Need help Archer/Thief build
KuroAisu
Member Posts: 8
Hi all!
The party I want need a thief and I want to play an kickass archer with thief abilities!
I want a combination of those two! I started a fighter/thief combo but he can't advance more than two proficiencies on bows
Is there a way to for example have 5* in bows and be a thief at same time? Didn't want to gimp my self dual classing and waiting 4/5 levels waiting for the Thief skills to be available...
The caracter will be running all from the beginning to the end of ToB.
Thanks in advance
The party I want need a thief and I want to play an kickass archer with thief abilities!
I want a combination of those two! I started a fighter/thief combo but he can't advance more than two proficiencies on bows
Is there a way to for example have 5* in bows and be a thief at same time? Didn't want to gimp my self dual classing and waiting 4/5 levels waiting for the Thief skills to be available...
The caracter will be running all from the beginning to the end of ToB.
Thanks in advance
0
Comments
Alternatively you can have stealth if you play as an archer (ranger kit), which are thieving abilities (you just can't get all of the thieving abilities including open locks, pick pocket and find traps).
Finally, you could play a fighter/thief, and just use shadowkeeper to give yourself 5* in bows.
If you change your mind and gonna just a play BG:EE or play BG2:EE (BG2) with another class, i would suggest Coran NPC to replace this character (fighter/thief elf with 20 in dexterity).
It's unfortunate that rangers are only able to dual/multi (or maybe only multi, i'm not sure) to cleric. EE keeper doesn't allow any bypass of this rule either.
My suggestion for you is to make a dual class fighter (3/7/13)/Thief or a Thief (the needed lvls to max OP and DT)/fighter.
just be aware that proficience points don't sum between the classes while any of them is inactive. If you have more points into a proficience in the inactive class, if the new points spread supress those, they will replace, otherwise they will be only lost.
I love bows so I wanted to make an archer with the most important open locks and detect traps!
I need 100% in both right? (OL and DT)
What diference can make in the long run, fighter 3/x thief and or thief 6/ x fighter ( 6 thief was the number that I found that maxed the two skills mencioned above)
What are your thoughts?!
6 levels as a thief would mean you'd get 25x6 to spend on skills + your starting stats + dexterity bonuses. At 18 dexterity and as a human you'd get +15/+5 (open locks/find traps) from your dexterity bonuses and nothing for a race bonus.
So evenly split you'd have 90 open locks and 80 find traps
Honestly, thats good enough for either game provided you use potions of perception/master thievery in the very few chests in the game they will be needed. This will allow you to be a usable thief for these two skills, though you will have to wait awhile while you dual class over to a fighter before you can take advantage of them again.
The other option is an elf fighter/thief. Only having specialisation (2*) in a weapon isn't bad and fighters do get extra attacks per round which (if it hasn't already been implemented) makes them more viable. The biggest difference between 2 and 5*'s is an extra 1/2 attack per round, (the 3 extra damage and 2 thaco is nice but not as big of a benefit). If you go with an elf fighter/thief it'll mean you'll eventually get 3 attacks per round with a bow in BGEE, you'll get a +1 thaco and damage bonus with bows (as an elf) and + thaco bonus because you can start out with 19 dexterity.
My explanations are getting horribly convoluted and rather subjective, but suffice to say its not (rule wise) legally possible to have the best bow wielding fighter you can have while at the same time you keep access to your thieving skills and get 100/100 in open locks/find traps (without the use of potions)
Well I thought I would lose a lot more being a fighter/thief with only 2*, to be honest! In the end I only lose 2 extra damage.
It's too much waiting to get the thief levels again, 6 or 7... I could be a level 3 fighter and the rest on thief but at least for this run I'm not aiming to backstabing etc (maybe sometimes just for fun!). I'll be sniping everything that's why I love the two archers from BG1
Ok concluding the pros and cons I'll pursue the elf fighter/thief carreer! My evil party begins!
Thanks for all the help and fast answers!
http://playithardcore.com/pihwiki/index.php?title=Baldur's_Gate:_Progression_Charts
As you can see, at 3° lvl a fighter get another proficience point, at 7° lvl your fighter you get an extra 1/2 attack per round, at lvl 13 you get another 1/2 attack per round (it's a total of 1 extra atk per round with the sum of lvl 7 and 13).
I suggest a thief/fighter (human) rather than a fighter/thief.
You're going to be more ranged than melee, so backstab isn't a problem, you want thief skills more for pick locks and detect traps than anything else and Attack per rounds, thac0, hp and equipment options are better with a fight. By the existence of a previous thief class you're going have access to Thief HLAs as well.
Old BG2 manual and the other following link can help you with this, in the thief skill chars of BG2 manual you get a base for the thief skills x dexterity value until dex 19, in the other link you get the progression of the thief skills further dexterity 19 but based on old BG table (that has only 4 kinds of skills that will need to be linked from old BG to BG:EE).
http://bg2download.free.fr/BG2_manual.pdf
http://stane0.tripod.com/BG1Tables.html
Starting with a human thief and 18 dexterity in BG:EE with a human will give you:
25% pick pocket
25% open locks
10% detect traps
20% move silently
15% hide in shadows
10% detect illusion
+40 skill points to distribute
By bypassing dexterity from 18 to 19 (tome of quickness action) you got a +5% bonus in every skill except detect illusion. from 19 to 20 (kiel's buckler) you get another +5% bonus in pick pocket, open lock and detect traps and +3% bonus in move silently and hide in shadows.
So from a start point you can calculate a start with 55% in pick pocket and detect traps (but it will be in fact 45% in each until you got dex 20). You can calculate the pickpocket and detect traps to be increased until 95% or 100%.
Hide in shadow and move silently can be increased by items into a fast amount during BG, specially BG2 (and you can get invisible by other means)
With this data, you can even choose to take a kit from the thief class if you want.
If you take thief vanilla, with the fast skill increase per level i suggest dual class at lvl 4.
If you take assassin kit, dual class at lvl 9 (and you gonna get 5x backstab multipler and the poison weapon is good for ranged weapons also)
If you take Swashbuckler, dual class at lvl 5/6 (i don't know exactly when the class get the AC and hit/dmg bonus)
If you take Shadow Dancer... well it's a bit out of character for an thief/figher archer, but ok... dual at lvl 9, you get the maximum Backstab multiple for this class and suffice skill points for whatever you want.
If you take Bounty Hunder... well just don't take this class, it's a shit, you're even better with vanilla class than this kit.
A lvl 4/5 thief can be quickly achieved, and a lvl 9 thief will be a pure thief the entire BG:EE anyway, the dual will only happen at BG2, where XP increase faster.
You might also want to wait with dual classing to level 7 or 13 for the extra ½ apr which will be very important.
You'll get 4x backstab multiplier with a level 9 assassin. 13 is the level that you get x5.
Swashbucklers get +1/+1 attack related bonuses at level 5, +2/+2 at level 10, etc.
I'd still go with the fighter/thief personally. The difference in APR and damage output is mitigated either way. Plus at higher levels you'll get access to both thief and fighter higher-level-abilities. Which is pretty sweet. Does whirlwind/greater whirlwind work with ranged attacks? 10 APR with time stop traps isn't bad if that is the case
The own table you quoted before state this, the manual display a vanilla thief backstab evolution, in the assassin's advantage list on character creation the +1 bonus in backstab is displayed.
The start skills you blockquoted from my previous post: They're made without any point distribution. Yes, this isn't right if we manually calculate, but before post, i created a human thief character in BG:EE with dex 18 and these where the base skills he started (without distributing the extra 40 skill points). So it's possible to BG:EE to have a different thief skill chart.
@SionIV i believe you're right about this, only multi-class characters have access to both HLA perks, Dual-class characters are left only with the dualed class HLA perk (another reason to go thief/fighter instead of fighter/thief, unless you have plans for a wizard slayer).
@SionIV i believe you're right about this, only multi-class characters have access to both HLA perks, Dual-class characters are left only with the dualed class HLA perk (another reason to go thief/fighter instead of fighter/thief, unless you have plans for a wizard slayer).
Really not disputing you on the thieving points front at this point. At least if I did in my post it was not intentional.
There is a +1 bonus to attack and a +1 bonus to damage that assassins get for all their attacks, but their multiplier damage doesn't deviate from that of a standard thief. Check out the backstab.2DA file in near infinite and you will see that thieves normally get 4x backstab at level 9 and 5x at level 13. That doesn't change with the assassin. The only thief kit that has a different rate of backstab is the shadow dancer (and that shows up in that 2DA file.
I can't use BGEE at the moment, but you can see in BG2 (with fixpack not that that makes any difference)
My assassin level 13 (you can tell this by how much she needs for the next level)
and a regular old thief I made up just now.
Vanilla Thief lvl 9
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Vanilla thief Backstab at lvl 9
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Assassin thief lvl 9
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Assassin thief backstab at lvl 9
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Character creation info about assassin:
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Ps: In BG:EE, assassins start with 40 skill points to distribute in character creation (they should start with 30), probally another mistake (the devs probally forget to set this), pretty much alike Dwarven Defenders being able to grand master axes 5*, when they should only being able to master it 4*.
About the off-topic, the guy whom asked for help already got everything he would wish for and more so, at least me, i don't mind going of topic here now (the help is already given and soon some moderator will close this topic anyway).
EDIT: Disregard.... Didn't pay close enough attention. Kensia definitely quashes any archery ambitions.
I've installed BGEE from Beamdog on a computer that has never had it installed before. I'm still getting assassins reading as they were in BG2.
As you can see I can make a neutral good assassin with 2x backstab at level 1 in BGEE.
@KuroAisu
I recommend multi Fighter/Thief. If mainly used with bows, either choose halfling for max thieving skills & 19 DEX (good ranged) & shortysaves or elf for 19 DEX and a +1 to hit with bows.
Read about the fighter/theif multi- and duals here:
http://playithardcore.com/pihwiki/index.php?title=Baldur's_Gate:_Dual_and_Multiclassing#Fighter.2FThief
Second, as far as dual classing goes, if you were thinking about going Thief -> Fighter you can actually get your skills back quickly and easily. The Ankhegs and Basilisks are both very easy to kill at range as a fighter. You can get 40k experience in a very short time without missing those thief skills this way. I think a lot of people do not realize how easily you can bypass most if not all of the inactive time.
Third, if you want a "badass archer" that does not necessarily require Grandmastery. Have you considered something like a Bard? The additional of Mage spells can make them far more powerful as a ranged attacker using bows mixed with spells to buff or debuff.
Fourth, Dexter is absolutely either Lawful Evil or Lawful Neutral. The first few seasons are LE, he kind of has a bit of a character arc that makes him a bit more LN though. Lawful absolutely though, he plays within the rules out of fear of punishment. His narrative makes him out to be selfish and his acts of apparent selflessness nothing more than an act to keep him out of trouble (e.g. really still selfish). The later seasons are where this seems a bit more neutral to me.
Also, don't forget to take into account some of the thief armor/boots/gloves/etc. that you can equip. Makes a difference...
Bows (and throwing daggers/darts) really exist only to give non-fighters access to bonus attacks. warriors are much better off (usually) just going melee or using thrown weapons since they already get bonus attacks. Except at low levels where melee is more dangerous and they haven't gotten their first extra attack yet.
(Especially true in PnP as PnP bows/xbows don't get any bonus attacks from warrior levels or specialization (and specialization/expertise is much weaker to them them then other weapons), making them really only the stuff of very low level warriors, or bard/thieves. The archer kit being the exception, since it gets bonus damage and extra attacks when using bows at the cost of their bonus warrior apr and the ability go beyond proficiency in melee).