it's also opportunity cost. casting knock robs you of 1000 xp that a thief would give. later on, it's 1750 xp you lose and costing you a health potion instead. also, thieves will outfight any fighter by a large margin. especially later. this is especially true of harder fights where neither mages nor fighters can hit. my thief solos demigorgon and other dragons every playthrough in a full party because the other party members can't contribute much in the 1 round that spike traps take to kill a high level enemy.
I wasn't even really thinking of that either, there are a lot of locks and traps worth almost 5K even before ToB. Some rooms gave me nearly 20-30K Exp just for picking all the locks on one floor.
And well Spike Trap beats anything.. to be fair I only use one spike trap on the big enemies otherwise I might as well just Ctrl Y them. Or if the encounter has a cheap thief that keeps backstabbing you and then stealthing again I might set a trap for them.
And that's why I pretty much always have to go Fighter/Thief or Mage/Thief if I want my Thief to actually participate in the combat. Even with 19 dex / 18 str, the plain thief just sucks at dealing any sort of damage. Fighter/Thief can actually make proper use (IMO) of bows and backstabbing the way they were meant to be. Without cheats the plain Thief or even Assassin is way too unreliable to actually backstab the targets you would want to. I mean there are enemies pre-ToB that require a -4 or better thac0 to even hit them reliably, and even then you're not hitting them all the time, only like 50% of the time, how the hell is a plain Thief supposed to do that on a regular basis. That's not even including ToB where truthfully I haven't tried backstabbing there, but I imagine it'd be way more unreliable. HLA's help but if you're not soloing it's going to take a while to actually get them. And if your thac0 is bad Assassination HLA isn't going to be that useful. I have a F/M/T solo with -6 thac0 pre buffs and her backstabs don't even hit 100% of the time and not even in ToB yet.
To me it just feels like the Hide in Shadows/Pickpockets are very poorly implemented in general.. at low skill level, 1-65 BG ee 2 they pretty much don't work at all, and then they work very unreliably until you get them into the 100-120 range, more true for pickpockets which still fails sometimes even at 150 skill points.
It depends on how you wish to play your dualled character: - if you just want extra HPs & APR and to be able to minimise down-time as a pure thief then level 7 would be a good choice. - level 9 allows you a few more bonus HPs and marginally better weapon proficiencies, but doesn't really change the nature of the final character. On the other hand it doesn't extend downtime too much either, so again is a perfectly reasonable choice. - however, if you wish (as some in this thread appear to do) to play your character more like a fighter and less like a pure thief in the later stages of the game then you probably want to go for a later dual. Extending that to at least level 13 will make a significant difference in your ability to fight in ToB - but greatly extend the down-time as a thief and above level 14 you start reducing the number of HLAs available.
I want to maximise thaco and proficiencies for my future thief- to be able hit sth in late game. And at the same time I dont want to waste too much exp for fighter levels.
@majber sounds like level 13-15 would be the right compromise for you then. At L13 you'll still be missing boss type creatures a lot of the time, but at that level you're not losing any additional HLAs (beyond the one you lose for dualling to thief at any level) - that's the result of the huge XP gap between thief levels 39 and 40. If you go for L15 you only lose 1 additional HLA, but for each fighter level beyond that you lose at least 1 more HLA, as well as significantly extending the time until you recover fighting abilities in the first place.
@majber If XP isn't an issue, level 14 (Kensai) is the optimal level to dual, since you still be able to reach lvl 39! as a thief (the same level as a 2 level Fighter dualed to Thief). You could choose to invest even more (Kensai) levels before dualing: 15 or 18 is more combat focused, but will then lose 1 thief HLA, respectively 4 thief HLA.
If you however choose to go Kensai/Thief 21/31 or Kensai/Thief 24/28, you'll be more powerful than a regular Fighter (10 Attacks with IH, and either Kai or Critical Strike, and +7-8 Thac0/damage, from the Kensai class abilities ), and get some Warrior HLA (on the expense of thief HLA), the latter build being extremely powerful, but on the other hand, only comes online extremely late into ToB, unless playing a very small party, and/or abusing respawns in WK, Saradush Fire Giant respawn, or Drow Slave respawns.
You also have to take into consideration that lots of enemies in ToB is immune to backstabs, meaning that the kind of build you're looking for, a low level Fighter dualed to Thief, wont be as powerful in ToB, as it is in SoA. With that in mind, are you looking for a competent backstabber that abuses HLA traps (Kensai/Thief 7-14/39), or a powerful Fighter that can backstab and use thief skills/traps (Kensai/Thief 21-24/28-31)?
A fighter/thief outfights a pure thief of any kind, but a plain thief or swashbuckler progresses in points much faster. I prefer having access to all thief skills by early-mid game in BG2, because that's my play style. That means either having one pure thief or two multi-class thieves. If you enjoy using thief skills often and early, you'll want a pure thief.
@typo_tilly , That's especially true because, unlike original BG and IWD, BG2 and BG:EE split the stealth action into two parts, Hide in Shadows and Move Silently. You need both of them really high to be able to scout reliably or use a backstab.
If you want a thief that can really do her role-defined job, that is, being good and reliable at opening locks and disarming traps, scouting ahead to spy on enemies, and still have points for that sweet Detect Illusions skill, not to mention being good at picking pockets to steal from npc's if you're into that, you want a pure class thief.
Even with a pure class thief and her wonderful fast level progression, I never have as many points as I want to really make my thief as skilled as I want her for the job I want her for.
The class wasn't meant to shine in combat. It's the critical out-of-combat skills and utility that you need your thief for. And yes, I do mean need your thief.
You can puzzle out ways to survive without one, but it sure is going to make your adventuring life a lot harder.
Comments
And well Spike Trap beats anything.. to be fair I only use one spike trap on the big enemies otherwise I might as well just Ctrl Y them. Or if the encounter has a cheap thief that keeps backstabbing you and then stealthing again I might set a trap for them.
@Skatan
And that's why I pretty much always have to go Fighter/Thief or Mage/Thief if I want my Thief to actually participate in the combat. Even with 19 dex / 18 str, the plain thief just sucks at dealing any sort of damage. Fighter/Thief can actually make proper use (IMO) of bows and backstabbing the way they were meant to be. Without cheats the plain Thief or even Assassin is way too unreliable to actually backstab the targets you would want to. I mean there are enemies pre-ToB that require a -4 or better thac0 to even hit them reliably, and even then you're not hitting them all the time, only like 50% of the time, how the hell is a plain Thief supposed to do that on a regular basis. That's not even including ToB where truthfully I haven't tried backstabbing there, but I imagine it'd be way more unreliable. HLA's help but if you're not soloing it's going to take a while to actually get them. And if your thac0 is bad Assassination HLA isn't going to be that useful. I have a F/M/T solo with -6 thac0 pre buffs and her backstabs don't even hit 100% of the time and not even in ToB yet.
To me it just feels like the Hide in Shadows/Pickpockets are very poorly implemented in general.. at low skill level, 1-65 BG ee 2 they pretty much don't work at all, and then they work very unreliably until you get them into the 100-120 range, more true for pickpockets which still fails sometimes even at 150 skill points.
- if you just want extra HPs & APR and to be able to minimise down-time as a pure thief then level 7 would be a good choice.
- level 9 allows you a few more bonus HPs and marginally better weapon proficiencies, but doesn't really change the nature of the final character. On the other hand it doesn't extend downtime too much either, so again is a perfectly reasonable choice.
- however, if you wish (as some in this thread appear to do) to play your character more like a fighter and less like a pure thief in the later stages of the game then you probably want to go for a later dual. Extending that to at least level 13 will make a significant difference in your ability to fight in ToB - but greatly extend the down-time as a thief and above level 14 you start reducing the number of HLAs available.
If you however choose to go Kensai/Thief 21/31 or Kensai/Thief 24/28, you'll be more powerful than a regular Fighter (10 Attacks with IH, and either Kai or Critical Strike, and +7-8 Thac0/damage, from the Kensai class abilities ), and get some Warrior HLA (on the expense of thief HLA), the latter build being extremely powerful, but on the other hand, only comes online extremely late into ToB, unless playing a very small party, and/or abusing respawns in WK, Saradush Fire Giant respawn, or Drow Slave respawns.
You also have to take into consideration that lots of enemies in ToB is immune to backstabs, meaning that the kind of build you're looking for, a low level Fighter dualed to Thief, wont be as powerful in ToB, as it is in SoA. With that in mind, are you looking for a competent backstabber that abuses HLA traps (Kensai/Thief 7-14/39), or a powerful Fighter that can backstab and use thief skills/traps (Kensai/Thief 21-24/28-31)?
If you want a thief that can really do her role-defined job, that is, being good and reliable at opening locks and disarming traps, scouting ahead to spy on enemies, and still have points for that sweet Detect Illusions skill, not to mention being good at picking pockets to steal from npc's if you're into that, you want a pure class thief.
Even with a pure class thief and her wonderful fast level progression, I never have as many points as I want to really make my thief as skilled as I want her for the job I want her for.
The class wasn't meant to shine in combat. It's the critical out-of-combat skills and utility that you need your thief for. And yes, I do mean need your thief.
You can puzzle out ways to survive without one, but it sure is going to make your adventuring life a lot harder.