GameBanshee Forums

for thieving abilities, does going beyond 100% actually improve the skill, and if so, what should be the limit for the different skills for maximum success?

secondly, in the manual, wearing different armour affects the thieving abilities, but when i check the record sheet of my character, the penalties are not reflected. Are the penalties actually there?

I don't think that the skills are percentage based.

Thief skills are not percentage. But if you get them over 255, they will drop to -256 (IE cant handle it if something is above or below a certain amount)

Armor: Only armor like sylvan chain and other such armors have penalties. No penalties for Studded leather and below

EDIT: *hands thegoon a dead fish* Welcome to GB

So that means my traps won't get any stronger if I have 100% or 255% ? If so that opens a lot more perspectives for my current F/T char.

Originally posted by Loki 65t
So that means my traps won't get any stronger if I have 100% or 255% ? If so that opens a lot more perspectives for my current F/T char.

They will continue to get better untill you hit 256, at which point they get a heck of a lot worse. (If I understood him right).

Note that Imoen seems to have a decent detect traps / pick locks skill set. I wouldn't count on her for pickpocketing, illusion detection, or stealth, but those two things (the main reason I carry a theif around) she is OK for. Not great, but OK.

Ah then I'll continue putting skills into traps and remain wearing full plate +1.

If the % wouldn't matter for the trap damage then I'd put points into hide and switch to Shadow D plate backstab purposes.

If I understand things correctly, every trap in the game has a difficulty value assigned to it. Whether you can detect it is determined by the value of your Find Traps ability. Most traps seem to have a difficulty value of 70 or less. If I'm not mistaken, this means that you can detect them if your Thief has 71 points in Find Traps. I once took a look at the maps in Watcher's Keep with Infinity Explorer to see how difficult the traps are, and I only saw a couple that were rated at 120; the rest were less than that (most were 90 or less). I suspect that if you have 121 points in your Find Traps ability, you can detect every trap in the game.

Pickpocketing seems to work the same way. Let's say a merchant has a "resist theft" value of 200. You can steal from him successfully if your Pickpocketing score is over 200. I don't know where you can find out what a merchant's "resist theft" value is, but I suspect it is tied to their store.

What I don't understand is whether your ability to detect traps or steal from merchants is determined by chance (once you have the minimum amount of skill). Does anyone know the answer?

I have a solo thief in Amkethran (sp?) and there is a chance of failure no matter how high your skill. I think its more like putting points in the skill decreases chance of failing.

with pickpocketing there is always 1% chance of failure, no matter how high your pickpoceting score is or how low the merchants "resists theivery" score is.

i dont think there are any more % failure applied to other skills. i.e., if your pick locks score is 100 and the locks difficulty is 99 you will pick it 100% of the time.

Originally posted by VonDondu
I once took a look at the maps in Watcher's Keep with Infinity Explorer to see how difficult the traps are, and...

Pls see above for full text. I'm pretty sure that some traps work the same way as Pickpocketing - i.e. the "attacker" has ability reduced by strength of target. But I don't have any stats available to prove the idea... (which is a pity, coz I'd quite like to impress VonD. with some sexy numbers, in the hope that she's got as much charisma as her icon and is at least female; but I don't have those stats at my fingertips...)

Anyway, this old-fashioned D&Der reckons that racking up the trap difficulty is just the sort of trick he'd pull if he were DM, especially when the characters had reached Complacent level...
Only the details of the mechanism are in doubt - anyone with more info, please post.

B.

Originally posted by Loki 65t
So that means my traps won't get any stronger if I have 100% or 255% ? If so that opens a lot more perspectives for my current F/T char.

I think Loki's question was about setting traps not detecting them. In which case, no, you never need above 100% to set traps. (Actually you can usually get away with around 80% -- especially if you get the Mercykiller ring.)