Flat Thief Abilities

*Marching party is at watchfulness level 2 (passive), roll hide in shadows to change to watchfulness level 3 (distracted).

Given that the examples of “distraction” on ACKS 99 include “conversation with friends”, I would consider “distracted” to be the default level of awareness unless the party knows that they’re in hostile territory and are proceeding with a moderate level of caution, in which case they would be “passive”.

*Thieves fail to hide in shadows

If they’re waiting in a prepared ambush, then they can be assumed to be reasonably well-hidden. I wouldn’t make them roll to hide in shadows until they actually move or initiate the attack.

*Thieves act in the surprise round from 160'

The thieves have the opportunity to wait as long as they like before springing the ambush, so, although they would notice the party at 160’, they would have the option of waiting until they get closer before actually attacking.

So, the way I would have handled it:

  • The party moves along a well-traveled road through settled territory. Since they have no reason to expect trouble, they are moving casually, talking to each other or perhaps singing a good traveling song. (distracted)

  • The thieves spot the party from 160’ away, but continue lying in wait as the party approaches. They let the party get to within 70’, then spring from cover and rush to attack.

  • The party rolls for surprise as the thieves break cover. They roll a 2. The elves call out a warning as they move to defend themselves, but it’s too late - the humans and dwarves are caught flat-footed and susceptible to backstabs. If an individual thief succeeds in his hide in shadows roll, then even the elves are effectively surprised by that thief unless they successfully hear noise (and he also fails to move silently).

Technically they were coming close to where they roughly had been told a hideout of some sort existed (there were conflicting rumors of what exactly was out there), but I can still see that defaulting to traveling being the “distracted” level of watchfulness makes sense for a random encounter.

However, if the stationary thieves are essentially undetectable (they wouldn’t make noise either, after all), it becomes a question of how to fairly judge how close the party will travel to their ambush spot.

Of course, turning this on its head and using it to the benefit of thief PCs/Henchmen is a bit harder. The most common time to want to use it is in the dungeon, where they’re often the mobile party coming upon stationary watches, or if there’s a random encounter it’s usually two parties barreling into each other, especially since the low level thieves are likely too scared to scout too far ahead. Add in light sources being used vs. predominantly darkvision enabled monsters, things get even tougher for a player wanting to be a thief.

If the ambushing creatures have had an opportunity to get into position and provide themselves cover and concealment, and are lying in wait, I will typically give their opponents a -3 penalty to their surprise rolls. This means in most cases a 5 in 6 chance of surprise, which roughly is equivalent to an 18+ throw.

If the ambushed opponents are the PCs, I will typically allow each PC to roll for surprise separately. This offers an opportunity for elves, explorers, and similar characters with a bonus to surprise rolls to benefit from their ability. Surprised characters don’t get to act in the first combat round.

Is the -3 penalty in the rules anywhere? Can PCs lie in wait for an ambush in a similar manner? How stressful is is, i.e. can they do this for a prolonged period, perhaps taking shifts (I assume you can’t count as resting while ready for ambush, right)?

Suppose the party hits a dead end room that they wish to investigate (or the cleric is meditating, etc), could a portion of the party set up in ambush positions in the room next door so that they can get the drop on any random dungeon encounters?

All this said, although it’s been demonstrated that the thieves might have had a better chance at a successful ambush, the fact remains that low level thieves stink at their proficiencies to hide and sneak (among other skills).

I was initially a firm believer that the dramatically lower XP costs justified the thief being relatively weak at low levels, but I’m a bit less sure now. Even at 1250XP, it seems dramatically less likely for a thief to ever see level 2 compared to the fighter, even with the extra 750XP required.

Of course, I am not a game designer, so I have no idea if my inklings have any basis in the underlying mechanics, but in play it seems like it takes a good deal more setup, on-the-spot ruling, and judge cognisence to make a thief work, as opposed to mages, fighters, and clerics, who seem better equipped to run “as is” and have them “just work”. If a thief needs special attention from the judge in order to ensure the player has the opportunity to shine, that’s fine, I think we can reasonably expect a little more from an ACKs Judge than, say, a 4th ed DM (which, coicidentally, is when I started DMing, so please go easy on me if it seems like I need more spelled out for me than you folks who have been running games for longer than “Since 2008”).

No, I’m just sharing GM-to-GM advice for handling a particular situation.

The rules simply state “When one side is well hidden, or naturally stealthy, the other side may suffer a penalty on its surprise roll. Conversely, some characters and monsters, such as explorers and ettins, are less likely to be surprised; they gain a bonus on their surprise roll.”

I would probably allow a party to lay in wait for 5 turns, then require 1 turn of rest. Having actually lain-in-ambush a few times during Army training it can get fatiguing.

The advice is appreciated. As I mentioned not too far below this post, I have only been DMing for 6 years, which sounds like a lot until you compare it to people who have been doing so for multiple decades. Also as I have expressed elsewhere, while I quite like the prosaic writing style of older editions, it’s not my natural habitat, so it takes me longer to get from what is written on the pages to “ok, this is what I’m doing and, yes, this feels right.”

While there typically isn’t the time at the table, a helpful yardstick for rulings is spending some time considering what the logical extent of the ruling is. In the above example you gave (requiring all the Bandits/Thieves to succeed on Hide in Shadows in order to ambush) the result was that no one other than lone, higher-level Thieves would be able to ambush someone. That’s simply non-sensical, and should suggest that the ruling made doesn’t hold up well to actual use (in the specific case it also doesn’t match RAW very well).

In terms of language, and how rules are expressed, I find that the difference with newer editions (e.g. 3.x) is that the general case works fine, but when the well-defined procedure meets the “edge-case” (which ends up being the majority of cases in one way or another) it can work, but quickly leads to results that also seem non-sensical if considered from an in-game (i.e. the character’s) perspective. A good example is the Diplomancer, who is apparently so persuasive that he or she can persuade the Kind and Queen to abdicate while naming him or her as regent, all on first meeting. The Diplomacy rules may have worked well for the majority of ordinary interactions with non-Diplomacy-specialized characters, but quickly break down beyond that.

Again, keep in mind that the low-level Thief (i.e. 1st level) has ~90% of ambush and Backstab under many circumstances; that’s hardly trivial. Moreover, keep the rules for Initiative (Thief gets Dex bonus) and Evasion which mean A.) in a Dungeon a Thief with higher Movement (should be from light encumbrance) will automatically successfully Evade (though maybe with being hit), and B.) a lone Thief in the Wilderness will successfully Evade 90% of the time (11+ evasion throw with a +8 bonus for even a single monster being 76%+ of the “party”/Thief’s numbers, e.g. 1).

I figured it was something like that. Still you could take the portion of available party (those not searching, meditating, skill-ing, etc.) and put them on a rotation where ~1/6 rests while ~5/6 waits in ambush, rotating ~1/6 every 10 minutes (1 turn) or so.

I’m guessing that, realistically this sort of discipline might be hard to enforce, but after the first near-tpk, most henchmen will consider giving it a try.

Good stuff, Alex. I love risk/reward being inherent in the rules. I’ve been trying to post my own thief rules, which use a +2 per turn spent system. Unfortunately, I seem to have a problem posting from home.

Anyway, thanks for the new house-rules!

Bit of thread necro, but it was a good thread, so.

I entabulated the various ways in which a thief may gain surprise here:

http://crowbarandbrick.blogspot.com/2014/10/unified-stealthsurprise-table.html

which included some of the thoughts from this thread.

I presume my second time through Stats stuck and I don’t have any egregious errors.

With the 'Heroic Companion' Kickstarter coming up soon-ish, have any decisions been made as to whether or not modify the theif abilities as part of the book? If so, are there any breadcrumbs you can give us regarding the direction you decided to go?

The cheapest (meaning least effort) way to improve thief abilities is to let them try again. Find or remove traps, open locks, and climbing can be retried as many times as a thief has time for; additionally, a thief can add +2 for doubling time (2 turns for finding traps), or a +4 for x6 time (a full hour to find traps). On the other hand, a higher level thief can take less time; a -2 for half time, a -4 for 10 rounds, or a -6 for a single round. That means a low level thief can still open a door, given time, while a high level thief has a good chance to open a lock in a single round.

Fighters can’t take extra time, because a kobold isn’t going to wait three turns to get hit; on the other hand, a fighter can kill a sleeping kobold outright. This gives thieves a similar ability.

Perhaps, but failing to find traps usually means the theif believes that there are no traps regardless of if there is one of not. Maybe this plays differently if the GM allows the player to roll his own find traps attempt, but in every game I've played this is a hidden roll by the GM.

I think it can still work; if the roll is secret, the player doesn’t have to believe what the gm tells him, and spend several turns searching. Even without that, allowing the thief to take more time for a significant bonus allows even low-level thieves to find traps, while rewarding higher level skill with the ability to find traps quickly. And no other rule changes need to be made, either.

Alex, have you employed these rules yet? I like them and am planning to go with them but was wondering whether you'd any lessons from experience with them yet.

I will be testing them in an upcoming campaign! I'll keep you posted.

For what it's worth, I've been using the flat thief numbers from the first post for a couple of months, and nothing's broken yet.  No gear options in use, and no assigning difficulty modifiers; the numbers are what they are, which makes it easy for me.  The thief's 3rd level, eyeing 4th (with attendance we have a spread from 4th to 1st level PCs), and the only difference I've noticed from stock D&D is an actual shot at finding and removing traps.  No-one's complaining about the thief overshadowing them, or wishing they had one over their existing character.

Hijinks haven't come up much except for listening for rumors, and so far my plan is to use the old progression for those.