Thief 'Fixes'

Check out fix three…that’s what I’ve done. Personally I find that one of the best fixes.Would be interested in seeing your version as well.

I’ve written some more on the ‘Everyone is Skilled’ idea, this time taking Proficiencies into account:

http://micahblackburn.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/house-ruleseveryone-is-skilled-part-2-proficiencies/

I don’t like automatic success much (at least at low levels), but here’s what I do:

The Thief Skills represent the values for when the skill is being used quickly or in stressful situations. When the thief has the opportunity to take more time and be more relaxed about it, their skill level is effectively doubled.
Example: A 1st level Thief can Move Silently on 17+ (that’s 4 out of 20) when doing so hastily or under stress. When given the time to relax and do it more carefully, he can Move Silently on 13+ (8 out of 20). And even when he fails he’s stilled moved quietly and may not have been heard anyway. The chances of a monster hearing someone moving quietly are actually fairly low in most cases.

 

Here are some rules I wrote for ACKS Cyberpunk. They should translate well to ACKS Core thief skills.

Time Interval: Most proficiency throws takes a standard amount of time (the time interval). For example, a Searching throw takes 10 minutes. A character gains a bonus from dedicating additional time on the effort, as noted on the Time Interval table below. Each step upwards on the Time Interval table provides a +1 bonus. The time spent need not be unbroken – a character may dedicate 1 hour per day for 8 days, for example, to reach the 8 hour time interval.

Time Interval

1 month (5 weeks)

1 week (7 work days)

24 hours  (3 work days)

8 hours (1 work day)

1 hour (6 turns)

10 minutes (1 turn)

1 minute (6 combat rounds)

10 seconds (1 combat round)

2 seconds (1 action)

 EXAMPLE: An Electronics Security throw normally requires 10 minutes. A Techie spends 1 hour installing an alarm system. 1 hour is one step above 10 minutes on the Time Interval table, so he gains a +1 to his Electronics Security throw.

Continuous Effort: A character who fails a proficiency throw may attempt it again with the same chance of success after dedicating additional time equal to the next time interval listed.

EXAMPLE: Despite spending one hour on the task, the techie (from the example above) fails his Electronics Security throw to install the alarm system. He can try again with the same +1 bonus after an additional 8 hours of work. If he fails again, he can make a third try (still at +1) after another 24 hours of work, and so on.

Stopping and Starting Fresh: A character who fails a proficiency throw can cease his efforts and do other things. The character may “start fresh” when time has passed equal to the time interval 3 steps above that expended in his last attempt. When he “starts fresh,” his proficiency throw will only take the standard time interval. The character may spend more than the standard time interval to get a bonus on his throw if desired. 

Very cool. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this seems to be inspired by the FUDGE system’s “increments of success”. In that, the amount by which you succeeded or failed would modify how long you spent doing something. My particular introduction to FUDGE rpgs was Diaspora, a hard sci-fi implementation.

I'm not hugely familiar with FUDGE but the concept of "increments of success" has shown up in plent of games I like!

Basically, you roll 4dF (the F is a fudge die, a d6 with two +, two - and two blanks) to get a result between -4 and +4 with 0 being most common. you have static modifiers and a target value. For tasks that hinge on the amount of time they take, exactly hitting the target means doing it in the standard time, and each degree you succeed or fail by increases or decreases the length of time by exponentially growing units. I highly recommend checking out Diaspora if any of this sounds interesting to you and you like hard sci-fi.

Reminds me of HERO actually (and that’s a good thing!) Though Fudge and FATE took the same idea as well.

Hm. I am intrigued by the “automatic success” option.

That would make thieves about as useful as possible, contingent on clever usage.

It seems like you could require a roll for particularly difficult or hastily-done tasks, but otherwise allow success.

It seems like that would make even a 1st level thief competent, without making them as good in difficult situations as a master thief.

I think I’ll playtest that next session I run.

I’d love to hear how it works out!

I thought about this a bit more last night, and had a few ideas on when I would require a roll for each thief skill:

Open Locks

This works when you can devote a whole turn to it. The roll determines if you crack it in the first round or not. As a DM I might put a level cap on some locks, such that only a thief of the listed level or above could open them. The players might also like this for locking up their own stuff…

I might also just require a check every turn. I like the idea of a thief laboring at a lock for a couple hours while the rest of the party gets increasingly nervous about wandering monsters and those noises they keep hearing. :slight_smile:

Find and
Remove Traps

This works if you take a turn for each 10x10ft area. If you check hastily in one round, as in combat, you would roll. Removal works the same way.

Pick Pockets*

This works as long as your target is not aware of you, as in a crowd or when you are sneaking. Otherwise you make a check to make something “disappear” off a table in front of someone, for example.

Move Silently

You know, as a thief, how to move without making noise, assuming your leather armor is properly oiled and you are carrying anything noisy. You make a roll if you want to move faster than 1/2 your speed.

Climb Walls

This succeeds unless, like above, you want to move more quickly.

Hide in Shadows

This succeeds if you have time outside of combat to find a good place to hide, but if you are trying to “duck out” in a combat situation, behind a wall or into a dark alcove, you need to both be within your movement speed of a hiding place and roll against this skill.

Success means that your opponents have lost sight of you at the end of your round.

Hear Noise

If it’s loud enough to hear, you hear it. You roll to get a general idea of what it sounds like (voices, footsteps, etc), which could be followed by a knowledge check for identifying, for example, what kind of monster makes that noise.

All of these combined, I hope, would make master thieves better at pulling off really cinematic thief stuff, while beginner thieves who are cautious can do much of the same stuff.

Players would still have to decide how to use their skills, and the ability to move silently or hide somewhere does not make you truly invisible. A vigilant opponent looking your direction is going to see you, so a clever thief will need to consider line-of-sight … and also things like how noisy it is when an armored sentry hits the ground after you snipe them.

As it stands, nobody in my player group chose to play thieves. I hope this can change that.

That sounds like a really good addition!

I have been using the 'Auto Success Round/Roll Turn/Roll Round for non-Thieves every session since my original post and it works great. Makes the thief ore competent.

Ours avoided death for quite some time and was very useful until she blew a roll to sneak up on a hobgoblin chief during a combat last week and ended up attracting his attention instead. He smashed her brains against a wall for her temerity. But before that, she did quite a bit successfully by careful (read: Turn by Turn) use of her abilities and saving rushed uses (read: round by round) for critical situations.

And everyone else is enjoying the opportunity to use first level thief abilities to cover those times when she hasn’t been available, as when the party splits. It inspires them to attempt more sneaky stuff.

With a game coming up tomorrow, does anyone have some ideas on how the “automatic success” option or its variations should affect the various thief proficiencies?

It seems like +10% to your rolls could be pretty weak whenever you succeed automatically anyway whenever you have enough time. But then again, it might still be useful.

I really hadn’t thought about it much, but I was helping a player make a character today and I was thinking “jeez, does this totally nerf the thief proficiencies?”

Thoughts, anyone?

Not really, it all depends on the DM’s interpretation of ‘stressful’ vs. ‘non-stressful’ and keeping proper account of time.

For instance, you might say that even if you have a full Turn to do something, the environment is way too dangerous for you to concentrate on the task at hand. For example, our late thief was trying to find an incriminating piece of evidence (subbing Find Secret Doors) in a guardroom without leaving evidence of her presence that might alert the murderer. Sure she had a full Turn, but in the back of her mind, there would be that ever present feeling that at any moment someone could come walking through the door and catch her. So she had to roll. She found nothing at that time, so later, they got the guard captain to arrange a drill so she would have more breathing room. Without the fear of discovery, I declared that she automatically succeeded.

As for time, sure the thief may succeed automatically after some part of a Turn to find a trap on a locked chest, but that doesn’t open the lock. That takes another Turn, and two Turns means a Wandering Monster check, less torchlight left and possibly a dead thief, as any attempt to remove a trap in a dungeon with poor lighting and the potential for monsters to pop around the corner at any time is a stressful situation requiring a roll, by my estimation.

I’m not really clear on what you are asking. How would it effect thief inefficiencies? It would make them reliable and effective, but at the cost of time on the part of the thief. If you are rolling random encounters than this pushes the risk up of time usage. Do they risk a turn to guarantee
success if it means another wandering encounter check?

Or are you asking something else?

*proficiencies…

Oh, I wasn’t very clear I think.

I meant the proficiencies that affect the thief skills, by giving bonuses to them. Since proficiencies are so few and far between in ACKS, I wonder if it would be worth it for a character to improve their chances of success if they didn’t have to roll very often in the first place.

Ah…got it. You know, I never considered those originally because, well, frankly I don’t see them as that good as written. If I were playing a thief, things like sniping and swashbuckling would look a heck of a lot more appealing.

But, in this case I see a couple of options. As you say, profs are few and far between. If you want the prof to be really potent, you could just say: if you take this prof, you don’t need a Turn to do X, but can do it in a round. That is VERY potent, but since they have 10 different thief abilities, maybe spreading them out isn’t that big of a deal. It’s still a class feature + a prof to equal a spell that the casters can already do and is usually automatically successful.

Alternatively, you could just use them as written for when things are ‘tense’. How good that is depends on how often you have scenes where they are using thief abilities under stress.

:-/ just to chime in. i used the following:

a thief that successfully hides is treated as if invisible. a thief that successfully sneaks is treated as if under silence. a thief that is making a tricky or more difficult climb does not need a climbing kit and can climb at 1/2 movement while other must use a climbing kit and can only climb at 1/4 movement.