Quote:
Originally Posted by tbone
I think I'm repeating a past comment I made in a thread somewhere, but I find it interesting that the FRPG Big 4 roles – fighter, wizard, thief, cleric – are still, after all these decades, the core of adventuring parties. I don't know whether that's due to D&D hitting on an ideal quartet from the start,
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There were only three classes to start with Cleric, Fighter, and Magic User. The thief got added in the Greyhawk supplement. The elements of what most people consider to be classic old school D&D stems from OD&D (1974 release) plus Supplement I Greyhawk.
Greyhawk added the thief, varying hit dice per class (fighters d8, clerics d6, thief/MUs d4). Damage dice for example 1d8 for longsword. In OD&D core everybody did 1d6 damage irregardless of weapon type or class.
As a consequence OD&D core books plays somewhat differently than OD&D + Greyhawk. This lead to many including myself ask how did character sneak around, climb, find traps, disarm traps, etc from people who played back in the day.
Got a variety of answers which basically boiled down to they either adjudicated it based on the plan i.e. player skill or did a bit of the former and had them roll dice based on an attribute like dexterity for stealth.
Their opinion was split on the Greyhawk thief. One view is that their skills represent extraordinary or heroic use of the skill. Anybody could disarm a trap but only thieves could do it at the listed chance in a middle of lightning in a storm giant melee.