Thieves with the BG2 stealth, detect illusion, and set trap skills in IWD
BelgarathMTH
Member Posts: 5,653
Hi, friends, I haven't seen this issue brought up here before.
The conventional IWD wisdom is that one should never play a straight thief, and should always be a multi-class fighter-thief or thief-mage, because a straight thief in IWD will max all thief skills relatively early in the game, and then have no way to grow more powerful in the late game.
But, a thing that I just realized that I have not seen discussed here, is the fact that in IWD:EE, there will now be BG2 rules for thieves.
That means, first of all, that the stealth action is going to be split into a combined hide-in-shadows and move-silently skill for its effectiveness. While a thief in the original IWD would have only needed to spend skill points to bring the stealth action to 100 in order to guarantee stealth-at-will, an IWD:EE thief will have to spend double that amount of skill points to achieve the same stealth ability.
Also, there will now be the possibility to build detect-illusions skill. I've never paid that much attention in IWD to illusion-busting, because it was never that important before. But, will it be important now? Could late game enemy mages have BG2 illusion magic devastation to bear in IWD:EE?
And now, IWD:EE thieves will also have the option to build set traps skill, as well.
If Beamdog uses the new BG2 rules to bring IWD mages to a BG2 level of danger, then, it might now be the case that a good IWD party would want a dedicated thief - one, for the new double points necessary for reliable stealth, and two, for both detect illusion and set traps.
I'm kind of surprised that no one else has brought this issue up before.
The conventional IWD wisdom is that one should never play a straight thief, and should always be a multi-class fighter-thief or thief-mage, because a straight thief in IWD will max all thief skills relatively early in the game, and then have no way to grow more powerful in the late game.
But, a thing that I just realized that I have not seen discussed here, is the fact that in IWD:EE, there will now be BG2 rules for thieves.
That means, first of all, that the stealth action is going to be split into a combined hide-in-shadows and move-silently skill for its effectiveness. While a thief in the original IWD would have only needed to spend skill points to bring the stealth action to 100 in order to guarantee stealth-at-will, an IWD:EE thief will have to spend double that amount of skill points to achieve the same stealth ability.
Also, there will now be the possibility to build detect-illusions skill. I've never paid that much attention in IWD to illusion-busting, because it was never that important before. But, will it be important now? Could late game enemy mages have BG2 illusion magic devastation to bear in IWD:EE?
And now, IWD:EE thieves will also have the option to build set traps skill, as well.
If Beamdog uses the new BG2 rules to bring IWD mages to a BG2 level of danger, then, it might now be the case that a good IWD party would want a dedicated thief - one, for the new double points necessary for reliable stealth, and two, for both detect illusion and set traps.
I'm kind of surprised that no one else has brought this issue up before.
6
Comments
Detect illusion could be a good thing, but there are other skills that could do the same and better even.
The only reason i could see someone pick a pure thief would be because of the kits. And if we look at BG people advice you against playing a pure class thief, so i don't see how this would change in IWD, an even more combat oriented game.
I would like to see a pure thief in IWD, i'm just not going to keep my hopes up.
Personally, I'm planning on running a bounty hunter. I think it'll be really good under the new rules. I'm not sure I'd be as excited to run an unkitted thief, but I am looking forward to that bounty hunter.
Mage/thieves and cleric/thieves, with their various invisibility options, won't be impacted much by the new stealth changes. Fighter/thieves might face some more difficult choices in point allocation, but they would presumably have access to the invisibility spells of allied mages and the handy invisibility potions.
Detect Illusion is one of those skills that rarely seems to figure in to thief creation. Many players never use it at all even in BG2 despite the fact it's actually quite useful against a variety of mage protection spells.
And trap setting, as Sion mentioned above, is a skill which is either central to a character concept or largely ignored.
One thing the changes will probably mean is that any items which boost thief skills will be in even more demand. Hopefully Beamdog will drop in a few new goodies to find along the way!
Detect Illusion would be useful for getting rid of a few Mirror Images, but is far from a game changer. Worth having, but not worth building to have.
Traps are likely to be powerful to the point of cheese, making Bounty Hunters awesome for players who like that style of play.
The IWD sneak attack is effectively a nerf to Shadowdancers, since you can't use it on the same target more than once. However, you can switch to BG style backstabs in the game settings, which makes Shadowdancers a lot better.
In normal play (i.e. 6 man party, non-HoF), Assassins will never reach a high enough level to take advantage if their increased backstab multiplier. The +1 hit/damage and Poison are still nice to have, but are best when combined with the increased APR gained when duel classed to Fighter (or Mage).
You also will never get the Use Any Item HLA through normal play, even if HLAs are included.
In conclusion, when Fighter/Thieves and Bounty Hunters are so awesome, there won't be much incentive to choose anything else in IWD.
Or if they do include HLA then they should make new ones for IWD and not use the old ones from BG2.
I certainly don't think it's worth putting effort into redoing them.
SoA has harder enemies than IWD
ToB has harder enemies than SoA
HLA were balanced with ToB in mind
They should not be included in IWD unless they give us some new HLA that are toned down.
HoF increases the damage and health of monsters, this doesn't make it harder.
Even a small amount of points in HiS/MS will eventually work - you just have to try hiding again and again. In the party you'll have mages with Invisibility spells to cover it as well.
Again, in the party you'll have mages so the Detect Illusion skill is not a necessity: you can use divine and arcane "Detect Illusions" and "True Seeing" spells.
Locks can be opened with the Knock spell and/or high STR of your fighter or a cleric with DUHM. Or you can even live without not opening some containers at all.
This leaves "Disarm Traps" and "Set Traps" as the only 2 skills you can really develop to the fullest in the party. And as a multiclass thief you'll have enough points fot it.
Yeah, I know some people like to scout, but there are lots of other options for that, and a thief under invisibility (or a cleric or monk) can detect traps whilst scouting, when a hidden thief can't.
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/comment/542662/#Comment_542662
so that it has the most accurate information about the game as possible. Anyways, the thief skill thing is publicly revealed information about the game, that I know. I'll just have to check to see who posted about it
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/comment/543913/#Comment_543913