As far as thieves' tools and RAW are concerned, I want to point out a couple of things which, I believe, have not been mentioned yet.
PROFICIENCIES
Armor: Light armor, medium armor, shields Weapons: Simple weapons
Tools: Thieves' tools, tinker's tools, one type of artisan's tools of your choice
Saving Throws: Constitution, Intelligence
Skills: Choose two from Arcana, History, Investigation, Medicine, Nature, Perception, Sleight of Hand
This is clearly RAW, but admittedly this class is not in the Players' Handbook (PHB), so let me bring up information from the PHB. There is a paragraph called "Customizing a background" on p125, which states that player groups are free to create any Background they want, giving their custom Background a total of two tool proficiencies or languages. But that sounds like it may be considered homebrew territory for some purists. The following is not.
Skill Proficiencies: Deception, Stealth
Tool Proficiencies: One type of gaming set, thieves' tools
Equipment: A crowbar, a set of dark common clothes including a hood, and a pouch containing 15 gp
Skill Proficiencies: Sleight of Hand, Stealth
Tool Proficiencies: Disguise kit, thieves' tools
Equipment: A small knife, a map of the city you grew up in, a pet mouse, a token to remember your parents by, a set of common clothes, and a pouch containing 10 gp
So, according to the rules, being good (in particular, proficient) at picking locks and disarming traps is not exclusive the the Rogues class.
Now, do I
personally feel happy with this ? Yes, for three reasons.
- I feels right to me. Picking lock or disarming traps isn't exactly difficult. There is nothing super advanced about it. Playing a particular instrument without any proficiency in any instrument (no musical training at all) sounds near impossible to me. But studying a mechanism until figuring out how it works sounds like something most of us have done in real life. Of course, one might say, 5E isn't mean to be a real-life simulator (even for life in a fantasy world). Which brings me to the second point.
- In a video game, that is a lot more likely to feature many locks and traps than a tabletop campaign (some of which may forego these altogether), being able to use thieves' tool well will be a fairly important skill to have in the party. I don't want to feel forced to include a Rogue.
In BG1-2, I always made sure I had a half Thief in my party (multi-class */Thief or dualed-out-of Thief). Because the older editions required a Thief for traps and locks to even attempt to remove them, and BG1-2 contained a lot of traps and locks. (Yes, I know, I could do without. But sending summons or tanks on traps, and using the Knock spell on locks leads to a very tedious gameplay.)
- I'm very happy for 5E's Rogues to be characterised by Sneak Attack and Cunning Action. I don't feel they need more.
Coming back to the original topic of the thread, I hope that Larian will restrict the possibility of using certain scrolls to certain classes. Again, for similar reasons as above.
- I feels right to me (even though, to start with, I find the concept of casting from one-use-only scrolls very stupid, but that's whole other topic). Reading a scroll requires reading skills. Not every one character can do that. And we're talking about reading complicated shit (otherwise Wizards wouldn't spend years mastering magic).
- Not restricting scrolls usage by classes decreases the identity of classes. 5E classes are already not as strongly-differentiated as they may have been in the past (and I like it fine that way). If Larian wants to make classes even less differentiated, I'm going to start wondering why they bother keeping classes at all (and I know they're on the record saying that classes are restrictive).
So, I hope they'll get round to implementing class-restricted usage of spell scrolls.
