Mage/thief good in tob or not?

Ryuuka

Hello everyone. I've got a question for you all. I've played through bg1 and 2 many times but I've never ever played a thief class through the whole of soa and tob.

I'm at the moment playing a mage/thief (no mislead cheese) and I find it very enjoyable. Backstabing, using invisibilty to backstab again. Using sunfire from stealth to eliminate groups of weaker enemies. I also really like the roleplaying aspect of a stealthy arcane caster who can slip in and out of the shadows and cause massive damage to both single targets and to groups.

My question is: Will I be able to use backstab in tob or even late soa? Are most enemies immune or not? Will my thief be able to melee at all later or will he pretty much become a mage with traps? If that is the case I think I might go for a fighter/mage instead. I don't want the character to just become a mage.

Also, has anyone tried improved anvil for bg2? I tried it and suddenly pretty much every enemy could see me even if I was invisible? Is this a bug or did the author think invisibilty was too good? If so that's kinda crappy imo, kinda ruined my whole character.

Cheers!

lunar

Most Improved anvil enemies have a lot of cheesy powers:they can see invisible, they are immune to traps, ranged damage, poison cloud effects, backstabs, poison, elemental damage, have super rapid regeneration, have absurd damage resistances to most attack forms, and some even are immune to some spells completely. Big golem types summon other types of golems continously. You can expect this from new types of golems but other major enemies have these powers too.

Gameplay in Improved anvil is focused on the author's favourite classes and his new kits, And his personal favourite npcs:Cernd and Valygar who get new and very powerful kits. Also you must play a good aligned necromancer to get the most benefits of new mage items. Otherwise most major enemies will 'greater silence' you and vocalise&amulet of power won't help at all.

In vanilla ToB a mage/thief is a very capable character, he has so many options and strategies. His only weakness is bad THAC0 and number of attacks, you can off set this by dual wielding weapons that grant extra attacks (Belm+2) and improved hasting your character. There are a lot of enemies immune to backstabs but there are a lot more vulnerable. In an Improved Anvil game %99 of the enemies are immune to traps and backstabs as author finds these methods cheap and cheesy. %85 of them can't be beaten with magic or ranged weapons too, so you should have massive melee damage, the super powerful new weapon upgrades, and your spellcasters should focus on buffing fighters, and removing protections from enemies, and summoning fodder. In an Improved anvil game a mage/thief is very weak, his thief levels will not give him any major power that works in combat.

Ryuuka

wow thanks for the quick reply. I see you don't seem to like improved anvil very much from the negative way you phrase some of your comments. I didn't like it very much either, I did like some of the things from the mod but it's not worth it if he severly screws up lots of the game for me.. I can't understand how he calls the mod fair play if all the things you said are true. O_o

I am not using improved anvil now so I guess my mage/thief could be really good then. I'm just about to enter the underdark and will see how he fares down there.

Thanks for the reply once again Lunar. I'll keep playing my mage/thief I think. I am already using belm in offhand to get those extra apr.

ZanathKariashi

You can get the Shakti figurine in Saradush to handle for you thac0 problems (or cast tenser if you're almost out of spells anyway), if you need to bust something up in straight melee. BS is less useful, but there are still opportunities for it, just not as many as in early BG2. Traps are solid though. Especially epic ones, if you're MC.


IA is a horrible mod and should never be played by anyone. It's one thing to nerf blatant cheese and incorrect mechanics, it's completely another to nerf properly working mechanics because you just hate a particular class/playstyle. ESPECIALLY when it renders all but like 3 classes completely worthless to bring along.


I may hate tactics and SCS for using cheese as well..but at least they use cheese available to the player and don't render most classes/spells/abilities completely useless.

Urd1en

Fighter multiclasses are capable at high levels and in tob in particular, because they tend to reach THAC0 0 and have better APR.

Melee combat makes the game in tob. Pure rogues, mages and clerics are secondary players in really tough fights. Powerful bosses usually die being hit by melee weapon.

Ryuuka

Thanks for the replies! I didn't know so many disliked improved anvil. I never tried it before but I read about it a lot during my years of playing bg2. I am using tactics and I find it pretty good. The monsters might use some cheesy tactics but so do I sometimes. I haven't felt like it's blatantly cheating though like improved anvil is.

I am multiclassed so I look forward to using the epic traps (time trap mostly, can you load up with backstabs in timestop? )

I will keep my eyes open for the Shakti figurine, I think I remember it. It gives you some kind of +5 sword or something doesn't it? Is that the best short sword I will find in the game? I usually play fighter/clerics so I have no idea what items I'm looking for for my thief/mage

Urd1en, that's what I remember too, thats why I asked about thief/mage, I was afriad he would become obselete in tob but from what the others have said it looks like he will still be useful! Cheers everyone, now I'm going back into the game to stab some drow!

FrozenCells

It's quite a difficult question. A Mage/Thief is good but you won't be playing it the same way you are probably playing it in ToB. Backstabs are a lot less important, generally, although not useless. Thief combat starts to suck a bit too much to make best use of some of the melee-focused mage spells also. Naturally the character gravitates more and more towards typical mage strategies because magic is just good and scales better but thief HLAs are rather good and give you even more options as to how you want to play. Depends on your mindset really...a M/T thief is a mage with traps if you play it like that, but a F/M can be just a buffed up fighter if you play it like that too.

F/M/T is a more well-rounded arcane thief, if you can get over the slower/less spell progression. You don't need to buff so much to be good in combat(+backstabs) so you can open up spells for other things which can make things fun.

lunar

I did not want to sound negative about Improved anvil, I really did not, I just stated the facts. IA turns bg2 game into a completely different game and robs the player of freedom. You have to play a certain few classes and new kits to survive, and most tactics and strategies are useless, also you need to figure out a certain order of quests and areas to visit if you wish to survive. Not to mention there are some downright ridiculous methods the mod forces you to obey:for example if in some area the game checks and if you have too many experience points and are a solo player the game scripts will auto kill you, because the author thinks you have cheated, etc.

Improved anvil is hugely tactical but there are only a few tactics that work and you have to play the same battles dozens of times to find them and it just gets tedious and ridiculous and not fun for me.

Sword coast strategems 2 on the other hand, I find the enemy intelligence far, far superiour. Especially the enemy casters play and react like living, breathing, human players! And not every enemy has %100 resistance to fire,cold,lightning, ranged damage, trap-poison-backstab-timestop-hold-charm immunity, etc. Some IA enemies are downright as powerful as some unbalanced Diablo hell difficulty bosses:'Immune to fire, Immune to cold, Immune to lightning, Immune to magic, %99 resistance to slash/pierce/crushing damage, immune to traps, backstab, some arbitrary spells just because, extra fast with too many attacks per round than normally available by the rules'

Corvino

I've never had a Mage/Thief PC, but Jan Jansen is a useful NPC to have around through TOB. As previously stated, thief HLAs are pretty good. Time trap is quite a lot weaker than Timestop, and if you've got the spell slots then timestop is hands-down better.

Backstab becomes far less useful in late SOA & TOB due to immunities and almost permanent True Seeing on most boss-type enemies. The improved selection of weapons over a pure and the versatility offered by Use Any Item do give you opportunities to do things a pure mage or fighter/mage cannot.

Mage/Thieves are not particularly cheesy or overpowered compared to powergamed dual-classes, but they allow you to mix your tactics up a lot using a wide selection of gear and spells.