Dual Class: Mage -> Theif. Need Help

DivineBlood

Hi everyone, like most of you im the bigest fan of baldurs gate, ive played it hundreds of times. However I never got to make the character i wanted. I wanted to make a dual class combination to make a great assassin. First off i wanted to start as a Mage untill i get to lvl 8. This is so I have several casts of invisibility, stoneskin, mirror image and so forth. After i reached this lvl 8, i wanted to dual class to a theif for the backstab capabilities. However, when i tested this it failed. Once i Dual classsed to theif it takes away my ability to cast spells. (however this is done in BG2). Can somone tell me if it is possible to do? Or if it was just a bug in the old Bg2.

Zutti

When you dual-class, you lose all the abilities from the first class until your new class surpasses the first class in level. If you dual at mage level 8, you need to get to thief level 9 before you can cast spells again.

DivineBlood

Ohhhhh Thank you so much bro ur a champ

moopy

And a level 8 mage / 9 thief would require 200,000 xp, and the game is capped at 161,000 xp.

The highest level mage you can make and still dual to thief with the xp cap is 7 mage / 8 thief (130,000 xp)

DinsdalePiranha

any combination of simple mage/thief won't be a great assassin... it can be a good lockpicker/traps guy, but on anything other than fighter dual/multis, your backstab will suck - "normal" thieves can barely hit the broad side of barn.

if you want to backstab things, go with fighter -> thief (or Shar-Teel), or if you're in need of a bit of extra magic, fighter/mage/thief (however, no stoneskin for you then - they can't reach lvl 4 spells with the xp limit in place. not like that's a problem though)

but even if you decide to stick to mage/thief, go multiclass instead of dualing - that way you won't run into a period of "not being able to do jack shit" with your character... maybe even a gnomish illusionist/thief, just for the extra spells and awesomeness.

DivineBlood

ye wow damn, fair enough lads. i jsut really wanted a assassin that could cast invis in the middle of battle and pwn backstab. :P. oh well guess ill try fighter combo.

Jarleale

You still can. There is a ring of invisibility in the game as well as potions of invisibility. Also, your mage can cast the spell on you.

moopy

M/T make great assassins with tensors transformation and mislead. That won't come into play until BG2, so I'd take the advise of others and go with F/T and use potions and the ring as Jarleale suggested. When the sandthief ring has one charge left, sell it to a store and buy it back to reload the charges.