Thac0 in ToB
Khyron
Member Posts: 635
So I've been pondering on making a new character to play through the entire saga, but after having researched high and low on all char concepts, it seems regular thieves and clerics (with no multi) are capped at 10 thac0, which means a whopping 10 point difference to Pallies,rangers,fighters etc..
Looks to me as if a melee dps thief singleclass will be worthless later on.. or will you still be able to regularly hit endgame ToB mobs? (If you do, then what's the point of fighters? xD)
Looks to me as if a melee dps thief singleclass will be worthless later on.. or will you still be able to regularly hit endgame ToB mobs? (If you do, then what's the point of fighters? xD)
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So to expand on my earlier Idea..
When you get on with late ToB, which of these combinations would be better? (Or, will any of them be quite rubbish?)
Fighter/Thief
Thief (Swashbuckler ~ +1 to AC,Hit,Dam every 5 lvls)
Fighter(9 or 7)->Thief
If you don't play with mods, then I wouldn't worry too much about class balance. Any class or class combination can finish the game with ease. You should try and focus on micro control of your characters, and on using the available equipment to best effect. That should get you much more power than class optimization.
Once you start playing with the more difficult mods (SCS, Tactics, Ascension, etc.), then you can worry about the fine print. But these little details don't come into effect much in a vanilla game, so don't worry!
'cos fighter->thief and swashbuckler both seem a little lackluster.. Swashie perhaps a bit better, despite loss of backstabb..
A pure swashbuckler caps at 2 base thac0 (counting their bonus to hit from levels), and deals WAY more damage then a fighter can (+5 more damage per hit). Though early game you need to dual-wield speed weapons to compensate for a lack of natural extra attacks, though late game, once you get WWA, anything works (though dual-speed weapons (upgrade your MH to SN ASAP) will still kill pretty much everything except the handful of +4 enemies...though 1-2 rounds of WWA with a strong weapon will kill those easily). Late game, they can throw on the strongest armors plus their bonus +9 AC, and maybe use a few mage scrolls to rival a Blade exploiting every engine-exploit in the game for damage and AC numbers (except the swashbuckler is legit).
Thac0 is meaningless. Rogues get all the thac0 you need (and even mages can put up a nice showing). The strength of the warrior classes is their ability to get bonus natural attacks, while everyone else is stuck at 1, unless dual-wielding, hasted, using ranged attacks, or speed weapons.
1) number of attacks
2) maximum proficiency in weapons
F/T gets ThAC0 0 and 1) due to having Fighter level 7 and 13 bonuses. He only gets 2 stars maximum in a weapon proficiency, which limits his damage potential (+2 if BG2 vanilla) and to hit potential (+1 if BG2 vanilla) somewhat.
Swashie has problems with 1) as he gets no bonus attacks from levels, but has no problems with 2) as his Swashie bonuses more than make up for it. Unfortunately he gets shafted in the ThAC0 department, due to the Thief cap of 10. A level 40 Swashie has at best an umodified (non-magical weapon, 2 stars in proficiency) ThAC0 of 1.
A pureclass Fighter can get to -2.
F->T can get 1) if he duals at 13. He can also get 2) due to being able to attain grandmastery. Caveat being, that he has to get by with only his thief abilities for 880k xp. Moreover he won't reach his full potential until 2130k xp, as that's the point when he regains acces to his fighter abilities.
As soon as mods enter the equation you can throw all of the above out of the window as multiclasses win everytime.
10th
But yea otherwise I agree.
Gripes I have; Carsomyr has ruined paladin for me (yay for using that frikken sword from early SoA until the end.. so boring, but i can't NOT use it..)
And fighter stronghold.. so awesome.. i must have a castle!
And fighter->thief is just.. well.. i don't like it. Unless I am to use singlehanded and bows.. but singlehanded vs dual wield = gimp.. so i dualwield and have a much wider array of weapons available due to only specializing (When F/T)..
Said it before.. if we could just get quickswapping between bows/twohanders and dual/shield.. it would completely alter the way i approach this game.
I agree that the quickswap-limitations are annoying. But I suppose there's no way around it, really, since it's all hard-coded stuff. Not being able to use throwing weapons + shield, or throwing weapons in melee mode + offhand is also part of that...
Multi-Class Grandmastery (Weimer): http://www.gibberlings3.net/bg2tweaks/