TOPIC: The Thief Adventure

I wanted to start this topic and ask if any players see value in the Thief having more than the one thief challenge to overcome?

If it is a popular idea that the thief be able to face any one of say three possible challenges in any given room - wouldn't that add a bit to the overall Thief adventure?

Having three possible challenges was an arbitrary number - but I would think having more than three things for the Thief to train on in camp would be tough. This raises the question - should all Thief challenges be something that they train on in camp...???

The next question of course is - if it is popular with players - would TD want to implement this?

Disclaimer: The reason I was thinking about this is I see a few other very in-expensive options to test a Thief's other skills like ability to work on touch alone, ability to reason out a solution, etc.


Thanks,
Gary

Personally, I played the thief and loved it. I think the thief is very popular, because there are times in the game that the entire party is waiting for the thief to get done. He is the only character that has things to do where the entire party is not working collaboratively toward some goal, so, no, I do not think that the thief needs anything else to make him special.
As for having multiple things that the thief has to train on, I also do not really agree, as that would place too high a premium on a player who had played before. In the present system, where anyone can walk off the street and do fine, is one of the things that makes TD great.

The thief should also be responsible for examining the rooms for traps or other things as well.

Just because there aren't specific tasks for the thief, it doesn't mean roleplaying won't help for the overall experience.

Mcylyck mentions something that I think our party did not think of, having the thief scan the room...I think this may be the case more often than not - a thief scans the room and if there is a "thief station" s/he hurries over to that and attempts to do the deed.

So there seems to be a split so far - perhaps the one skill task - but to remind players or design rooms that need the thief to look at other items.

Not a bad start, anyone want to keep this going?


From my first hand experience, I was the Cleric in the party, my buddy was the Thief - he had a good time and did well with the thief challenges, but I am not certain he was involved in the rest of the room like the party was - too many times (if there was a thief task in the room) he would shoot straight for the box/maze and the party would head for the main item. In the case of the Efreet room, I am not certain he went to the table at all and looked at the items...I could have missed seeing that, but once he got the gem from that task it was time to set the Efreet free and then watch the Efreet and bad guy fight it out.

So I would agree that in every room the Thief already has several specific things to do - just curious if players see a desire for different tasks to accomplish.

Gary

Even though the thief only has one 'skill', he can still be useful in many rogue like ways. If i was starting a party I would have my most observant and dexteritous (sp?) play the rogue. Rogue traps aside, rogues can scan the room for danger, valuables, secret doors etc. If you have one person scanning the room at a time instead of seven you are less likely to be suprised should say a spider spray silly string on you or something. I would play TD, just like you play a tabletop game. How many times do players say in a pencil and paper game, okay I'm going to cover the rogue and keep an out out for trouble, but when confronted with the same situation in real life (and by real life I meant TD lol) they all end up watching the rogue and not watching for danger. Sometimes they even say they are going to watch for danger and then watch the rogue :smt107

On many of the trap such as the genie bottle or squirt trap on the skeleton, you could actually physically see the trap if you looked closely enough. Many rogues also tried to get into the spirit of their class by keeping any treasure tokens they found without telling their party. So even though you might only have one hard and fast 'skill', you can still live out the rogue character in several ways.

That being said, we have looked at additional skills for the rogue and actually for all of the classes. As we come up with new ideas we incorporate them like we did this year with the bard book and cleric beds.

Lee

In the past, the thief, could easily see where traps were located. That might not be the case in the future. We may decide to have multiple "dummy" boxes as a diversion, or hide the skill box all together waiting for the thief to suggest they are examining the area, item, or room.

That gives me an idea....(off and running for the TD notebook)


Dave

Gee things to "waste" the thief's time...very cool, may require more than one player investigating to be sure the thief has time to complete the task and assist the party - I am even seeing groups of two searching together...

Not bad.

Gary

Dave,

I like your idea a lot of hiding the skill box a lot, as it much more closely mimics the traditional role playing session. If such is done, though, it would have to be carefully playtested, to make sure that too many parties do not run out of time.

A hidden skill box might also be a great place for a special token that could only be found if a box is found and opened, and was not otherwise present in bags/available for sale. It would be highly prized among players, even if it had a relatively innocuous effect like allowing a non-mage to cast mage spells once per adventure.

The hidden skill box could be something that, if found in the room, could be sitting next to the battle board just behind a curtain.

It could be run like this - a party enters the room - everyone in the party says they are looking for secret doors or otherwise scanning the room - the DM rolls for the CHARs and gives the thief a modified roll for his/her skill level. If someone finds the box the curtain is pulled to show the party the box - then the fun begins...

Neat idea???

Gary

I don't see a reason to limit the scanning of the room to the thief. When we played, everyone in our group was constantly looking around. More often than not it was someone other than the thief that saw something (the monster, the spider web, the genie bottle, whatever). I don't care for the idea of giving the thief a bonus to find things that everyone should be able to find just by looking. The thief gets the fun of dealing with the traps, but in a real life game, just because I'm playing the bard CHARACTER doesn't mean I'm not the most observant PLAYER. With the stripped down ruleset, we don't really know who has the best Spot and Listen skills. Maybe the Fighter sunk all his points into Spot....
Keep the thief doing stuff that only he can do, but let the rest of us be able to find things by looking around and being observant. Once we find the item in question, then we can figure out who is best to deal with it.

Love thieves... love involving all players.

As I watched from the dark, blue-hand corners last year I thought it might be neat if the thief could "search for traps" in the same way the wizard would try to "detect magic." That is to say, give the thief the proper light source for a short period that will allow them to see (if they are thorough) the flouresent paint symbol that marks the trap.

If they spot the subtle trap symbol then, as mentioned earlier, the player may know which is not the dummy trap, or the DM would open the curtain or small panel door to expose the trap found, etc...

I agree with Indy. If the thief has access to a special light source that could show outlines of floortile traps, or secret doors that would be reather useful.

Also, perhaps to make the ranger and thief more popular in combat the ranger could have the option of 2-weapons or bows and the thief could have thrown daggers. Then they could throw darts or velcro balls at a target to simulate hitting monsters.

I also wouldnt illuminate things the thief could pick unless he has detected traps or scanned a room. Whenever we saw a trap picking outline our group ignored everything else in the room till he finished it, knowing that something in the room would hurt us.