Skill distribution for an illusionist/thief?

State_Lemming

I plan on making an evil illusionist/thief and was wondering what thief skills to focus on since I'll have fewer to allocate. Since I'd like to backstab with the char I'll use hide in shadows, but what else should I pursue and what should I leave to another thief in the party?

Madhax

Well, as a multiclass mage, you'll eventually have access to invisibility spells. These work quite well in conjunction with backstab, though in a scenario where you'd want to come in and out of stealth repeatedly would deplete your spellbook quickly.

It might be possible to simply focus on the lockpicking/trap disarming side of thieving, and rely on your spells for stealth. This would allow you to avoid having other thieves in the party. I've not done this personally, though, so grain of salt and all that.

CaptRory

The most important thief skill is Detect Traps. Nothing else quite duplicates the ability to detect and disarm traps. You can bash open locks or use the Knock Spell to open locked, uh, locks. You can cast spells to remove illusions and things. You can cast invisibility to hide. But there's nothing that detects and disarms traps like a thief.

That said, you can get a second thief to do all this stuff so you can focus on what you really want to do. Eventually I think you'll have enough points to do everything yourself but maybe not til the next game.

State_Lemming

@Madhax Can you use invisibility to backstab then? I've never used stealth much before so this is all new to me. I suppose I'd still want hide in shadows for initial attacks, so I don't have to rest after every fight.

CaptRory

Yeah you can backstab from Invisibility.

Madhax

@CaptRory well, to be fair, you can cast Detect Traps to find them without a thief. There would be no way to disable them, but you could drop Minsc on a trap and hope for the best, or cast some protective magics on your mage before triggering it.

Not as elegant a solution as Knocking a locked door, but there are alternatives to a thief with Find Traps. I wouldn't want to play a party without one, though.

Edit: And yes, you can backstab out of invisibility. On my current playthrough I'm rocking a Fighter/Thief that likes to sneak in, backstab, chug a potion of invisibility, and backstab again =D

ZanathKariashi

Well...based on come recent studies...never put points in Hide. Move silently is superior in every way (the boots of stealth combined with about 60 MS will almost never fail when in a shadow), and will allow you to get locks, traps, and illusions at a reasonably time frame without gimping anything.

State_Lemming

@ZanathKariashi I always gave preference to move silently but isn't hide in shadows needed to initialize the stealth in the first place? Do you know what detect illusions should be at to work effectively?

ZanathKariashi

Detect illusion skill rank is the % per round of find trap of removing illusions (it checks for each illusion separately, so at 100 it basically instantly removes them all). So anything above 50 is decent, though the quicker it hits 100 the better. Gnomes have a starting 10 in it, due to racial skills, so they have a decent head start in that regard (most races get no bonus at all in it, except gnomes and dwarves (5)).

And apparently no, while hide does apply it's bonus to increase your chance of hiding the first place, it has no baring on staying hidden or prolonging how long you remain hidden after a failure. Move silently on the other hand seems just as effective as hide in the first place and also is solely responsible for maintaining your stealth after you enter it.

My thoughts on the matter is that MS is pretty much stealth from the first game, and hide is just an extra bonus to enter stealth mode (it does seem to help more when hiding out of a shadow though)

CaptRory

You can cast detect traps and have someoen trip them, but it's not as good. As I said, nothing quite duplicates having a thief with disarm traps. There are other ways of dealing with everything else. But nothing quite handles traps as well as a thief does.

State_Lemming

So it sounds like MS, detect traps, and detect illusions are the most handy, or at least they do things that can't be solved with lower level spells.

Madhax

Detect Illusions is quite powerful, but I don't see it being a worthwhile investment until BG2. Other than instantly dispelling Mirror Image if you've invested four whole levels of thief points into it, it really won't make much of a difference in BG1, since mages aren't at high levels yet. Keep in mind that Detect Illusion wasn't even in the original BG1, it was added in BG2.

State_Lemming

Thanks for the heads up. I figured by BG2 I'd have all the skill points I'd ever actually want, I just needed some guidance for that first chunk of Baldur's Gate where Gibberlings are threatening.