How important Thievery skill is?

[Shin Okada]

And how much skill modifier, say, one's level +X, is needed to use Thievery skill at trustful level?

Most of the pre-4e adventures (modules) were assuming that there is at least one PC who has Trapfinding class feature and reasonably high Search and Disable Device.

But AFAIK 4e core rules are not strongly suggesting to have a PC with high thievery skill.

Now, we have a year and a half worth of published or official adventures. Reading them, how your feeling on Thievery skill? Is it a must-have for an effective adventurer party? Or not? If that is, how high should it be, comparing to the party's level, to be effective?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Traps are often a part of a combat encounter, occassionally an encounter on their own. Thievery often makes dealing with them a lot easier. It can get costly to suffer regular attacks from a trap, or being limited in movement or actions due to a trap. Or it gets costly because you need to spend a lot of time in combat disabling a trap.

In the end, it depends a lot on how commonly a DM uses traps, as always. I personally don't use them much.

 

[Rechan]

The thing about traps is that often it takes longer to use Thievery to disable a trap then it does just hitting the trap over the head with a sword. If you're the only person with Thievery, it typically takes 6 standard actions. If you have a team of 5, they can focus fire on the trap and remove it rather fast.

But ultimate it depends on how common your DM makes thievery useful.

 

[eriktheguy]

It's worth remembering that the DM often decides what skills your party needs to be successful.

If your party had 3 characters with the thievery skill, only a cruel DM would never present them with a quest that involved picking pockets, opening locks, or disabling traps.

Likewise, if no one in the party has thievery, your DM would be a jerk if she filled every dungeon with traps and locked doors.

If no one in your party has a good thievery skill, it should be no more than an occasional inconvenience. Sometimes you will need to search for a key before you can enter a door. Sometimes you will need to walk through traps to get to the other side of a room.

But there are many other ways around these challenges. Some players can teleport past traps, or jump over them with athletics. Some players can smash open locked doors and chests. Some players can open locks with rituals. A good DM should let you overcome obstacles in many possible ways.

So no, thievery is not necessary for most parties to be effective. If the DM pushes lots of traps and locks on you, it may be worthwhile to invest in some thieve's tools, have someone retrain and learn thievery, or even hire an NPC to do it for you.

And as far as pre-made adventures go, the DM should always take the liberty of modifying them to fit the party. If no one has thievery and 8 of the doors in the dungeon are locked, I would remove half the locks, hide keys for 2 of the other locks, make one of the locked doors easy to break and let the players decide how to get past the last one.

 

[Starfox]

Thievery is a great trickster skill. It doesn't have much application in combat and I don't use many traps. But whenever a player tries do do something clever and I have to come up with a skill for it, if find I end up with either Arcana or Thievery. The combination of sleight-of-hand and the only skill with a mechanical component, all kinds of levers, spiked doors, emergency rope bridges and other ad-hoc construction tend to end up as thievery.

If no one has thievery and 8 of the doors in the dungeon are locked...

Bring a bigger hammer!

 

[Mengu]

The party I DM for has no one trained in Thievery. I ask for thievery checks just frequently enough to make them ponder if one of them should pick up the skill, but not so much as to make them feel handicapped for not having thievery. Usually they get around it with the Deva Shaman who gives himself a +5 or so using Speak with Spirits, and another d6 if needed.

I usually have multiple ways around a trap. Magic runes can be disarmed with Arcana, mechanical obstacles may be delayed or gotten around with Dungeoneering, and locked doors can be gotten through with Athletics or Thunderwaves.

It's not really necessary to have Thievery, but it's a helpful skill to speed things along at times. From a DM'ing perspective, players should never be stuck because they are lacking a skill.

 

[jester_gl]

As the only character with thievery in a party, I can attest that it is useful to open lock and maybe some skill challenge, but totally useless in combat. A locked door of my level is usually a 2+ on the d20 to unlock it, same thing for success out of combat. (halfling, trained, dex-stat, background and using thieves tools, don't forget that free +2).

But in-combat trap taking 6 standard action to succeed, after finding the panel or something, is completely useless. Especially when you have to stand in front of the trap the whole time, getting shot at for for a considerate amount.

I guess getting a surprise round once in a while by stealthily opening a door instead of having to bash it open is worth having one guy trained in it. And I'm not even trained in stealth. Wild sorcerer multi into thieves btw.

 

[Chainsaw]

As others have said, it really depends on your DM. If he writes adventures where disarming traps or locks (not just mindlessly bashing them apart) is required to progress (or to progress more quickly or with better rewards), then it can be useful. Personally, playing in a campaign where thievery is irrelevant would feel incomplete to me. I'd find another campaign. YMMV.

In my group, I burned a feat to get my fighter trained in thievery. I also picked up some burglar's gloves and lockpicks. Dungeoneering and disabling traps/locks are part of his "tomb raider" theme. Anyway, disabling traps or disarming locks has come in handy a few times - allowing us to sneak up on someone in a room (thus gaining surprise) and allowing us to avoid damage. It's not necessarily a direct combat benefit and I don't think it has turned the tide of any session, but it's fun for me to have an ability that other people don't have (regardless of fluff) and, to me, it's a vital component of what D&D should be. Again, YMMV.

 

[Chainsaw]

From a DM'ing perspective, players should never be stuck because they are lacking a skill.

Yeah, but you also can't tailor the world to fit what's convenient for the PCs. Fine line. I'm not going to design an adventure that doesn't have any tough locks or traps just because none of my PC's decided to take thievery. Maybe they have to choose between going back to town and hiring an NPC or risking TPK by bashing the trap.

 

[Mengu]

Yeah, but you also can't tailor the world to fit what's convenient for the PCs. Fine line. I'm not going to design an adventure that doesn't have any tough locks or traps just because none of my PC's decided to take thievery. Maybe they have to choose between going back to town and hiring an NPC or risking TPK by bashing the trap.

They can always make untrained thievery checks to get through a lock or a trap. Worst comes to worst, the trap springs, they suffer some consequences, or maybe can't get into the vault, and have to find a key somewhere so their treasure acquisition is delayed a bit.

I certainly wasn't claiming the world should be tailored around the PC's. But allowing use of non-Thievery skills to get around such challenges or having them deal with consequences is often a feasible approach. They might think to themselves, darn we would have had more resources going into that last fight if we had someone with thievery. But there should never be a time when they see a locked door and say, pack up, this adventure is done, we're going home, we'll bring a rogue next time.