Sneaking around a hostile stronghold is a situation that seems to arise with some regularity in the fantasy adventures I’ve experienced. It could be caves with unfriendly humanoids living therein, a hostile noble’s estate manor, alleyways in a border city, or amongst the winding switchbacks and boulders on a mountainside.

One of the weaknesses of the classic Thief character class in D&D has been that the class was designed for the character to operate in solo. Yeah, in games about groups of characters acting in concert, thief characters were designed to do their thing all by themselves. Everybody else can take a break and play some poker or something among themselves while Sneaky McThiefy does their thing. This isn’t a horrible arrangement when it comes to picking locks or checking for traps, though any time infiltrating a stronghold comes up, things can get kludgy.

It’s possible, certainly, for the players to plan infiltrations with the non-thief PCs causing distractions and getting into position for obvious intrusions on the site to mix things things up. Playing out the split narrative between solo sneak and the rest of the party can prove tricky, though. I reckon part of the solution is to simply include the non-thieves in more of the sneaky stuff.

It’s always been the case, as many have claimed, that all PCs can sneak around to some extent; the chance to surprise foes rests on that assumption, despite it never being stated. All PCs have some ability to dart from one hiding place to another, climb over walls, and hide behind furnishings and in dark corners. The difference, as I see it, lies in how well they can do it when compared to the professional sneaks.

All PCs can move quietly. The difference lies on how quickly they can do so and how close they can be to guards without noise giving their presence away. Where a thief can pass within several feet of a watchman without notice, the rest of the party may only be able to pass without tipping the watch off at a distance much further away.

All PCs can hide in places that provide cover and shadow. The difference lies in how much cover and how deep the shadows necessary to allow for it to be effective. I offered up a take on AD&D thief skills some time ago that touched on this, so I’ll see if I can find that again and link to it. (Note: it’s a bit lengthy.) For those who enjoy that classic approach on thief skills, I figure that look at the skills will provide material to consider adding to play.

That take on the classic theif skills speaks to the points mentioned above about thieves being qualitatively better at sneaking around. Thieves can move more quickly and quietly and get closer to guards without being noticed. They can hide better and requires less cover and shadow to do so to avoid notice.

I suspect that there’s a need to describe how amateur sneaks — the other PCs — can sneak around to help integrate the whole party better in plans to infiltrate a stronghold in a way that doesn’t spend most of play time resolving the actions of the solo thief character. So many people seem to have assumed that because thieves have skills explicitly described that other types of PC can’t also do the same activities, which is nonsense. The difference is akin to that between somebody who plays pick up basketball in a gym and the pros who make a living at it; they all play basketball, the pros are simply much better at it. In the same fashion that Hrothgar, the Mighty, is better at fighting than Nimbleshanks, the Quiet, Nimbleshanks is much better at sneaking than Hrothgar.

Laying out some explicit processes for sneaking in general should be included in the rules, certainly. GM materials discussing how to present the situations to include more sneaky activity by other classes also seems helpful. I’m thinking the process offered that walks through infiltration actions should explicitly support actions by all PCs, instead of focusing on what the thief does will carry the rest of the load.