Thieves, don't let them get away with it

[Thac0]

Thief gameplay is one of the few things becoming better in modern crpgs.
This is how a trap functions in Wrath of the Righteous.

You trigger it by stepping on the read area, you defuse it at the end of the dotted red line. Looks pointless at first glance, but has some interesting applications in practise. Sometimes the defuser is behind the trap. Then you have to send the rogue ahead solo, maneuver him past the minefield, defuse the trap, and then your party follows up. Like a minitiature 3 second version of a real trap encounter in a pen and paper. Sometimes there are also monsters in front of the defuser. Then there is actually a reason for your rogue to have stealth instead of only for scouting, as you can stealthily disarm the trap without triggering the fight, and then have your team engage.
It is a very simple and elegant way to make traps as one of the rogues core element more engaged in isometric crpgs and I was surprised noone came up with it before.

Baldurs Gate 3 has a fairly involved stealh system which borrows elements from Shadow Tactics.

I personally do not like having some Shadow Tactics in my Baldurs Gate, and fiddling around with lines of sight for a marginal advantage is not my style. The system is rendered moot anyway by the low key retarded implementation of advantage from high altitude. You could sneak up behind the enemy for a backstab, or shoot him from a nearby elevation for exactly the same benefit. But it is nice in theory and another possible venue to expand thief gameplay in isometric games further.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Well, we should scrutinize every game with thieves as a class. See how bad or good they are. There are times I think batman is a thief/ninja. He certainly has hide in the shadows and move silently mastered.

 

[Sarathiour]

Thief gameplay are one of the few things becoming better in modern crpgs.

Well it's indeed incline, but you're still ironically still reducing the archetype to a subpar fighter/mage with the abilty to spot trap.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the archetype was originally called "rogue" and not "thief" back in AD&D, precisely because they were supposed to do broader stuff than just stealing.

 

[PapaPetro]

Thief gameplay are one of the few things becoming better in modern crpgs.
This is how a trap functions in Wrath of the Righteous.

You trigger it by stepping on the read area, you defuse it at the end of the dotted red line. Looks pointless at first glance, but has some interesting applications in practise. Sometimes the defuser is behind the trap. Then you have to send the rogue ahead solo, maneuver him past the minefield, defuse the trap, and then your party follows up. Like a minitiature 3 second version of a real trap encounter in a pen and paper. Sometimes there are also monsters in front of the defuser. Then there is actually a reason for your rogue to have stealth instead of only for scouting, as you can stealthily disarm the trap without triggering the fight, and then have your team engage.
It is a very simple and elegant way to make traps as one of the rogues core element more engaged in isometric crpgs and I was surprised noone came up with it before.

Baldurs Gate 3 has a fairly involved stealh system which borrows elements from Shadow Tactics.

I personally do not like having some Shadow Tactics in my Baldurs Gate, and fiddling around with lines of sight for a marginal advantage is not my style. The system is rendered moot anyway by the low key retarded implementation of advantage from high altitude. You could sneak up behind the enemy for a backstab, or shoot him from a nearby elevation for exactly the same benefit. But it is nice in theory and another possible venue to expand thief gameplay in isometric games further.

If you're gonna have complex stealth mechanics in an RPG these days then you have to add more layers to it. You gotta deal with a world where invisibility and teleportation exist.
Like you can be invisible as a thief, but you still have a scent or have magic items that can be detected by Detect Magic. Stuff like that.

 

[Thac0]

Thief gameplay are one of the few things becoming better in modern crpgs.

Well it's indeed incline, but you're still ironically still reducing the archetype to a subpar fighter/mage with the abilty to spot trap.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the archetype was originally called "rogue" and not "thief" back in AD&D, precisely because they were supposed to do broader stuff than just stealing.

Not really, I just wrote on the expansion of the class itself inside of the game mechanic, not on what the class developed to in modern rulesets a la Pathfinder and 5e.

In 5e the rogue is a bit lost. He has lost the ability to pick locks, stealth and defuse traps. Well not really lost, but those became general class agnostic skills, everyone can get them. The rogue, aswell as the bards are by far the best at noncombat skills due to expertise, so they can be significantly better than everyone else at those skills, but everyone can do them fine enough.
As a tradeoff the rogue now goes into a very "evady fighter" direction. Ability to evade aoe attacks, ability to evade single target attacks partially once per turn, ability to sprint, hide, disengage as a bonus action while still attacking the turn as a tradeoff for never getting more than one attack per turn. Damage increases over sneak attack, which is now very easy to trigger, and balanced around being able to proc it on 75%+ of attacks taken. Also you can sneak attack everything, from constructs to undead.
In total the separation from getting more attacks per turn gives the rogue some unique powerspikes when the sneak attack grows, makes him a mediocre fighter after the other classes gain extra attack however.
He however becomes a very good offtank for some reason. High mobility and the abilities to dodge in a dozen ways let the lower hp pool and worse armor go a really long way.
I don't like the 5e rogue that much, but it presents an interesting direction for the class. I think decoupling lockpick, traps and such is smart in the long term, I just don't think that "dodge tank" should be something a rogue is good at.

Pathfinder has very similar things going on with the rogue. Pathfinder rogue used to be complete shit, having his rogue skills sidelined but getting nothing in return really. He was buffed as a new version, the Unchained Rogue.
Unchained Rogue is pretty good. Mostly because he gets a lot of feats for dex fighting for free now, which opens more leniency to customise the rogue with feats, which Pathfinder is all about.
Sneak attack gets really high in Pathfinder, making them some of the best dps classes in the game if the Dm is lenient in applying it (see the Owlcat games which use an ultra lenient way to apply sneak attack damage, turning Nok Nok into a murder machine). I know less about Pathfinder than about DnD, since I don't Dm that.

So DnD 5e rogue became a dodge tank with decent damage and absurd mobility, Pathfinder rogue became a sneak attack glass cannon. Both have rogue skills as something at which they can become the best party member for, it is no longer a mandatory part of their identity however.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

These later editions have more feats than Generic Giant Spider.

I can't pretend to even understand them. I played Toee for a bit and being a CRPG made it a little easier.

 

[Dorateen]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the archetype was originally called "rogue" and not "thief" back in AD&D

You have it backwards. The class was always Thief going back to its AD&D roots. The term "Rogue" was used as modern contrivance introduced in later editions.

 

[Thac0]

These later editions have more feats than Generic Giant Spider.

I can't pretend to even understand them. I played Toee for a bit and being a CRPG made it a little easier.

A bit of a protip, it is easier to understand feats by starting with a potent one, and then just buying all the prerequisites.
Let's say you want Manyshot, which is a very good feat. You have to take the two prerequisite feats anyway, and unsurprisingly they are good archer feats aswell.
If you want Improved Cleaving Finish as a very good melee feat you need to take a ton of cleave prerequisites.
So just pick out a few very potent high level feats for your character, and build towards them. That makes character building easier, at least in Pathfinder.

 

[jackofshadows]

The only games with good thief game play are literally the Thief games.

That's why stealth was kinda decent in Underrail: it uses a light and shadow mechanism inspired by Thief for stealth checks.

I don't know for sure what Styg took as an inspiration exactly but Fallout/Arcanum's systems took that into account long before that as was mentioned in this prestigious thread already. Underrail just introduced a very neat way to telegraph lightning level via transparent avatar's background. In general however, Underrail offers to thief-like character waaay more space when it comes to stealthy gameplay than those two inspirement sources.

 

[Sarathiour]

If you want Improved Cleaving Finish as a very good melee feat you need to take a ton of cleave prerequisites.

I guess you're talking about PnP, because i never see the point of imp Cleave over simple cleave.
In NWN and and kingmaker, thing that you can OS are basically a non-issue, so you don't really care about crushing them in one or two less round.

 

[JarlFrank]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the archetype was originally called "rogue" and not "thief" back in AD&D, precisely because they were supposed to do broader stuff than just stealing.

Yeah they were inspired by roguish sword and sorcery characters like the Grey Mouser.

 

[gurugeorge]

I thought that the point of Thieves is C&C? You can choose to have a thief in your party at the expense of having another competent combat character; if you choose another competent combat character then by that choice you forego the option of being able to open locked doors, spot traps, etc.. Unless you have a cleric or mage who has spells for those things - and that again is C&C.

IOW a thief is a net burden when it comes to combat, a net asset when it comes to "getting goodies" or fully exploring an area. That's a choice. Seems fine to me.

 

[octavius]

The only games with good thief game play are literally the Thief games. In crpgs thieves suck. Gimped fighters that exist to disarm traps and open locks. The hole backstab fight mechanics is contrived. Its just flanking with a different name. Mostly, gameplay isn't fleshed out to accommodate stealth so the rogue always fall short. And as mentioned before, why use a rogue when a wizzard can do the same ? Party based games simply aren't suited for them and developers won't make the effort to add mechanics to make one class more interesting. The Thief games are some of my all-time favorites but I know no crpgs where rogues add much to the game. And don't get me wrong, I like the class in principle but the implementations in cprgs have all been underwhelming.

Thieves are fine in the IE games, and I wouldn't leave the Friendly Arms Inn without one.
You can use them as scouts, assassins (chunk weaker enemies are soften up tougher ones), they can detect and disarm traps (which unlike Arcanum's traps actually can be more than a minor annoyance), open locked chests (unlike Arcanum you can't brute force them), and they can Detect Illusions. In addition you have things like pickpocketing and trap laying.
Sure, mages can do some of these things, but here's where C&C comes in again. Do you really want to use spell slots on Knock and Invisibility, instead of Web?

 

[unseeingeye]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the archetype was originally called "rogue" and not "thief" back in AD&D

You have it backwards. The class was always Thief going back to its AD&D roots. The term "Rogue" was used as modern contrivance introduced in later editions.

I don't feel like digging out my books, but although this is mostly correct, in that the Thief was a class going back to basic D&D and that it was still known as such in AD&D 1st and 2nd editions, Rogues existed from at least 2nd edition as an archetype from which the more specialized classes were derived (so Thief, Assassin which came and went briefly, Bard &c) and that it was then in 3rd edition that Rogue replaced the actual name for the Thief class. I'm not sure why but I tend to suspect the worse and assumed it was because of the negative connotations of the one versus the romanticized perception of the other, but its likely something even more mundane.

Edit - Sorry, misunderstood what you said, I believe you are entirely correct. I thought you had said that Rogue didn't come about until 3rd edition.

 

[Kliwer]

Thieves are one of the many victims of bringing PnP RPGs to a computer.


A typical PnP adventure isn't about killing every enemy that comes up. The point is to achieve your goal. Enemies - same as traps, hunger, wide chasms, disease, navigation problems, quicksand in the jungle and an avalanche on the slopes of the mountains etc. - are obstacles on the way to the goal. The problem with cRPGs is that monsters can only be killed - and nothing else. Let's add to that - in cRPG we usually don't meet impossible enemies. This weakens all trick-based classes, including thieves.


Let us take a primitive example. Let's assume that the goal of the adventure is to free a hostage from orc captivity. We have a tribe of 100-150 orcs (many of them elite) in front of us, and there is a hostage in the middle of their camp. It is obvious that this task cannot be accomplished by force; a group of 4 or 5 adventurers on level 3-4 are not able to kill the entire orc clan in open combat. To achieve the goal, you need to use diplomacy, stealth, unconventional use of less obvious spells, etc. In such an adventure the "strongest" classes (mainly combat-oriented) turn out to be the least useful. And a thief can be very useful - he can sneak through an orc camp, add a tranquilizer potion to the drink of the guards, distract orcish troops with ingenious traps, disguise himself as an orcish shaman etc.


But when we transfer the same adventure to the computer, it suddenly turns out that our team can simply kill everyone. Even if the developers have prepared some non-combat alternative path (which is rare) - this is only an optional, irrelevant flavor.


That is why thieves seem to be uninterested in cRPG. They fight worse than warriors and mages, and at the same time they rarely can use their skills in key moments.


The authors of cRPG somehow realize this, but they solve it in the worst possible way - trying to make each class perform equally well in combat.


Typical cRPG: 80-90% combat, 10-20% everything else.

Typical PnP adventure: 10-40% combat, 60-90% everything else.

That's why thieves are one of the coolest classes to play in PnP. And usually one of the worst to play in cRPG.


To change this, it would be necessary to come up with a new cRPG design philosophy. Among others:

- significantly expand all non-combat aspects of the game; invent various new mechanics that allow to use non-combat abilities. Opening a magically sealed door or crossing the swamps should be a challenge as serious as defeating a group of monsters.

- introduce (often) enemies that are impossible to defeat in open combat.

- introduce the possibility of "spoiling" quests on a large scale. We killed the orcs, but they had killed the hostage earlier. We don't get experience for failure. Not every quest can be completed by every group.

 

[Tacgnol]

Sneak attack gets really high in Pathfinder, making them some of the best dps classes in the game if the Dm is lenient in applying it (see the Owlcat games which use an ultra lenient way to apply sneak attack damage, turning Nok Nok into a murder machine). I know less about Pathfinder than about DnD, since I don't Dm that.

Unchained Rogues are generally in a good place in PF 1e. They play well in combat situations in which they can do precision damage (which is probably 90% of fights dep on campaign and fight circumstances), and have plenty of skills to be useful outside of combat.

Some people consider Slayers to be superior from a pure combat perspective, but Slayers have no where near the out of combat utility.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

If we consider that D&D essentially came from Tolkein, the evolution of the thief class is pretty easy to track.

In The Hobbit, Bilbo was the party's 'Burglar'. He had some natural knack for moving silently and hiding, but for the most part it was to get the dwarves to think he'd be useful. So the character itself is a bit of a con.

He uses cleverness and stealth to get out of jams, and of course once he has a magic ring of invisibility he takes the stealth aspect to a whole new level, and uses it to murder giant spiders and such. He's also used for recon.

This maps pretty much exactly onto the D&D thief. And of course in pen and paper a thief is as useful and important as the GM allows.

In video game RPGs, obviously the game world must be more scripted. And in general combat is a higher priority than in pen and paper. So the thief character, which is highly useful and unique in an open world environment, has to fit into the combat heavy mold. The game designer must put locks in to be picked, traps to be disarmed. They have to put in a path to be able to stealthily approach a boss.

So the thief role feels more artificial. Rather than being a useful utility for opening an open world even more, they become a crappy fighter you have to take along to disarm the traps and pick the locks.

Pick pocketing especially is usually just savescumming nonsense in most games that have it. BG2 is a good example of this. I strongly doubt many people just accepted turning the entire town hostile due to a failed pickpocket.

I think some games have done it better. Kingdom Come Deliverance had a neat pickpocketing minigame. DOS2 had an OK pickpocketing system.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

The only games with good thief game play are literally the Thief games. In crpgs thieves suck. Gimped fighters that exist to disarm traps and open locks. The hole backstab fight mechanics is contrived. Its just flanking with a different name. Mostly, gameplay isn't fleshed out to accommodate stealth so the rogue always fall short. And as mentioned before, why use a rogue when a wizzard can do the same ? Party based games simply aren't suited for them and developers won't make the effort to add mechanics to make one class more interesting. The Thief games are some of my all-time favorites but I know no crpgs where rogues add much to the game. And don't get me wrong, I like the class in principle but the implementations in cprgs have all been underwhelming.

Thieves are fine in the IE games, and I wouldn't leave the Friendly Arms Inn without one.
You can use them as scouts, assassins (chunk weaker enemies are soften up tougher ones), they can detect and disarm traps (which unlike Arcanum's traps actually can be more than a minor annoyance), open locked chests (unlike Arcanum you can't brute force them), and they can Detect Illusions. In addition you have things like pickpocketing and trap laying.
Sure, mages can do some of these things, but here's where C&C comes in again. Do you really want to use spell slots on Knock and Invisibility, instead of Web?

I am not asking for the removal of thiefs or their gameplay. My parties also include a thief or a multiclass character in BG1/2. They certainly have their place in the infinity engine games but their addition to gameplay is pretty minor in my opinion and stealthy gameplay is rather tacked on instead of being a fully fleshed out gameplay element. It's also not the fault of the class, party based games that are combat dominated just don't align themselves well with the class in my opinion. I wouldn't mind a crpg with less focus on pure combat and more on other approaches that favors classes like thiefs, bards and the like. But as it stands, most party based games are combat dominated with little room for stealth.

And you can open some chests and locks in BG1/2 with strength checks although its very few and requires most of the time strength values that aren't available in any normal way. Just use attack on the door/chest. Most chests can't be opened that way.

 

[Joggerino]

I most enjoyed the thieving in kingdom come deliverance. Please imagine a guy in full plate armor

Spoiler

sneaking into a clothes shop in medieval Bohemia after midnight and stealing women's clothing. That's how good the thieving was. This guy was caught in the act and had to kill the whole village afterwards. This is a real story.

 

[JarlFrank]

A typical PnP adventure isn't about killing every enemy that comes up. The point is to achieve your goal. Enemies - same as traps, hunger, wide chasms, disease, navigation problems, quicksand in the jungle and an avalanche on the slopes of the mountains etc. - are obstacles on the way to the goal. The problem with cRPGs is that monsters can only be killed - and nothing else. Let's add to that - in cRPG we usually don't meet impossible enemies. This weakens all trick-based classes, including thieves.

That's how it usually is, but is that necessary?

Of course not. There's a few RPGs with alternate solutions. Games that present you with a goal and then allow you to pursue it however you want.
Fallout 1 - rescuing Tandi from the Khans:

There are numerous ways to rescue Tandi:

• Defeat all of the Khans and break her out.
• Fight Garl in unarmed combat for her release.
• Purchase her from Garl.
• Intimidate Garl for her release (45% Speech required).
• Quietly kill the two guards at the rear of the building and pick the lock on Tandi's cell.
• A male character with a Luck stat of 9 and wearing leather armor or using a Stealth Boy can be mistaken by the raiders for Garl's father, whom he killed to take control of the Khans (50% chance). With at least 6 Intelligence and a Charisma or Speech check, the Vault Dweller can bluff Garl with this ruse and secure Tandi's release.
• Use dynamite on the door to her cell.

Arcanum: while the big dungeons have tons of unavoidable enemy mobs, the worst of them can be skipped entirely by talking about dwarven philosophy with the dwarf king until he thinks you're worthy of speaking with his father without having to go through the Dredge, so he opens the back door.
You can also use stealth and avoid the monsters if your character is skilled enough for that, since it's not necessary to kill them.
In fact, not many things are strictly necessary in either Arcanum or Fallout. You get a series of goals, but there's always an alternative way to achieve them in case you screw up. Usually there's three options: kill someone, convince someone, steal from someone.

The upcoming Space Wreck is going to have a similar approach to Fallout 1 and Arcanum. Create a character with certain skillsets, receive quest goals, then pursue those goals however you wish. Whether the people in your way die or not doesn't matter as long as you achieve the goal, and there's always a non-violent solution if you're so inclined.

Or take some of the Gothic 2 quests. Yeah, the game is an action RPG and you're intended to kill all the hostile NPCs and monsters, but there are some top notch quests like "Get into Khorinis"
Ok, so how do you get into the city?
You have various options. Become a farmhand by helping the local farmer, bribe the guards with money, or... explore around the city wall until you get to a cliff that lets you jump into the sea and enter the city from the harbor. An NPC will even comment on your unorthodox way of entering the city. Nice!

This kind of quest design is not unseen in CRPGs. Therefore a proper implementation of thief style characters isn't impossible, either. Especially when you design your game like an immersive sim, with a simulationist approach to the ruleset. Thief is a great example, even though it's not an RPG. Its base mechanics are simple, but they are very flexible in creating interesting situations for the player to navigate, and offer enough tools to allow for different approaches. Water arrows have a stim that extinguish all fires they land on. Extinguishing a fire deletes the light source, creating an area of darkness where it's easier to hide in. Bam, suddenly you got an extremely flexible way for the player to manipulate his environment through using a limited resource (water arrows).

There's no reason RPGs can't be designed like this. Less strict scripting, more simulationist rules.

 

[KateMicucci]

I have used the pickpocket feature in an RPG about four times in my entire RPG career.

Stealth games are fun but I've never felt like being a thief in an RPG. Why bother stealing when killing monsters is easier and safer?

 

[fantadomat]

oh this is old. Vintage.

I still love thieves in games. Stealing, robbing, home and shop invasions. Taking inventory from stores or pockets. Disarming traps and locks. Stealthing everywhere like a ninja. Good times.

I am surprised there are 19+ y/o threads.

 

[fantadomat]

Rogues are the most versatile class in rpgs,they have the most skills and could become very useful both in magic and dps. High int and dex for more skill points is a legit build,especially if you dual/multi with mage. With the nu advantage/disadvantage sneak attack rules they are also very high DPS characters.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I love games you can rob, pick locks, disarm traps, set traps, assassinate/snipe, backstab/strangle with a garrote, hide and stealth around line a creepy fuck. Multi-class rogue-mages or something else is even more grand.

Might be a reason I like to be a privateer in space and sea games as well.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

If we consider that D&D essentially came from Tolkein, the evolution of the thief class is pretty easy to track.

In The Hobbit, Bilbo was the party's 'Burglar'. He had some natural knack for moving silently and hiding, but for the most part it was to get the dwarves to think he'd be useful. So the character itself is a bit of a con.

He uses cleverness and stealth to get out of jams, and of course once he has a magic ring of invisibility he takes the stealth aspect to a whole new level, and uses it to murder giant spiders and such. He's also used for recon.

This maps pretty much exactly onto the D&D thief. And of course in pen and paper a thief is as useful and important as the GM allows.

The thief class was heavily inspired by Roger Zelazny's novel Jack of Shadows, as well as Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser stories. The chief contribution of Tolkien to D&D is the presence of elves, dwarves, and hobbits halflings as races/classes.