Evil Party, Thief MC?

Iecerint

I was originally going to play an evil mage, but I seems like the game is already full of mages I like that jive with an evil party (e.g., Neera, Edwin, the hidden character, Xzar). It also seems like the evil game doesn't really have a obvious useful thief character other than Montaron, but I think I'd rather play with Neera and/or Edwin than feel tied to Xzar. (Only other playthrough I stuck with long-term, I was a Chaotic Good Female fighter-class with Ajantis, Coran, Minsc, Imoen, and Xzar in BG, and Mazzy, Minsc, Anomen, Imoen, and Edwin in BG2.)

So I'm looking at the Thief class and its kits for a planned evil playthrough. Any thoughts on what's good? I'm kind of ignorant because Coran was just "point and shoot" and Imoen was functionally a mage. It seems like Assassin might be the way to go in BGII, but Thief or boring-Swashbuckler might be the way to go for BG. I'm looking at Dorn, maybe Shar-Teel, Viconia, Edwin, and maybe Neera for party-mates.

Any thoughts?

Nifft

As an Evil dude, you should not feel any guilt at all when you separate Montaron from Xzar.

The Bounty Hunter kit is really fun. Traps are powerful.

Iecerint

Yeah, but I don't like characters permanently dying. I've always played with the mods that turn the Friendly Arm Inn into a hub for removed party members. I like collecting. :]

emjay

If you want a pc thief I always felt a fighter/thief was superior to an assassin. Always felt traps were kind of cheesy and swashbuckler seems like it's designed to be dualled to mage or something, kind of pointless on its own because again fighter/thief just does it better

Iecerint

Now I'm at Fighter/Thief v. Bounty Hunter in my head. Multi-class hadn't really occurred to me because I was human last time.

Nifft

Fighter -> Thief Kit would be great. Too bad you'd need ShadowKeeper to do it.

Fardragon

Advantage of multi-class is you get both fighter and thief HLAs in BG2, and you can be a non-human (pretty much all are better than humans). You are also not presented with the dilema of choosing just when to dual.

Oxford_Guy

fighter/thief or Assassin. Illusionist/Thief also rocks!

OzzyBotkins

"" I'm looking at Dorn, maybe Shar-Teel, Viconia, Edwin, and maybe Neera for party-mates.""
seems like a good lineup of NPCs
you could also pick up Kaigin and drop shar-teel
give kagin the dexterity gloves and he's a good tank
there is going to to be an evil female thief (assasin kit ) NPC in BG2:EE
the assasin and bounty hunter kits get less thief points
and swashbuckler can not backstab
just pick a class/kit that you think will be fun to play
Good luck and keep us posted on how things are going
I allso agree with Oxford_Guy
a gnome Illusionist/Thief is a great Multi-Class to play

KidCarnival

It is *suspected* that the evil female thief NPC in BG2 will have a kit. There is much reason to believe she'll have a different kit (shadowdancer) since all other new BG1 NPCs have kits that were not in the game originally.

Phyrax

Removing an NPC (in this case Montaron) with an evil protagonist without them permanently dying is really easy:

First a few assumptions:
The protagonist is evil and vehemently dislikes said NPC, or has no objections in removing party members via non-social means.
There is a certain distrust among the protagonist and Montaron (which is not very difficult to make believe, considering it's Montaron, the evil Fighter/Thief).

I'll role play it:
First, the protagonist needs to find the cursed scroll of petrification without the others knowing it (iirc it was somewhere in Nashkel Carnival?).

S/He is secretive about this find, but somewhere 'accidentally' let's Montaron (and only him) know s/he is in the possession of an expensive magical scroll that can be used by anyone to increase power/wealth/what-have-you.

Montaron, being an evil thief, obviously wants this scroll for himself and steals it during the night, since it is not stored in the protagonists scrollcase, but in on the belt for quick access (quickslot).

Montaron moves away from the party (since you want him to be in the FAI, another room perhaps) to read it in secret (the protagonist might wake up and find him reading this powerful valuable scroll, such a thing should not happen, Montaron wants to frame some NPC in your party he dislikes for this theft!)

Montaron starts reading this scroll and is petrified!

The party, including Xzar, wakes up the next morning and finds Montaron reading the scroll somewhere or, if Monty hid himself really well, does not find him.

Xzar exclamed "Montaron! I... I never loved you!" and he stays with the party.

Tada! Problem solved!

Fardragon

KidCarnival said:

It is *suspected* that the evil female thief NPC in BG2 will have a kit. There is much reason to believe she'll have a different kit (shadowdancer) since all other new BG1 NPCs have kits that were not in the game originally.

The reason for adding an evil thief to BG2 is different, and very simple. THERE ISN'T ONE. Evil parties have little choice but to take a goodie twoshoes (Imoen or Jan) in order to detect traps. Since shadowdancers absolutely suck at detecting traps, if the new NPC where a Shadowdancer, they would be a waste of space, since the evil party would STILL need to take Imoen or Jan.

It's also worth mentioning that Sorcerers, Monks and Wild Mages are NOT new to BG2.

Wanderon

I'm playing a human dual class beserker > thief (currently 3/5) that has 4 pips in scimitars and two in two weapon that fits very well with an evil run.

Edit - fixed typo dualed at 3 not 4

KidCarnival

It doesn't change the fact that all possible kits and stats of the evil thief are speculation and it is simply not true that "BG2EE will have a female evil thief (assassin kit)". It is very, very likely that BG2EE will have an evil thief, who is also very likely female - as that comes from the same source and statement. It says absolutely nothing about a kit. For all we know, she couldn't have a kit at all and just be a pure thief - which would actually be the best option. Everyone could level her as they see fit without worrying about drawbacks of a kit.

Oxford_Guy

KidCarnival said:

It doesn't change the fact that all possible kits and stats of the evil thief are speculation and it is simply not true that "BG2EE will have a female evil thief (assassin kit)". It is very, very likely that BG2EE will have an evil thief, who is also very likely female - as that comes from the same source and statement. It says absolutely nothing about a kit. For all we know, she couldn't have a kit at all and just be a pure thief - which would actually be the best option. Everyone could level her as they see fit without worrying about drawbacks of a kit.

I'd rather have an assassin, but that's just my POV

Iecerint

I settled on Fighter/Thief. Having lots of fun -- unlocking all of the things and giving in to killing the function-less NPCs where appropriate is surprisingly fun. I also let Imoen die and will probably keep her that way. So liberating....

Of course, everything will presumably be retconned in BG2. ^^

I also hadn't known that you can zone/run away to make guards/Flaming Fist folks give up the chase. I had assumed they mindlessly followed you across the world. I feel a lot better about keeping my rep low without worrying much about meta-gaming now. I wish I could turn on the "good buying prices at extremes of reputation" mod option, though, since I feel like very low rep is associated with enough added difficulty already that some kind of quadratic relation between rep and cost should be in play...

I played with SCS last time, so it's pretty easy this time, but I guess that's fine. It's more casual on my iPad, anyway.

One issue I encountered -- dunno if someone reported it as a bug yet -- is that in my first playthrough, the icons on the map were all displayed incorrectly. For example, instead of Beregost looking like a city, it looks like a line sketch or something. But that seems to have fixed itself this playthrough, so I'm not sure what triggered that glitch.

Where's all this evil female BG2 thief stuff coming from? Link? Anything else announced?

revaar

IIRC, the Evil female thief in BG2EE comes from a twitter response by a dev, mentioning that the are aware of the lack of evil thieves in BG2, and people extrapolated from there.

Iecerint

Ugh, Viconia won't join. Apparently due to my low reputation, because my CHA is 15. That is very dumb btw.

There goes my fun.

I hope Dorm doesn't have this problem. Any rep nearby other than Joia's ring?

Madhax

Iecerint said:

Ugh, Viconia won't join. Apparently due to my low reputation, because my CHA is 15. That is very dumb btw.

There goes my fun.

I hope Dorm doesn't have this problem. Any rep nearby other than Joia's ring?

Whoa, what? Evil folks don't refuse to join your party based on rep. Something else must be amiss.

Iecerint

No, they do. It's an oversight. All reactions are based on something called reaction, which is a function of CHA and Rep. I found some FAQs about this very point. I'm used to playing with mods that fix this, though.

Nifft

Iecerint said:

No, they do. It's an oversight. All reactions are based on something called reaction, which is a function of CHA and Rep. I found some FAQs about this very point. I'm used to playing with mods that fix this, though.

If that's not an engine bug, then it's a game design bug of even more depressingly gargantuan proportions.

Iecerint

I posted something about the reputation system as a whole in the features section. By all means, agree with me!

Fardragon

I've played through with a rep of 4/5 and not had any trouble recruiting Viconia.

But evil an person might be wary of joining a party with too low a rep - they don't want to be stabbed in the back any more than a good person.

Wanderon

I had her refuse to join twice due to low charisma (8) even after saving her sorry butt. (rep would have been average)

Iecerint

When Viconia would join and talk about how much Shar loves the party

Fardragon said:

But evil an person might be wary of joining a party with too low a rep - they don't want to be stabbed in the back any more than a good person.

Maybe, but it's not clear the "low reputation" parties are the ones I'd expect Viconia to be looking out for given her recent history.

And, I mean, if she joined my party, she'd start talking about how much Shar loves us. XD

Fardragon

No, Viconia doesn't want someone who will turn her in for the first drow bounty that is offered. She is evil, not stupid. She can't team up with a party that is too good, since their actions would displease Shar. A middle rep party would suit her fine.

IkMarc

Kensai lvl3 or lvl5/thief?

Lemernis

Maybe try

elven or half-elven Fighter/Thief dual-wielding swords (your pick)
half-orc Cleric/Thief backstabbing with quarterstaff
human Berserker 3/Thief dual-wielding maces swords (your pick)

Iecerint

Fardragon said:

No, Viconia doesn't want someone who will turn her in for the first drow bounty that is offered. She is evil, not stupid. She can't team up with a party that is too good, since their actions would displease Shar. A middle rep party would suit her fine.

Then she would get freaked out by low rep parties that she's in, but she doesn't. She likes them.

The only RP interpretation requires that her perspective/anxiety changed immediately upon formal admission for some reason.

redline

Iecerint said:

Fardragon said:

No, Viconia doesn't want someone who will turn her in for the first drow bounty that is offered. She is evil, not stupid. She can't team up with a party that is too good, since their actions would displease Shar. A middle rep party would suit her fine.

Then she would get freaked out by low rep parties that she's in, but she doesn't. She likes them.

The only RP interpretation requires that her perspective/anxiety changed immediately upon formal admission for some reason.

Well, if the party has a reputation for being treacherous, murderous, or otherwise unpleasant, I can see why someone in a vulnerable position might be reluctant to join at first, regardless of alignment. Once she's in, though, she realizes that CHARNAME's group of brigands and miscreants isn't actually an immediate threat to her, and so she's able to revel in the mischief they cause.

Not that that was actually any developer's intention -- I'm sure it's just a programming oversight. It's always fun to explain these things away, though.

Fardragon

Lemernis said:

elven or half-elven Fighter/Thief dual-wielding swords
human Berserker 3/Thief dual-wielding maces

Given that there is only one really good mace, I wouldn't want it to be the only weapon prof on a dual wielder.

Longswords or Daggers would be a better choice.

For an elf, I would go longsword/single weapon style/bow.