Classes&Cogitations, 2: Thief vs. Fighter

It rained on my eclipse, so let's stay indoors and talk about RPGs today.

 

Of the four most basic D&D classes, two would be easy to update for a better fit within a wider system: thieves can stay, fighters gotta go.

There, simple, see?

Done.

...

No, not done, obviously I plan to talk more about it. Case ya ain't notice, I doth prose verbose!

Combat greatly expanded with every iteration: more weapons, more rules, threatened areas (doin' the Opportunity Tango) and ranges, positioning, etc.

Healing grew into multifaceted support and protective abilities.

Magic spells acquired metamagic, multitudes of effects, schools, memorization mechanics.

 

But thievery? I've seen three editions of DnD so far adapted to PC, plus various imitators, and the stealth/disarm/pickpocket package remains largely unchanged. In fact, in contrast to all the other classes I'll be discussing, thieves don't need updating so much as backtracking from the more backstab-oriented rogue of 3E+ to 2E thievery. When thieves were the default medium armor and light weapon class, it made sense for them to also be the squishier alternative to fighter muscle. But with the addition of barbarians, rangers, monks, bards, swashdruids and whatever, it makes a lot more sense to refocus the rogue on traps and sneaking and shift assassin or sniper builds onto the later, less defined classes. Downplay the thief's combat ability to middlin' (between casters and fighters) and let it own its original role. Situations like NWN2 (where Neeshka was my most reliable damage dealer) or Solasta (where my evasive little Shadow was my most resilient frontliner) tread too much on more inescapably physical roles' toes. Thieves should be a utility class.

Fighters, on the other hand, are so poorly defined as to lack any validity among later additions. Everybody fights! Moreover, when weapon choice so consistently features in characters' identities, defining any one class as "all of the weapons" is a non-starter. Let the barbarian, swashbuckler, paladin, ranger and other more specialized fighters own their roles by removing the jack-of-all-trades capable of duplicating them at will. And hey, there's still room for heavily-armored fighter subclasses/kits/archetypes like shield defenders or some sort of pike/halberd-wielding interdictor - so long as their niche is defined with others in mind.

 

Don't get me wrong, if this were primarily a puzzle-solving stealth-based genre with rare fights, it would likely be the thief that needs to be split into locksmith / cryptologist  / pickpocket / burglar / mugger / confidence artist / Richard Nixon. Fighters could just be generic hired muscle. But as cRPGs at least rarely or never go in that direction, let the one own its niche and prevent the other from owning too many niches.