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Id just like to see them more often. I didn't see one until the recent mining quest that tied into the Ardeep RP.

I've also wondered about the usefulness of one of the skills, Disguise. As it is, when disguised...if you are caught stealing, it matters not how good you are at the skill, if you are caught...no matter what disguise, you are still thrown in prison. Even if the disguise is removed. What is the real purpose of this disguise other than to rp with PCs. Then this brings about the race into the equation. For example, a Tiefling or Halfdrow with the disguise skill is albeit useless. Most PCs, NOT ALL, most PCs simply overlook the disguise and look straight to the race.

Player A sees Player B, whose adjective is "A cloaked and hooded male tiefling". Player A howls, "TIIIIEFFFLINGG". Somehow I find this hard to swallow. Maybe there could be a way to disguise race as well depending on the skill level of the disguise skill? Also...there could be ways to incorporate the skill into quests that would make it more useful overall.

I agree 100% that rogues face an ooc, mechanical, barrier when they are compared to other classes as far as perceived worth. Their personality can still be spunky and witty and brooding and have all the great RP you want, on the grandest of stages - but you can do that with any class.

Steal is great. Steal works as well as I could expect from a text based game. But stealing is definitely more of a solitary thing, and certainly not something that is encouraged to go about using as a launching point of PC interaction.

The combat portion is a little skewed compared to tabletop because dexterity/dodge isn't compensating for the light armor restriction like it can in tabletop...so light armor with very mild dexterity affects coupled with less HP than warrior classes who can wear heavy armor - i can certainly see where it'd get frustrating...since it's so far off from what tabletop is like. I realize it isn't tabletop, and I can't imagine how hard it is to find a balance mechanically in a game like this - but there certainly is oceanic gap between light armor fighters and heavy armor fighters (heavy armor fighters should always mechanically come out higher, because of armor cost and upkeep...but light armor is little more than clothing).

But still, I don't think that part is where real class imbalance is coming from, for the rogue class in a game that's focus is on pc interaction (combat, of course, is secondary...but combat isn't the only form of mechanics). Being able to disarm, and being able to pick locks is huge. Dungeons and Dragons - the genre sweats treasure chests and gas traps. Just by doing something as small as an imm dropping a locked and trapped treasure chest (can we do both in this game?) from a mob when they see one is about to get stuck by a PC...it doesn't have to be anything big in the chest, a couple coins. What makes treasure chests fun, and what makes rogues so valuable to the adventurers as their own personalities, is that they open the loot - most the time it may be a bunch of goblin toiletries...since goblins take those things seriously But the character always wants that chest opened, because it /could/ be that end all be all ticket to the east side.

I guess i'm not positive about how long it takes to make something like that. But a number as small as five dropped chests a week would /significantly/ play up the usefulness of a rogue for what it was designed to be, a utility class. Level 50 epic fighters flying around on giant dragons would still have to drag the chest back to town and ask the morally questionable rogue (how'd you learn how to steal like that again?) for a hand.

And it's something you'd be expected to pay quite a bit for, since traps are very dangerous.

Anyway, more long winded than I was planning on. To sum it up, disarm trap/pick locks as a party utility option would instill role play, make the player feel that his PC is mechanically worth anything, and bring about the intended feel for the traditional rogue class in dungeons and dragons, and generally all fantasy genres.

Anyone who knows me, knows I have some quirks about me. My main one has to be thieves and thier abilities as any who have heard me complain about them would know.

Zilvryn wrote: Also, a rogue with good skills will be able to take out a fighter in PvP, i've seen it happen numerous times. So again, I think the class is well balanced.

Before alot of the code changes I went toe to toe with several high level fighters in plate. I would lost 70% of the time. But They would be arround 20%-30% hp. Now when I spar characters who are MUCH lower level then I. I get completly WHOMPED!. They being arround 50-60% hp. I have GMED several weapons, taken feats, and GMed other skills that put me above the rest, why cant I at least hold my own against them, least low level characters with alot less time put in them me in combat? Please dont berate me on it, just what ive noticed.

On another note. Stealing, I know to be fair we are not supposed to steal containers and such. However, how are we spposed to get a chance to steal when people have 3+ more contianers in their inventory at a time? Myself, I have taken on to only holding what I would need to 'survive' or that I would need for RP. Leaving the rest on minions. Im not saying everyone should do this, makes it more realistic though. Now, with steeling, besides coin, most mob-merchants are coded to not alow you to steal from them, be it magical or normal items. Perhaps chaning this would help out alot.

As for steal how about a Random chance to aquire an item -loot- or some other name, that could be sold to a fencer in the game. The better you are at steel, the better quality of loot you can steal and sell.

Now, as for RP into thieves. Myself, I play the Im a fighter routine. Yet people always point at me and say, YOur a thief, why should I trust you? or.. Rumor has it your a thief. Wich, is why ive done as much as possible to limit my training of thieve skills. But, Im one of the few people to idle in MS to help people outside my alignment, faith, and what have yous start their rogue characters/evils from WD. Or be that Fighter needed in a mage quest. Dont get me wrong - Ive done my fair share of "Get out of my face before I punch you in the throat" routines. Im a nice guy or bad when it suits me. However as a thief. I get black-listed by people who just happen to "know" im a thief. Thankfull there are thoese who overlook the fact for RP's. We thieves have to make ourselves confrontational to get noticed, or join a faith that is considered good to be accepted. That is what the stigma of being a thief on FK is about. Either your evil and you want to kill goods, or your a good thief who is fun to be arround

Dalvyn wrote: Would making traps more deadly be a solution then?.

The one thing I seem to do is help people with traps. OH dont get me wrong, most of you out there have NO idea what traps are out there. You think a mage's spells or clerics prayers are bad? Try getting into some of theose traps and finding yourself headless. Instantly. However it takes ALOT of time spent to get to these area's. Once there a need is grown to find a thief.. and take them there for your own needs. We dont need more deadly traps, we need more traps to make them a problem. I think though, we need to work on traps themselves and the rules and uses of them so we can RP with them some more. A rogue, helping to trap Waterdeep as an undead invasion is spawened by some evil necromancer (yeah, you know who im talking about)

However as it stands, this poses a problem for thieves.

Admit your a thief by detrapping a trap or dont get taken along. Once you admit your a thief... its pretty much over for you. Being a thief isnt a problem for people who are OOC friends as ive noticed. It is for people who arnt.

So, all in all, Thieves got the blunt end of a sharp stick for a weapon right now. We have our one unique skill. The only thing we have is our RP to get us through any situation - where the other classes can bash or cast or pray through them.



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If you think of thief as a trap specialist and offer your services that way then who knows. to many people see the word thief on their screen and automatically think hes out to get me. Hmm maybe hes out to get your coin, so if hes gunna get it, at least put him to work for it.

Id like to see traps all the way up to the first level of the UM, it will provide for thiefs by getting them wanted by those who wish to travel even to the shallow parts and to join the ranks of that organization at the top of Mount Waterdeep, the name eludes me right now.

The Brotherhood of Undermount. I wish it would be nice to see more traps to deal with. Perhaps the farhter in you go into UM the more deadly?

First... let's get rid of the name Thieves.

There aren't any thieves anymore. There are only Rogues.

I see this difference as more than just a name. I see no point at all on the focus on stealing. Stealing is like a little pkill in my opinion. Either you get to keep the item, and the victim is pissed off; you end up richer, the victim poorer, but there was no interaction. Or there is some interaction between the thief and the victim, blackmail, "I will give it back to you, but I want this in exchange", but this kind of roleplay quickly gets old. I, for one, would just get rid of steal rather than put the focus on it. I'm not asking for it to be removed, I'm just saying that I'm not interested in spending any resource on making steal "better".

I can add traps in various areas. I've actually already done it here and there. But here's what I suspect is going to happen:

- Player A (not a rogue) goes there.
- Player A is hurt by the trap.

2 options here:

1) - Player A is badly hurt.
- Player A sits down and browses the web or chats while hit points go back up.
- Player A continues till the next trap.

2) - Player A is killed
- Player A quits
(I could give you plenty of examples of this: players who think they should be able to do everything on their own and quit, frustrated, when they notice that they die. Just typing this already brings 3 or 4 player names related to events that happened in the last 2 days.)

It's a hard thing to obtain a balance where people think about asking for help rather than (a) sleeping their wounds off or (b) getting frustrated with their many deaths.

But let's keep concentrated on the trap topic for a while (if only because it's a topic I can do something about more or less easily, so we might as well discuss things that can be changed easily and quickly).

Dalvyn wrote:Would making traps more deadly be a solution then?

Yes, and steal more useful in an area environment as well. If you don't like it as an option for players to use against players - fine. I honestly don't even care. It's so rare you're 'allowed' to use it that the skill is fairly worthless to use against other players. And, even still, you will find it rarer that the player you're using it _on_ is a good sport about it.

But, it would still be nice to have them not be so much a cripple in a fight. Sneak attack and feint (and improved feint?) would be fun. Something more for the rogue to do to assist his party other than just detrap. Hey, it's fun to be able to lord a skill over a party and all, but I think a party would be even more comfortable if you weren't just some low level fighter who can detrap.

Dalvyn: I would agree, make the weak ones carry a bit more punch and then scatter them down in the most inconvienant places, forcing PCs to make a hard choice.

Steal: Perhaps not more stealing from PCs but I would like to see more stealing from scenarios. IE a quest requires a party to retrieve an item to continue, now you can go and kill the mob who is always surrounded with guards and packs quite the punch, or you can send in the group rogue to slip in there, grab it and slip out, thus the party can continue the quest. Note im not calling for the ability to take the party out of quests or missions, just some convienant 'alternate routes' to the end that would entice a group to bring along a rogue.

Another reason in why Mud and TT rogues are so skewed is the skill balances. In TT rogues get the most skill points of any another class, and just underneath dexterity they also rely heavily on intelleigence. This works great in a game where fighters only get 4 skill points per level and pays heavily to use a skill outside of his class, but in a mud where every fighter has a masters in languages, knows the lore and history of just about everything, and can also write a 40 page thesis while he sits and recovers his health, it kind of dulls the intent of the rogue class in the first place. Rogues are considered the jack of all trades, and depending on how you allocate points you can have the smart arheologists/indiana jones type rogue, the conniving political/intrigue spy, or the run of the mill pick pocket brute. Rogues are useful in a party as not only can they decipher script, use magical devices, can slip in and slip out of tight areas easily, and have the ability to get the party in and out of places they arent suppose to be, they also provide an angle to combat that has to ability to tip it from one side to the other with their sneak and flanking attacks. If it wasnt for the fact that the need for translations and deciphering of script is almost none existant in the mud I woud say thats another good niche the rogues can fill in. An old dungeon with scrip and text scattered throughout, the party needing to figure out its messages and clues so they can get out, well in TT its not so easy to cast translation magic as it is in the mud, yet another reason to bring your rogue along.

I regards to your question on traps Dalvyn I think that it is definitely an option and I think a good one... also possibly the coding of a few mechanical traps not detectable through magic

Aren't trap hits to the head/chest pretty much instant kill, if the trap is anything above minor? Seems pretty nasty damage wise...though more of them might make things interesting.

I say that if it an area made to have a group instead of being allowed to solo it. Have the traps instakill the entire party. Then you could certainly think twice about taking any type of group somewhere without a rogue to assist :p

I don't think that this is *always* the case. Recently I was in an extended RP with a rogue along, and she was utilized properly in my opinion, where her skills applied in the many traps and hidden places in the area. But what about the days when she wasn't available? Would the RP need to be stopped dead in its tracks?

As a general comment, in my experience trying to force "proper RP" through hard code never works. If certain players aren't RP-ing to mud standards, punish them directly on the spot. But radically adjusting hard-code affects everyone on the mud. In many cases I've seen so far, it causes more "twinkish" behaviour as everyone tries to work around new limits, which may be un-IC-ly restrictive.

List of things that I would add:

Locked doors without key.
Locked doors with lost key.
Locked doors with key in possesion of really scary monster that most fighters should fear but the rogue could steal if he is good at it.

Trapped chests (If they no exist)
Locked chests as random loot a monster
Locked chests as object in the ground waiting to be found and unlocked from a rogue.

Hidden treasures and Hidden doors (Encouraging the use of search)

Overall more traps.
Random positionated traps (bye bye rushing through an area)
Traps that affect all the group (Without forgeting the traps that damage only the leader)

I'm not sure I agree with increasing thief fighting abilities. I like much more the idea of making the existing abilites more useful. If you have a thief who can go toe to toe with a fighter because the combat skills are more equal, why not have a fighter go toe to toe with a thief on stealing or detrapping?

I like the idea of more traps and locked items. As for traps on rooms, I think that as long as there is SOME clue that harm might occur, they aren't so bad. As a player I got frustrated on the mud I played YEARS ago when I'd walk into a room and then be suddenly dead with no clue as to what was to come - now way to think to myself, "maybe I should get a rogue to help me out in this spot."

Maybe some mobs, instead of dropping coin when they die, drop containers that are locked, trapped or both.

If I recall, and I might be wrong, many mobs were made to be un-stealable because some PCs were repeatedly stealing from a mob and selling the items back to the same mob.

If there is a way to make a trap do attribute damage (curse or something) - nothing that would force a character on a quest to return back to town and come back later, but something that certainly is terribly annoying and costly enough that if a player decided to take the stance of "i'll just run through and get cleric'd afterwards" would never wind up being worth the cost of getting the "curse" removed.

The curse IC could be represented by serious burns from a naturally magical material (special gem powder mixed with the combustion)...or tendon damage or illness from gasses.

You could have some serious fun with traps that do more then take away hit points.

Traps could, completely zap away all strength, one could not even lift a dagger to defend themselves. Or it could blind them to where a clerics spell could not remove it, or take away their ability to move, perhaps zapping away items such as weapons and armour (espeically for more difficult places like UM and such).

I can promise you that having all of your strength taken away to where you cannot move to leave the place or even be able to call for help, would make me think twice about going into these places.

The point here is to make the skills a thief already has have more of a use in adventuring not making them better in a Pkill situation. You do not want a thief to be able to stand toe to toe with a fighter because of hard hitting things like backstab and circlestab, if a theif could defeat a good fighter without those skills, then they would be unstopable with them.

I would love to see some new items such as Lockboxes that cannot be removed from the room and once you leave they vanish never to return.
That way you must have a rogue with you to pick out these locks at that time. Or have a hallway of nothing but traps to anyone who cannot hide and sneak. The theif sneaks through the traps disabling the ones he can and avoiding the other, so that he can pull the lever at the other side of the hallway that will disable all the traps so the rest of the group can get through.

Also, I would like to see some of those lockboxes have enough items for everyone in the group, that way you are not just having one person horde all the items. When a group of adventures go on a quest do you honestly think that they would all sit by and say "Oh no you take all the loot, your leading the quest" ? Heck no! Having small things like this would make the game have more of a tabletop feeling. And I think that nobody here would be upset at that prospect.
Things like that would make it to where it would be alot more fun and easier to gather a group to go explore some new cavern that has been found in the spine. Just a few ideas I thought I would like to throw out there

Perhaps this would be too hard to code or perhaps not but I would like to see random located traps in some areas, that way people could not learn where are they, and they will have to look for traps really and waiting to the rogue saying in the way is safe or not, instead of rushing from trap to trap.

Hmmm, should rangers/druids get trap/detrap in wilderness areas?

Lathander wrote:Hmmm, should rangers/druids get trap/detrap in wilderness areas?

It only makes since.. could one code it only in forest areas?