BG2:EE - Please add a real thief

shadowstriker85

Would like to have a more permanent thief character added for BG2:EE. Neither Imoen nor Nalia are good enough for ToB, Jan can be quite tiresome after too many play throughs, and Yoshimo catches a bad case of death. At times I almost feel required to play a thief myself if I don't feel like having Jan in my party.

charname

Don't get me wrong, I really loved all the new characters. Adding a wild mage is a great idea. I always wanted to try that class but didn't have the courage to do so. Half-orc and a monk is also great additions. But what i really wanted was an evil thief npc. In BG2 that is just what an evil party lacks. You got the best fighter(korgan), best cleric (viconia) and best mage(edwin) but not any thief. This makes me want to play a thief whenever i want an evil character. Although there is no greater joy than playing as an evil assassin and then becoming the god of murder but still...

ElectricMonk

I completely agree that it would have been wise for one of the new NPCs to be an evil thief. Though I generally don't play evil characters, it really is a deficit that there isn't an evil thief choice for the BG games. Baldur's Gate really requires (or at least strongly encourages) the need for a thief in the party, and I really dislike the idea of those playing as evil alignments feeling forced into playing as a thief (or some thief combination) themselves. The fact that a lot of the best NPCs are evil doesn't really make up for this. Perhaps if enough support is shown for this idea, Overhaul will include a thief in BG2:EE, or possibly even add one starting in BG:EE as DLC...

Syntia13

I agree that BG2 needs an evil thief, but BG2:EE is still far away, and it's quite possible they will add more NPCs to it, seeing as it has less original NPCs than BG1.

In BG1 though, there already IS an evil thief, available right away. Montaron the halfling, Xzar's better half. (BTW, does enyone knows what was up with those two? Each one would celebrate if the other died, and yet you couldn't separate them in life. Were they sworn to spy on each other by some unknown powers, did they somehow got cursed and chained together with invisible manacles, or what? Fanficcers, I demand a fanfic that explain this all! ;D )
And I'm not sure, but I think Tiax was half-thief as well. Give me a sec... *googles it*. Yep, he is.
So there you have it, warrior/thief and cleric/thief of evil persuasion, for your gaming pleasure. :P

Cheesebelly

Agreed. It tends to be a straight forward thing when you have to decide a class. It's like the game telling you : "either play a thief or you'll get trashed around by traps!", which is not preferable :P

Linkamus

Would be awesome to be able to find a swashbuckler that was neutral.

Space_hamster

What about Jan? With his Gnomish abilities, plus his 'inventions', he becomes a powerful thief and backstabber with the right equipment.

Linkamus

That's the complaint, is that Jan is the only viable option, and he can be very long winded (which isn't bad, but after a few play-throughs it can get exhausting)

LadyRhian

@shadowstriker They may have taken care of this with the new monk character. Monks get most thief abilities as a thief of one level lower than they are. In 1e, anyway. Time will tell when the BGEE comes out.

Space_hamster

Learn the knock spell and you don't even need a thief.

Winthal

LadyRhian said:

@shadowstriker They may have taken care of this with the new monk character. Monks get most thief abilities as a thief of one level lower than they are. In 1e, anyway. Time will tell when the BGEE comes out.

@LadyRhian In BG monks only get detect traps unfortunately, nothing else. They can't even disarm traps

Tanthalas

Winthal said:

LadyRhian said:

@shadowstriker They may have taken care of this with the new monk character. Monks get most thief abilities as a thief of one level lower than they are. In 1e, anyway. Time will tell when the BGEE comes out.

@LadyRhian In BG monks only get detect traps unfortunately, nothing else. They can't even disarm traps

And Khalid also catches a bad case of death so he's not available to disarm them.

Space_hamster

summon monsters to bait traps.

FrozenDervish

A dwarven assassin would be cool, a human swashbuckler, or a human thief would be nice.

MilesBeyond

Tanthalas said:

And Khalid also catches a bad case of death so he's not available to disarm them.

...Almost didn't catch that one, LOL.


I agree with the OP, though. Especially in evil parties, where it seems like a thief of some sort is the logical choice (BG2 evil NPCs are: The absolute best fighter, the absolute best mage, and the probably best cleric), but if you're a thief, you can't take the evil(er) path in Chapter 3!

LadyRhian

@Winthal @Tanthalas- Well, that's no fun! I'd like to see a scout-y type as well, then.

Tanthalas

@LadyRhian

Honestly, I never understood the point of Monks being able to detect traps and not disarm them. Same with the spell Detect Traps.

"Yay I can see that that chest is trapped but since I don't have a Thief I'm going to trigger it anyway to get the stuff inside!"

or much worse:

"Yay, I can see that trap on the ground, but since I don't have a Thief and I'm forced to go that way anyway I'll just have to trigger it!"

The Monk/Divine Spell trapfinding is only useful in very specific and uncommon situations.

FrozenDervish

Aerie becomes the best mage and cleric due to her multiclass. Best npc fighter is undebatable, and best single class cleric is also debatable as Anomen while grating has bonuses Viccy does not such as higher hp, more APR, able to wield fighter weaponry along with his cleric stuff, and has a decent base strength and dex.

LadyRhian

@Tanthalas "Yep, it's trapped. Now what?""

MilesBeyond

FrozenDervish said:

Aerie becomes the best mage and cleric due to her multiclass. Best npc fighter is undebatable, and best single class cleric is also debatable as Anomen while grating has bonuses Viccy does not such as higher hp, more APR, able to wield fighter weaponry along with his cleric stuff, and has a decent base strength and dex.

You're going to have to play for a looooong time before Aerie even comes close to surpassing Edwin. As in, I don't think it's possible without removing the XP cap. Edwin gets 4 level 9 spells as soon as he hits lvl 18! Not even the PC can match that! The dude is just insane.

Best fighter is far and away Korgan. Absolutely no mercy. Tons of hitting power, tons of HP, massive saving throws, and the Enrage ability for when they fail. He is unbeatable. His closest competitor is probably The Big S, with maybe either Keldorn or Mazzy taking third. But even with Carsomyr +6, I would not put my money on Keldorn if he were fighting Korgan. No chance. When I played an evil game I had Korgan solo Firkraag at level 10, no problem whatsoever. Never seen another NPC do that in a straightforward fight, no cheese, no preparation. And the combination of awesome saving throws and Enrage means even towards the end of TOB he can still hold his own against mages.

I guess the problem is Korgan more or less works alone, while some of Keldorn's abilities also benefit the whole party. Also, good luck keeping some characters in the same party as the surly dwarf.

I'll give you that Anomen can give Viccy a run for her money. As far as pure divine magic, goes, Viccy is the better choice with a higher WIS, but Anomen's got those nice Fighter levels in there. Still, though, with Korgan at the front, who needs a backup fighter?

FrozenDervish

9th level spells aren't the best at all times as quite a few bosses are immune to timestop, but aerie will have access to sequencer and contingincies with her cleric spells which short her on the mage side but she makes up with by having a cleric side allowing her to fight with buffs, heal, resurrect the dead, blade barrier, implosion, then most low level wizard spells are just as good as the higher ones such as the all powerful breach, and stoneskins. Not to mention aerie will recieve both wizard and cleric hla abilities.

This is all not including how easy it is to rest that if you even go through even a portion of your spells which in all honesty you shouldn't really need to as the amount of spells the base class recieves are ridiculous.

Winthal

Tanthalas said:

@LadyRhian

Honestly, I never understood the point of Monks being able to detect traps and not disarm them. Same with the spell Detect Traps.

"Yay I can see that that chest is trapped but since I don't have a Thief I'm going to trigger it anyway to get the stuff inside!"

or much worse:

"Yay, I can see that trap on the ground, but since I don't have a Thief and I'm forced to go that way anyway I'll just have to trigger it!"

The Monk/Divine Spell trapfinding is only useful in very specific and uncommon situations.

@Tanthalas Same goes for the ranger, he can detect but not disarm. I think they were going for something like Rangers and Monks being perceptive enough to spot them, as in they have a kind of trap awareness, but they lack the skills to disarm traps because they don't know how they are built - since rogues can place traps (and presumably make them), they know exactly what wire to cut or where the pressure plates are etc.

Moomintroll

It's always frustrated me that, bards decided to pick pockets rather then locks.

Corvino

Utterly agreed on the need for a new thief NPC for BG2. Pure class would be nice but I wouldn't see a problem with them being a fighter-thief dual or multi either, there are plenty of thief-mages but naught else.

Drugar

I've been (semi-) working on a mod that adds an evil assassin to BG with the option of dualling to a fighter whenever you feel like it. Writing dialogue and such isn't the problem, but I suck at coding and don't have a lot of time so don't hold your breath. I wouldn't mind Overhaul adding one though, the game does really need it.

oldsch00l

Tanthalas said:

@LadyRhian

Honestly, I never understood the point of Monks being able to detect traps and not disarm them. Same with the spell Detect Traps.

"Yay I can see that that chest is trapped but since I don't have a Thief I'm going to trigger it anyway to get the stuff inside!"

or much worse:

"Yay, I can see that trap on the ground, but since I don't have a Thief and I'm forced to go that way anyway I'll just have to trigger it!"

The Monk/Divine Spell trapfinding is only useful in very specific and uncommon situations.

It makes total nonsense in BG but I think it comes from P&P where you always have to have one kind of thief. Problem is the thief can miss his detection and consequences can be deadly. Hence the extra detection of the priest. Ok he cannot do it but he can tell the thief where to look to disarm it. Happened more than once in my D&D career (played lots of priest ;-) )

LadyRhian

@Tanthalas I want to know what sourcebook they are taking this Monk from. I looked up the original AD&D 1e monk, the Oriental Adventures Monk (pretty much the same in both places) and the 2e Kit for the Priest of Warrior Monk, and none of them is like this new character being presented in BGEE.

Tanthalas

@LadyRhian

I think that when Bioware originally developed BG2, they just scavenged the Monk kit from the 3E Monk.

LadyRhian

@Tanthalas. 3e wasn't released until 2000, and BG came out in 1998. Unless you mean BeamDog is scavenging it now.

Tanthalas

@LadyRhian

No, Beamdog is getting the Monk directly from the BG2/ToB engine. Remember that BGEE will include all the classes and kits from BG2.

LadyRhian

@Tanthalas Ah, nevermind then. I never played a Monk and forgot the class was in the game. :P