I wrote a little about the original version of Gygax's Thief class and how it differs from the Greyhawk version. Bonus: a Thieves Reference Sheet collating the info from the original article into a one-page sheet.
http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-d6-hd-od-thief.html
Zach, that's a fascinating find. I'd read about the thief coming from the CA / Aero Hobbies crowd, but not much on how the concept changed mechanically from original idea to what ended up in AD&D via Greyhawk. Looking at the original concept versus the final AD&D 1e version, it's interesting how the thief got progressively nerfed.
ReplyDeleteOn the face of it, the thief doesn't come off as an overpowered class which makes the progressive nerfing puzzling (witness the many online discussions in recent years whether the thief should even be a class, or should be ditched entirely). Thinking about it, I wonder if the nerfing has to do with the Lake Geneva style of play in the 70s - much more trap heavy than most modern play, from what I've seen. A thief that can automatically detect traps is much more unbalancing when your model of dungeon design is closer to "Tomb of Horrors" than "Keep on the Borderlands". If true, it might be a case where Gygax nerfed the class to balance it for the style of play in the Lake Geneva campaign(s); whereas out "in the wild" where dungeons were less trap heavy (speaking only from my personal experience over the last three+ decades) it made the thief class overly weak instead of balanced.
Of course, that starts to segue over into changing dungeon/adventure design preferences over time and across campaigns, which is a whole topic unto itself. Thought provoking post, thanks for putting it up! : )
Great post. I added a small "correction" on your blog.
ReplyDelete