Solving the Dungeon Thief's #1 Problem

One of my players, who runs a rogue, has long been aware of the paradox that arises when you take a standard-model human thief-type into a dark dungeon. All their skills are optimized to scouting ahead in the dark, hiding when foes approach, and surprising them in the back in a fight.

Except they can't see in the dark.

1st edition AD&D gets around this problem because you'd be a dope to run a human thief anyway. I'm running Basic-type so I don't have that "solution" at hand. But the answer lies in a piece of folklore I'd ben aware of ever since I read John Bellairs' The House With a Clock In Its Walls as a kid:

The Hand of Glory.

Originally, this magical object was not an actual hand, but the mandrake root, supposed to grow under gallows, with soporific and hallucinogenic properties that sometimes led to it being described as "shining like a lamp." Transforming "mandragore" to the French pseudo-etymology "main de gloire," the "Hand of Glory" came to be imagined in English folk magic as the actual hand of a hanged man, combined in some way with a candle made from the fat of that hand - either grasped in the hand, on the back of the hand as in the Gorey illustration, or made by actually lighting the fingers.

Just as unclear is what this Hand of Glory actually does. It is always mentioned as a tool for burglars, but variously it puts the inhabitants of the house to sleep; paralyzes them when they see the light; or opens locks and doors. Also, the flames can only be extinguished by blood or milk.Bizarrely, the version found in the 3rd edition D&D SRD allows the holder to wear an extra magic ring. (You have to wonder about the kind of campaign this would be useful in, where characters are going around tricked out with three or more magic rings.) Charles Stross' Laundry novels of modern magic take the Hand even further by treating it as a sorcerous zap gun.

But the one legend of the Hand of Glory that solves the thief's dungeon problem is the lore, also used in the Harry Potter novels, that it emits a light that only its holder can see. This is the basis of my Hand of Glory.

Hand of Glory

Availability: -6 (can be reliably had in only the largest metropolis)
Price: 500$

This magical item is made from the hand of a hanged murderer. It is considered a disreputable item of sorcery, if not evil in itself. When properly mummified and prepared, the hand grasps a candle made from its own fat. The lit candle burns for an hour and illuminates a 20' radius with a sickly yellow light that only a person holding the Hand in his or her own hand can see - the light source is invisible to normal and darkvision alike. Thus, it is prized by experts in sneaking and hiding, for it lets them explore completely dark areas without being spotted.

The candle also may not be extinguished by any normal substance other than a life-giving bodily fluid - blood or milk. If so extinguished, however, it may be lit and used again for the remainder of its burning time.

Making a Hand of Glory requires 150$ in materials, one full day's effort to prepare, a month waiting time, and the casting of continual light, invisibility, infravision, and continual darkness on the same day at the end of that time. The most difficult requirement, of course, is that of the hand itself; many enlightened rulers now order the cremation of hanged criminals to prevent their use for black magic of this kind.

The Thief As Aquaman

Poor Aquaman. Butt of a thousand comic-book meta-jokes because his powers depend on an aquatic setting. If he wants to join in the fun with the Justice League the writer had better provide a port, beach or boat.

You know who's like that in D&D? Yeah, the druid. But less obviously - the thief.

As written in the Basic and Advanced games, the thief is saddled with inferior combat everything, and gets in return some very unreliable skills (more on that next post). However, while combat is a feature of almost every environment, things like traps, locks, climbs, and sneaking opportunities have to be written into an adventure. Putting a trapped, locked chest on a high ledge is like putting a villain's lair in a undersea volcano for the Superfriends. If these opportunities don't make sense in the adventure, tough. Maybe this is one reason for the knee-jerk secret doors, traps, locks impulse I've noted in so much module writing.

In my 52 Pages system, and to some extent in 3rd edition, rogues work better because they have a clearer combat role as missile troops and sometimes scouts. The skills are useful, but secondary. I think any designer has to come to grips with this. "Can't do much but gains levels quickly" is not really a recipe for a viable character class.

There's a strange parallel here with the cleric. In Old School circles, as I've noted before, both these classes are marginal and often questioned. The cleric also presents a skill that is very useful in circumscribed situations - turning undead. This is the most direct tie to the class' origin as a vampire hunter, Van Helsing with the crucifix. Faith healing is less in line with the fiction, but in function, it's become the most important reason for the cleric to exist, to the point where 3rd Edition just laid down and admitted it, with free substitution of cure spells. The Aquaman power here, turning undead, is supplanted by a more generally useful combat power, healing.

By the way, that task I mentioned where the thief has to climb a ledge, pick a lock find a trap, and disarm it? In AD&D a 5th level human thief with 17 DEX has a roughly 7.5% chance of completing that skill sequence successfully. More on this next time.

OSR Contradiction 1: Play vs. Fiction

Attempts to enforce purity in the Old School Ratatouille are doomed to fail. Why?  Because in its glorious diversity it's fallen into at least two contradictions that I've become aware of writing recent posts. These contradictions are not fatal, except perhaps to an exaggerated sense of traditional gaming orthodoxy, but they bear mentioning.

Contradiction 1 relates to something I noticed a while back: Old-style D&D combat (any kind of D&D combat for that matter) bears little resemblance to the give and take of pulp fantasy combat. OK, so it's not the most original observation that D&D combat is not realistic. But it's remarkable that even the general style of play of high-level D&D heroes is at odds with the cautious, life-or-death approach taken by even the greatest heroes of early 20th century fantasy literature.

But also, as Aaron Steele recently remarked, "One of the unique features of Dungeons and Dragons is the idea of the ADVENTURING PARTY." The vaunted pulp fantasy influences can't really account for this confluence of archetypes that quickly settled in a foursquare formation. Fafhrd and the Mouser, the Eternal Champion and his sidekicks are duos cut from essentially the same cloth. The Fellowship of the Ring may have contributed the "fantasy races," elf-dwarf ribbing and all, but their mission is completely different and they're missing a few key players.

I've personally rejected the neo-Old School arguments to drop thieves ("Hey, everyone's a thief") or cleric-types ("Hey, no room for goody-goodies in Hyboria"). Only recently have I realized why.

In the first place, even taking both measures at once will bring you no closer to your Weird Tales utopia; you'll look in vain for all those pulp adventure stories featuring the sword-wielding barbarian and his wizard buddy. Drop the wizard PCs, and you'll have a true pulp adventure game (resembling perhaps Searchers of the Unknown). But it won't be D&D, or even T&T.

In the second place, the four classes are classics because they set up instant character conflicts within the party, but on a tame enough level that the party can still work together. To illustrate:

Silhouettes by Telecanter & myself

The fighter-wizard axis is the classic Kirk-Spock, Aubrey-Maturin, Narcissus-Goldmund alliance of opposites. Not all fighters and magic-users fit the stereotypes, of course. But the classes as developed in fantasy gaming tend to bear out the roles by making the wizard the combat-weak master of powerful but limited resources, and the fighter the more durable frontline figure.

The cleric-thief axis sets up moral debates and conflicts, encouraged by the altruistic nature of the cleric's gifts, and the acquisitive, loner nature of the thief's methods. I've had to express these in two ways because different play groups work differently with them. Some see the conflict as between the thief and the party (the labels in parentheses), others as seeing it as between the party and the rest of the world.

The moral axis may not work sometimes. It lets clerics and paladins be asshats by insisting on moral action detrimental to the party, and thieves and assassins be asshats by insisting on selfish action detrimental to the party. Things work out best, perhaps, when the thief advocates for the selfish and immediate interests of the party (as opposed to robbing sleeping companions) while the cleric advocates for the long-term moral interests of the party (as opposed to telling the truth to the Dark Lord's guards).

Perhaps these problems with the moral axis, or its suggestion that there is more than the looter ethos, leads some to reject its classes completely. I can't ... because that's not D&D. Despite all those problems, and implementation problems that persisted for twenty years, thieves and clerics nevertheless stuck around. I just don't see it as a positive to insist that the long-lived and very resilient party structure of the game is some sort of tumor that has to be excised to reach purity.

Contradiction 2 is coming up, and it leads in to my review and play guide for Tomb of the Iron God.

Like A (Stumbling) Thief in the Dark

So this weekend I kicked off a new campaign using Matt Finch's Tomb of the Iron God as the starting adventure. Last year it was recommended to me and it definitely delivered on the old school funhouse-plus-meaningful exploration front. My players are fellow psychology students and researchers, seasoned online gamers all.

No wall sconces down here...

Because of the tactical mindset, one issue came up during play that I'd like some feedback on. My wife played a rogue character, as she'd been wanting to do ever since the RPG bug hit our household. But in practice, a rogue/thief/whatever under the Basic D&D or OD&D dispensation is very limited as a dungeon scout explorer. With race-as-class, a human thief can have no infravision, and sneaking around a dungeon with a shiny light is not very practical.

Of course, in race-plus-class systems like AD&D this is one big reason to take a nonhuman thief (plus all the racial skill bonuses) and in thiefless systems like true OD&D it's a non-issue.

So, have any players or DMs come up with creative solutions to let the thief-type take point in a dark, dark dungeon?

Pick Pockets

I'm not racist, but most of them are halflings

Another interesting Slate article reports the decline of the New York City pickpocket. Alas, no more need Mom and Dad instruct their kids to put their wallet in the front pocket. Apparently these darn urchins today with their Pokeymons and social networks have no gumption for learning a craft involving elaborate feats of misdirection and legerdemain.

Well - need it be said? Good riddance.

I was in Barcelona last summer during a wave of pickpocketing. Constant reminders on the subway, from hotel personnel, everywhere. Paranoia undercutting our enjoyment of one of Europe's most amazing cities. My wife had a compartment on her backpack (thankfully empty of anything valuable) opened by stealth. Not much desire there to applaud the exquisite art of the sneak thief.

You know, I also feel the same way about the "pickpocketing" skill in roleplaying games. Even when expanded to "sleight of hand" to allow minor conjuring tricks, it's a basically antisocial skill. It screams out "Hey! Thief! Go off and have a solo adventure!" While whispering "Psst! Thief! Care to try your skill on your fellow party members?" Note-passing campaigns with stealth player vs. player action may be fun to run online, but at a tabletop I see that kind of action as a pain (but see also JB's somewhat different take on the whole issue).

And yet ... if you have a character who is a thief, he or she just might have been trained in this very exacting skill. My solution is to treat it as part of the 1-3 background words a starting character gets in my Old School Players system; so if you choose "thief" you will get a minor chance to pickpocket, ruled on the spot, and if you choose "pickpocket" you'll be quite competent at it from the start. I don't want pickpocketing to be at the center of the campaign but it's fine as flavor. Maybe if the game revolved more about intrigue and capers things just might be different. But in my dungeon-bashing game, there ain't no need.