"Going all the way back to B/X’s roots, the earliest role split was between Fighters and Magic-Users, with the Thief showing up early in the game’s development as a third “skilled expert” option that wasn’t either. Then someone wanted to play a vampire-hunter, and the Priest/Cleric was created as a variant of the Magic-User that could do defensive and healing magic instead of primarily offensive or utility magic."
You have the order wrong. The cleric was created *before* the thief (yes, because someone wanted to be a vampire-hunter, in order to hunt another PC who had become a vampire!)
It wasn't until *after* publication that players started asking "but what about thieves". The thief class was created for the first supplement "Greyhawk".
"Going all the way back to B/X’s roots, the earliest role split was between Fighters and Magic-Users, with the Thief showing up early in the game’s development as a third “skilled expert” option that wasn’t either. Then someone wanted to play a vampire-hunter, and the Priest/Cleric was created as a variant of the Magic-User that could do defensive and healing magic instead of primarily offensive or utility magic."
You have the order wrong. The cleric was created *before* the thief (yes, because someone wanted to be a vampire-hunter, in order to hunt another PC who had become a vampire!)
It wasn't until *after* publication that players started asking "but what about thieves". The thief class was created for the first supplement "Greyhawk".
You are correct! For some reason I thought the Mouser influence got folded in before the Hammer Films stuff.