Is 100% thief skill = 100 skill points?
orosius
Member Posts: 45
Because I can go way over 100 on the skill. Discuss.
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There are many modifiers to theses skills that all add or remove percentage. Once the game accounts for modifiers, you then have that % to succeed.
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/183/index/12667733/
^ Very good write up on it.
Open locks and detect traps work different, each lock/trap has a threshold you need to bypass. Some locks are so easy you can open them with as low as %20-30 in open locks. (and their containers have like, a few gold pieces or a dagger) Some traps are so difficult you can not even spot them with %75-80, and even if you spot them you can not disarm them. (and they may blow in your face when you attempt!) Note that there are a few traps literally impossible to remove too.
A %75-80 in open locks and find traps will enable you to deal with the majority of those obstacles in the game. For the rare, uber-difficult traps/locks (cough..Durlag..cough) you may need to gulp a potion of perception and/or master thievery to boost your skill. Potions of mind focusing also helps, because they raise your DEX ability score, further giving you bonus points in all thief skills.
Picking pockets is a different animal alltogether. It takes the percent chance literally, ie:you have %25 pickpockets, you have %25 chance to pickpocket a commoner. However, some creatures or shops/vendors are exceptionaly difficult to steal from. They likely impose a heavy penalty to your pickpocket skills, so you need more than %100. I have noticed that pickpocketing certain characters are even much more difficult, (IIRC Drizzt) you need way over %120 to succeed reliably. A strange quirk I've noticed in BG2, it is exceptionaly difficult to pickpocket someone who has his own pickpocket skills. In other words, stealing from a bard or thief is more difficult, perhaps their own percentage pickpockets is substracted from your own? Also it is good to know that even if your pickpocket chance is %250, you still have like %1 chance to critically fail and get caught. Which is important to know in a no-reload game.
Set traps, Detect Illusions (DI checks separately for each illusion rather then 1 big dispel though as it gets closer to 100 the difference is less noticeable), MS/Hide, and Pickpocket are all percent based, but stealth and pickpocket receive modifiers to success based on the ambient lighting/being shadowed, or the value/weight of the item to steal, though some characters also have a higher base chance to catch you (Bernard in BG2 has an EXTREMELY high chance to detect pickpocket attempts).
In his math the penalty reduces the chance on both HiS and MS.
Then he says the penalty is reducing the HiS chance.
If the penalty reduces both stats it doesn't matter how much you put in either stat as long as both added together = 400.
If penalty reduces only HiS then a score of 200 in MS should be enough to hide in all conditions.
I feel confused...
Hide in Shadows and Move Silently work together. In order for you to have a 99% chance to Hide in Shadows (the max), you need 100 in both skills and have zero negative modifiers. Negative modifiers include daylight, enemy line of sight, etc.
A basic example:
Lets say you have 50 Hide, with a +15% Hide Boots and +20% Hide Armor = 85 Skill (Percentage)
Lets say it's daylight, which is -50% chance to hide.
You have 42.5% chance to hide.
But say I have 50 MS and 80 HiS = 130 (130/2 = 65% chance to hide with no penalty)
If I'm standing in daylight, would I have 130 * 0.5 = 65 (65/2 = 32.5% chance to hide in daylight, penalty modifier effects both HiS and MS)
or would I have (50 + 80*0.5) = 90 (90/2 = 45% chance to hide in daylight, penalty modifier effects only HiS)
When I read NExUS1g's post for me it seems he sometimes suggest that the penalty only applies to HiS and sometimes the post suggest that it applies to both.
I think some of the confusion you're experiencing might come from the fact that sometimes people use "hide in shadows" when talking about the thieves overall stealth action, and sometimes they use that term specifically when talking about the skill called "hide in shadows".