skill points distribution and effectiveness for Thief?

sivistojko

Hi all, I currently have distributed 135 points in Move Silently and 135 in Hide in Shadows. Since I dont have experience in playing backstab Thief I don't know how many is enough for efficient hiding in shadows. Right now I can hide in shadows anywhere and at any time but when enemies are not in sight.

1. What will I get if I assign more points to HiS and MS (beyond 135)?

2. Is it possible to hide in shadows while enemies can see me and how many points would that require? (without using a potion of course)

3. Will I ever be able to make 2 backstabs in a row if I have good enough Move silently?

4. Does dexterity have anything to do with skill efficiency?

5. Will traps be harder to detect in the end game and how many points is minimum for detecting them?



Thanks a bunch.

ZanathKariashi

1. It'll eventually wrap around to 1+ and start failing horribly.

2. No. That would require Hide in Plain sight, which is exclusive to the shadow dancer kit that may or may not be coming (though exact details of how it works are unknown at this time. Whether it requires a minimum light level to function, similar to PnP, or merely removes the usage restriction while observed (which would be waaaay overpowered, even by the current Bar of Brokeness that some BG2 kits/cheese exploits have already set), has yet to be revealed.

3. There's a high level ability called Assassination that all non-swashbuckler theives can take. It causes all attacks in the next round to be multiplied by your backstab modifier and removes the need for facing and stealth (but still requires proper weapons and doesn't work vs enemies immune to backstab). There's also an extremely cheesy, borderline cheating, use of the spell Mislead that allows for unlimited backstabs, due to shoddy implementation of the spell. Otherwise, No.

4. Slightly. Starting at...15 or 16, you start getting ~5 hide/MS per point of dex above ~15. At 17 and beyond it starts effecting other thief skills as well.

5. in BG1, 100 is the max (Durlags Tower)...in BG2 and beyond..90 is enough if memory serves, aside from 1 trap that can't be disarmed (it's to force you to go around...you'll know it, since it instant kills anyone going through it, no matter what protections you put up), and another that 100% of the time back-fires if you attempt to disarm it.

TJ_Hooker

1) Based on the results of some tests some guy did that he posted on the Bioware forums a long time ago:

Your overall percent chance to stealth is (HIS+MS)/2. Regardless of this value, you will always have at least a small chance to succeed or fail. When outside during the day, if you are not in a shadow, your stealth ability is reduced by half. When indoors and standing in lit area, I believe it's reduced by a third.

2) Nope

3) Nope

4) Yes. See here: http://www.playithardcore.com/pihwiki/index.php?title=Baldur's_Gate:_Races_and_Stats#Dexterity

5) To be able to detect every trap in the game, I believe you need 90 in find traps. You need 100 to be able to disarm them all. What you can do is just get your skill to something like 80, and just use potions of perception in areas with difficult traps (Durlag's Tower).

Edit:

ZanathKariashi said:

1. It'll eventually wrap around to 1+ and start failing horribly.

I think it only wraps around when it goes over 255. And, I'm not sure, but I think they fixed a lot of the wrap around issues for BG:EE.

ZanathKariashi said:

3. There's a high level ability called Assassination that all non-swashbuckler theives can take. It causes all attacks in the next round to be multiplied by your backstab modifier. There's also an extremely cheesy, borderline cheating, use of the spell Mislead that allows for unlimited backstabs, due to shoddy implementation of the spell. Otherwise, No.

But you won't be seeing either of these things till BG2:EE.

sivistojko

Thank you so much for fast replies!!

IkMarc

You can use invisibility potions for double backstabs.

Oxford_Guy

IkMarc said:

You can use invisibility potions for double backstabs.

Or cast it on yourself if a mage/thief...

BTW you do get massive negative modifiers for trying to hide (and staying hidden) in daylight, so a high MS/HiS score can be worth it.

The Invisibility spell is better in some ways, though, at least when trap-finding, as you don't lose invisibility when trap removing, but do lose stealth if using MS/HiS. Same thing for Sanctuary (if a cleric/thief), though you can't use Sanctuary for backstabs. In BG2, though, 'natural" stealth can be better than magic Invisibility, as with the cloak of non-detection on, you won't be revealed by spells etc. (I think...)

Regarding traps - potions of perception are good to use to buff your Find Traps score for areas you know have high strength traps, but it can be dangerous to rely on these (especially in a no or minimal reload game), as you might not know which traps are "tough" until you trigger them...

ZanathKariashi

The question was will he ever get additional BS's for having High MS, the answer is no. Using invisibility is a completely separate stealth event, not the same stealth period as the initial BS. The ONLY way to get multiple backstabs from a single stealth event is to use mislead cheese, Assassination sort of counts, but you don't need stealth, it just allows you multiple effective BSs in a single round, which doesn't work with invisibility, since you can't make another attack, until the next round starts, since you interrupted your attack cycle (assuming you had more then 1 attack to begin with) by using a activated action (the ring of gaxx is the only item I know of that can use invisibility or IH without it counting as an action, but it's only got 1 use of invis per day...so..really hard to abuse).

Yeah, the cloak protects natural stealth, and invisibility generated by items, but not spells. Also it doesn't prevent creatures that can innately see through invisibility to do so (but most of those, except Kuo-tua, can't be backstabbed anyway, so it's not a huge deal).

Oxford_Guy

Thanks @ZanathKariashi I learned some new stuff there!

sivistojko

yeah, me too. really good stuff here. i'm glad i started this topic.