Thief skill points and dual-classing into specialist kit

pwaring

I'm part-way through playing a fighter/thief (dual-classed, mainly to get the extra HP) and I've got to the stage where I have over 150 points in Hide in Shadows and Move Silently (200+ including rings, armour and boots). I don't have anything else to spend my points on as I already have 100 in Set Traps, Imoen is my find/disarm traps and lockpicker and I don't bother with pickpocketing as most of the characters with decent kit hand it over as a reward (good) or get killed (evil). Can I continue to put points in the same two skills, or does there come a point where there's really no extra benefit? I can hide in plain daylight even with the penalties - in fact the only things which stop me are True Sight and line of sight (if I run round a corner I can disappear before the bad guys catch up).

I've also heard that anything above 255 'wraps round' back to 0 as the values were stored in a byte - has this been fixed in EE? Some forum posts say yes, others suggest not...

Finally, when I came to dual-class I wanted to select the Assassin kit, but it wasn't an option (neither were any of the other kits). I know I can dual class from a thief kit to a fighter, but it doesn't seem that I can go the other way - is that definitely the case?

joluv

That is definitely the case: you can't dual-class into a kit unless you alter the game. And yes, there are diminishing returns for the stealth skills. Why don't you put some points into Detect Illusion? It's a very useful skill in BG2.

Arunsun

Try to have 100 in everything, about 120 in HiS and MS, put the rest in pickpocket (some characters require 180 to be pickpocketed with decent succes rate, Renal Bloodscalp comes to mind)
These are the only three thief skills that benefit from having higher than 100 in the said skill.

And one cannot dual into a kit. You may dual from a kit to an unkitted class, but the other way is not possible.

pwaring

Is there any point to pickpocketing? I already have some stupidly powerful magic items and there's only many that a character can be equipped with.

Tresset

Well, you can kinda hack your character to be dualed into a kit, but you need to use EEKeeper and it usually doesn't work completely flawlessly. It often depends on what you are trying to do. You can only have one kit active on a character because there is only room for one kit entry on a character file.

I personally made a Berserker->Shadowdancer character in an 'unmodded' game, but I had several issues ranging from too many thief skill points to too high of a backstab multiplier. I actually had to create a custom spell that I could cast on my character to permanently lower her backstab multiplier by 1. I also turned Imoen from a thief/mage into a thief/conjurer. The spell restrictions seemed to work fine but the bonus spell slots did not work at all so I had to make another custom spell to give those to her.

As for the wraparound thing... That was a bug that has since been fixed. No need to worry about that anymore.

Yannir

What point in the game are you? I personally pickpocket every 9th level spell from Lazarus Librarus at the start of ToB. He requires 150 or so points from your pickpocketer but that's doable with gear and potions. I only ever use pickpocketing at 2 points in the game, the other one being the dude in Gaelan Bayle's upstairs bedroom..

pwaring

I'm in the Underdark at the moment. I don't see much point in pickpocketing in ToB because by the time I've got to that point I've got so much spare cash (plus the discount from 20 reputation and 21 charisma) that it's hardly worth stealing from a storekeeper.

Lord_Tansheron

Is there anything ACTUALLY worth pickpocketing? Like, there's some minorly useful stuff like Ring of Regen and the Efreeti Bottle but those aren't exactly breathtaking.