This is wonderful! I’ve long thought that no thief was viable with the puny percentages that RAW provides. Diagetically, I didn’t see any working thief bringing along an apprentice thief who couldn’t be relied on to succeed on opening locks or finding traps less than half the time, so it wasn’t believable that any working thief – and PCs are supposedly experience at what they do – would have really low chances.
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I can’t take credit for that. Thieves ridiculously low chances in classic D&D have been mentioned before, including by one of the creators of the game. You have a higher chance on some thief skills being a non thief using the 1d6 system that’s there for non thief characters.
There’s probably a more elegant way of doing it than the one I’ve mentioned but it’s a starting point.
I understand that. I’d just never thought about conversion to d20 and what percentages would be good for that. As I mentioned before, I reworked the whole thing to use with 2D6 rolls (after doing so with D12 rolls…and d10 rolls…and…). Seeing a couple of conversions together in your post helped solidify my thoughts on what percentages are likely appropriate in play.
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The funny thing about game design is most of the time you’re shooting for around a 65% chance of success for players…that sweet spot where you still fail so it doesn’t seem too easy, and you’re not failing too much.
One of the problems with games where players ‘level up’ is keeping that success rate steady. So you get a better chance of success but the monsters get stronger. You get better at an ability but the challenges get more difficult.
You could just have a game where you need to roll 3 or higher on 1d6 for everything you’re good at and it would be quite similar in percentages to most well designed games, but it doesn’t feel the same.
My percentages get up too high in the higher end really, except that was the feel they shot for in B/X…the thief who almost never failed. Seems pointless rolling when you chance is in the high 90% range though.
There’s also the difficulty of the challenge to consider. That 90% rating facing a -25% modifier for difficulty gets right back down to 65%. It’s like the older systems where the top chances are over 100% to allow for modifiers that bring the odds back down.
I’m OK with thieves getting to ratings of over 100% for that reason. They’re going to face challenges that come with serious penalties – at least, in my games.
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Yes. The negative modifiers, or higher armor class, or higher DCs are there to adjust for the higher player abilities. It’s a fun little game design or gamemaster dance to arrive near the same percentage chance of success. Professor DM did a great video on this topic…
And covered the same topic again more recently…
It is fun for players to have a 120% chance of success and do something that would have been impossible for a mere mortal with a -55% modifer…giving them a 65% chance of success.
We could just tell players to roll 3 or higher on 1d6 but that doesn’t feel the same as using your 120% thief skill to crawl around upside down on the ceiling over hot bubbling magma while backstabbing a giant spider.
Thanks for doing this and picking a good post for the first session. Robert Fisher is great, I return to his site often have utilized in some form almost every mechanism he has proposed, at least one time or another to try out.
Reading through his understanding of thieves is certainly a popular interpretation, and it is one that I often use, even if that wasn’t the “original intent” of the class, by any of the three contributing parties (not that I think author intent really matters for play).
This is definitely an era of the OSR I look back fondly at, as there was a lot of growth and play, so its fun to revisit these times and remember. Not to say we aren’t in a “good timeline” now, for whatever that’s worth.
For the discussion time questions - I have definitely played with the B/X thief, and I have played with more thief classes than I think I can name. In terms of thief inclusion, I tend to go with the classic hack of “all thief skills are hear noise,” as that tends to be the easiest way to bring to head most of the abilities, even if it does nerf climb sheer walls initially.
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After reading through the blog post and all the comments, I am in solidly in the camp of not having a strong opinion on thieves. 
I think I kind of like the rationale of making thief skills quasi-supernatural abilities. I am a player in a sometimes Shadowdark game, and I also think giving them advantage on thief-y things pretty good too.
I really like what @Pladohsghost said about having treasure hunters/experts. I’m not super into the criminal implications of calling the class Thief, but I don’t feel super strongly about changing it and swapping out some of their skills.
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