Hi all, hope that you can help me out a little, with my character.
I am currently playing a thief, and I am wondering - how many points in the various skills are enough for the entire game? I.e. Pickpocket, Lockpicking, Trapdetecting, Silent Moving ect. ect.? (Eventually including the effect from potions)
And yes, i DID search the forums in various ways for an answer to this, but I couldn't find any...
100 is generally the magic number at which the skills should succeed 100% of the time. I have noticed occasional failures in hide and move silently even at >100 skill levels, possibly due to the time of day or other subtle details. With judicious use of potions of perception/master thievery, the numbers could go much lower. Keep in mind that the game is designed so that Imoen or Jan can be the only dedicated thief in the party without running into problems. Most thieves will get more than enough to do what they want to do within a short time of playing SoA.
Generally 95 skill can be considered perfect if critical failures are possible, 100 if the skill doesn't allow critical failures and if there are additional difficulty modifiers (they are only confirmed for pickpocketing) you can benefit from even higher skill.
About 90 in picking locks and detecting traps should get you through the game easily. For pickpocketing normal victims 95 skill is perfect, you only fail on a critical failure, NPC thieves and shops get difficulty modifiers so you need more skill for the same success chance. But you can always drink potions to raise your skill or reload until you succeed.
I never realized hide/move silently had critical miss chances. That must be why they fail occasionally at >100 skill levels. Sorry for giving wrong info and thanks kmonster.
There may be situations where 100 isn't enough, though I can't remember any specifics (I think the original Baldur's Gate had a few at least). It's not really a percentage so shouldn't be treated as such. If you don't want to miss a single locked chest, then it might be worth putting points in a skill past 100, though I wouldn't go too far beyond.
Well I will start out with a 100 in the ones that I REALLY want, and then see how that goes So far so good actually, haven't had a trap or lock I couldn't take care of (yet). But then again, I am nowhere near finishing the game, so I might just trip over a few here and there :laugh:
I believe that having more than 100 points in Hide in Shadows allows you to hide in broad daylight, though not in plain sight. Having more than 100 points in Find Traps would make you find them more quickly.
Anyway, you only really need about 80 in Find Traps and Open Locks.
And by the way, if you ask me, thieving skills are useless!
Backstabbing deals some nice damage, but the most powerful and annoying opponents are immune to backstab. And a couple of your tanks will make a short work of weaker opponents even more quickly than a backstabbing thief.
Traps are nice, but cheesy. You don't really want to set traps to take care of the opponents which can be bashed by fighters easily, and you don't have the opportunity to set traps in most of the boss encouters.
Open Locks is useful on your first couple of playthroughs. After that, you will find that you really need to open just a couple of doors/chests, and you will bash those locks.
Find Traps is also useful just on your first runthrough. You will memorize the location of the few nasty traps, and you will use summons (or a character with low saving throws) to deal with those traps. You can hire a thief for Wacher's Keep.
Detect Illusions...does anyone really use that!?
Pick Pockets is nice if you are looking to get rich quickly. Or at least it was, until drinking multiple potions was nerfed. And until you get it up to 150+, you will probably have all the money in the world anyways. The only item worth pickpocketing is Ribald's Ring of Regeneration.
So, don't get me wrong, for the roleplaying purposes thieves are an interesting class to play, and their abilities are fun to use. But from the powergaming perspective, they are mostly useless.
So not having a thief, or having a poorly leveled one, will not prevent you from finishing the game (easily, once you get the hang of it).
Hm, can't say that I agree with you on that one...
I have never used backstabbing actually, mostly because I forget that they CAN backstab (the same with set traps, which annoys me a bit, but maybe I'll learn it some day)
I like the thief, because they can open locks and disarm traps - which gives some nice XP AND it doesn't hurt your characters
And then there's the allmighty Use All Items, I am completely addicted to that ability LOL :laugh:
Plus, when a fighter is dualled to a thief - wow grandmastery AND use of all items, gotta luuuuve it
I am not aware of any "nerf" to multiple potion quaffing. My game is patched and modded to kingdom come and still stacks the effects of potions of master thievery/perception. It's possible, even likely, that there is a mod out there that weakens or removes skill enhancing potions, but I've never heard of it.
Thieves are not useless, just somewhat underpowered until they get high level abilities. With UAI they can use mage scrolls, which allows them to turn themselves into nigh-indestructible demigods if you have the right spells. They can also swing Carsomyr, which apparently can't tell the difference between lawful good and chaotic evil if its wielder is sufficiently sneaky. This is just the tip of the iceberg for UAI (ab)use. Traps are deliciously cheesy in some places too e.g. Kangaxx, dragons, and any other encounter that doesn't immediately turn hostile. This all counts doubly for fighter/thieves and dualclasses.
Forgot to mention backstabbing. I ignore it habitually because of its tendency to be randomly useless against certain enemies. Quoth the game, "the backstab seems to have failed". Why? Uhhhh...there's an eye on his butt? No explanation. I've never really experimented with it much. It IS useful against the enemies it works on, but I have no idea which enemies those are.
UAI is the most overrated HLA. Yes, overriding class restrictions is very nice. Kensai 12 -> Thief is powerful, I do agree. But, come on, a thief wielding Holy Avenger!? That's just silly. Also, Blade can cast spells from the start, and he still gets to pick UAI, so...
I agree. I typically love thieves but they do become rather pointless in many ways as the game goes on. The amount of backstab-immune opponents shoots through the roof. This is really frustrating since I love backstab. UAI is powerful but I don't like it. Your thief turns into some kind of swiss army knife which I think is ridiculous. By late game the thief has turned into some kind of mage wielding a two handed sword or some other absurd combination.
whatttttttttttt, Thief is cool! Thief is awesome! You don't know that feelings on my first playthrough when I saw Yoshimo got killed by my own hands! And he was the one who got me all those nice stuff from placing his awesome traps! (yes, he got me Holy Avenger too :> )
oh dear, regarding the "set trap" skill - ... does summoned creatures (animals, undead, elementals and whatnot) trigger traps that you have laid out? They don't seem to trigger the ingame traps, but since I've never actually tried sending a summoned creature across one of my own traps (which again, I have yet to try, since I tend to forget that skill) I am uncertain about the concequences..
and please... I didn't intend to make this into a Thief VS all-other-characters debate Thieves are great, and so are all other classes.. we all have our favourites, let's not make a big fuss about it ok?
Densorteengel, your own summons cannot trigger your thief-related traps, however, they will trigger magic, proximity based traps such as Skull Trap or Glyph of Warding.
“The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.”
Thief as a class is far from useless, like others mentioned, Use any Item is beyond overpowered, it's basically a cheat given to you for free. Want to equip Carsomyr on a thief? You can. Staff of the Magi, allowing you to hide in plain sight? You can. Armors that belong to some specific NPC but yield exceptional bonuses, such as 25% resistance to physical damage (Jan's armor) or increased saves and high AC (Keldorn's armor)? It's done. Just grab UAI and you can equip any item you've dreamed of, even scrolls!
Traps are the same deal, in a Vanilla game you can just place all your traps on a spot where you know a boss will spawn or activate (Irenicus battle at the Tree of Life for example, or unimproved Demogorgon), rest, place more traps, rest, place more traps... when you finally decide to activate the boss, he activates all your traps and dies almost instantly. This is uber cheese, exploity gameplay, but the fact that the game allows you to use this is another reason why thieves are more like an overpowered than an underpowered class.
Unless you have the desire to play the game "straight" for roleplay purposes (aka: use no exploits, stand in full view of dragons, no pickpocketing and reselling items to storekeepers, no resting in the middle of dungeons, no actions against your alignment) you may as well use the silly tools it gives you.
To answer your question, Densorteengel: all the thief skills have their own usefulness. Raising them to 100% is enough to make them functional and raising them to 200% is enough to make them work without flaw.
Open Locks: the usefulness of this ability is evident. You can also bash open doors if you have 18 Str or more, but this ability yields XP and feels really fun. You're a thief, so you want to steal things the elegant way.
Find Traps: a lifesaver on a party which has some members with little HP. Again, you can go without it, simply have a tough fighter type run through traps and soak their damage (like a noob in DDO) but that's as uncool as it is risky.
Pick Pocket: allows you to steal a few great items from NPCs (Ring of Regeneration from Ribald, a Genie Flask from the Genies in Trademeet, etc.) but the real use lies in the fact that it can supply you with infinite gold.
1. Find a few (3-4) very expensive items. Carsomyr, for example.
2. Go to a store that accepts stolen goods. The vendor in the thieves guildhall in the docks, for example.
3. Drink a few Potions of Master Thievery to reach 200% Pick Pockets, if you do not already have 200%.
4. Sell the items.
5. Go to the stealing tab in the store screen.
6. Steal the items back.
7. Rinse and repeat 4-6.
8. Profit.
Move Silently & Hide in Shadows: I'm not 100% sure about the effect of Move Silently, but I believe that both skills must be raised to as high a level as possible if you like to stealth a lot. The reason for this is the fact that 100% Hide in Shadows gives you 100% chance to hide in shadows, but you receive a massive penalty to this roll when you try to hide in broad daylight. So if you like hiding a lot, I would recommend one of three tactics:
1. Forget about Hide in Shadows and stock up on a boatload of Potions of Invisibility. Added benefit of allowing you to stealth in broad daylight and in the middle of combat, obvious problem with this is that the number of potions of invisibility in the game is limited.
2. Get the Staff of the Magi from the Twisted Rune encounter in the Docks. Every time you re-equip it, it hides you instantly. Also works in the middle of combat and in broad daylight, but has the obvious downside that you must defeat the Twisted Rune first (and might want to give this awesome staff to a spellcaster).
3. Get all the "essential" thief skills up to 100%, then use the remaining points to raise both Hide in Shadows and Move Silently to insane heights. Has no real advantage or disadvantage, you end up with more points than you need anyway.
Detect Illusion: Most people hating on this ability are oblivious to its uses. It allows a thief to detect invisible/stealthed enemies when she uses Detect Traps. How cool is that? Only problems here are that it doesn't always work (perhaps some enemies are immune?) and it forces your thief to stand still Detecting Traps. The latter is the real reason why most players leave it out of their builds. They rolled a thief to be a deadly assassin, not to stand around. So they want their thief to be doing more interesting stuff, such as backstabs, and leave the detection of invisible enemies to mages (with the spell True Sight).
You now bear the awesome responsibility of the Metal "Unit". Gussets of wind, seams like reality, pockets of resistance, the seat of power, and legs as flared as your temper. Polish it well; the onus is now on you.
forgot to ask... what does NERF mean? And unnerf? I allways wondered wether or not it's a good/bad thing, and I always keep my distance from it, when (for instance) tweakpack asks about it...
To nerf means to weaken something, e.g. a spell, usually through a patch.
In G3's Tweak Pack, the "un-nerfed THAC0 table" probably refers to BG1's or P&P's table, and implies BG2's table is weaker than the example it followed.
To un-nerf means, well, to cancel a previous nerf.
We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting. -- Khalil Gibran
