors — the use of silence and shadows being only two of them.  There's no practical game rule for treating silence and hiding as different skills; you never do one without attempting to do the other, and by insisting that a roll is made for both in all circumstances only assures that full likely success is a very tiny number.  The chance of a 1st level thief in AD&D, without dexterity or racial bonuses, succeeding at BOTH hiding in shadows and moving silently is 10% of 15% ... or 1.5%.  The best you can do at 1st level is to be a halfling thief with an 18 dexterity: this gives you a 35% chance of 35% to succeed in both: 12.25%.  You literally have a 1 in 8 chance of slipping up on a guard at 1st level, if you're the best thief possible.  And, of course, if you fail at either roll, you'll be seen or you'll be heard.  You're set up to fail.

And remember: you're not supposed to know if you succeeded at either.  That information is kept secret from you, until it's too late.

Similar arguments to these apply to other abilities.  Opening locks is not a matter of "can you succeed?" but "how long does it take?"  If you understand locks, and you have the proper tools, a success roll is meaningless.  Also, just for funsies, locks don't exist in a pre-17th century world.  And those in the 17th century were laughably easy to break.  The locks were large, so they made noise while they were opened.  Not because they were notoriously hard to break.

Gygax included his thief ability comments in the DMG because, as he said, they would "prevent abuse of these activities."  He clearly believed that the thief being able to automatically perform thieving abilities would overreach the game: as though climbing a wall or reading a language compared with casting a spell.  What is the issue with a thief being able to read a magic scroll, exactly?  Aren't there other players who can do that automatically?  How does this sort of thing break the game?

I haven't yet discussed "hear noise."  Until I puzzled it through, this used to be the bane of my existence as a DM.  Players were constantly pausing to hear noise, calling it out like 5e players call out perception checks.  Naturally, players always want more information; they want more warning of things that are coming ... and a particular kind of DM doesn't want to give that warning.  They're convinced that the best possible sort of tension is built out of the players no knowing what's coming next.

I circumvent the problem by telling players that if they can hear something with hear noise (I call it "heightened senses") then I'll say so without my having to be asked.  Moreover, I like the players to know what's ahead.  Knowing is much more worrisome than not knowing ... a truth that Hitchcock taught the world 80 years ago.  Watching the gasoline creep across the street in The Birds, and then the fellow with the match, and then the fire, is far more interesting than having no idea that there's anything to worry about.  If the players know there's a powerful demon behind a door, waiting for them, whenever the players are ready to push on through and engage it, that is MUCH more interesting in game terms than opening an apparently harmless door and finding a demon behind it.

The sad truth is that a great many DMs don't have very much idea of what tension is, or how its built, and so they think information is a bad thing.  They don't watch enough good movies, or they watch too many of a certain kind of movie, and they don't investigate and study storytelling as a subject.  For these reasons, they subvert possibilities in their gaming by adopting mechanics deliberately designed to keep players in the dark, when in fact knowing that there IS a trap, and that it's not deactivated is much more compelling than knowing nothing.

The thieves' abilities, understood right, played right, are a means of pouring exposition into the players' hands, by ensuring that the thief sees things, learns things and hears things, in a hundred different circumstances, enabling us to fuel the game's momentum.  Why would we want to keep the thief from going places and getting details about the scenery we want the players to have?

The Sweet Spot

In case some people missed it, I have been suffering from the plague all week.  I don't know what else to call it; the damn thing won't let me go.

It is perhaps because of this that I am fixated on the pickpocketing problem.  I've received a lot of helpful comments and I will be putting much of what people have said into the thief and assassin characters, when I am again able to think with a clear head.  This is the first time in days that I have felt up to writing anything.

There is a point that has been missed, however.  Several have said that in their campaigns, their thieves most often use the pick pocket skill to get hold of things, like a guard's key or a specific item from an NPC.  I must say I find this strange, since I never have players that do this.  Not that I have any problem with the idea, I think it is sound.  It is perhaps that I don't give keys to guards who can be approached in the open (logically, a guard standing outside a gate would be let through the gate by a guard on the inside, thus you would need the key to steal the key) or because I don't think to put valuable adventure-critical items in NPC pockets.  If we as DMs don't create the situation where the pickpocket can solve the problem with pickpocketing, the players don't use that as the solution.  After all, who needs a key?  Doesn't a thief open locks?

My bigger problem, which I stated on the previous post, but which was passed over, is this:

1. We can assume that pickpocketing is a way for a player character to make money.
2. How much money ought a pickpocket of varying level succeed in obtaining from a total stranger, keeping in mind that we want to make the score matter to the player?
3. How do we make the obtaining of that score difficult enough that the player can't just rob thousands of g.p. at will without risk?

Risk is, after all, the game.  Without risk, I might just as well give the thief the money and have done with it. There HAS to be a risk that threatens actual death, or it won't cause the player to hesitate.

To encourage the player not to hesitate, the score has to be BIG enough that the player can't easily forget the presence of the potential take.  It has to be mouth-watering.  It has to bother the thief.  This is the only thing that will encourage the thief to hazard the risk.

The sweet spot between these two points was the purpose for the pickpocketing table.  The sweet spot is achieved by giving the thief additional skills as the thief increases in level.  That only lowers the risk, which makes the take easier and spoils the game.  The better alternative is to increase the size of the score, arguing that the benefit of the thief's level is NOT that the thief gets better at taking things, but that the thief gets better at finding things to take.

Presumably, a 9th level thief wouldn't walk from one side of a doorway to the other to lift 20 g.p. from a target.  Why bother?  Said thief already has pockets and hoards bulging with thousands of gold.  I should have made the score size based on a die roll ~ like, say, a d10 per level.  Then a 9th level thief might feel it worthwhile balancing a point of 6 against a take of 500 g.p.  He might seriously risk rolling snake eyes again if the score was nearly 10,000 g.p.

It has to be understood that ALL game rules are seeking that sweet spot that produces the player's dilemma.  We want the emotional rush that is produced by the sound of the ball rolling around the roulette wheel coupled with the near certainty that putting a hundred dollars on number 26 is sheer folly.  The near certainty.  There is a world of angst to be found in the word "near."

So we don't want rules that eventually guarantee a player's success.  I understand this is what most DMs adhere to when creating rules for anything, the presupposition that as a player character increases in levels, their success edges towards certainty.  No.  No, no, no.  We've got it all wrong there.  The game is designed to ensure that increase in levels assures a greater variety of monstrous foes, a greater variety of obstacles and difficulties to overcome and a greater variety of ways to die.  The game does not get easier for players who go up levels!  In most ways, it gets harder.  Much, much harder!

3.5e never learned this lesson, 4e never learned this lesson, 5e hasn't learned this lesson.  It is why most games, played the way the rules say, suck ~ but in a very subtle way, in a way that has DMs and players scratching their heads and thinking, "This is all really awesome, except for this thing I can't quite put my finger on."

It takes a very self-aware DM to overcome the tendency to feed the player's hero-fantasies and ensure that the game consistently makes the player ache and flinch at the same time.  Most DMs who can do this, I'm dead certain, don't know that they're doing this.  It goes back to what I've consistently said: we don't know when we're playing the game well.  It is such a hard game to know.  

Picking Pocket Points

Some four years ago I proposed a change to the thieves' skill, pick pockets.  I consider those rules a failure, not because they don't work, but because in four years of game play none of the thieves in my game have ever made use of them.

Now, that may seem strange to some folks, but I blame myself.  Thieves in my game just don't think like thieves in other games usually do, mostly because it is very rare that a party in my world is just farting around a town doing nothing.  They're almost always on their way to somewhere, or they're not interested in pissing off anyone in the town for a very small amount of gold, compared to what they're likely to get come the end of the present adventure.  A pouch with a hundred gold just isn't worth the possible aggravation or the potential of pissing off the locals.

This makes pickpocketing a strange non-element in my world.  It's there, deservedly so, but the rules for it are minimalist for a payoff that doesn't measure up . . . on the whole, as a sub-game inside the game, pickpocketing is a bore.

However, even though my players don't care, and won't use the rules I make for it, I'd like to find a way to make the sub-game less boring.  How to do that?

We can make the payoff bigger.  We can give access for thieves to steal bigger pouches, bigger stones and fabulous jewelry - except that we have to ask ourselves, what in blazes is all this fabulous wealth doing hanging on belts or in easily grabbed places, like fruit hanging on trees?  Too, do we want to risk making the payoff so high that the party will just hang around town rather than go to a dungeon?  There's a fine line to walk here.

As well, look at the basic system for picking pockets.  Roll a % die, win-lose, that's it.  And really, how many raucous fleeing chases do we want to run as a DM, as yet another player is chased by yet another group of NPCs in yet another town?  How often can this happen before we're just going through the motions?

Well, I wish I had an answer.  If I had an answer, I'd be writing the proposition I have on my wiki and not on my blog.  When I write things on my blog these days, it's because I'm not sure.  I'm testing the water.  I'm thinking through the problem.  The problem being, right now, that I'm working on the sage study, pickpocketing.

Let's give this a go.  I've come up with a convoluted game-like pickpocket table that works something like the game of craps.  Here it is:

The "Roll" is 2d6 for those who have never played D&D and
can't figure it out for themselves.

The above represents an attempt by a thief to find a "score" in the space of a day's pickpocketing.  Before rolling on the table, the thief must first designate a number of hours in the day that they're going to try searching.  My argument is that scores of 10 g.p. or more don't come up more than once a day, so the first penalty against the thief is that they have to waste time of their lives (and their parties) actually pickpocketing.  They can do it casually, if they wish, for an hour a day, but then the chance of any result is reduced.

Let's say Digger the Thief decides he's going to spend 8 hours hunting up a score.  He begins by rolling a d12; if he rolls an 8 or less, then it is possible that a score will be "found" ~ that is, Digger is allowed to then roll on the above table.  As well, Digger's roll on the d12 indicates how many hours passed before the possibility came up; if he rolled a "2," then the table above was consulted in the second hour.

We'll say that Digger did roll a 2 and that he does get to roll on the table above.  Now, if Digger rolls from 7 to 11, it turns out that the possibility for a score was a bust; the silvery necklace was actually cheap bone, shining in the sunlight, mostly worthless, or it turns out that the rumor that a rich ponce was going to come out of the Lost Mast's Pub on Warehouse Row was just a rumor.  The roll on the d12 be damned, Digger just spent 8 hours wandering around town, getting next to nothing.

But what if Digger rolled box cars - the "guard" result.  Well, that being the case, Digger will get hassled by local law enforcement for vagrancy, unnecessarily following people around, not having a right proper job or anything else the constabulary cares to name.  Digger won't be arrested, just moved on . . . but his face will be remembered and again, he'll lose 8 hours time since the guards and what friends they have will keep an eye on the miserable malcontent spoiling up their town.

No, to have any chance at a score, Digger has to roll less than a 7.  We'll say he rolls a 5.  His appraisal skill tells him that the item he's chasing is between 90 gold pieces (because we'll let him roll).  He also knows that the fellow carrying the score is likely between 1st and 4th level ~ I don't mind giving this information to Digger, since he's got to figure that someone carrying around a pouch with this much coin in it has to be trained in some capacity.

So now Digger has to decide, is the score worth it?  It is probably the only score he'll get today ~ but to get it, he has to roll a 5 again before he rolls a 7, 11 or 12 (see the 2nd roll column).  See?  As I said, like craps.

Now, he's not putting up any stake, but as he starts to stalk the score ~ that is, he rolls on the "2nd Roll" column ~ there's a rub.  It reads, "if not the same roll as the original score" ~ in this case, not a 5 ~ "add 1 level to the target."  In every sense, not rolling the 5 (or the "point" as it is called in craps) indicates that the target carrying the score is eluding Digger.  And as he keeps missing the number he needs (his chance), we can imagine it is because the target is staying just out of Digger's reach, likely because of good instincts.

We'll say Digger is 5th level.  He isn't afraid of being exposed to a 1st to 4th level target, but now he's missed the number he needs three times and the target is probably 4th to 7th level.  Does Digger want to try again?

If he's exposed, it means that the target discovers what Digger's trying to do as Digger is doing it.  Rather than the cliche, which says the thief grabs the object, is discovered doing so and is chased through town, here we're saying that the object is in the hands of both parties, who are wrestling for it.  If exposed, if Digger wants the score, he'll have to grapple for it; that's going to mean initiative, rolls to hit and potentially his getting attacked by other people (say, guards that recognize him) if Digger gets stunned.  The only way Digger gets away with the score clean is if he makes that number he needs.  Therefore, having more levels than the target matters.

But it's okay . . . because Digger can walk away any time he wants.  He can just grumble and give up the rest of his day and say, "Oh well, tomorrow."  He's lost nothing except the opportunity.

I'm hoping players will want to play this game.  I'm hoping the score is big enough to be worth it.  A really lucky low level thief could conceivably hit a jackpot.  A high level thief might feel that it's worth possibly getting into a fist fight, if that's the worst that can happen.

What the table doesn't do is offer a higher chance to a thief that is higher level to get away clean.  I've been thinking about that.  Perhaps having the option of ignoring a bad roll, one time per 3 levels above 1st? Perhaps optional rolls replacing a d6 with a d4, when the player chooses to do so, with one substitution per level above 1st.

Also, the size of the score could be increased; higher level thieves would see bigger scores, thus we multiply the numbers shown as the thief goes up a level.  A 1st level may have to roll two 3s to get a 250 g.p. bauble but a higher level thief would only need to roll two 6s.  These are things I think are potentially viable.

Like I said, all in the thinking stage.  Perhaps it is simply too convoluted.  Perhaps it is not convoluted enough.

The Criminal Class

One of my goals this week has been to create a list of sage abilities for the thief, to add to the wiki.  Not to actually define in detail these abilities, as that would take far more than a week, but to identify what those abilities would be and to leave the details for later.  I've given up trying to introduce the sage abilities in complete form to my parties ~ it's just taking too long.  I've been banging away for several years now and it feels like nothing gets done.  If I make the framework, however, perhaps I can get the players to help and in some cases we can make rules on the spot, the precise limitations to be established by precedent.

This sounds bad but hell, right now, there are no rules of any kind for most of these things.  A proposed structure is at least a start.

So, the thief.  Now, I'm well aware that this class wound up being a public black-eye to the game company and that by the 90s everyone had chosen to adopt the term "rogue" because we are, well, all infant children and such.  For my money, if there was going to be a change in the term, we should have gone the other way and identified the thief as the "criminal class."  For my money, this is what the thief represents: not a playfully mischevious scoundrel, not a scamp, not an acrobat, but a class that embodies those skills that the criminal class DOES possess, however unpleasant they might be to encounter in everyday life: double-dealing at games, forgery, casing a building, holding a group of hostages effectively, acting as a quack or a shyster with no real knowledge of medicine or the law, putting the blade between the fourth and fifth ribs adroitly . . . these are difficult things to do and take time to learn.  I don't care, myself, that the acquisition of these skills suggests someone who ought to be in jail; my players are free to associate with whatever characters they will.  So long as the violence is directed at people outside the party, it is up to the party to decide what makes them comfortable, not me.

Therefore, screw most of the physical tricks and feats usually ascribed to the thief.  These things rightly belong to the BARD, a performer, not to someone who chooses the criminal profession because it is the easiest and least physical way to make a living (something that everyone seems to have forgotten).  I know, I know, the cat burglar is the quintessential thief, but a character doesn't need to do somersaults to climb buildings quietly and doing somersaults doesn't make a person thief-like.  In fact, the two have nothing to do with each other, except for the thin veneer of needing the thief (er, rogue) being able to do something to make the class viable.

I would rather simply admit it.  The thief knows how to smuggle, make a trap, roughly praise a valuable object, fence a stolen good and woo a victim.  If I can think of enough dirty tricks to add to a thieves' sage abilities, I will add them . . . but on the whole, I must admit, it is still fairly thin on the ground.

On one level, it should be.  The thief has the easiest amount of experience to go up a level so it is naturally the weakest, least effective class.  There are certain aspects of a thief that are useful, that can't be gotten around with the social blunderings of a cleric, the physical force of a fighter or the raw power of the wizard.  The thief is finesse.  Ruthless finesse.  This is the structure I'm going for.

No doubt about it: many of the thieves' studies are going to offer little.  I have no interest in the massive modifier bumps that show up with e3.5 and carry through to the later editions.  Basically, don't bother rolling the die, you have a +35 to any roll you care to make, where thieving skills are involved.  I've just been through the 3.5 feat rules and I can say with conviction that there was a LOT of lazy game design there.  +2 if you have this skill and another +4 if you also have this skill and add another +7 if you have THIS skill.  Criminy.

Where my system is concerned, I am on the hook for coming up with at least 8 individual abilities (no leaning on extra bonuses!) for ALL of the following studies: setting and removing traps, casing a building, hiding in cover, picking pockets, opening locks, pawning goods and like chicanery, forgery, cheating at gambling, acting as an accomplice, acting with guile (managing victims), hearing noise, sure-footedness, dirty fighting and, of course, backstabbing.

Not an easy task.  But I'm sure with time I will steadily accumulate those 120 expected abilities and probably more.  That's how the sage ability design has gone so far.

Oh, the assassin is another problem.  I've been thinking of the difference between the two, apart from the difference between backstab and assassination.  I think it comes down to this:  a thief is concerned with being liked; most of the actual criminal activities involve some kind of association, what with finding marks to cheat, victims to terrorize and customers for stolen goods.  All these things are easier if the thief is appreciated and liked.

Killers, however, are just scary.  They're not concerned with being liked.  Dillinger was a thief and had a friendly reputation.  Bonnie and Clyde, likewise.  These criminals killed, yes, but they were better known for robbery.  On the other hand, the less popular gangsters, like Bugsy Siegel or Dutch Shultz, were feared.  No one idolized them while they were alive nor did they mourn their deaths.  This is the difference, I think.  Crooks imagine that someday they'll be admired and respected for their skill and daring.  Assassins, on the other hand, just want the other guy to die.

Thieving Abilities - Hear Noise

I'm going to take a crack at hear noise, among the most annoying, least defined and generally crappy game mechanics in AD&D ... and at the same time, absurdly difficult to improve.  I've never been able to do so, I don't know of any other mechanic that does more than simply inflate the base problems - first, that the character supposedly fails the roll and can't hear something that ought to be perfectly clear, and second, that what can and cannot be heard is far, far too subjective, and therefore almost wholly dependent upon the grudging or generous DM.

What's needed is a measurement ... and as it happens, in sound there is one.

Having spent some time trying to hammer down the mechanics of decibels, I've put together the following table:

Now, while I think this idea may in fact be easy to use, once one is adjusted, initially it is a bit of a mind fuck ... so take that ol' mind out and give it a good stretch.

The numbers were put together from an online calculator, so I admit that I did not do my own math; this one was a bit beyond me, I'm afraid ... but remember, we're not trying to pass a physics test here, we just want a workable system for D&D.  One where we can measure sound, not just point at it.

The feet/yard/miles columns are included so the DM can choose what particular measure is useful given the particular circumstances.  The examples of sound for decibels is more or less what you'll find online, though I've worked to remove all modern references, such as rock concerts, jet planes and jackhammers.  Those are very common examples you'll find on decibel sites.

How this works is this:  the distance indicated is that point where the sound being made has been reduced to barely audible (12 decibels).  It's that distance that the sound can just barely be picked up ... because, it must be understood, the amount of sound a thing makes is dependent on how far away you are from that sound.  That's obvious ... but where is the mechanic that demonstrates it?

If you half the maximum distance, you increase the level of sound by 6 decibels (not double!).  Half that distance again, and that again increases the sound by 6 decibels.  This is how the decibel mechanics actually work.  A sound that is 6 decibels higher can be heard at twice the distance.

So the hammer on an anvil can be just picked up at 3/10ths of a mile ... but it sounds very minute, like the clear sound of a pin dropped on a floor in an otherwise silent room.  At 273 yards, the hammer sounds as loud as the rustling of leaves.  At 137 yards, something like the collective sound of a nearby farm.  And so on.  At nine yards, as loud as a stream, at six feet, as loud as a dinner party.

Sound is such a deceptive thing, however, and the real problem with your perception of a hammer right now is that you tend to think of it as loud as it is when you're standing right next to it, actually using the hammer.  It's hard, really, to grasp how loud it sounds, exactly, from nine yards away.  Moreover, it is almost impossible for you to get a good grasp on how loud the rural countryside is, or a 'quiet garden.'  That's the mind fuck.  Every idea you have about the relationship between sound and actual recognized sound-making is purely subjective.  You simply have to discard that perception.

I would like a better set of sounds than 'quiet street' and 'noisy street' ... but that's going to take even more research than I've done now, and I'd like to start to get a handle on what kind of sounds I'm looking for.  The thing is, most examples that are given bear a certain modernistic similarities - I got better traction by looking up specific things.  I'm going to have to spend a bunch of time thinking up a list and then looking up those things and placing them on the decibel scale.

Meanwhile, the system in general should work. 

See, figure what the sound level is, then ask yourself as DM, is the party close enough to hear that?  Then consider this ... can the thief pick out the sound that's relevant apart from other sounds?  Not just that there's voices, but what the voices are actually saying.

That ought to be a gradient as well.  However, while I've been piecing out the above, I'm stumped for how to improve the thief's actual ability to decipher the noise.  I don't like the idea of a straight percentage roll ... which sucks.  Perhaps an ability to nail down sounds that fall into a certain range, and then that range expanding.  Between 57 and 62 at 1st level, then between 56 and 63 at second, etc.  Note that the range system above allows a very precise measurement of where the sound overlaps that range, and the difference in a few points could make a big difference.

But I'm just spitballin' here at the end.  I want to think about it more, try out the base template, and see if I don't get an epiphany.

Climb Walls - Thieving Ability

The content of this post is built on the premise described on this post.

No-Fault Climbing

Thieves are considered to be able to climb any reasonable vertical surface with 100% percent efficiency, so long as the distance climbed does not exceed their stamina. A 'reasonable surface' is defined as any constructed or natural surface that is not, a) polished or plastered smooth and intentionally manufactured without cracks; b) possessing a vertical slope greater than 95º; or c) made of material such as smooth metal or glass, possibly of magical origin.

The total distance that a thief may climb without fault is equal to their own dexterity in feet, +3 additional feet per level. Thus, a 4th level thief with a 15 dexterity would be able to climb a distance of 27 feet (15' + 3' x4) without any danger of falling. This presumes that if the thief is able to rest (remain in fixed position without having to use his or her hands to hold on), the thief would then be able to climb another 27 feet without fault. Thus, imaginably, the thief could climb a 3,000 foot cliff, so long as there was a place to rest every 27 feet or less, without any danger of falling.

Danger Climbing

If the distance between places to rest is greater than the distance the thief is able to climb safely, then the thief must take a chance of falling. This chance of falling is equal to the standard climb walls percentage found in the player's handbook (table posted here to follow later), up to an additional distance equal to twice the thief's no-fault climbing distance.

Thus, a 4th level thief with a 15 dexterity has a climb walls of 88%, and is faced with a single climb of 80 feet. The thief can easily accomplish the first 27 feet; since the remaining distance is less than twice 27 feet (which would be 54 feet, and the remaining distance if 53 feet), the thief need only succeed at rolling 88 or less on a d100 in order to successfully climb to a place where rest is possible.

If the distance is greater than twice (say, it were 55 more feet), but less than five times the thief's no fault distance (a total of 135' beyond the initial 27'), then the thief must roll his or her climbing percentage twice to succeed in climbing that additional distance (anywhere between 82' and 162'.

If the distance is still greater, then the thief must roll three times to succeed in climbing a distance more than five and up to 8 times their no fault distance (up to an additional 256', or between 163' and 283'). Further distance calculations are based on 13 times the distance, 21 times the distance and 34 times the distance.

Obviously, a different base dexterity and a different level would modify the above numbers, which are all part of the same example.

Pitons

Modern pitons do not exist in a D&D world, but spikes may be driven into walls or rock faces as often as availability allows. If pitons are used, there is a good chance that they will belay the fall of an individual who has slipped. For the remainder of this document, pitons will refer to spikes, and not to modern mountain climbing tools.

Pitons must be placed by persons with wisdom in order to be at their most effective. Any individual can hammer a piton into a rock; only a wise person will put it in place so as to perform its purpose. Note that proper placement of a piton does not guarantee success - but poor piton placement guarantees failure.

Piton effectiveness is never determined until such time as the piton is actually employed to arrest a fall. At that time, the individual who placed the piton (which may not be the individual who has fallen) must make a wisdom check (roll equal wisdom or less). If the wisdom check succeeds, then the piton has been placed properly and has a chance to arrest a fall. Otherwise, the piton will become unfixed from the rock when weight is applied and the piton will be useless.

The chance of a piton holding (when placed correctly) is equal to 100% minus the total weight of all persons falling divided by 50 lbs. multiplied by the number of 32' distances dropped. Thus, a 150 to 199 lb. climber falls a distance of between 64 and 95 feet, which equals a subtraction of 3 x 3 percent - in which case the piton will hold if 91% or less is rolled.

The distance fallen is determined by the length of rope plus the distance above the piton prior to the actual fall.

Tying Together

If individuals tie together, without the use of a piton, the chance of a resting individual (not holding on with his or her hands) on the rock face arresting the fall of another individual is equal to a percentage of 5 times the anchor's strength minus the same percentage applied above. If this percentage fails, the anchor is pulled off the face of the climb and will fall.

If the individual is not resting, and is in fact also climbing, then the chance of that individual arresting another individual's fall is equal to twice the anchor's strength minus the usual percentage.

Non-Thieves

Non-thieves are able to perform no-fault climbing up to a distance equal to their dexterity. They are able to danger climb just as thieves do, only their percentage climb walls ability is equal to 70%, subject to race adjustments. This climb wall ability does not increase with level.

P.S.,

I'll be adding thieving abilities to this page throughout the week.

Thieving Skills - Pick It Or Not?

Pick pockets.

"Dear old gent passing by
Something nice takes his eye,
Everything's clear, attack the rear
Get in and pick a pocket or two.

When I see someone rich
Both my thumbs start to itch
Only to find some peace of mind
We have to pick a pocket or two."

-- Oliver, the Musical

I have never been a fan of the pick pockets ability.  I quite like it when a player is clever with it, uses it to filch a map off the bar from two lads planning a robbery, or kypes a dagger from a fellow's belt - that's sweet when it happens.  But what I usually hear - from people who have played WAY too much D&D in old style games - is the cliche:

"I look around the market: is there anyone who looks like they're carrying a fat purse?"

Jeezus.  Can you feel your eyes roll?

The answer to that question is, unfortunately, yes.  It's a market.  People bring their money.  What's more, other thieves than the player know this.  Some Master Thief knows this, and that's why he or she has the boys pick a few here and there without spoiling the field by taking too much!  That's why there's an understood rule in the town underground that this particular market square is OWNED by Ricktus the Unforgiving, who cheerfully murders dumb-ass outsiders who think they can saunter onto his stealing grounds and pluck plums he's let dangle for months.  The last thing Ricktus wants is for some tight-ass town official with tendencies to blood vendetta to have his pocket picked ... but of course the fucking player doesn't think about these things, because the fucking player has been playing for 15 years with fucking DMs who don't think about these things.  So then I have to kill the player's thief, and smartly, because even if the official doesn't notice it, the 4-24 other thieves who are always in the square see the player's thief pick that pocket plain as fucking day.

This tends to produce two effects: 1) the player cries and whines and never plays in my world again; and 2) the player never uses their thieves' ability to pick pockets.

My feeling is, (1) good riddance; and (2) if you want to use it, think it through.

Since that isn't working, however (because players can't be bothered for a few coins), and since I'm rewriting the thieving abilities anyway, I will relax my position on the matter and see if I can't arrange a compromise that retains the master thief's status and enables the player to reasonably secure a few coins.

As ever, the first real problem is the percentage.  It doesn't convey any measure of whose pocket is being picked, so that the 1 HD prostitute is as easily picked as the 1 HD village idiot.  You can modify for level, but there's no modifier for streetwise (and no measure, either).

The second problem is that of identifying the target.  Let's ask the question, is the actual target of the theft important?  If the player is caught, then the player is going to have to run from virtually every authority in the square no matter who is the target.  Remember, this isn't a poor production of Oliver, where the thief runs ignored through the streets, pursued by the gentleman who is ignored.  This is a square with a potential lot of spellcasters.  You really want to mess with your thief as a DM?  Have a tree suddenly appear two feet in front of the thief just as the thief looks over his or her shoulder - they turn back, there's a tree, no time for disbelief - BANG!  One unconscious thief.  Whereupon the first level illusionist with phantasmal force walks up to the gentleman and says, "Half?"

Think of the spells: magic missile, grease, hold person, push, trip, blind ... and locate object, augury, divination, etc.  Realistically, in the age of magic, with so many easily applied spells available to first level casters, once the thief is revealed, that thief is caught.  This is usually overlooked by DMs (who haven't the imagination Ron Howard gave a Pie) ... but I don't overlook it.  If you want better, smarter players, you shouldn't cater to their laziness by overlooking it, either.

Let's say we don't need to identify the target.  Let's further say there doesn't have to be one target.  After all, what the player actually wants is the money.   There's a rule floating around that picking pockets is worthy of gaining experience, but seriously, I hope DMs are not dumb enough to follow such rules.  If they are, well, what I'm about to suggest won't change it.

If the target is unimportant, we can perceive the market square (or the whole town or village) as a kind of field, which the thief picks from.  If we suspend the troublesome percentage role (yes, "role," not "roll" - I have ideas for the %), we could employ a different measure for the thief's efforts.  A measure like, How Much?

It's reasonable that a high level thief ought to be able to take more from that field than one that's lower level.  If we impose a rule that says a thief must spend one full day in examining the field, identifying other thieves who may be watching, picking their moment and choosing from opportunities (assumed, not described by the DM) as best they can, at the end of the day the 8th level thief will have more to show from that work than the 1st level.

In other words, we can roll dice to determine how much is taken, not IF something is taken ... so that the 1st level can take a day to get money for the inn that night, and an 8th level can help fund the party's latest adventure by lifting more.

Mm, but how much more?

It has to be little enough so that it doesn't unbalance the game in favor of the thieves' take.  If the thief is lifting 200 g.p. a day by 6th level, well, I think my thief is going to take a year and visit London.  At the same time, it has to be enough to count for something.  I propose a sort of lottery.

Let us say that the base theft for a day is 4d4+4 c.p.  That's a range of 8-20.  That's not much, but it's a bit of pocket change for a low level thief.

We can then modify this by multiplying it against an increasing modifier.  For such things, I love the Fibonacci series:  1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc.  Each number is equal to the sum of the previous two numbers, so that the next number in the series would be 13+21 = 34.  This series doesn't climb as quickly as exponents of 2 (1, 2, 4, 8, 16 ...) but it does climb meaningfully.  Thus, the 8th level thief is lifting between 168 and 420 c.p. per day (or 1 to 2 gold, depending on how you want to roll).

This isn't much, and shouldn't be much ... too much, like I said, and they'll leave off adventuring.

Yet I have an interesting way in which this can be enhanced.  Let's say that for one day's stealing, there's a low chance (1 in 20) that the thief will get lucky.  They'll pick up 10-100 g.p. in one pull.  Let's further say that the thief gets 1d20 roll per level to see if they're lucky.  This means that, even though the 2nd level pulls as much as the 1st level (note both the first numbers in the Fibonacci series are '1') ... the 2nd level gets twice the chance to get lucky.

Let's further say that multiple 1s on d20s do NOT mean multiples of 10 to 100 gold in one pouch ... but that every collected 1 can be rolled again, so that on the second round the hit might be as much as 100 to 1,000.

For example, suppose that Dorry the Doorslipper is 6th level, and she spends the day thieving.  She throws dice, getting a 13, multiplying that by 8 (see the series) and getting 104 c.p. worth in silver and copper (how you determine that is your business).  Dorry then throws 6d20 for her luck ... she rolls two 1s, and so gets the 10 to 100 g.p. bonus.  She then rolls both 1s (the other four dice are ignored) to see if she does even better.

You can decide if you want to allow a 1,000 to 10,000 g.p. option.  (It's a 1 in 8000 chance, so the payoff is slightly worse than 1:1 - 11:16)

Ay, but here's the rub:  if the player wants the piddling few coppers, they can take them without risking any chance that the local thieves' guild, or any other witness, will see them.  But after, repeat AFTER, the player rolls a 1, so that they SEE the plump pouch, they then have to decide if they want to throw the % listed in the player's handbook to take that pouch.

Worse, if it is a VERY plump pouch, the 100 to 1,000 g.p. pouch, they have to roll that % twice to get it.  This is because that pouch (or tiara or jeweled sword or whatever you decide it is) is more obvious to everyone in the square ... there are more people watching it.  Thus, if Dorry gets a second 1 in a row, and sees that very tempting piece, will she dare take it?  Only Dorry will know.

If she is spotted, well ... as I said:  spells, spells, spells, and of course a very angry guard and or master thief.

Thieving Abilities - Up In Stages

Very well, the next thieving ability:

Climb walls.

I'm going to have to start with a quote from The Bridge on the River Kwai:

"--They say in view of the time element, they don't think a few practice jumps would be worthwhile.  --No?  --No, they say if you make one jump, you're only got a 50% chance of injury, two jumps, 80%, three jumps you're bound to catch a packet.  The consensus of opinion is the most sensible thing for Major Shears to do is to go ahead and jump and hope for the best.  --With or without parachute?"

If you are going to train thieves to climb walls, you'd better do it so there's a far less chance of failure.  A 15% chance (first level) is plainly ridiculous.  Long before the thief lived to become first level, the thief would have fallen to his or her own death.

At the same time, to argue no fail thieving abilities is, all respect to JB who made a comment on this post, is just olympically stupid.  Not only because realistically it's not possible, but MORE to the point, where's the freaking drama?  JB notes that it takes a lot away from the thief's going up levels ... well duh.  How does one improve from a no fail position?

The no fail solution reflects how little imagination a lot of DMs have.  There's more to climbing something than simply putting hand over hand.

I had a friend who was passionately into free climbing - no ropes, no equipment, just what you're born with.  He considered a mountain like this one an easy afternoon:

Which it is, given that this is the first little lump - called Yamnuska - you come across when you drive west of where I live.

Jan demonstrated his technique by climbing up an ordinary brick wall on the side of an old school we were passing.  The mortar allowed for about 7-8 millimeters purchase, but Jan went straight up about two and half stories in about ten seconds.  Nothing special.

Now, there wasn't any chance, really, of his falling ... so long as 25 feet was all he was going to climb.  Another 25 feet, he admitted, was going to be harder than the first, and he wasn't eager to try a brick wall a hundred feet high.

What I'm saying is that your chance is dependent on how much you climb, not on the mere choice of doing so.  Most anyone in school could at least climb five or ten feet of rope.  It was another thing to climb to the ceiling, and it would have been quite another to climb three times as high.  If you're going to make rules about climbing, those rules have to address the practicality of sustained climbing.

Jan had no trouble climbing something like Yamnuska because the mountain has plenty of places for rest.  So long as he doesn't need to sustain his energy for more than short spurts, he could go up and down the sheer face twenty times a season with little or no fear of falling.  Any thief with equal chances to rest could say the same - in fact, ought to say the same.  If there's a window ledge to rest on every 18 feet, even a first level ought to be able to manage a ten story building.

So my proposition would be that the ability would translate to spurts of dexterity x ft. +3' per level, for anything equivalent to a brick wall.  (May seem a bit low compared to Jan, but consider the thief is probably carrying equipment, and isn't wearing modern sneakers).  Half the purchase and half the feet climbable; double the purchase, double the feet climbable.  And so long as there's a chance to rest, no chance of falling.

However ...

If the distance did not allow a rest, then the chance of falling the distance of the second allowable spurt would be the % found in the player's handbook.  Thus, the first level thief, faced with a 25' continuous climb, would decide to take the risk once climbing past 18'.  If the single continuous climb were greater than 36', then double the chance of falling (the thief would have a 70% chance of success).  And so on.  The thief would have to make up their mind before making the climb.

If the 1st level thief decided to come down again instead, there ought to be a no fault success for the first 18' ... the second 18', however, that would probably have to be rolled for again.

What's nice about this is that you could establish a flat total for anyone else, still based on their dexterity.  Thus, the fighter can climb walls - so long as the distance is not great.  I would propose dexterity x ft./2 +1' per level.  Thus, a first level fighter with an 18 dexterity could climb 9' up a brick wall before needing a rest.

It's the sort of thing that probably needs playtesting to establish a fixed number.

UPDATE:

See comments below for an alteration to the above suggestion.

Thieving Abilities - Locks & Stalks

I had some thoughts on how to rework some of the thieving abilities for AD&D, without going down the road taken by skill sets and later editions of the game.

The Number One problem for thieving skills would be that they are based on percentages. Percentages are well and good, and have their place, but it is extremely hard to balance play and success as a thief on the basis of pure, unadulterated chance. If the abilities could be reworked to either eliminate or at least reduce the importance of percentages, I think this would be a vast improvement.

Up until recently, however, I haven't given much thought on how to do that. I've been running a few adventures that have been intensely thief oriented in the last year, however (player choice, not mine) and I've been increasingly frustrated at the weak-ass worthlessness of planning activities around these silly percentages.

Open Locks.

Count the number of times you can remember where anyone attempting to open a lock in a film or a book stopped, turned to their companions and said, "nope, sorry, I can't open it."

Obviously, if I tried to open a lock with a pick, this would probably be something I'd have to say in short order.  But I'm not a thief.  I'm not able to cast spells or fall from buildings without taking damage, but in D&D I don't have to throw percentages in order to accomplish those things.  Logically, if an illusionist can manage a phantasmal killer without chance of failure, a thief ought to be able to open a freaking lock.

Yet naturally, there's the voice of drama again:  "We can't have the party just going anywhere!"  It cries.  "That would be anarchy!  We must make it possible for parties to be stopped by doors, even if they can destroy six stone giants!"

So we are in a dilemma.  There is something to be said for thieves having trouble opening locks.  Still, I think the drama can be retained if we ignore the chance of success in exchange for time until success.  Sure, the thief can open the door ... but can he or she open it right now?  Does it take one round, so it can be done quietly and without waking anyone up, or is the thief clumsily taking a dozen rounds to succeed?

A balance that takes into account the thief's level is easy:  something like 2d4 - level would be sufficient.  Using a small result would mean that by 7th, the thief was well past all that bullshit noobie stuff with regards to opening locks.  At first, it could still take a few tricky, inconvenient rounds if opening the door quickly mattered.

Of course, you could easily mess with the players by having 4 classes of lock:  2d4, 2d6, 2d8 and 2d10.  A 2d10 lock would be tough and inconvenient even for a master thief, half the time ... it would almost always be a long drawn out struggle for a 1st level.  Remember, since actual success is not in question, the main problem would be the thief standing around for 15 rounds while trying to get said lock open.  Additional problems could be created by arguing that if the thief is distracted, the lock resets and has to be addressed from scratch; or you could implement the old % roll to see if the thief was able to pick up from where the thief left off, or if the thief lost his or her place.  Either way, the drama shifts, so that locks are more an obstacle like a speed bump ... which a good DM could use to build a hell of a lot more tension than Yes it's open or No it isn't.

Move Silently.

As a thief, this has to be the most vague, annoying, sometimes useless ability in existence.  If there's anything that can be said to be humiliating about being a thief, its when you're 10th fucking level and you still can't simply walk 30' behind a first level guard without his or her noticing you.  Sure, a lot of the time, but you're gonna fuck it up 1 chance in 4?  I mean, come on!  What do you have to do?

We can divide up move silently into basically two features, each defined by what it is used for: 1) thieves use it to get past someone or something; and 2) thieves (and assassins) use it to approach a target.  We can call (1) stealth and (2) stalking.  Neither should be a percentage die roll.

Stealth.

Primarily, stealth is a defensive ploy intended to avoid conflict, and its success should be dependent upon whether or not it accomplishes that.  If I want to move past someone without being heard (or seen, for that matter), then what matters is distance between me and the listener, and whatever material happens to burden me at the moment.

For example - oof! - I am going to carry this - oof! - 113 lb. sofa on my - urg - back while I sneak behind you on your keyboard.  My success is going to be - uh - balanced by the fact that I am least several miles distant, and in some cases on another actual continent.  This will enable me to move several dozen yards - oh my back - while going completely undetected.

There.  I'm done.  You did not hear me or see me, and so my success at moving silently, in this case, was 100%.  I did say I was doing it, but even despite that, you were completely undisturbed ... and mind you, I'm not even a thief.

On the other hand, if I were to attempt to do the same while almost brushing you with my sleeve, it is unlikely I'd manage.  And this is the point.  Distance is everything.  The better the thief I am, the closer I should be able to pass and the more I should be able to carry while doing so.  There is another reason that runners strip down to almost nothing in warzones that has nothing to do with speed - less weight makes you more agile, more silent and less noticeable.  You're less likely to snag something on a tree while running along.  When's the last time a thief in your world stripped down before attempting to "move silently?"

I haven't quite got an modifier for this, but I'm sure something like 5d4 - level + 1/10 lbs. of weight carried (any weight at all), where the sum equals an optimum distance in hexes (or squares) is a good place to start.  All things could be calculated and if the die was less than the distance, the thief succeeds; more than the distance, and the thief fails. Thus, the thief is able to judge the distance against their level and what they take with them, and roll the dice, rather than depending on a ridiculous flat percentage that is supposed to fit every situation.

Stalk.

This would be primarily an offensive use of silent movement, intended to get the thief (or assassin/monk - or even ranger) as close as possible to the enemy before being noticed.  It is presumed that at some point the enemy will see or hear you ... but preferably not until you're in sword distance.

Desirably, we'd want this number to occur with the maximum amount of uncertainty while still allowing a reasonable judgement and improvement upon the stalker increasing their level.  This is not as difficult as it sounds.  If the base die is 3d4 hexes - level of the attacker, a lot of low levels are going to find it difficult to get right next to their enemy.  Still, if you reason that the moment of detection is also the potential moment of SURPRISE, it only dictates how far away the thief is before the melee begins.  This distance can be balanced by making it +1 hex per level of the highest target ... thus at 1st, there won't be much edge.  At 10th, however, its better than average that against a 2nd level target the moment of detection would be zero or less - which means, before the thief attacks, there is no moment of detection.  The thief attempts to back stab, the assassin assassinates ... and the melee is resolved.

So, no percentages.  Improvement with level, adaptation to abilities as the thief improves ... sounds like good work to me.

Thieving Abilities - Traps

Being Friday afternoon, it's a good time for a discussion of new rules, being that they can sit on the blog for three days (I rarely post on weekends).
So taking the thieving abilities one by one ... and not starting with Pick Pockets, as the book does.  I already followed this post with another, so you're probably reading this second, but here you go:

Find/Remove Traps.

I don't really mind the % chance to find traps.  Long ago I implemented a policy that any thief within reasonable distance of an actual, existing trap, were justifiably likely to find that trap according to their % ability, whether they were looking for the trap or not.  For those purists who play this game thinking that a thief, put into a dangerous situation, must indicate to the DM that they are LOOKING before they are able to SEE, I wonder why this same puritanism is not applied to remembering to think, pee or breathe?  Why is it the thief is some special exception who's capabilities are stunted by the need to vocalize them?  The thief should be able to recognize a trap just as clearly as any other character recognizes that a room is round or square.  If you describe the various colors of the stone and the various shapes of the statuary, the thief should have sharp eyes that also notice that weird shadow where no shadow should be, or the tightly wound strand connected to the third block from the left.

FINDING traps is not something that is done with the hands, like a blind man picking a tea cup from a strange cupboard - if they were, thieves stupid enough to blunder around with their fingers would soon be conveniently eliminated.  The principle means of finding anything is SIGHT, and any DM dumbass to believe that a thief doesn't see something weird before he feels around for something weird hasn't yet figured out how to hit the toilet with his or her shit.

The fact is people create this sort of necessity ("I search for traps") because it is a deliberate verbal cue for creating drama - but very corny, crappy drama, the kind at which Gygax excelled.  It says, "I am going to be a thief now," as though such-and-such must jump into a dungeonish phone booth in order to transform into THIEF-MAN, finder of traps!  It is purile and naturally embraced wholeheartedly by the very same dungeon masters who like it when their fighters cry out, "I venture to slay the beast, and send it back to its foul beginnings!"

The same sort of sickening sort who just read that and thought, "YEAH, THAT'S THE GAME, MAN!"  Thankfully, we'll be rid of this sort when genetic determination laws are finally overturned.

Ah, a good rant loosens me up.

After the finding of traps, the removal lends itself to some problems.  In the first case, how does one "remove" a pit?  In reality, even if I point out the pit to Stenglapp the Stumbly, there's still every chance that his Royal Clumsiness is going to put a foot wrong and fall in.  So pointing it out isn't a guarantee that it will cease to do harm.

At the same time, where's the difficulty in removing a poison-lock trap if the way to set it off is to stick in a fighter's finger?  If the finger will set it off, then obviously so will any similarly sized chunk of wood.  It isn't as though the poison is set to spray everywhere around the room (how would all the poison fit into a lock?).  The same can be said for most traps.  Setting them off safely isn't much of a hassle - it hardly takes a % roll to succeed, particularly if the person doing the deactivating is a talented, capable thief.  Once again, if the mage can manage the forces of the universe into a ball of fire 40 feet across - without ever conceivably failing, mind - why does a 7th level thief still need to roll a die to see if he's struck by the d3 damage sprung dart he knows is there?

Well, we know why.  Because thieves are shit, and we can't just let them be able.  We must punish them for being thieves by making them constantly in danger of being killed for stupid reasons.

I think it can be presumed that IF all the parts of the trap can be viewed and successfully identified by the thief, or IF the trap itself is fairly simple, we can reasonably suppose the thief has deactivated it safely without having to roll.  IF the trap is some freaking thing from the Tomb of Horrors, infantile as that module is, then perhaps a % roll is in order - but the DM should really question how hard is this thing to deactivate, if setting it off is something that can be done by someone who knows how standing thirty feet away.

Setting Traps.

Really, this belongs in the above section, but the reader's eye is getting tired and a new section makes people think they're making progress.  This inspires readers to keep reading, and that is why journalists do it.

The setting trap problem is in many ways similar to the setting off of traps.   Most traps are just not that complicated.  Hollywood be damned, most trained boy scouts manage to create a snare without actually hanging themselves up from trees; a cord can be tied across a path without danger of tripping over the cord; and digging a hole and not falling into it is something that many children learn before grade 3.  I think we can assume a thief, trained to be a thief, might just be able to manage spring traps, pit falls and collapsible frames without actually having to roll for success.  It is patently silly to think otherwise ... but thinking is not a strong suit for some DMs, and they must be forgiven for their vitamin-D deprived cityfied ignorances.  So far, until above said genetic laws are repealed, these herds must be tolerated before they can be exterminated.

I suppose if you're going to have a thief who wants to create something really complicated, like having the pyramids implode or something according to sand pouring out of a donkey's ass, such a percentage die roll might be in order ... but as DM, you should seriously consider whether said percentage for success shouldn't be reduced to ZERO.  If a simple murder can't be created with a heavy crossbow and a doorway, is the thief really being creative, or just implausible?  It is up to you to decide.

(a small digression - what if I just sit outside your trap-festival for a year or so and wait while the gears and springs rust, the delicate fluids seep from their containers, or evaporate into the air, dust to blow in and soil creep to shift the mountain a few millimeters, so all your stupid traps don't work?  What's amazing about the dumbass sinking stone at the beginning of Indiana Jones is that grit and insect carcasses hadn't simply gummed it solid - were the natives coming in monthly to "tidy up?")

Hm.  This is already much longer than I expected.  I guess I'll have to write a series of posts then.