In
Basic Dungeons and Dragons, and in the first and second editions of
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, a character class dedicated to the art of stealth. Their
larcenous abilities were (in all these editions of the game) characterised as a set of percentile scores, much like character skills in
Call of Cthulhu. Initially, these scores were fixed by a big, scary table, but by the time of Second Edition it was allowable to vary them by alloting points from a pool. Thieves also traditionally required the least
XP to advance levels.
In Basic, where the names of the
classes and
alignments were a
semantic minefield, there were no alignment restrictions on thieves, but it was left unclear as to whether a thief had to, er, thieve. In later editions, thieves have had to avoid certain alignments - notably
Lawful Good. In First Edition there was also a
thief-acrobat class, introduced in
Unearthed Arcana and of doubtful value. In Second Edition, Thieves were part of the
Rogue class group. In the new Third Edition, the Thief class has been renamed
Rogue.