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?”
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?
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.
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.