Saturday, December 13, 2008  Building a Better Thief (Part II)
This post is going to be somewhat stream of consciousness in
nature. I'm going to look at each of the OD&D abilities and give
my current thinking about each. Note that I say current
thinking. I'm prepared to change my mind through reasoned
argument, so here's chance to convince of how I've got it all
wrong.  Open Locks: I actually don't have a big problem with
this ability. It's an appropriate "specialist" ability and one
that not all characters were assumed to have prior to the
introduction of the thief class. Likewise, magic-users could
already use knock to achieve a similar effect, so it's not alien
to the milieu of early D&D.  Remove Traps: This is a bit more
worrisome to me, insofar as previously all characters could
theoretically remove traps. It is my understanding that the
thief class owes its origin to players in the Greyhawk campaign
who wanted to hire someone who was specially trained to deal
with removing traps, which is is why I call