AD&D - Let's dive into the Thief abilities from the PHB!
In today's episode, I got an email from Tom asking me to dig into the Thief class from the AD&D Player's Handbook. He wanted my take on how some of the abilities work—and more importantly, how I’d actually run them at the table.
So we’re cracking open the PHB and looking at what Thieves can really do.
I’ll walk through:
Which abilities make sense as-is
Which ones need tweaking to match how people actually play
How I handle things like hiding in shadows, backstabbing, and picking pockets—without slowing the game down
And why I think some of the percentile skills get misunderstood or misused by DMs
If you’ve ever had a Thief in your party—or tried to be one—and felt like the rules didn’t quite work in the moment, this one’s for you.
Let’s get into it.
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