To Thief and Die in LA

Motivations in Roleplaying Game Economies Part 4/10

Welcome to Part 4 of Motivations in Roleplaying Game Economies. You can find Part 1 here. In this series we discuss how games affect the behavior of their players, using Dungeons & Dragons: Basic Set (1981, Ed. Tom Moldvay) as our example text. Part 4 delves into the secrets of the beloved Thief class. Further installments publish weekly on Saturdays. Subscribe to get the updates!

We hope this essay finds, removes and disarms traps in your RPG life.

---

The Fighter is not the only rodeo clown leaping onto the back of the angry bull that is Dungeons & Dragons: Basic Set. Beyond the heirs to Hercules’ talents are five other “classes” or professions one can embody: Cleric, Elf, Dwarf, Magic-User and Thief. Our series will touch on each (if you count Dwarves as a subset of Fighters), but we’ll start with the Thief.

However, They Do Steal

Compared to the fighter, the text gives the thief class a more nuanced, morally ambiguous description. They are “humans who are trained in the arts of stealing and sneaking.” And rather than referencing mythological forbearers, the text airily warns that thieves steal from their friends. Remind us why we are friends with them please. 

Let’s contrast Fighter X’s hellish survivability odds with the abilities of the thief class. To begin, we assess their combat survivability. A typical first-level thief–leather armor (AC 7), short sword (1d6 damage), 3 HP and 12s in ability scores, THAC0 19–has a 45% chance of survival against a single goblin from the Caves of Chaos. Odds that most of us would only want to rely on in a dire emergency. 

In this case, we see that the 81% survivability of the typical fighter makes them much more efficient at bullying a single goblin. We find it reassuring that the system appears to model a disparity in the specialization between the two classes: fighters are decent at fighting; thieves are mediocre at fighting. But a thief in Dungeons & Dragons: Basic Set (1981), is more than just an unreliable fighter. They are bestowed with a series of special “Thieves’ Abilities.” The game describes them as follows: Open Locks 15%, Find/Remove Traps 10%, Pick Pockets 20%, Move Silently 20%, Climb Sheer Surfaces 87%, Hide in Shadows 10%, Hear Noise “1-2” (33.33%). 

We’ll examine the three most relevant abilities for our purposes: Move Silently, Hide in Shadows and Open Locks. However, at a glance, comparing the thief’s combat survivability (45% against a single goblin) with their Thief Ability odds seems to indicate the thief is better in a fight than performing their specialties, but there’s subtlety in the thief’s abilities that defies a direct comparison.

Based on the class’ introductory text and their special abilities, we feel confident stating that the thief’s core function involves effectively navigating difficult spaces to gain access to treasure. Like the fighter, the narrative description of this class provides players with introductory heuristics to begin exploring how best to navigate play. Sadly, unlike the thief, the text does not provide the fighter class with a reference table of special abilities. If it did, perhaps it would include items like this: Squash Goblin (81%), Protect Weaker Members (20%) and Train for Battle (15%). But if we consider their 81% survivability as a fighter class “special ability,” we can make a direct comparison between the efficiency of the thief and fighter: the fighter’s 81% survivability far outstrips the thief’s Move Silently (20%) or Hide in Shadows (10%) chances, and is matched only by the thief’s ability to climb (87%). 

However, failing to survive combat has stark consequences, whereas the outcomes of sneaking and stealing are vague and open to interpretation. Since most of the thief’s abilities don’t offer black and white outcomes, we will attempt to recreate what playing the situation in cave D would be like in order to understand its possibilities. 

The Caves of Chaos scenario explicitly states that the goblins are on patrol near the entrance. They are even described as using a special warning call—“Bree-yark!”— that they employ to summon reinforcements should they encounter invading interlopers. We’ll use this wrinkle to continue developing our hypothetical situation. If one of their number is assassinated by X, we can assume a respectable game master would bring in the remainder of the patrol to investigate. That means the five remaining goblins in the patrol emerge from the tunnel to confront our hapless fighter and thief. Now what? 

For the sake of highlighting the thief’s class efficiencies, let us imagine that the thief chooses to do the thiefly thing and pads off while the goblins are distracted by X’s selfless “protecting weaker members” schtick. Sadly, this means we must briefly summon our hell-bound fighter once again and note that X has only an 18.65% chance of surviving this encounter with those five goblins. The sneak thief is likely leaving him to die!

However, the system does not allow the thief to simply wish themselves out of danger. It invites a roll to answer the question “Does the thief get away undetected?” For this type of action, we’ll use their Move Silently ability, which is rated at 20%. However, even with an 80% failure rate, the consequences of a thief failing to move silently through a dangerous situation are dire but still less severe than death. If detected, the thief might hide, run or even fight if necessary. Whereas if Fighter X is unsuccessful in combat, he’s slain and removed from play. A player may not be expected to know this from looking at the class, but the experience of play should quickly teach players fundamental heuristics around these differing consequences.

That said, sneaking past the goblin patrol is only the beginning of the thief’s troubles. There’s never just one obstacle in a dungeon. The game master in this scenario could quite reasonably state that, as the thief moves along the dungeon corridor, another patrol rushes toward them from area 18, en route to help their companions battling with the fighter at the cave entrance. In this moment, the thief’s player would be called to decide on whether to flee back the way they came, stand and fight or try to hide. I suspect most would chance the odds and try to hide in a shadowy alcove as the goblins dash by them. Of course, their odds are vanishingly slim: Hide in Shadows has only a 10% chance of success. Which means the thief has only a 2% probability of passing both the Move Silently test and this Hide in Shadows ability check. These odds are roughly equivalent to the chance the fighter has at surviving a battle with three waves of three goblins (4%). In its odd way, the game’s economy is rather balanced in this regard (if, by balanced, one means a scale tipped by Orcus’ demonic claw straight into the Abyss).

Of course, a thief’s job is not yet complete as they have found no treasure and earned no experience points. Since we imagined X fighting through three waves of goblins, we’ll model the thief tackling three obstacles as well. So let’s push them to the climax of their journey. If we can stretch our imagination to say they’ve improbably succeeded at both moving and hiding, let’s now imagine that they’ve found at last a locked chest that jingles with the tune of lucre when gently shaken. For our purposes in this rather belabored example, the chest contains 100 gold pieces—the equivalent of 100 experience points in Dungeons & Dragons: Basic Set. Unbeknownst to our enterprising thief, the chest is also trapped—because Saint Gygax truly hates thieves. Mercifully, this particular trap is a simple one—something to protect against goblins stealing their boss’s gold. If somegoblin tampers with the lock, a poisoned needle springs out and lances the erstwhile thief’s knuckle. A classic mechanism. And, small mercy, there’s no need to disarm it first, so long as the lock is opened properly it will not trigger.¹ According to the thief's special ability scores, the chance of their successfully opening locks is 15%. If they are poisoned as a result of a failed roll, the system grants the thief a saving throw vs poison to resist its effects. First level thieves have a 40% chance of passing that saving throw. These odds combined grant our thief a 51% chance of failing to open the lock, getting jabbed with the hidden needle and dying, but only a 15% chance of successfully picking the lock and getting the loot.² 

According to our calculations, sneaking past the first patrol, hiding from the second patrol and then opening the lock without triggering the trap gives the thief a .3% chance of success (.02 x .15=.003). That is 1/13 the success odds of the fighter. However, the fighter has a 96% chance of dying while the thief has only a 51% chance of dying, accruing almost half the risk over the attempt. Such crushing odds for a measly 100 experience points in loot, what type of sadistic game is this?

The chances of success for either character fulfilling their roles in this scenario are dismal. The Fighter has a higher overall chance of success, but his failure results in death in every scenario. The Thief has a slimmer chance of total success, but his failure is tiered—several options will force the Thief away to return and fight again without dying and losing all of his earned experience so far. Both have a total chance of success so bad, in fact, we might wonder about who designed this torture engine in the guise of a fantasy roleplaying game.

Before we cast this infernal rulebook back to whence it came, we should revisit the premise for this digression. Does the game have an incentive economy and does the game guide the players to use that economy so they can make informed decisions about their character’s actions and the risks they pose and rewards they offer? Find out next time, as we delve deeper still into the mysteries of this baroque system.

Can’t get enough of our thoughts on games? Check out our companion podcast, The Hypothesis, here.

1. While a thief has the ability to “Find/Remove Traps”, any game master who calls upon the thief to make a fourth test of their abilities in a scenario like this is truly in league with Asmodeus. The thief has but a 2% chance to move silently to slip away, hide in shadows to dodge the patrol. To then pass a test of 10% odds…has but a .2% chance of succeeding. Of course, failure to find or remove a trap triggers the trap, which is likely fatal for the thief. If they are then called by Asmo-DM to Open Locks, their chance of doing all four tasks in a row is an astonishing .03%. Pity the poor thief in Basic Dungeons & Dragons. 

2.  85% to fail to open the lock * 60% chance of failing their save vs poison = 51%. And a 34% of triggering the trap and surviving the poison, in case you were wondering (.85 x .4=.336).