The Thief, the Specialist and Demihuman Level Limits

I received a whole bunch of material for Lamentations of the Flame Princess recently, including the new Rules & Magic hardcover book. And its presentation of the Specialist class makes me think it might be able to solve two separate problems.

Why I like the Specialist is that its abilities clearly extrapolate from systems that have been in D&D all along. The class takes the 1 in 6 or 2 in 6 rolls in dungeon exploration and figures that there is a simple mechanic behind them, and then just expands them so the Specialist gets better at those things. The specialist skills are neat things and don't over-complicate the game. They also allow thieves to be competent at things fairly early on, while in Greyhawk and its derivatives in Classic and Advanced D&D don't. (Halfling thieves with 18 Dexterity in AD&D aren't awful.)

So that's problem number one: making thieves competent at low level while allowing them to grow. I may tweak the skill list a bit, but overall I think I prefer the class to the thief as written.

The second problem is demihuman level limits. Generally demihumans with no limits are too good to pass up. There's no reason to play a vanilla human in a game where elves are just plain better. So that's where Specialist skills come in: they're a way to make demihumans continue to advance without letting them be as good as fighters or magic-users as a high level human. So when an elf caps out in level, they can take some amount of XP (say 100K or so) and use it to get points in Specialist skills. I think this is a compromise that allows demihumans to continue to grow without throwing the whole game out of whack.

Any thoughts on these?

Playing the Specialists

OD&D lists ten types of specialists who can be hired by PCs: Alchemist, Armorer, Assassin, Animal Trainer, Engineer, Sage, Seaman, Ship Captain, Smith and Spy. With Greyhawk, a Thief was added as a sort of playable specialist class, with various functions that were useful in dungeoneering. In Blackmoor this was expanded and the assassin class was made playable; per various discussions this was also the intent of the sage rules, which became a set of NPC rules. As was pointed out to me after my previous post on assassins, there is an alchemist written up in the second issue of The Dragon, as a character who produces poisons, acids and potions.

The Dragon alchemist class has a number of fascinating new potions, and I recommend tracking down this class (which unfortunately isn't in the Best of the Dragon #1) mostly for its interesting new potions, such as flash pellets, which are thrown at the floor to blind opponents and come with the warning "Don't fall into a pit." This would be a fairly interesting character to have, although they really aren't much use until third level. An alchemist really fits best into a retinue-type campaign, where the character attaches themselves to other PCs at low levels and functions like a magic-user, and pays them back later with potions aplenty. It's also an interesting alternative to have an alchemist running around doing the healbot stuff, since they can create potions of healing at level 3 (3000 XP), rather than a cleric.

Spies are the very obvious class here that has a niche somewhere around the assassin and the thief. Indeed, for some kinds of action I would consider a spy to be almost more iconic than the thief or assassin as such. A spy class could be somewhere between a thief and assassin and the LotFP specialist - a jack of all trades, and someone really good at sneaking and finding hidden information. Like thieving and assassination, these are really things that just about anybody could do, but a spy class could really fill a couple of niches well in a dungeon. One is the sneaking and reconnaissance role that thieves often take part in. The other is disguise and infiltration of enemy groups; very useful if there is a bunch of brigands or bandits in the dungeon or wilderness.

Sages have an Arnesonian pedigree. It's not immediately clear what one will provide on a dungeon expedition, but in a true exploration game that might not be so irrelevant. If a sage is able to figure out the secrets of the dungeon and get the party to the treasure alive instead of falling to its horrible tricks and traps, he's worth his weight in gold. Particularly if you give a sage class a magic item use capability similar to magic-users for wands, rods, staves and so on (but no actual spells).

The rest are a stretch. Engineers could be interesting in a dungeon, but only if the referee is willing to tolerate a very nonstandard approach to exploration - reminding one of the story of digging around the traps in the Tomb of Horrors. Animal Trainer is explicitly limited to one type of animal, which precludes a Beastmaster type of character with all kinds of "pets" that do his work; probably good for those who are squeamish about animal death. Seamen and sea captains, outside a strictly nautical campaign where they'd probably just be fighting-men, are not useful at all.

But for these four - alchemist, sage, assassin and spy - I do think there's real potential for highly nonstandard PCs. Especially with the spy, who I think could be a better alternative to the thief if done properly.

Making a Killing

The assassin class was one of the innovations in Supplement II: Blackmoor, and hails more or less (there is some difficulty with who wrote what in the supplement; its editor, Tim Kask, has said that the assassin material was revised) from Dave Arneson's work. There has been ample objection to this class over the years, and it was used in 1e AD&D but excluded from 2e with the concept that an assassin is not a true "class" function. By that measure, a thief shouldn't be either; neither stealing nor killing is a pure class. Similarly, it is pointed out that assassins aren't heroic; again the thief speaks against ideals of pure heroism. Both are breaking major moral and ethical rules as a way to make a living. So none of the arguments against them really wash for me.

The assassin character type adds to the game a built-in structure, the Assassins Guild. This lasted into 1e, but was made optional for PC assassins; in Blackmoor they are all guild members, PCs included. It also makes the fascinating observation that assassins are neutral, whereas AD&D stuck them firmly in the "Evil" side of its alignment matrix. That certainly colors your Blackmoorish neutrality and chaos differently, I think, considering that thieves can be neutral or chaotic, and hired by lawfuls. It also works in terms of insulating assassins from either "side" when viewing law vs chaos as a fight with two sides instead of a grand ethical dilemma. Assassins are for hire and don't take sides.

An assassin's guild was part of Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, built into the "Slayer's Brotherhood." This certainly seems much closer to the concept of the Blackmoor assassin than the somewhat muddled accounts of Islamic killers in various medieval sources. It has little basis in reality, but presents a fantasy setting with a very distinctly grey sense of morals. The mere existence of an assassin's guild means that society, tacitly or openly, accepts its existence.

Blackmoor introduced levels that require you to fight a superior, both for monks and assassins. With monks fights aren't necessarily to the death; with assassins they are. A Guildmaster assassin got there by killing his predecessor, period. AD&D added to this the Grandfather of Assassins, a level above that again can only be reached by more murdering. Too many assassins reaching higher levels automatically spells trouble, and a whole high-level campaign could be waged simply around a PC as a Guildmaster Assassin.

What is really interesting to me is the question of the assassin in a dungeon crawl campaign. Having an assassin PC seems like an invitation to basically switch over to a city-based campaign. But assassins are low-functioning thieves (2 levels lower than the already paltry thief numbers) per Blackmoor, and will be skilled poisoners as well. Consider - instead of the traditional "hack through the opponents" mission, an assassin PC could really thrive in a "faction dungeon," getting hired (with the available treasure) to take out assassinations on all the leader-types of different monster factions. It really puts the normal dungeon crawl on its head, but I think it's a fascinating possibility, even for solo play.

A final tidbit that I think wasn't followed up well enough appears in the Blackmoor assassin write-up: "Details of poison types will be handled in some future supplement when alchemists are fully covered." There's a bit more in the Dungeon Masters Guide, but doesn't really give us that full treatment I would like to see.

Has the OSR mostly embraced thieves?

In the earliest days of the OSR, a number of people didn't care for thieves. Read through this thread on Grognardia from 2008, and it becomes clear that a lot of people (including me) didn't really care for them. I think a good chunk of the reason was in Philotomy's musing about thieves and thief skills (you can find all of Philotomy here, it's a great read if you haven't gone through it yet), which posed it as a live question.

With more games being based closer to B/X D&D, and with Swords & Wizardry Complete taking on more prominence, the thief has snuck back into the game without much protest. Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea both remove percentiles as a way to not make thieves so bad at everything, but many games stick with the thief skills pretty much on the model of Supplement I: Greyhawk.

I have a thief in my Stonehell game, and he's pretty well played. Not to mention lucky - he may have failed a bunch of saving throws, but rolled a 20 when he took a jet of save-or-die poison gas to the face. I kind of like having a lightly armored character in the dungeon, but I don't think the thief class is the best way to get that. Thief skill percentages are awful until high level, and it's more fun to do trap detection by narration anyway.

It seems to me that, in a game without thieves, magic-users should have a bigger niche. Classically the M-U's main job is to cast sleep once (unless the player went and memorized something else; charm person is ok too, but magic missile seems like it was mostly meant to cause players to waste their spells) and then hide behind the fighters and clerics; in return she (gender choice in honor of Azraiel, an M-U who recently perished in my Stonehell game) will be blasting things with fireballs and lightning bolts once she reaches 5th level.

But the magic-user seems to me to be well suited to recon, particularly once she reaches 3rd level. Then she can cast invisibility on herself, and use sleep or charm as a failsafe if she gets in a spot of trouble. By contrast, a thief who gets caught loses his whole advantage since he can't backstab once he's been seen. Magic-users are lightly armored and so have their full movement rates in tact.

I think this doesn't play out as much as it should because M-U players value every scrap of experience they get towards being able to nuke enemies with fireballs. But that doesn't really call for a thief, and I want to discuss the possibility with the players next time I run OD&D.

Now, I think that if you're playing AD&D the magic-user/thief is actually pretty good. Extra HP and weapon use, backstab damage and only half a level behind, plus the thief levels keep going up after the elf hits the M-U level cap.

But in an OD&D or classic D&D game, or their simulacra and genetically modified clones, do we really need the embrace the thief has gotten?

More on Heroic Classes for Holmes

In my last post, I hinted at the idea of using expanded classes in Holmes Basic Dungeons & Dragons that only become available at 4th level. I don't like the term "prestige classes" because, to me, they speak of bloat and excess and character builds in 3.x D&D. Since in OD&D, 4th level equals Hero, I think that Heroic Classes is a more apt title.

The paladin in Supplement I: Greyhawk is, I feel, the archetypal heroic class. It has stringent requirements (17 Charisma, Lawful alignment, few magic items), and a fairly limited set of powers (lay on hands, immunity from disease, +2 to all saving throws, dispel evil at 8th level, Holy Sword, paladin's horse). This is a good template. I particularly like how the "dispel evil" ability is given at 8th (Superhero) level, since that firmly establishes a baseline of 2-3 abilities at Hero level, and another at Superhero.

Druids from Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry would also adapt well; they get a separate set of spells from spell level 2 onward, with the identify pure water / plants / animals and pass through abilities at 4th level, and their shape shift gets moved back to level 8 - when it will be powerful but not overwhelming.

As for a new heroic class, I kind of like the idea of an Alchemist for magic-users. This would be something of a specialist in the creation of magic items - focusing on temporary and rechargeable items at 4th level, and permanent ones at 8th. One thing that would go particularly well with this would be an "identify" ability as a base ability. Of course, making magic items would take significant time and effort, and possibly some hard-to-find items. This pairs particularly well with the Holmesian scroll-making capability.

I think this could work without going too far overboard. I think keeping it sharply limited to 3 abilities plus 1 at 8th is a good way to start. One way to balance things out may be to create different progressions for heroic and non-heroic class characters. Basically, if you're a paladin, you get your abilities but stick with your base fighter progression; if you stay as a basic fighter, you get extra attacks, which are a very big thing in older D&D as I've mentioned before.

Now, the one thing about all this is that it kind of means I need to actually write a Holmes Expert expansion. So there's that. At least I can limit it to 48 pages.

Additions and embellishments

One of the things that I have never been quite so happy with in the Old School Renaissance is the extreme tendency toward simplicity in character types - after all, in a humanocentric OD&D game, you're basically a Fighting-Man, a Magic-User or a Cleric. That's fine for one off gaming, but as players want to do different things it can be a bit monotonous.

That's part of what I like about Holmes, which adds the Thief class. It can probably use a bit of polish, but without the Thief you pretty much have no options for the player who wants to be something like the Gray Mouser. I'm okay with the Holmes Thief at this point, really. The "character skill" aspect of this is avoided elegantly by noting that Holmes has a "Remove Traps" skill rather than the later "Find or Remove Traps" - the others are mechanical (Open Locks, Pick Pockets, Move Silently, Climb Sheer Surfaces, Hide in Shadows, and the already existing Hear Noise). This integrates tightly into the D&D I already prefer to run.

But the "basic 4" classes leave a real niche uncovered that I think should be filled. I think the Ranger type, somewhat modified from the original presented in The Strategic Review (it's a bit powerful despite its claim otherwise), fits it. The Thief is good at some dungeon tasks, and I'll probably add scroll use for extra Gray Mouser flavor, but a tracker / archer type is really what the game demands IMO. I've run into more issues with OD&D when players got frustrated trying to play a lighter-armored archer than anything else. The ranger fits with the loner hero type; Aragorn is the obvious inspiration, but I think you could find a lot of rangers in post-apocalyptic fiction (Hiero pretty closely fits, I think, despite the fact that he's technically a priest). And it has a clear place in the game, which I think is very important.

For me the watchword remains "don't repeat AD&D, or do AD&D lite." I think a lot of the restraint with regard to classes is based on this, but we shouldn't kid ourselves. It was relatively rare in golden age (pre-1979) play that people didn't bolt on any and every character type that they could get their hands on. I think it has more to do with forethought and planning; I think the Ranger is a good fit for the kind of D&D I want to do, so I'm tinkering with the class. It's one thing to go back to basics at first, so you can figure out what your style actually requires, but to enshrine this as a principle is mistaken.

Classes, tradition and related problems.

A month or so back, I posted a barbarian class (later renamed berserker) to the OD&D board (you can read the thread here). It brought up a couple of points that I think are relevant.

First - there was a bit of backlash to the merging of the barbarian and berserker archetypes that I had perpetuated in the original sketch of the class. The separation of the two is, I believe, a bit artificial - Conan did have moments that are best described as berskerk rages. And it's a very old conflation in the hobby. Issues of Alarums & Excursions had a berserking barbarian as far back as 1976, and the 1977 Arduin Grimoire codified it as a class. So I don't feel that I was entirely off base. But, there are legitimate differences at work here, and since the "berserker" is in Monsters & Treasure, I changed the name to reflect this.

What I find equally important is the question of "What should be a class?". I view D&D as best played within a dungeoneering context, which plays a significant role here. The major classes that people were interested in during the early period of D&D were the paladin, the ranger, the bard (or singer or poet), the druid (or neutral cleric) and the barbarian. Most of these are outdoorsy types who are not necessarily a natural fit for the dungeon. I play the game with the Greyhawk paladin (pretty much any Charisma 17 character becomes a paladin), and I'm considering the druid as an addition.

I've been reading some more of the Conan stories lately, and Conan is plainly a fighting man. He can do a lot -- definitely at different points he's a hero and a super-hero -- but class wise, I would not put him in my berserker class. There's a certain cachet to being a barbarian, but there's not a lot of mechanical flavor that is going to differentiate the character from the OD&D fighting-man without going the weird route pursued by Unearthed Arcana or merging with the berserker. And I'm starting to think that this is okay.

The niche that I think has not been filled adequately is the lightly armored, clever type who dabbles in magic but isn't serious about it, and is a hell of a fighter nonetheless. (The Gray Mouser, Cugel the Clever, etc.) There were echoes of it in the Greyhawk thief class, but this was merged with a specialist who is probably best left as an NPC. I think that some adaptations of the bard came closer, but really it's one of the challenges that remain, and something I've spent some time thinking about.

Beyond the examples I've listed above, I think it's necessary to have a certain skepticism about the need for a new class. For instance, I've thought about a more potion-oriented magic using class as a witch, but too much of the interesting detail would happen outside of the game. It's a valid character type in the world, but I don't know if it translates to an interesting D&D class.

I think that this approach needs to inform our class-building. There's a certain degree of flexibility within the three original classes, but they tend to move in definite ways in-game. (For instance, fighters tend toward AC 2, magic-users go from one-shot "sleep 'em!" to world-shaking magic, etc.) But classes still need to be added with a "should I add this?" approach rather than "this would be cool."