Should dual classed Assassins put points in stealth, or should they rely on invisibility?

Swarmkeeper109

Hello everybody! I should probably preface this by saying that despite me putting this in the bg1 category, it will also affect bg2. I haven't played the full saga in a few months, so I decided it was time for a new run. This time around I wanted to play a class I've never played before, being an assassin 13 dual to cleric. Should I put all of the points I get from assassin into the stealth skills or should I focus on other thieving skills? I'm not sure what other party members I'm going to use, although I could probably just use Monty in the first game and then Jan in the second for any other thieving skills I may need. Despite me having thousands of hours in these games I've never actually played an assassin before, so thank you for any recommendations!

Allanon81

Stealth is invisibility…expert assassin here.

DinoDin

It's going to depend on your party composition. I think it's actually perfectly fine to have two thieves, especially in BG1, with one focused on traps and locks, while the other focuses on stealth. It can be impossible to get that all on one thief at low levels. And since you can't run stealth and find traps simultaneously, it's helpful for clearing out the hardest dungeons (i.e. ones with traps and monsters) with both characters in your party. A side note is that a ranger can also be a stealth character instead of a second thief.

So, I think you have to think hard about your party composition for BG1 and even BG2. Are you going to take another thief, say Jan in BG2? Then you can focus purely on stealth.

That being said, at the later stages of the saga, using invisibility spells, potions, abilities is often better than stealth, especially if you're aiming to score regular backstabs. Even by the second half of BG1, where you have access to more shops, an invisibility ring (albeit quite pricey), invisibility ends up working more practically than stealth. So you certainly can build an effective assassin, one that takes advantage of backstabs while putting no investment into stealth.

FredN

.....May I inquire why an assassin/cleric rather than assassin/mage? In later stages of SoA and most of ToB, the higher level enemies all have things like detect invisible, invisibility purge etc. But a mage can learn the non-detection spell, which prevents that. Also, both mages and assassins can use daggers, while as a cleric you are going to have to use something like a club or mace. As a mage, you will probaby be using spells in combat rather than a weapon.
.....True, you won't have a lot of spells as a low level mage, but I assume you will have party members to carry you through those awkward first few levels. Just seems like a better fit, skill-wise. But maybe you have a specific reason for preferring a cleric? Planning on using some uber weapon like the +5 Flail of Ages, perhaps? But you can't get that puppy fully upgraded until half-way through ToB.

jmerry

Why a dual into cleric? Because they want to. They don't need any other reason.

Now, as for Non-Detection ... the spell has problems. While it does block Detect Invisibility and Invisibility Purge, it's useless against the higher-level divination attacks. If an invisible character with Non-Detection up gets hit by Oracle or True Seeing/True Sight, the spell both removes the Non-Detection and reveals the character. You see, ND counts as an illusory protection, which those spells remove. And they do that removal before the part of the spells that reveal invisible foes.

Item-based non-detection, like the cloak, does not suffer from this problem. If you're stealthed with a cloak of non-detection, nothing can reveal you. The only counter to that is enemies that see through invisibility.

FredN

>"Why a dual into cleric? Because they want to. They don't need any other reason."<
Well, doh! Obviously they don't need anything else. But I was curious if the poster did in fact have a more specific reason. For example, maybe his group already has a mage and someone with raise dead ability would be crucial down the road. No harm in asking.

Swarmkeeper109

Thank you for all of the advice! Sorry I was gone for a while. I'm not sure why I decided to go with the cleric dual. I guess I just thought it would be interesting