I think a pure thief in BG1 is very good. He'll level up fast which means better thief skills sooner and better backstab. So for BG1, if you want to make a dedicated backstabber that can stealth, open locks, find and disarm traps and do it well then a pure thief is the way to go. Now a pure thief becomes pretty pointless in BG2 but that's another topic.
So the discussion re pure thief is really two issues....PC and NPC.
This discussion is interesting....but there needs to a clearer distinction between playing a pure thief as PC and having a pure - and therefore fully effective - thief in your party. These are two different discussions imo.
I play a 'good' party and I want a fully effective thief....I dont want a mage with some minimal thief utility....so I dont dual Imoen.
A PC pure thief would only make sense imo if the player wanted to role play as a thief and specialise in backstabing and/or stealing and pickpocketing etc.
Nor can I see any sense in a PC that has a minimal thief ability and is also mage or fighter. What use is a half-assed thief? Wouldnt make sense or appeal to me.
Is there a point to pure fighter, when berserker is strictly better? If you don't plan on using missile weapons, cavalier is strictly better than paladin
All the cleric kits are strictly better than the base cleric too.
Then again, kits aren't exactly pen and paper rules.
Is there a point to pure fighter, when berserker is strictly better? If you don't plan on using missile weapons, cavalier is strictly better than paladin
All the cleric kits are strictly better than the base cleric too.
Then again, kits aren't exactly pen and paper rules.
How do you define "strictly better"? Do you mean from a powerplay perspective; or from an RPG perspective? Or is it just your personal preference.
Is there a point to pure fighter, when berserker is strictly better? If you don't plan on using missile weapons, cavalier is strictly better than paladin
All the cleric kits are strictly better than the base cleric too.
Then again, kits aren't exactly pen and paper rules.
How do you define "strictly better"? Do you mean from a powerplay perspective; or from an RPG perspective? Or is it just your personal preference.
No, "strictly" in this case was supposed to mean that mechanically, there is no reason to pick a cleric over one of the cleric kits. Obviously for roleplaying purposes and stuff this is not necessarily the case.
I think a pure thief in BG1 is very good. He'll level up fast which means better thief skills sooner and better backstab. So for BG1, if you want to make a dedicated backstabber that can stealth, open locks, find and disarm traps and do it well then a pure thief is the way to go. .
I disagree. A thief dual classed from a fighter is obviously much better.
1. If you dual class from level 2, the XP "lost" to fighter is completely negligable, so he'll level up just as fast. But the difference is: you will have a thief with higher weapon proficiencies than 1 (2 in any weapon is a big difference because of the extra attack; best to give him 2 in a ranged weapon and 2 in a melee weapon). And if you dual class from fighter level 3 he could even have proficency 5 in one type of weapon. 2. He will be able to wear any armour and use any weapon.
So dual-classed Shar-Teel really is much more useful than Skie, Safana or Alora.
I think a pure thief in BG1 is very good. He'll level up fast which means better thief skills sooner and better backstab. So for BG1, if you want to make a dedicated backstabber that can stealth, open locks, find and disarm traps and do it well then a pure thief is the way to go. .
I disagree. A thief dual classed from a fighter is obviously much better.
1. If you dual class from level 2, the XP "lost" to fighter is completely negligable, so he'll level up just as fast. But the difference is: you will have a thief with higher weapon proficiencies than 1 (2 in any weapon is a big difference because of the extra attack; best to give him 2 in a ranged weapon and 2 in a melee weapon). And if you dual class from fighter level 3 he could even have proficency 5 in one type of weapon. 2. He will be able to wear any armour and use any weapon.
So dual-classed Shar-Teel really is much more useful than Skie, Safana or Alora.
Definitely....for a PC thief the way to go is to dual from fighter or multiclass.
@Flauschig Build a human fighter with 2 weapon proficiencies in slings and 2 in some blunt weapon. At level 2 dual class to a cleric (choose sword and shield style and some other blunt instrument). Once the cleric hits level 3 you have a cleric that is good in melee and whose sling will more than occasionally hit someone.
I'm rockin' a half-orc fighter/thief right now and he's absolutely brutal. I'm just saying you could get all your thief skills up and running quicker with a single class. Right now my character Drekk is a fighter5/thief5. I've been mainly raising his stealth skills which both are at around 90 with Shadow armor and boots of stealth. His open locks and traps skill is around 45 or so and I haven't raised pick pocket at all. So my character is more of an assassin type. A pure thief would be higher level and have better overall thief skills. That's all I'm saying. This is advantageous if you want that jack of all trades. Now going this route would produce a weaker combatant as well.
In the end, it comes down to power preference. Pure thieves can still complete the game, as can any class (even though I don't have evidence regarding Wizard Slayer, Beastmaster and Jester).
Play whatever you feel like. If you feel like CHARNAME should be the badassest badass on the Sword Coast, take the dual/multi-route or even powergame and cheese like there's no tomorrow. If you have a character concept and want to play it, by all means do so and choose whatever class suits best. If you're somewhere in the middle, make a short list of priorities and have a good night's sleep over the decision.
Just don't let yourself get pushed too strongly in one or another direction by random advice on the internet. Of course there's maths and majority opinions, but don't let that sway you too much.
Is there any class but ranger that doesn't feel sub optimal compared to a kit or multi/dual? There is no reason to take a pure mage (conjurer) or fighter (berserker) Bard (any kit, really) Paladin (Cavalier). All classes have at least one kit that is flat out better than the base class, except the ranger. Ranger kits take away the ranger's inherent flexibility.
I think that the Archer is better than the base Ranger, especially at higher levels with the extra hit and damage modifiers. I'd also argue that the Stalker is superior, because of backstab. Granted, there is a lack of heavy armor, but on the other hand it forces you to not immediately discount one of the Ranger's base class abilities which would otherwise disappear: stealth.
I think a vanilla ranger is actually quite blah, at least as far as combat is concerned. The archer and stalker kits are the only good kits for power gamers.
After the restoration of true weapon specialization, the archer got stronger but all other ranger kits got weaker. The true-class ranger and beastmaster suffer tremendously; the stalker at least has backstab. Basically, all rangers get is stealth, charm animal (abilities which are fun but not that useful) and low-level spells that are obsolete at the time they are acquired. Rangers also XP slower than a fighter and do way less damage.
That said, non-Archer rangers are still a threat in battle and are still a fun role to play. It's worth mentioning that @Demivrgvs has a great mod (for BG2) that made rangers much more balanced. Hopefully he'll restore the BG:EE ranger to its PnP glory.
The way you want to play the game is fully up to you and how you dual-class, you do so for your needs and possibly for expirements, in a single player video game stuff like that isn't really big deal, while in pen & paper game lead by a dungeon master you might easily get into conflicts with others. A very common thing to do is to make fighter/ mage maxed with dual-wielding stuffs and throw them in melee, just because of sheer amount of defensive spells and ninth lvl Blackblade of Disaster. I once took completely different approach and made 7th lvl fighter/ max lvl mage with crossbow grand mastery, idea was to keep him at range where I think mages in general belong and have access to more powerful ranged weapon, in comparison to regular bows one might think I was mad but with weapons like Light Crossbow of Speed and Firetooth you want to do other stuffs sometimes.
My only comment about multclassed thieves in general is that they have highest lvl cap of all classes and you have to be careful how to dual-class them especially with mage combination as mages require highest amount of experience from all classes to advance in lvls. And higher amount bread & butter thief/ mages can easily result in fewer amount hard neck single class mages.
Comments
This discussion is interesting....but there needs to a clearer distinction between playing a pure thief as PC and having a pure - and therefore fully effective - thief in your party. These are two different discussions imo.
I play a 'good' party and I want a fully effective thief....I dont want a mage with some minimal thief utility....so I dont dual Imoen.
A PC pure thief would only make sense imo if the player wanted to role play as a thief and specialise in backstabing and/or stealing and pickpocketing etc.
Nor can I see any sense in a PC that has a minimal thief ability and is also mage or fighter. What use is a half-assed thief? Wouldnt make sense or appeal to me.
If you don't plan on using missile weapons, cavalier is strictly better than paladin
All the cleric kits are strictly better than the base cleric too.
Then again, kits aren't exactly pen and paper rules.
Do you mean from a powerplay perspective; or from an RPG perspective?
Or is it just your personal preference.
Obviously for roleplaying purposes and stuff this is not necessarily the case.
A thief dual classed from a fighter is obviously much better.
1. If you dual class from level 2, the XP "lost" to fighter is completely negligable, so he'll level up just as fast. But the difference is: you will have a thief with higher weapon proficiencies than 1 (2 in any weapon is a big difference because of the extra attack; best to give him 2 in a ranged weapon and 2 in a melee weapon). And if you dual class from fighter level 3 he could even have proficency 5 in one type of weapon.
2. He will be able to wear any armour and use any weapon.
So dual-classed Shar-Teel really is much more useful than Skie, Safana or Alora.
Play whatever you feel like. If you feel like CHARNAME should be the badassest badass on the Sword Coast, take the dual/multi-route or even powergame and cheese like there's no tomorrow. If you have a character concept and want to play it, by all means do so and choose whatever class suits best. If you're somewhere in the middle, make a short list of priorities and have a good night's sleep over the decision.
Just don't let yourself get pushed too strongly in one or another direction by random advice on the internet. Of course there's maths and majority opinions, but don't let that sway you too much.
After the restoration of true weapon specialization, the archer got stronger but all other ranger kits got weaker. The true-class ranger and beastmaster suffer tremendously; the stalker at least has backstab. Basically, all rangers get is stealth, charm animal (abilities which are fun but not that useful) and low-level spells that are obsolete at the time they are acquired. Rangers also XP slower than a fighter and do way less damage.
That said, non-Archer rangers are still a threat in battle and are still a fun role to play. It's worth mentioning that @Demivrgvs has a great mod (for BG2) that made rangers much more balanced. Hopefully he'll restore the BG:EE ranger to its PnP glory.
A very common thing to do is to make fighter/ mage maxed with dual-wielding stuffs and throw them in melee, just because of sheer amount of defensive spells and ninth lvl Blackblade of Disaster.
I once took completely different approach and made 7th lvl fighter/ max lvl mage with crossbow grand mastery, idea was to keep him at range where I think mages in general belong and have access to more powerful ranged weapon, in comparison to regular bows one might think I was mad but with weapons like Light Crossbow of Speed and Firetooth you want to do other stuffs sometimes.
My only comment about multclassed thieves in general is that they have highest lvl cap of all classes and you have to be careful how to dual-class them especially with mage combination as mages require highest amount of experience from all classes to advance in lvls. And higher amount bread & butter thief/ mages can easily result in fewer amount hard neck single class mages.