OSR and Thieves' Skills in Old School Essentials

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.

  • Thieves 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 level at 8,000 XP. 

 

  • At 1st level, thieves have a +4 to hit and double damage backstab! (If a thief is under-powered, I would say the deadliness of the backstab becomes less meaningful at higher levels, and may need increases as levels increase, perhaps at 5th and 10th levels.)
  •  At 1st level, thieves already have an 87% chance to climb sheer surfaces.
  • Thieves are not great at sneaking - only at 8th level are the odds better than 50-50 for thief to hide in shadows and move silently. It's dangerous slipping around and hoping no one will notice.
  • In Moldvay (1e DnD), thieves detect room traps and treasure traps; in OSE, a thief detects treasure traps but not room traps. 
Thieves, as I read the rules, are a risk-taking type who live and die by the chance. I see this with awesome thieves in our game, like Dan's character Darvus and Steve's character Honeybadger.
 
I'm thinking (1) OSE rules as written are fine, (2) characters balance out with time, (3) DMs must create places where it matters to be a thief, and (4) treasure traps likely protect "treasure" rooms, the same way they protect a chest. 

Thanks for reading. [I moderate comments on this site. If you leave a comment, I'll post it in a couple days.]

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