Myths & Legends

A question that comes up a lot is how do you handle stealth for non-thieves in AD&D? A lot of people expect there to be some kind of default probability, less than that of a 1st level thief, but some sort of probability in the same vein as the Thief Abilities. Some veteran AD&D players simply allow the surprise check to work as a de facto stealth check, with Thief Abilities representing skill above and beyond that. But that seems to raise more questions than answers. How exactly is Move Silently or Hide in Shadows supposed to be integrated with the surprise system? There is something in the PHB to suggest that being silent would boost the surprise probability from 2 in 6 to 3 in 6, as would being unseen, and both would boost it to 4 in 6. So what do you do? Call for a hide in shadows check, a move silently check, and a surprise die roll just for a thief to sneak about? I can understand how the extra stealth skills of a thief would enhance the surprise ability, leaving the a...

I view the phrase "make sense" with suspicion. Because at the end of the day, what it's always really going to be is "make sense to my puny human brain," and I don't think anything, in the real world or fantasy world, is obligated to make sense to puny human brains. In fact, I've done some experiments in creating dungeons straight out of Appendix A. What I found is that in designing dungeons that way, you take on something very similar to what the first-hand experience of players going through the dungeon will have. By not knowing from the start what this dungeon is supposed to be, I found my mind constantly working to figure it out. In other words, the dungeon didn't have to "make sense"--my brain would try to make sense out of it. At first, things wouldn't make sense at all. Not enough information to draw any conclusions. And this had me endlessly curious to find out what was behind the next corner. This is HUGE. You read any advice o...