On thief skills, and want of an opinion

odessa333

Hey all!

Not sure if this is the right place, but here goes.

I'm playing around with BG1 (TotSC, strait GoG, no BG2, tutu or mods) and was wondering about my thief skills; I mean, I hear they can go up to 255 or something in BG2 for example, but high high do you really need? Right now, I have 'two' thieves in my good aligned party, Coran and Imoen (Imoen is dual classed, and is lacking her thief skills right now). I'm about to head into Baldur's gate in chapter 5, and Coran is a level 6/6 Fighter/thief, where Imoen is a level 6 conjurer (she dualed at 6, so she could get her thief skills back next level). Coran right now has skills of: find traps 20%, stealth 148% (with boots/armor of stealth), open locks 80%, and pick pockets 60%. (I don't remember Imoen's skills 100%, but she had something like 80% find traps, and 20-40% in the other three, I think).

So far, Coran has yet to run into a person he can't pick pocket (with perhaps a reload or two) or a lock he can't pick. Sure, he can't find traps, but I hope to Have Imoen back for that before say, Durlag's tower. So it makes me wonder; what should I develop on him for his future levels? Are there locks that need over 80% to work? Does stealth really need more points for a primary archer? Who can't i pick pocket at this point? Etc, etc. I keep debating it, and not come to a clear conclusion yet. Any thoughts?


About Imoen; i'm worried going into Baldur's gate without someone to detect traps. Still, I've done everything there is to do outside Baldur's gate, except the TotSC stuff (Ulgoth's beard and Durlag's tower). From what I remember, trap detection is even more crucial there lol. Still, the rewards are greater in the expansion areas, at least experience wise, and I'm tempted to go there for the exp and....well, Baldur's gate is huge and it scares me lol.

Any tips/thoughts/opinions welcome!

HaHaCharade

I put all my points equally distributed into pick locks / find traps. If you would get both to 100, then start dumping them all in Hiding. Unless you refuse to reload, Pick Pockets is pretty pointless... but if you don't like playing that way you might want to invest there.

sandmanCCL

Generally speaking, 80ish is about the highest you'll need. If you REALLY need more, potions of master thievery will get you the rest of the way.

The only skill that truly benefits from going beyond 100 is Stealth. You have like a -40 penalty for trying to stealth in the daytime IIRC so going above 100 will help you stealth more reliably when the sun is up.

CaptRory

That said, there are ways of being all stealthy before spending a bunch of points. There are pieces of equipment that boost stealth and you can always cast invisibility, so it might be one of the later rogue skills you invest heavily in, especially if you have someone else on your team that only puts points into stealth.

ARKdeEREH

I strongly recommend having someone with the detect traps ability with you before attempting Durlag's Tower. I imported my BG2 party into Tutu once and went to Durlag's Tower without thieves. They suffered enormous amounts of damage and only survived (with a few reloads) because they had more health than anyone could possibly have in BG1. There are numerous places where BG1 characters just wouldn't be able to get through without the ability to disable the traps.

sarevok57

for bg1 the you need 100 % detect traps for durlags tower, and for open locks you only need 90% there is no lock in the game higher ( or that requires higher) plus you can use the level 2 mage spell knock to open any locked chest that you cant unlock

kamuizin

Remember that dexterity will give you bonus for some thief skills.

100% detect trap.
100% (or 90% as some people says) for pick locks.

Those 2 are what you need, the rest is optional.

Hide in shadows and move silently, don't go for more than 70% in both, no use for it, dex will give you bonus for those skills, there's the boot's of stealth and the shadow armor (i'm not sure) in the game that give you bonus for those skills and a tome of dexterity that will raise your dexterity in one point permanently.

As you're starting to play the game now, i discourage any use of detect illusions, let it for further plays, when you know the mechanic of the game better.

Only pick set trap if you have 2 thiefs in your party and each specialise in something specific.

I never confirmed this, but apparently there are some bonus and penalities to hide in shadows during the day and near too much non joinable NPCs for example.

About pickpocket, with 100 you probally will be able to pick most of the pockets (maybe you get some fails with Shandalar in Ulgoth's Beard), but the true use of this skill will come in BG II, where you will have more shops to steal. Each shop in the game, BG or BG II, have a steal penality that will be applied on your pickpocket points, some shops have 90 points of penality for example, but don't worry, master thief potions exist exactly for this.

I can't confirm this but i'm pretty sure that steal penalities are raised if your reputation is too much low (2 or 3 for example).

Quartz

@kamuizin -

The OP said

odessa333 said:

I'm playing around with BG1 (TotSC, strait GoG, no BG2, tutu or mods)

There is no need to bring up Move Silently, Detect Illusion.

Also yeah. Anything but a Fighter/Thief should stick to 50% Hide in Shadows because Boots of Stealth = +35% and Shadow Armor = +15%. The reason I say Fighter/Thieves may wish to go higher is because a Fighter/Thief + Drizzt's Armor goes together like milk and cookies.

TJ_Hooker

Well there is an advantage to getting stealth higher than 100%, because there are hidden penalties. The 2 that I know of are a penalty when hiding outside in daylight and thieving skill penalties from wearing armour. I can't find the penalties for wearing armour in BG so maybe it wasn't implented, but for BG2 wearing studded leather armour gives you a -20% to move silently and hide in shadows. Which makes me wonder about Shadow armour, which gives +15% to HIS. Is this bonus cumulative with the penalty, giving a net modifier of -5% to HIS, or does it negate the penalty completely and give and additional +15% on top of that?

ryuken87

Leather / studded leather penalties are not implemented, the manual is wrong.

kamuizin

those stats aren't visible only.

TJ_Hooker

ryuken87 said:

Leather / studded leather penalties are not implemented, the manual is wrong.

Really? Not even in BGII? Huh, I honestly don't know why I'm even surprised, seeing how many errors there are in the official documentation. Hell, in the same table I got those numbers from they list the skills Detect Noise, Climb Walls, and Read Languages.

I am curious though, where did you get that info from?

ryuken87

From values displayed in the game. This is from the BG2 engine as I haven't played vanilla BG1 in about 8 years.

Kirkor

I have question about BG2 thief
- How high should be "set traps" skill, to succes in making any trap?
- I never used "Detect Illusion" skill, to be honest. Is it any good? Does it really help you? And how high it should be, to be good?
- How high should be other skills, to be 100% effective? (I don't care about pick pockets)
- And last, but not least - what the hell is the difference in mechanics between Move Silently and Hide in Shadows?

Wikkid_Suhn

Kirkor said:

- And last, but not least - what the hell is the difference in mechanics between Move Silently and Hide in Shadows?

Something I would like clarification on as well. Just from their names I take it that you need Hide in Shadows to get into stealth mode, and then you need Move Silently to stay in stealth mode as you creep around.

If this were the case, though, why do rangers only need the Stealth attribute? Seems like a freebie to me.

ryuken87

- Set traps should be 100. If you want to also set traps with Simulacrum then 167, that's a bit of a waste though.
- Detect Illusion is really good, it effectively strips all illusions at will. Again 100.
- Locks and disarm traps again at 100 each.
- Not that you care about it but Bernard is the hardest store to steal from requiring 225 in pickpockets IIRC.

- Hide in the Shadows and Move Silenty effectively are the same. The game takes the average of the two values to determine your success score so 100/100 and 200/0 function the same. There are external modifiers such as time of day, whether you are actually in a shadow (I think) and type of armour (but don't trust the manual) that affect the chance of success. About 125/125 or 250 total is probably good enough. There are boots and armour which boost the score, but you might not want to equip them depending on your character.

Oxford_Guy

I quite like to have two thief-type party members in BG1 - one (usually CHARNAME) as a stealthy back-stabber type (either an assassin or fighter/thief), the other a trap-finding/lockpicking one, so as to maximise the effectiveness of each, could also do something similar with a trap-laying/illusion-detecting bounty hunter and utility thief combo

TJ_Hooker

I've read some conflicting things about hide in shadows and move silently. Some places say that it's an average of the 2, others that hide in shadows is a check to enter stealth and move silently is a check to maintain stealth.

Kirkor

@ryuken87 thank you! It is answer I was looking for!

Space_hamster

Just have your thief carry plenty of potions of invisibility, he'll never be found.

Notepic4

So as some people have asked before, what is the difference between a thief's hide and shadows and move silently vs a ranger's stealth? Do thieves have any advantage over rangers since they have two skills and not one? If not, would it be possible to modify the thieves so they only have stealth, since have two skills would be redundant if they both do the same thing.

ZanathKariashi

@Notepic4

Nothing.

Rangers get equal amounts of hide/MS automatically every level up.

Where as thieves get points to distribute.

In vanilla BG1, there was no difference at all, since they both used the stealth mechanic which only had 1 value.


Move Silenty contributes half to your chance to hide, and 100% to stay hidden.

Hide just contributes half to hiding in the first place and has no barring on staying hidden. (you can technically ignore hide completely if you want).

Disarm and Open lock worth on a threshold system, if you exceed the threshold, you will succeed every time, if you don't, you never will. However, being within 5 points of the threshold score gives a 50% chance of opening/disarming per attempt. (The dresser with the star sapphire in it has a threshold of 65...but a 60-64 skill can open it..it just may fail several times before it works. 59 never will.


Only stealth and pickpocket have value over 100. Since there are other modifiers involved. Some NPCs or stores have innately higher chances to catch you, as well as the value of the item you're attempting steal. And stealth depends on lighting. If you aren't shadowed, you have a penalty even at night time, though it's much smaller then in light.