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OSR and Thieves' Skills in Old School Essentials

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My friend Dan and the RoUL DnD Group have been discussing thieves skills in DnD. We questioned if they were too weak in the OSE rules. Should a thief be better than others at detecting traps and sneaking around? We noted: Any character has a 1-in-6 chance to hear noises behind a door and 1-in-6 chance to find a room trap or a secret door.  Dwarfs and halflings has a 2-in-6 chance to hear noises and a dwarf has a 2-in-6 chance to detect a "room trap." A thief at level 2 has a 2-in-6 chance to hear a noise; also, less than a 1-in-6 chance to detect treasure traps and the same chance as any other character type to detect a room trap. Should we 'home brew" OSE rules to increase the skills of our thief? I studied our  notes in Roll20 and reread the OSE rules. T hieves level-up quickly. You can see it in the bar graph with black bars for a thief and blue bars for a dwarf, halfling, and fighter. A thief is 4th level at 4,000 XP and a halfling, dwarf and fighter are 4th le...
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OSR, elves, and a mini

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                 [Gildor and the Wandering Elves (Max Carr)] Moldvay wrote that elves love 'frolicking in wooded glades.' Some, Tolkien says, 'lingered in the twilight of our Sun and Moon. Others lived ages in the 'Faerie' West and grew 'fairer and wiser and more learned'. Here are elvish songs and magic items, and some elves I've lately met. *** The songs of elves are filled with nightwalks, stars, and memories of beauty. Gildor and the wandering elves sang of Elbereth the Starkindle r: Gilthoniel! O Elbereth!         Clear are thy eyes and bright thy breath! Snow-white! Snow-white! We sing to thee          In a far land beyond the Sea. Be side the river Nimrodel, the wood-elf Legolas sang 'in a soft voice hardly to be heard amid the rustle of the leaves.' Where now she wanders none can tell,        In sunlight or in sha...
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OSR and good yarns

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Now if it's yarns you're longin' for, I can tell you of two, maybe three - even me, I can read 'em with the pictures. *** The first one's Lovecraft, The Colour Out of Space . Here's Virgil Finlays' picture - there you see 'em - first hand witnesses of the 'gleaming, eruptive cataclysm" that shot-up from old Nahum's well! [illustration by Virgil Finlay (1941), reprinted in the Annotated H.P. Lovecraft] Folks say it was aliens. Before he died, old Nahum had said: ...it comes from some place whar things ain't as they is here...one of them professors said so...he was right. Look out Ammi, it'll do suthin more...sucks the life out... *** Now, a mellower light glows in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island . Look here at Newell Wyeth's painting of Bill Bones, a buccaneer, hangin' 'round the cove, or upon the cliffs, with his brass telescope.'   [painting by N.C. Wyeth (1911), copied from Treasure Island , Antheneum B...
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