What's your prefered build for a mage with find traps?
Moonheart
Member Posts: 520
I've found among many reading that mages with find traps is one of the most common source of mult/dual class usage.
Probably because there is almost nothing a mage with a bit of thievery skills can't handle.
But I wonder... what is the funniest option to give find traps to a mage?
- mage/thief
- fighter/mage/thief
- thief => mage
- assassin => mage
- shadowdancer => thief
- bounty hunter => thief
- swashbuckler => thief
Probably because there is almost nothing a mage with a bit of thievery skills can't handle.
But I wonder... what is the funniest option to give find traps to a mage?
- mage/thief
- fighter/mage/thief
- thief => mage
- assassin => mage
- shadowdancer => thief
- bounty hunter => thief
- swashbuckler => thief
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Comments
The advantage of a Mage/Thief is that they still get enough skill points to do practically everything a Thief can do, but can also serve as a secondary spellcaster. In a few cases, they can exploit synergies between caster-only arcane spells and thieving abilities (such as Mislead cheese with a high backstab multiplier).
If you want a Thief who can disarm traps, open locks, set traps, detect illusions, and maybe even pick pockets or hide effectively, you can get that with a Mage/Thief. If all you want out of your thief is trap removal, then the dual-class is sufficient.
Detect illusion is less efficient than True sight
Hide is less reliable than Invisibility
Open lock is easily replaced by Knock
I still don't really see if there is anything a mage/thief will do better than a thief 13 => mage, save being simplier to level at mid-levels
To cast True Sight you have to memorise it (conflicts with the amazing level 6 spells like PfMW, Mislead and Improved Haste) and then have it available when you need it (i.e. you can't already have used it). You then potentially have to get round SI Divination (not a big issue in vanilla but matters massively with SCS).
Detect Illusions is available all the time, doesn't require you to use a spell slot, cannot be disrupted, takes a maximum of 6 seconds to work (usually much faster) and cannot be blocked by anything.
For a multi or high level dual, investing in Detect Illusions is massively worth it.
A thief 13 => mage has 340 skill points. It can probably have pickpockets, find traps and detect illusion to 110
You don't need anything more than 100 in Find Traps, Set Traps, Open Locks and Detect Illusions. Additional points in these skills are worthless. You also get "free" points in some skills (your starting skill is greater than 0), as well as DEX bonuses and racial bonuses for multiclass.
For a dual at 7, you can really only have 2 skills maxed, so you have to choose between Open Locks, Stealth and Detect Illusions (Set Traps has little value for 2 low damage traps). For a dual at 13 you can more-or-less max out 4 skills, so there's really no reason why Detect Illusions should not be one of them. A multiclass can do everything (eventually) so you just have to choose priorities.
Thief skills are mostly useless for a mage:
- Detect Illusion: well, ok, it's not limited nor need preparation, keep it
- Hide/MS: you need almots 400 skill points to do what a simple invisibility spell do
- Pickpocket: You just don't need it at all
- Set Trap: Low damage traps are not worth 100 skill points
- Find Trap: the only worth skill
That's 2 skill uselful for a mage, which only requiers a total of 200 skill points (or less, due to starting score and dex bonus). You can have that with a thief level 7
You can push the thief level up to 13 if you really want the x5 backstab modifier, and you will still have a lot more of spells and casting power by the end of the game than a mage/thief, for the same utility.
Futhermore, you could use a kit and get additionnal advantages.
As for the Thief 13 -> Mage, if the reason to dual class in the first place (and forgo playing a Sorcerer or a specialist) is so that you don't have to take a dedicated thief to deal with traps, you've just defeated that purpose. Because I doubt you're going to find 1.5 million XP worth of trap-free questing to do while you wait for your thief skills to come back, even if you kick everyone out of the party for a mass scribing session. Which means you'll have to carry another thief along for at least part of that period until you get your skills back. That's one of the reasons why people rarely dual-class their thieves past level 10 despite how close to x5 backstab you are. After level 11 Mage their experience rate goes linear, and there's a huge difference between 375k and 1.5 million XP to get your original class back.
And @Gotural is right... Spike Traps and UAI are more than enough reason to want a Thief that continues to level throughout the game.
Or, more specifically, Illusionist/Thief, because Gnomes are almighty, but since it's long, I'll just be saying M/T and remember that I'm referring to the badass short version.
- A Mage/Thief has no downtime when it is not a thief. They will always be progressing towards maximum thief THAC0, and always have spells. By the time a Thief 13 is ready to dual, the M/T is a 10/11 with level 5 spells, by the time the Thief 13 completes their dual at 2.16e6 the M/T is 40,000 Exp off from being 13/15, didn't spend 1.5e6 Exp not being the character you wanted them to be, and has level 7 spells before the SoA cap, which is where they can start using Project Image the way it should be used - to abuse the limitless quantity of spells and snares it offers.
- A Mage/Thief has enough points to serve as a full party thief, handling all thieving needs.
* A good pickpocket score can score early equipment that cannot otherwise be acquired until much later, such as Ribald's Chapter 2 ring o' regeneration, and can get literally hundreds of thousands of gold's worth of gear both long before it can be acquired legally at zero risk. And no, that's not cheap, it's a core game mechanic being used the way it's intended.
* Detect Illusions bypasses Spell Immunity, works passively, and can be used while fighting or casting other spells without interrupting casting, and it destroys every type of illusion for free, from Simulacrum to Mirror Images.
* Stealth skills both save spell slots and are useful because Non-detection stops stealth, but not invisibility, from being broken by true sight, and cannot be dispelled by any other means either.
* Set Snare is one of the strongest abilities in the game. 7D8+7 damage x 7, ignores MR and ignores most forms of damage resistance, and can be set up ahead of time in multiples of seven, with the best trap being a save or die. They are completely party friendly, are very easy to set up to cast during combat if you're good at LOS management or tactics, and you get so many of them they're basically free. Open with a Greater Malaison on a hard target, then let them walk into 21D8+175 damage and have to make seven saves or die.
* Open Lock and Find Traps are less useful, because traps aren't particularly dangerous to a mage, but free Exp is free Exp, so who cares?
- For pure shenanigans cast blind on yourself (you might even fail it sometime because of the save penalty), then boom, you can set snares and hide whenever, because it's based on character LoS, not the other way around, and your character can't see squat.
- As a specialist they have more lower level spell slots and gives -2 save penalties to illusion spells, such as Spook and Deafness, the -6 (before the illusionist boost) save penalty crowd control spell and the 50% spell failure chance spell that's "permanent until dispelled" but nobody pays much attention to because they're too busy casting magic missile at the darkness.
- An M/T does not have to be human. Being human is a penalty compared to being a gnome, specifically a -7 save penalty to Spells and Wands, and save vs. spell is absurdly common.
- An M/T has access to the best HLA pool in the game, and the M/T gets 19 HLAs. Assassination + UAI + Dragon Breath + IA + Summon Planetar + Extra Spell x3 leaves 11 slots for HLA traps. Time Traps are half-length time stops, can be layered on top of one another, and can be manually triggered by enraging a summon. Ten Time Traps is effectively five level 9 spells on top of the three they get normally, and they're just as easy to drop from around a corner since they have no cast time. You can get the MR ignoring 20D6 or 10D6 explosion ones if you like, since you have so many HLAs, or cut down to get a few more level 10 spells if you want, I'm generally pretty underwhelmed myself.
- UAI is just too damn fun. Wield carsomyr? Sure, why not. Dual purifier and Hinjo's Doom for 40% stacking MR while you cast? Awesome. Grab those paladin only gloves of healing and resurrection? Okay. You want helmets? Go for it. Free simulacrum is free simulacrum. Peppered by arrows? Shield of reflection, you're now immune to ranged attacks, resume casting. Want to fight in melee for a laugh? It's dangerous to go alone, take Crom Faeyr, the strength bonus will more than offset non-proficiency penalties, and your final THAC0 is 3 better than a dual can achieve anyway, so knock yourself out, I ran a perfectly successful Mage/Thief handling tanking and melee through ToB.
Dispel Magic? Who cares? You have Breach and SI: Abjuration, you can't be dispelled, you can pierce anything that actually matters.
Caster Level? Who cares? You have plenty of caster levels and they're not a significant change to the best spells anyway, plus you max out caster level at 20 anyway.
Earlier level 8 and 9 spells are good, but they're not necessary to be a perfectly viable primary arcane caster, even in ToB. Especially backed up by the additional goodies that thief skills and HLAs give.
Funnest, sometimes funniest, and generally one of the most optimal characters in Baldur's Gate 2: Gnome Mage/Thief.
Or, y'know, if you need find traps you could be a gnome Cleric/Mage, since Find Traps is a level 2 cleric spell.
Pickpocketing does not work as an intended game mechanic, it is completely and utterly stupid. Unless your idea of an intended mechanic is to stack multiple potions of master thievery, use metagame knowledge to know who has what (such as Ribald's ring), sell and re-steal the same loot over and over again with a fence, and on the rare again that you actually get caught stealing and a critical NPC becomes hostile, you just reload.
Hell, with an intended game mechanic like that, just save the bother and go CreateItem("KILLSW01").
Interesting use of pickpocket is usely related to stealing quest items such has key, or secret documents, as a possible way to solve a problem.
In BG2, there is no such thing. So pickpocket is only a way to get what you would gain neverless later without it.
And then go to the stores which specifically have a "steal from this store" option, drink "one" potion of master thievery and cast DUHM to have a tiny chance of failure from anywhere except possibly the Copper Coronet, while continuing to increase your score above 100 to allow you to rob any joint with literally no sense of failure?
If it wasn't an intended game mechanic to steal from stores, then stores wouldn't have a steal option.
If it wasn't an intended game mechanic to steal the property of NPCs you don't want to murder first, then there wouldn't have been a Pick Pockets skill in the first place.
Your argument of fence abuse and the fact that Potions of Master Thievery stacks with itself has no weight. Sure, fences should not allow theft, that's stupid, and sure, Potions of Genius and the like should not stack with themselves, but those are hardly problems with pick pockets itself.
And save scumming as an argument? Really? You can Finger of Death over and over against Firkraag until it sticks, so I guess that means that it's finger of death that's the problem, right?
There are not enough Agrees in all of the forums for this, but thankfully EE Keeper exists for precisely the purpose of changing Gnome paper dolls into Elven Thief paper dolls.
Nalia's questline has one - The Roenall documents can be stolen.
The Thieves Guild questline has one - Edwin's secret documents can and should be stolen.
The kidnappers questline has one - Steal the Pantaloons. Always steal the pantaloons.
The halfling ghost questline has one - Steal the bear, bypass a confrontation.
I remember there being more, most definitely including liberating a key off someone, but yeah, that's four off the top of my head. You also used to be able to steal the tear of Bhaal from the Selfishness Demon, allowing you to bypass the whole thing and still get the Good outcome without sacrificing 1 Dexterity, but EE changed it so that even though you can still steal the tear you can't leave until you're forced into one route or the other.
With such a comment @Moonheart you remind us that Selune, the moon maiden, cannot cast her own light, only reflect the light from the sun. In darkness she is as black as her sister Shar. Your heart then must surely be black if you cannot see the beauty inherent in each gnome. The most inventive of races, yet the most peaceful and loving.
Intelligent and wise (because the game places three tomes of wisdom within it to make up for any short comings...) Shorty saves and extra spell slots make gnomes the easy choice for power gamers.
...
You sir, are gnomophobic!