Pure thief, skill point guidelines...

ScytheKnight

OK so my BH is starting to rock a few levels under her belt, the skill points are slowly rising. Thing is when do you stop?

Now note that I'm not really looking for the absolute optimum point at which to stop because of X, Y, Z really hard to get/obscure items. If it's stuff I could reasonably expect to get in a reasonably thorough play-through well and good... but this is more of a RP run then a powergaming run.

Now then to my knowledge 100% is as much as you need for open lock and find trap, with that you can open every lock in the saga and find/disarm every trap. Or do things go above this in late BGII/ToB?

Pickpocket... not *really* my character's style, but it may go up later if I have points to spare...

Set Trap, OK this is a big one has a bounty hunter, but I really have no idea how it works skill point wise, I can guess higher makes setting traps easier. (at this stage the damned things are as likely to go of in *my* face then the enemy) But what of 100%+?

Stealth... this I know is the huge points sink, likely to be my late game points going in here once OL, FT/ST are sorted.

And yeah, also looking to export over to BGII and see if I can get a pure ToB game finished (and not finish SoA as a bloody mage!)

[Deleted User]

Set Traps only needs to go up to 100%, same as open locks and find traps. I know you're not interested in heavy item optimization, but it's worth noting that the bonus merchant in Ribald's shop in BG2 has the Mercykiller Ring, which gives +20% to Hide, Move Silently, and Set Traps. It's expensive, but it's not hard to get, and even if you got 100% set traps, you might want it for the stealth bonus anyway.

Edit: Also, for future reference, Detect Illusion only needs to go up to 100% as well. Trust me, as a single-classed Thief playing through the whole series, you'll have the spare points sooner or later.

Mathmick

I find that 100 points in everything is enough to last the whole series. If you pick up and use items that boost thief skills in BG2 (the two rings and the pickpocketing gloves), you will need less.

If in doubt at any point in the game, take a few potions of thief skills along, though I doubt you'll need them.

Deucetipher

With limited point that a BH, in BG1 I wouldn't go over 80 Open locks/Find Traps. More points then that are rarely needed, and potions of perception are relatively plentiful (+20 to both) I generally ignore PP, ocaisionally picking up a bard to just using master theivery potions when needed. Typically, I dump all other points in stealth, but you'll want to dump the remaining points in Set Traps, I imagine.

Aranthys

Basically, the skills that benefit from higher than 100% are :
- hide in shadows, move silently (to help with hiding when there's very few shadowy places)
- Pickpocket (Some shops have a malus to the skill)

That's pretty much it.
Some traps / locks require more than 100% to open/disarm, but these can either be dodged, or you can use a spell to open the lock.

Kortok

Set snare is the best thief skill besides open lock/find traps.

ZanathKariashi

Detect illusion is awesome in the sequel, not so much in BG1. There just aren't as many invisibility or illusion spammers. It wouldn't hurt to dump 10-15 in it, but not much more then that, especially as a BH. If you're a Dwarf or a gnome, it's not really needed, since they get a 5/10 points from race. You'll definitely want it maxed by level 11 or 12 though.

Hide/MS/PP are the only skills that benefit above 100. You can actually ignore hide for the most part, until the sequel. Hiding is the average of Hide and MS, but staying hidden is MS alone, so having high MS is simply better. The little bit of hide from boots of stealth and shadow armor makes hiding a breeze, with only the points you get from race/dex.

A BH has 220 skill points at the BG1 lvl cap. +15 in traps from the class, and depending on your race and dex you could get quite a few more. So..just figure them up like that and decide on the best way to distribute them.

100 is the max used by any trap or lock. Durlag's has several requiring 100, but BG2 only has a single one each, in the thieves guild hall, in the lock/trap picking training room. The next highest is only 90 and is in ToB.

Madhax

It's worth noting that potions are available to raise your lockpicking/pocketpicking by 40 and your trap-finding by 20. I planned my recent F/T with this in mind, and I never had any issues. This let me have one multiclass thief handle all support roles and reliably stealth, though I had nothing in snares or detect illusions.

ScytheKnight

Thanks for the heads up on all that... nice to know I wasn't completely clueless about this stuff... learning more on the playthough about making good use of magic and magic items so will be interesting to see how the game progresses through SoA and ToB.

Pantalion

Given the way that stealth works, if you were planning on getting, say 100 points in each, you'd be better off with all 200 points into Move Silently and 0 points in Hide.

This is because entering stealth is a chance based on the average of your M.S/Hide skill, but your chance to remain in stealth is a function exclusively of your Move Silently skill, so with 200 M.S and 0 Hide you'd have a 100% chance (base) to enter stealth, and would never fail the check to remain in stealth.

[Deleted User]

Pantalion said:

Given the way that stealth works, if you were planning on getting, say 100 points in each, you'd be better off with all 200 points into Move Silently and 0 points in Hide.

This is because entering stealth is a chance based on the average of your M.S/Hide skill, but your chance to remain in stealth is a function exclusively of your Move Silently skill, so with 200 M.S and 0 Hide you'd have a 100% chance (base) to enter stealth, and would never fail the check to remain in stealth.

On the other hand, given the way stealth works combined with the way very high thief skills work (they roll over at 255 and become crap), you probably want more than 200 points total (to improve your chances of entering stealth while under penalty), and you want to split them a bit so you don't inadvertently roll over your Move Silently by putting on too many stealth-boosting items.

TJ_Hooker

Kaigen said:

Pantalion said:

Given the way that stealth works, if you were planning on getting, say 100 points in each, you'd be better off with all 200 points into Move Silently and 0 points in Hide.

This is because entering stealth is a chance based on the average of your M.S/Hide skill, but your chance to remain in stealth is a function exclusively of your Move Silently skill, so with 200 M.S and 0 Hide you'd have a 100% chance (base) to enter stealth, and would never fail the check to remain in stealth.

On the other hand, given the way stealth works combined with the way very high thief skills work (they roll over at 255 and become crap), you probably want more than 200 points total (to improve your chances of entering stealth while under penalty), and you want to split them a bit so you don't inadvertently roll over your Move Silently by putting on too many stealth-boosting items.

I think they fixed a lot of the issues involving high/low values wrapping around for BG:EE, so I don't think this will be a problem anymore.

ZanathKariashi

It still doesn't matter...by the time you can throw 200 points into MS, you'll likely have everything else maxed and can spare to put points in Hide.

The main thing is, Hide simply isn't a priority for skill points. It would be pretty much the last thing you put points in, unless you simply don't care about PP at all.