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Thanks. I enjoyed reading that.
Say, how did rogues change since then, exactly?
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In Basic D&D and AD&D 1st, 2nd, the "Thief" had fixed percentages to succeed at his skills. At low level, these were low (10-25%). This meant, that the ROG generally failed at leats one roll of "move silent" and "hide" if he was out scouting, meaning his death. Which meant, he was not good to "check for traps" or "assassinate a single guardpost" until higher levels. And then the casters were better at this (cleric with silence spell, followed by a finger of death). He was reliable only at climbing walls (start: 83%, +1% per level, check every 10' of climbed wall, take 1d6 per 10' fallen).
The fighter had a d8 HP, the cleric a d6, and both the magic user (3.5: wizard) and the thief had a whopping d4 HP. The thief could use leather armor (+2 AC), but no shield and no two-handed weapon. Generally, they were equipped with long sword (d8+STR dmg) and long bow (d6 dmg). If the thief managed to surprise a foe, he had +4 to hit with his melee weapons and dealt double damage. In later AD&D 1st and/or 2nd, the bonus damage increased to x3 or x4 at higher levels. But since few thieves had high STR, this sneak damage was marginal and not enough to cope for the weaknesses of the class.
The black "Master Box" for levels 26-36 introduced weapon mastery with almost absurdly high damage potentials. A fighter could become a "grand master" of any weapon, the thife and cleric could become "masters" and the magic users could become "expert" in a weapon they could use. Suddenly, the fighter could attack up to four times with his sword, each hit dealing 25+ HP instaed of the meager 10 HP. Then the thieves suddenly became very good archers. But this rule was optional, and we didn't use it.
We had a lot of house rules, with which we voided most of the tables. We played with the "Three Saves" of 3.0 since 1988: external threat to body, internal threat to body, magical/willpower. Start with a value of 14 in each (equals DC 14 today), get 2 point at each level (monk 3) to distribute at your leasure, bonus for high DEX, WIS, CON. We had a clearly defined skill/feat system before 3.0 came out, and one of my buddies said "HEY, Hasbro copied our feat and save system", when 3.0 hit the shelves.
Which is rather unlikely, since we never posted the rules anywhere, and are a long way from the Wizards Coast to Cologne/Germany.