Finally, I really think the Shadow Dancer should follow the stalker multiplier, which always made sense as a "I can somehow backstab, but not as good as a thief" class. 1-8 : x2 9-16 : x3 17+ : x4
In terms of kits being perfectly balanced, I think @Aranthys is pretty much right with their suggestions, however I'm very happy with @Dee 's solution too. Balance is important to me but not so important that every class must rigidly be equally as competent at all levels, just that they feel worthwhile. My reaction to Dee's proposal is 'shit, now I want to play all of them, how am I ever going to pick a class'. Which is a good thing....I guess?
Good to see you come around to my way of thinking, @Dee I really think that balancing this as modifiers off of the base thief backstab progression is very rational, and works elegantly. There will be parts of the game where one kit is stronger than another, but there are parts of the game where that is true for any class's kits - Just now, none of the thief kits are *useless*.
I do think that capping at x4/x5/x7 by giving the assassin an extra +1 at 17 after everyone else stops at 13 would be appropriate, though.
I actually think @Aranthys makes a nice suggestion for the Shadow Dancers BS progression (not sure about the Assassin) and @Kaigen illustrates the positives of it nicely. My concern was the ease of abuse of Dualing with a BS x4 at lvl13 and x3 at lvl9, not to mention how strong it would be at those later levels....
If I might volunteer an idea for the Shadow Dancer only: it seems like making the second and third stage of BS progression (5-8 x2, 9-12 x3) into one single progression (5-12 x2) would accomplish a lot in terms of making the BS more viable for the Shadow Dancer as well as providing something to aim for later on and detering (or at least off-setting) dual classes. If you followed with lvl 13 x3 and lvl 17(or even later) x4, there's plenty still to aim for....
...It would also stay somewhat true to the Thief Class BackStab structure...
I never thought that Assassins really cut it, from a series perspective. They're playable sure but my question is, why would you want to? Until level 17 (x6 multiplier), it's a thief with a lot less skill points, poison weapon and +1hit/dmg. Multi F/T makes it almost entirely redundant, having more skill points, better combat, similar or better backstabs etc. Improving the backstab to progress faster and start at x3 makes it immediately an attractive option compared to both from other thieves and F/T, in addition to making it more dual-able. Scaling Poison Weapon both tones down one of the more unbalanced abilities of BG:EE and counterbalances a faster backstab progression at the same time. For a kit that effectively gives up its ability to be the party's 'thief', I think it's a really good solution.
One question I have about the Shadowdancer still is though, will it have access to HLA traps? It wouldn't make sense if it did, but then Bards do so, who knows. It becomes a bigger drawback later in the series to not have even normal traps.
Bounty Hunter/Swashbuckler I think have always been well-implemented. Swashbuckler is a bit niche though.
I never thought that Assassins really cut it, from a series perspective. They're playable sure but my question is, why would you want to? Until level 17 (x6 multiplier), it's a thief with a lot less skill points, poison weapon and +1hit/dmg. Multi F/T makes it almost entirely redundant, having more skill points, better combat, similar or better backstabs etc. Improving the backstab to progress faster and start at x3 makes it immediately an attractive option compared to both from other thieves and F/T, in addition to making it more dual-able. Scaling Poison Weapon both tones down one of the more unbalanced abilities of BG:EE and counterbalances a faster backstab progression at the same time. For a kit that effectively gives up its ability to be the party's 'thief', I think it's a really good solution.
One question I have about the Shadowdancer still is though, will it have access to HLA traps? It wouldn't make sense if it did, but then Bards do so, who knows. It becomes a bigger drawback later in the series to not have even normal traps.
Bounty Hunter/Swashbuckler I think have always been well-implemented. Swashbuckler is a bit niche though.
At low level, yeah, multi F/T makes them redundant. But you can't deny the power of beeing able to poison your targets. That, and, past level 9-10, they become very capable thieves, even if they earn less points per level. Thieves usually cap in their important skills by the time they get to level 15 or so.
Finally, I'm sorry, but I don't think it's a good idea to improve a kit to make it more "dual-able". Assassin's poison is among the most dangerous things in BG1 during most of the game.
The only thing the vanilla assassin is kinda lacking is >maybe< a slightly faster backstab progression. Granting them x3 backstab at level 1, or even x4 backstab at level 5 is a bit too fast for my taste.
- Assassin gets Poison Weapon at the normal levels, but the ability now scales with level:
Level 1: deals 2 damage per round for four rounds (save vs poison negates), and 2 damage per round for one round (no save). Level 10: Deals 1 damage per second for 24 seconds (save vs poison negates), and 1 damage per second for 6 seconds (no save). Level 15: Deals 3 damage per second for 10 seconds (save vs poison negates), and 3 damage per second for four seconds (no save). Also slows the target (save vs poison negates).
The scaling effect, as it turns out, was supposed to work that way initially but was never hooked up properly.
Yay, poison scaling! I love it. But are the numbers open to tweaking? I personally think the current ones, even though they're the original values, are a bit wonky. I'd like the duration of the poison to stay the same in all cases and just up the damage a little at each stage or make it tick more often, because when you rely on poison as an anti-caster tool a shorter duration is a disadvantage even if the overall damage increases.
I think this tweaking shows the effort the community has put into the issue of changing the proposed beta-version of a shadowdancer is effective. Many thanks to @Infiltrator , @enneract , @Aranthys , @Basillicum and many-many others.
Additional thanks to @Dee. It means so much when the Devs hear what the community discusses and even when at first the Devs are not ready to change their plans later they give the solution in the form of this tweaking. It's much appreciated. Personally I've been positevely surprised @Dee made this tweaking after he said nothing would be changed. Great!
Thanks to @Eudaemonium and others who said an Assassin should get the Poison Weapon at the normal levels. I've been playing with the Assassin recently and can say his poison is VERY important in fights with SCS BG1 mages. Personally I see this poison more important ability of the Assassin than his backstabs in BG1 with SCS. Tarnesh, Zordral, Narcillius, Rezdan, Kysus, Davaeorn - all of them were possible for me to kill due to the Poison Weapon of the Assassin. And thanks to @Dee again - he continued to listen to the community.
I didn't visit the forum at the weekend and now I come back and see this level of communication. Wow! It simply has made my day!
I'm against raising backstab multipliers for generic thief and bounty hunter classes by 1. Because then Assassin faces too much penality to skill points (15per level compared to 25 for generic thief and 20 for bounty hunter). This makes Assassin much, much less attractive to players.
Large source of backstab damage comes from weapon enchantments.... Even with +1 to damage bonus Assassin merely gets +7 to backstab damage.
Analysis:
Thief with +5 weapon, x5 modifier - 25 extra damage at level 17 Thief with +5 weapon, x6 modifier - 30 extra damage at level 17 Assassin with +5 weapon, x7 modifier - 42 extra damage at level 17
And this makes Shadowdancer class absurdly powergamey... loses 5 extra damage compared to thief/bounty hunter but gains ability to hide at will... Basically with x5 modifier Shadowdancer can potentially backstab every round (because they don't have to run away to hide and hide action in BG engine almost counts as free action since thief can backstab immediately) which almost equates to 5 attacks per round minus strength bonus. Makes generic thief very weak compared to thief kit classes to the point of being almost redundant and Shadowdancer becomes better backstabber than even Assassin, who's suppossed to be the best backstabbing class (at significant cost of 40% less skill points per level).
Perhaps better solution might be to cap backstab multiplier for shadowdancer to 4, generic thief/bounty hunter to 6, assassin to 8?
Shadowdancer with +5 weapon, x4 modifier - 20 extra damage at level 17 Thief/BH with +5 weapon, x6 modifier - 30 extra damage at level 17 Assassin with +5 weapon, x8 modifier - 48 extra damage at level 17
And this makes differences in backstab damage between classes very similar to vanilla BGEE:
Shadowdancer with +5 weapon, x3 modifier - 15 extra damage at level 9 Thief/BH with +5 weapon, x5 modifier - 25 extra damage at level 17 Assassin with +5 weapon, x7 modifier - 42 extra damage at level 17
EDIT: bugger just found out others suggested pretty much the same on posts above!
@leeho730 You're forgetting that stealth has a cooldown, so the SD can't technically stab every round. A 5x/6x/7x (sd/thief/assassin) is much better since thieves and assassins can re-stealth easily before mid-BG2 with rings of inivisibility and plentful potions.
Bottom line - other thieves can emulate the shadowdancer with cheap and plentful items, shadowdancer can't compensate his drawbacks (low mult, lack of traps) ever.
Yes but cooldown is around 6s and once button gets activated thief can immediately hide unlike scrolls and potions (gulp) which takes a bit of time to activate. In BG/BG2 invisibility potions are in sparse supply (becomes plentiful in TOB) and there are only a few invisibility ring and they're limited to single day per day/rest. Gaxx offers 3x/day improved invisibility but unless the main character is thief it is likely to go to other classes like warrior.
@leeho730 The point was you can't constantly stealth and hit every round. And well, we are of course assuming you are maining the sd/thief/assassin and he is given loot priority. In BG2 you are literally showered in invisibility potions before mid game, every thief is almost always carrying one, on every run through I had more than enough for any situation but I never used all of them because rings of invisibility are extremely easy to acquire (2 of them can be gotten as soon as you leave the dungeon of Irenicus).
Yes but once per day, unlike Shadowdancer with unlimited hiding per day, almost like staff of magi with invisibility upon equipping (and Shadowdancer doesn't even have to fight Shandala to get it). Only a few merchants sell Invisibility potions (please refer to Lee's Thief FAQ, for me I bought mainly from the 'witch' at bridge district in BG2) and is rather heavy for thieves who aren't given strength items and thief NPCs typically don't have good strength other than Yoshimo (and well... I won't spoil it). And bag of holding cannot be acquired until later and potions bags are not available until TOB. Not to mention budget is rather tight for the party in the first half of game, especially those who want to buy items from Joluv/Deidre (epsecially Balduran's shield before Underdark and Robe of Vecna) and "special" items in Adventurer's mart later.
Granted, thief stronghold is fairly profittable and one can drink thieving potions and sell/steal/sell at certain merchants to quickly get large amount of money.
@leeho730 I really don't know what you're trying to convey, all I'm saying seems to be falling on deaf ears while you're talking randomly. Who mentioned BUYING potions? Invis potions heavy? Please. Robe of Vecna.. Joluv.. what does this have to do with what we're talking about here?
You're also plainly wrong about some things (sd hiding every round) but still just keep going at it.
An assassin won't need to hide and hit a target twice, the enemy will be dead in one blow (especially useful against mages). The SD HAS to have HipS because otherwise what is he going to do with the low mult?
For those cases where a thief has to restealth mid-fight, I've listed enough free options, that, although limited, are easy to get.
Meanwhile, what does SD get in terms of damage? Nothing. He is limited to the same weapons like the other thieves.
What can he do about traps? Nothing. He isn't getting them, ever.
I'm ok with SD remaining at 4x @ lvl 17 provided he gets some more flavor abilities, like useful summons or debuffs on backstabs (like stun/sleep).
It would be ok if around lvl 10 he had an ability where for X amounts of rounds he incured Y debuff on every backstab (some form of crowd control like short-term paralysis). This promotes the usage of his HipS ability during combat and he can have an additional steriod ability like the assassin for those hard encounters. He won't hit as hard but he can disable enemies for a short while.
Not many NPCs drop Invisibility potions. Besides you sound like thief can hide as often as SD in realistic term, which is untrue. SD can potentially hide 5x per every combat but in maps with frequent enemy encounters (like Umar hill) it's not feasible for generic thief unless one's willing to gulp several potions per combat or micromanage quite a bit and run away for a fair distance before hiding each time (and running away will cost at least one extra round)? And not to mention when rest gets disrupted the items don't recharge and I believe I stand corrected in terms of SD hiding every round :-) So thieves can't hide as frequently as SD unless one carries tens of invisibility potions and rests quite often, provided rests are not disturbed.
The real issue is, why make classes more powerful, like giving more flavour abilities? Do players find mods like Ascension enjoyable because that mod has buffed classes? No, such mods make the game more enjoyable because they make game more challenging. Or maybe players, especially hardcore ones, are in general masochistic ;-)
And I don't believe it is possible to script so that backstabbing would cause secondary effects like paralysis for a few rounds. AFAIK not possible with conventional SPL or EFF editing within IE's capability, unless one is capable of doing really clever scripting by tweaking AI scripts and that's something that's not likely to ship with retail release. Backstabbing mechanism in BG/BG2/TOB IE engines is fairly hardcoded and AFAIK only modification possible is to change backstab modifier via SPL file or backstab.2da :-( But if I'm wrong please correct me.
I disagree about increasing the thief multiplier to x6. The vanilla value respects the PnP value, and it has always been fine. No need to change what doesn't need to be changed.
The assassin backstab multiplier has always been fine too, and I think that losing skillpoints for the ability to poison weapons, get +1 Thaco/+1 damage AND get a higher backstab potential is far enough for that class (It's actually a class that is pretty good even in ToB)
The only change I could see OK, as I stated previously, is maybe increasing the speed at which they are getting they backstab increases... but even that isn't really required and could very well be left untouched (The biggest perk at low levels is the +1 THACO and the poison weapon ability - increasing their backstab multiplier too soon would make them badly imbalanced in Baldur's Gate 1 / 2)
Regarding the Shadow Dancer, I believe what I said previously is more than enough and seems to have a bit of community support, so there's no need to say more
@leeho730 You're forgetting that stealth has a cooldown, so the SD can't technically stab every round. A 5x/6x/7x (sd/thief/assassin) is much better since thieves and assassins can re-stealth easily before mid-BG2 with rings of inivisibility and plentful potions.
Bottom line - other thieves can emulate the shadowdancer with cheap and plentful items, shadowdancer can't compensate his drawbacks (low mult, lack of traps) ever.
You're looking at a Shadow Dancer too much from a backstabbing perspective. You should note that it's pretty much the ONLY thief that can go, attack a wizard, and, right as they are casting their spellls, hide in plain sight to make them waste the spells they just casted.
Sure, there are a lot of ways to have your thieves go invisible, but you can't deny that it's pretty different from a free, at-will ability like the one of the shadow dancer.
Finally, I'd support if a few minor abilities were added to the SD (Like, say, a shadow summon useable once per day and that slightly scales as you level up, or a few illusion spells useable 1/day like say, mirror image... maybe even a Simulacrum at very high level, renamed to "Shadow Double" Edit.: But to be honest, a Shadow Dancer with a x3 multiplier at the end of BGEE / x4 backstab multiplier at level 17 would be more than capable enough as a CHARNAME to be useful to the group.
Finally, I'd support if a few minor abilities were added to the SD (Like, say, a shadow summon useable once per day and that slightly scales as you level up, or a few illusion spells useable 1/day)
But wouldn't that also justify giving other thief classes abilities like slippery mind (can be implemented in similar fashion to elf's resistance to charm/sleep via EFF file) or crippling strike (% chance of lowering 1 point of strength via SPL file),
Finally, I'd support if a few minor abilities were added to the SD (Like, say, a shadow summon useable once per day and that slightly scales as you level up, or a few illusion spells useable 1/day like say, mirror image... maybe even a Simulacrum at very high level, renamed to "Shadow Double" Edit.: But to be honest, a Shadow Dancer with a x3 multiplier at the end of BGEE / x4 backstab multiplier at level 17 would be more than capable enough as a CHARNAME to be useful to the group.
Finally, I'd support if a few minor abilities were added to the SD (Like, say, a shadow summon useable once per day and that slightly scales as you level up, or a few illusion spells useable 1/day)
But wouldn't that also justify giving other thief classes abilities like slippery mind (can be implemented in similar fashion to elf's resistance to charm/sleep via EFF file) or crippling strike (% chance of lowering 1 point of strength via SPL file),
I disagree. This is AD&D... actually, DnD2.5 since some of the 3rd edition prestige classes were somehow implemented as kits. This is not 3rd edition.
Crippling strike could maybe be implemented as an HLA - doubt it would be worth it - but I would disagree about any change to any vanilla base class (Fighter, Thief, Cleric, Wizard) And kits should be roughly as powerful as their base classes, but with a different flavor.
Looking at the different thief classes specifically in how they relate to combat (since it's combat where people are most concerned about the Shadow Dancer).
Unkitted thief has the best skill progression, making them best at fulfilling the Thief's utility roles, and has backstabbing as an opener and traps for additional damage with preparation.
Swashbuckler trades backstabbing for static damage bonuses and dual-wielding for more consistent damage.
Bounty Hunter trades skill progression for more and better traps, retains backstab
Assassin trades a lot of skill progression (which makes it hard to leverage traps or fulfill the thief's utility role) for +1 hit/dam, poison weapon, and better backstabbing.
Shadow Dancer trades skill progression, traps, and a bit of backstab for Hide in Plain Sight. Hide in Plain Sight is very powerful defensively, as it effectively serves as an "aggro dump" and can force spell casters to waste spells that are normally too fast to reliably interrupt (or which may be uninterruptable due to scripting).
So what about HiPS offensively? It essentially gives the Shadow Dancer the potential to backstab every round. Yes, it has a cooldown of ~6 seconds, but in my book, "once every six seconds" is as close to "once every round" as makes no difference. Once you can reliably stealth, it becomes analogous to extra attacks, with the SD delivering three or four attacks worth of damage each round. It doesn't stop there, though, as activated abilities are on a different cooldown than HiPS, and the SD still has access to that bevy of invisibility items that other thieves use to leverage in-combat backstabs. Get an SD an extra attack per round, say via Haste or using a speed weapon, and you can manage two backstabs a round by alternating between HiPS and invis items. Now, there are caveats: some enemies are immune to backstabbing, it takes a lot of skill investment to be able to reliably hide every time in any situation, and the possibility of having to reposition and micromanage to get the backstabs (thereby reducing the efficiency a bit), means this certainly isn't as good as handing the SD a 4 APR; that said, it's a significant enough damage boost to justify the loss of traps and the capped multiplier, in my mind.
(Also, I find myself tempted by the thought of a Shadow Dancer->Fighter dual class. Sure you lose hit points relative to a Fighter and have some catching up to do with THAC0. But opening each round's set of attacks with Grandmastery-fueled backstabs is pretty enticing.)
Yes but cooldown is around 6s and once button gets activated thief can immediately hide unlike scrolls and potions (gulp) which takes a bit of time to activate. In BG/BG2 invisibility potions are in sparse supply (becomes plentiful in TOB) and there are only a few invisibility ring and they're limited to single day per day/rest. Gaxx offers 3x/day improved invisibility but unless the main character is thief it is likely to go to other classes like warrior.
Actually, there are an unlimited number of Rings of Air Elemental Control, all of which have 1/day improved invis.
If one considers HIPS ability of SD overpowered, giving her x4 modifier at level 17 makes sense. If one believes backstab modifier of SD should be one point less than that of thief/BH, giving her x4 at level 13 makes sense.
Comments
Damn.
I do think that capping at x4/x5/x7 by giving the assassin an extra +1 at 17 after everyone else stops at 13 would be appropriate, though.
...It would also stay somewhat true to the Thief Class BackStab structure...
One question I have about the Shadowdancer still is though, will it have access to HLA traps? It wouldn't make sense if it did, but then Bards do so, who knows. It becomes a bigger drawback later in the series to not have even normal traps.
Bounty Hunter/Swashbuckler I think have always been well-implemented. Swashbuckler is a bit niche though.
But you can't deny the power of beeing able to poison your targets.
That, and, past level 9-10, they become very capable thieves, even if they earn less points per level.
Thieves usually cap in their important skills by the time they get to level 15 or so.
Finally, I'm sorry, but I don't think it's a good idea to improve a kit to make it more "dual-able".
Assassin's poison is among the most dangerous things in BG1 during most of the game.
The only thing the vanilla assassin is kinda lacking is >maybe< a slightly faster backstab progression.
Granting them x3 backstab at level 1, or even x4 backstab at level 5 is a bit too fast for my taste.
Yay, poison scaling! I love it. But are the numbers open to tweaking? I personally think the current ones, even though they're the original values, are a bit wonky. I'd like the duration of the poison to stay the same in all cases and just up the damage a little at each stage or make it tick more often, because when you rely on poison as an anti-caster tool a shorter duration is a disadvantage even if the overall damage increases.
Additional thanks to @Dee. It means so much when the Devs hear what the community discusses and even when at first the Devs are not ready to change their plans later they give the solution in the form of this tweaking. It's much appreciated. Personally I've been positevely surprised @Dee made this tweaking after he said nothing would be changed. Great!
Thanks to @Eudaemonium and others who said an Assassin should get the Poison Weapon at the normal levels. I've been playing with the Assassin recently and can say his poison is VERY important in fights with SCS BG1 mages. Personally I see this poison more important ability of the Assassin than his backstabs in BG1 with SCS. Tarnesh, Zordral, Narcillius, Rezdan, Kysus, Davaeorn - all of them were possible for me to kill due to the Poison Weapon of the Assassin. And thanks to @Dee again - he continued to listen to the community.
I didn't visit the forum at the weekend and now I come back and see this level of communication. Wow! It simply has made my day!
Large source of backstab damage comes from weapon enchantments.... Even with +1 to damage bonus Assassin merely gets +7 to backstab damage.
Analysis:
Thief with +5 weapon, x5 modifier - 25 extra damage at level 17
Thief with +5 weapon, x6 modifier - 30 extra damage at level 17
Assassin with +5 weapon, x7 modifier - 42 extra damage at level 17
And this makes Shadowdancer class absurdly powergamey... loses 5 extra damage compared to thief/bounty hunter but gains ability to hide at will... Basically with x5 modifier Shadowdancer can potentially backstab every round (because they don't have to run away to hide and hide action in BG engine almost counts as free action since thief can backstab immediately) which almost equates to 5 attacks per round minus strength bonus. Makes generic thief very weak compared to thief kit classes to the point of being almost redundant and Shadowdancer becomes better backstabber than even Assassin, who's suppossed to be the best backstabbing class (at significant cost of 40% less skill points per level).
Perhaps better solution might be to cap backstab multiplier for shadowdancer to 4, generic thief/bounty hunter to 6, assassin to 8?
Shadowdancer with +5 weapon, x4 modifier - 20 extra damage at level 17
Thief/BH with +5 weapon, x6 modifier - 30 extra damage at level 17
Assassin with +5 weapon, x8 modifier - 48 extra damage at level 17
And this makes differences in backstab damage between classes very similar to vanilla BGEE:
Shadowdancer with +5 weapon, x3 modifier - 15 extra damage at level 9
Thief/BH with +5 weapon, x5 modifier - 25 extra damage at level 17
Assassin with +5 weapon, x7 modifier - 42 extra damage at level 17
EDIT: bugger just found out others suggested pretty much the same on posts above!
Bottom line - other thieves can emulate the shadowdancer with cheap and plentful items, shadowdancer can't compensate his drawbacks (low mult, lack of traps) ever.
Yes but cooldown is around 6s and once button gets activated thief can immediately hide unlike scrolls and potions (gulp) which takes a bit of time to activate. In BG/BG2 invisibility potions are in sparse supply (becomes plentiful in TOB) and there are only a few invisibility ring and they're limited to single day per day/rest. Gaxx offers 3x/day improved invisibility but unless the main character is thief it is likely to go to other classes like warrior.
Yes but once per day, unlike Shadowdancer with unlimited hiding per day, almost like staff of magi with invisibility upon equipping (and Shadowdancer doesn't even have to fight Shandala to get it). Only a few merchants sell Invisibility potions (please refer to Lee's Thief FAQ, for me I bought mainly from the 'witch' at bridge district in BG2) and is rather heavy for thieves who aren't given strength items and thief NPCs typically don't have good strength other than Yoshimo (and well... I won't spoil it). And bag of holding cannot be acquired until later and potions bags are not available until TOB. Not to mention budget is rather tight for the party in the first half of game, especially those who want to buy items from Joluv/Deidre (epsecially Balduran's shield before Underdark and Robe of Vecna) and "special" items in Adventurer's mart later.
Granted, thief stronghold is fairly profittable and one can drink thieving potions and sell/steal/sell at certain merchants to quickly get large amount of money.
You're also plainly wrong about some things (sd hiding every round) but still just keep going at it.
An assassin won't need to hide and hit a target twice, the enemy will be dead in one blow (especially useful against mages). The SD HAS to have HipS because otherwise what is he going to do with the low mult?
For those cases where a thief has to restealth mid-fight, I've listed enough free options, that, although limited, are easy to get.
Meanwhile, what does SD get in terms of damage? Nothing. He is limited to the same weapons like the other thieves.
What can he do about traps? Nothing. He isn't getting them, ever.
I'm ok with SD remaining at 4x @ lvl 17 provided he gets some more flavor abilities, like useful summons or debuffs on backstabs (like stun/sleep).
It would be ok if around lvl 10 he had an ability where for X amounts of rounds he incured Y debuff on every backstab (some form of crowd control like short-term paralysis). This promotes the usage of his HipS ability during combat and he can have an additional steriod ability like the assassin for those hard encounters. He won't hit as hard but he can disable enemies for a short while.
Not many NPCs drop Invisibility potions. Besides you sound like thief can hide as often as SD in realistic term, which is untrue. SD can potentially hide 5x per every combat but in maps with frequent enemy encounters (like Umar hill) it's not feasible for generic thief unless one's willing to gulp several potions per combat or micromanage quite a bit and run away for a fair distance before hiding each time (and running away will cost at least one extra round)? And not to mention when rest gets disrupted the items don't recharge and I believe I stand corrected in terms of SD hiding every round :-) So thieves can't hide as frequently as SD unless one carries tens of invisibility potions and rests quite often, provided rests are not disturbed.
The real issue is, why make classes more powerful, like giving more flavour abilities? Do players find mods like Ascension enjoyable because that mod has buffed classes? No, such mods make the game more enjoyable because they make game more challenging. Or maybe players, especially hardcore ones, are in general masochistic ;-)
And I don't believe it is possible to script so that backstabbing would cause secondary effects like paralysis for a few rounds. AFAIK not possible with conventional SPL or EFF editing within IE's capability, unless one is capable of doing really clever scripting by tweaking AI scripts and that's something that's not likely to ship with retail release. Backstabbing mechanism in BG/BG2/TOB IE engines is fairly hardcoded and AFAIK only modification possible is to change backstab modifier via SPL file or backstab.2da :-(
But if I'm wrong please correct me.
The vanilla value respects the PnP value, and it has always been fine. No need to change what doesn't need to be changed.
The assassin backstab multiplier has always been fine too, and I think that losing skillpoints for the ability to poison weapons, get +1 Thaco/+1 damage AND get a higher backstab potential is far enough for that class (It's actually a class that is pretty good even in ToB)
The only change I could see OK, as I stated previously, is maybe increasing the speed at which they are getting they backstab increases... but even that isn't really required and could very well be left untouched (The biggest perk at low levels is the +1 THACO and the poison weapon ability - increasing their backstab multiplier too soon would make them badly imbalanced in Baldur's Gate 1 / 2)
Regarding the Shadow Dancer, I believe what I said previously is more than enough and seems to have a bit of community support, so there's no need to say more
You should note that it's pretty much the ONLY thief that can go, attack a wizard, and, right as they are casting their spellls, hide in plain sight to make them waste the spells they just casted.
Sure, there are a lot of ways to have your thieves go invisible, but you can't deny that it's pretty different from a free, at-will ability like the one of the shadow dancer.
Finally, I'd support if a few minor abilities were added to the SD (Like, say, a shadow summon useable once per day and that slightly scales as you level up, or a few illusion spells useable 1/day like say, mirror image... maybe even a Simulacrum at very high level, renamed to "Shadow Double"
Edit.: But to be honest, a Shadow Dancer with a x3 multiplier at the end of BGEE / x4 backstab multiplier at level 17 would be more than capable enough as a CHARNAME to be useful to the group.
This is AD&D... actually, DnD2.5 since some of the 3rd edition prestige classes were somehow implemented as kits.
This is not 3rd edition.
Crippling strike could maybe be implemented as an HLA - doubt it would be worth it - but I would disagree about any change to any vanilla base class (Fighter, Thief, Cleric, Wizard)
And kits should be roughly as powerful as their base classes, but with a different flavor.
Unkitted thief has the best skill progression, making them best at fulfilling the Thief's utility roles, and has backstabbing as an opener and traps for additional damage with preparation.
Swashbuckler trades backstabbing for static damage bonuses and dual-wielding for more consistent damage.
Bounty Hunter trades skill progression for more and better traps, retains backstab
Assassin trades a lot of skill progression (which makes it hard to leverage traps or fulfill the thief's utility role) for +1 hit/dam, poison weapon, and better backstabbing.
Shadow Dancer trades skill progression, traps, and a bit of backstab for Hide in Plain Sight. Hide in Plain Sight is very powerful defensively, as it effectively serves as an "aggro dump" and can force spell casters to waste spells that are normally too fast to reliably interrupt (or which may be uninterruptable due to scripting).
So what about HiPS offensively? It essentially gives the Shadow Dancer the potential to backstab every round. Yes, it has a cooldown of ~6 seconds, but in my book, "once every six seconds" is as close to "once every round" as makes no difference. Once you can reliably stealth, it becomes analogous to extra attacks, with the SD delivering three or four attacks worth of damage each round. It doesn't stop there, though, as activated abilities are on a different cooldown than HiPS, and the SD still has access to that bevy of invisibility items that other thieves use to leverage in-combat backstabs. Get an SD an extra attack per round, say via Haste or using a speed weapon, and you can manage two backstabs a round by alternating between HiPS and invis items. Now, there are caveats: some enemies are immune to backstabbing, it takes a lot of skill investment to be able to reliably hide every time in any situation, and the possibility of having to reposition and micromanage to get the backstabs (thereby reducing the efficiency a bit), means this certainly isn't as good as handing the SD a 4 APR; that said, it's a significant enough damage boost to justify the loss of traps and the capped multiplier, in my mind.
(Also, I find myself tempted by the thought of a Shadow Dancer->Fighter dual class. Sure you lose hit points relative to a Fighter and have some catching up to do with THAC0. But opening each round's set of attacks with Grandmastery-fueled backstabs is pretty enticing.)
...Right?
1-8 : x2
9-16 : x3
17+ : x4
Is the best progression to at least start from as far as the SD goes.
If one believes backstab modifier of SD should be one point less than that of thief/BH, giving her x4 at level 13 makes sense.
Maybe one should start a poll...