Vanilla Thieves

Skarose

Does anybody else think that vanilla thieves are irrelevant?

I've played thieves in Baldur's Gate and Siege of Dragonspear where they remain enjoyable to play, but when I import my thief character to Shadow of Amn, pretty much as soon as I depart Chateau Irenicus, the character starts feeling pretty useless to play.

It even occurs to me whenever I recruit Hexxat, even with her amazing stats and supernatural powers, I always end up feeling like she's excess baggage. She can find traps and open locks, but when combat starts she's next to useless. It always makes me feel like she's occupying a slot a more useful NPC could be filling.

It's just a shame, because I enjoy vanilla thieves in 2nd edition tabletop, oh well, I guess I can Shadowkeep Hexxat into an Assassin, or something else interesting to play.

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Dragonwizard

I tend to agree,
for stealth/backstabbing Shadowdancer and Assassins are far better,
for traps you will want to use a bounty hunter,
for pure fighting purposes the Swashbuckler surpasses every other kit imo.

So for me the one reason to pick a pure class vanilla thief is to get more thief points faster, which is an quite significant advantage in BG1 but gets less prevalent the further you get in BG2.

ThacoBell

Vanilla thieves are still amazing. Each kit does one thing better than the others, but the vanilla thief does two things better than every kit. If you want your thief to be hyper specialized for one thing, its the best choice. Besides, the HLA traps are better than anything the Bounty Hunter gets anyway.

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jsaving

It's certainly possible to finish the game with vanilla thieves and there are some people whose playstyle is very compatible with having singleclass thieves in the party. But if what you want to do is send the character into melee like you would a fighter, a singleclassed thief of any stripe is probably not the right character for you. A fighter/thief would be much better for that purpose (and will still get the HLAs that many people regard as the thief's best feature).

borntodie

If you want to get the most out of your thieves, this ancient post by Southpaw is pure gold.

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/34607/theft-robbery-and-occasional-murder-or-a-short-guide-to-thieves-solo-or-in-group

Dragonwizard

borntodie said:

If you want to get the most out of your thieves, this ancient post by Southpaw is pure gold.

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/34607/theft-robbery-and-occasional-murder-or-a-short-guide-to-thieves-solo-or-in-group

Nice read! Thank you for that.

Aerakar

I used the @Southpaw thievery guide myself back in the day. Glad to see it resurface!

Borek

I wouldn't say they are irrelevant but it's probably fair to say that they are needed for Traps, save convenience for locks and have some nice abilities that synergize well with other classes. The biggest issue IMO is that they get the traps/locks covered before level 10, after that they don't really scale very well until they gain HLA's, so there's a big part of the middle game where they just kinda idle along waiting for 3m+ xp. They work so well as a multi/dual class combo that playing 1 as Vanilla just feels like a weak party slot. Even Hexxat with her great stats doesn't bring much raw power to the table, i wish she could be dual classed.

karnor00

I think that thieves generally work better in PnP because stealth, guile and trickery are great with a real DM but hard to implement properly in most computer games.

And when rogues are largely limited to their combat abilities they compare badly to fighter types - as you’ve noticed.

ThacoBell

@Borek Comparing a vanilla thief to a dual or multi is kinda unfair. Any dual and multi is stronger than any single class. Kind of a meangingless comparison.