The Fall of the Thief

Since I have switched back to 2nd edition, I have not spent as much time on the 4th edition website as I had. Still, I do occasionally pop over to the Wizards of the Coast site to see what's going on. While doing this, I came across an article that almost made me cry. The article was entitled "Evolution of the Thief" by Mike Mearls (the current R&D group manager for Dungeons & Dragons), and supposedly is talking about how the Thief of older editions has grown into the Rogue that exists in the game today.

In the middle of the article was the following quote: "The thief had shifted from a class that offered a unique set of skills and abilities, to one that excelled at dishing out alot of damage. Sneak Attack rather than its skills became the class's defining trait."

First of all the idea that this is a positive change simply astonishes me. In second edition, the thief was one of the most interesting classes outside of combat, while still being able to offer something to the group in a fight. I always thought that giving other classes the ability to get thief skills was simply a mistake, but the article talks about how it was a purposeful decision to focus the character on being a damage machine.

This is, at its basis, what is wrong with the current edition. Everything in the rules boils down to combat. Each class is defined by its role in a fight, magic has been basically taken apart to only include those things that are combat worthy, and even the skills have been thinned out to those most useful on combat situations. Now I do think that the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons has some amazing combat rules. It may be the tightest, most cohesive rules set I have ever played with. But I feel that a RPG should offer more than simply rules for fights.

I also feel that it is a bad design decision to create classes whose "defining trait" is a purely combat abstraction by peeling away its options out of combat. Now I will be the first to say that 2nd edtion was not perfect in this regard. (I am looking at you, Fighter) But with the introduction of the proficiency system, it was a step forward from what 1st edition was. That being the case, it is sad to see how much of that momentum was lost, or even reversed, in the last two editions. It seems that this is one of the ways that Modern D&D is returning to its roots, by becoming more like the table top wargames that spawned it.