|
I'm trying to understand the thinking behind making UMD part of the rogue's abilities - I grew up in 1E and I don't remember it being a part of the class back then.
Is it crunch-based (gives them an extra benefit to balance out other classes) or fluff-based (rogues are deceptive, so they can "fool" a magic device)? I can't think of examples of this kind of skill in much fantasy literature, so I wonder where it came from.
I'm trying to understand the thinking behind making UMD part of the rogue's abilities - I grew up in 1E and I don't remember it being a part of the class back then.
Is it crunch-based (gives them an extra benefit to balance out other classes) or fluff-based (rogues are deceptive, so they can "fool" a magic device)? I can't think of examples of this kind of skill in much fantasy literature, so I wonder where it came from.
I think it's more of the "puzzle solving" aspect of the rogue. As part of trap disarming, or disableing any device is the desire to also understand how it works and how to make it work. Rogues can do this with magical traps, and now it also extends to magic devices. They just have a knack for figuring them out and getting them to work, not necessarily fooling them into operating.
The way that I see it is that Rogues have the ability to disarm magical traps as a class feature even though they are otherwise non-magical. They just seem to know how to tinker with magic to make it do its thing. This tinkering to make magic not work is under Disable Device. Since they do dabble in a bit of magical tinkering, they will probably learn how to make magic actually do what they want. This is the UMD skill. They don't have a spell list or innate access to magic, but they can sort of think or will their way into convincing a wand to fire (or whatever). Pathfinder further upped this from the 3.x set by giving Rogues the ability (through rogue talents) to actually learn to cast a spell or two a couple of times a day.
From a crunch side though, if it wasn't a class skill for rogues, no non-magical class would be able to use those random treasure drops of scrolls. It also does something to lessen the power gap between casters and non-casters (though not by a whole lot).
Not official, but just how I see it.
I'm trying to understand the thinking behind making UMD part of the rogue's abilities - I grew up in 1E and I don't remember it being a part of the class back then.
I don't have 1E books remotely handy, but didn't thieves get a scroll-using ability at higher levels? I always assumed that was the precursor of UMD.
I'm trying to understand the thinking behind making UMD part of the rogue's abilities - I grew up in 1E and I don't remember it being a part of the class back then.
It was, but for scrolls (and other magical writings) only, and only at high levels.
EDIT: ninja'ed by a mongoose
It was most likely inspired by Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser series by Fritz Leiber whom Gary Gygax cited as part of his creative bibilography The Grey Mouser is a thief who's had just enough magical training to be really dangerous with it. He typically monkeys around with magical devices hoping to make them work. Gygax was apparantly rather taken with this and so he made it one of the percentage abilities that were part of a thieve's arsenal in First Edition AD+D. This evolved into Use Magic Device when 3.0 decided that skills should be more of a factor.I'm trying to understand the thinking behind making UMD part of the rogue's abilities - I grew up in 1E and I don't remember it being a part of the class back then.
Is it crunch-based (gives them an extra benefit to balance out other classes) or fluff-based (rogues are deceptive, so they can "fool" a magic device)? I can't think of examples of this kind of skill in much fantasy literature, so I wonder where it came from.
I had never thought of it myself, but I think you're absolutely right.
+100
I'm trying to understand the thinking behind making UMD part of the rogue's abilities - I grew up in 1E and I don't remember it being a part of the class back then.It was, but for scrolls (and other magical writings) only, and only at high levels.
EDIT: ninja'ed by a mongoose
To be fair, UMD is pretty useless at low ranks unless you've invested feats in it too. You need at least a +10 total score in it to be even remotely effective with it, as the absolute lowest UMD DC is 20.
|
|
Thanks, guys. I was wondering about this, because I'm rereading the Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser books and I was thinking just that, though in 3E/PF terms, the Mouser has one or two levels of Wizard vice UMD....
I appreciate the thoughts. It makes me more comfortable with the flavor of having my rogues use UMD.
Cugel the Clever (from the Dying Earth universe) tries his hand at spellcasting a couple of times...although it doesn't go so well. :-)
|
Cugel the Clever (from the Dying Earth universe) tries his hand at spellcasting a couple of times...although it doesn't go so well. :-)
That was, in fact, the rationale for having thief-cast scroll spells sometimes have reverse effects in 1E--because of the times in Eyes of the Overworld that Cugel reversed the effect of a spell he'd cast.
I think its also just the "opening up" of the "4 food groups" that you need to go anywhere. 1E and 2E were alot more unforgiving.. you Needed that melee, that rogue dude, that wizard, and that cleric- or you weren't going anywhere.
3.0/5 and Pathfinder have gone a long way to alleviate that.. some with other spell casters, but mostly with UMD and lots of wands.
If your rogue (or whoever) can UMD a wand of CLW its alot less necessary to have a dedicated "healer" in the group.
-S
I think its also just the "opening up" of the "4 food groups" that you need to go anywhere. 1E and 2E were alot more unforgiving.. you Needed that melee, that rogue dude, that wizard, and that cleric- or you weren't going anywhere.
I semi-disagree there -- there's literally nothing a rogue can do in 1E and 2E that a wizard or cleric can't do with a 1st or 2nd level spell. There's a niche they were supposed to have, but they weren't actually good at even that for some reason. In theory, levelling the fastest was supposed to make up for that but really did not.
In 3E+ they actually have a niche.
If you are talking about activating a utility wand out of combat then just a +4 modifier gives you an 80% chance to be able to do so over time. Have a few PCs at the table with bonuses around there and its a done deal.
Not necessarily. Don't forget that rolling a 1 on the check for a wand means you can't activate that wand for a day. A +4 modifier actually gives pretty decent odds that you'll roll that 1 before you roll the 16+ needed to activate the wand -- which means you'll actually have to make all those rolls.