@Khyron The point that I am making and that you seem to have missed is not that Fighter/Thief dualclasses are generally inferior to Fighters (which they are not), but that Fighter/Thief dualclasses are inferior Fighters compared to Fighters.
Unless you abuse the invisible Fire Giants in Saradush dual classing a level 17 character in a full party is never worth the hassle. Even if thieves level faster it's still a very long downtime. He's powerful enough as he is for the very hack'n'slash gameplay of ToB - (Greater) Whirlwind with the Silver Sword or the Ravager will mow down everything. For mages, well, that's what Keldorn is here for.
If OP's had a 3 person party things might be different but for 6... bleh.
I'd drop Keldorn, Youknowwho fulfills a similar role in the party (two handed smasher). You lose the super dispel, but there are other ways to get rid of mage protections. Plus, this way Keldorn gets to go back to his family!
Doesn't he get stuck in hell?
He sticks around in case you want him back, but the game never confirms or implies he statys there in the end.
I have dualled Voldemort to a thief and the end result was awesome. If you keep him low level so as to use his proficiencies efficiently in one big level up remember his low level saves will be terrible and it felt like he was regularly dropping to anything with a save vs death
funny thing, the ONLY time i ever use backstab is in the first dungeon in bg2 where there is all those wand traps and the 2 dugers dudes, i will stealth pass them, grab the wand keys, and then just for the lerz i will backstab the one guy
other than that i NEVER back stab any enemy afterwards, so if you are worried about losing backstab potential i wouldn't worry about it
my thieves have cleared entire dungeons in soa and in tob used the backstab to prepare the ground killing minor but annoying foe or simply having the enemy party members move from the positions they spawn to the ones i like to have them by having some of them follow my thief, as they stop very near the place where he goes invisible.
i find the thieves really powerful in what they can do and bakstabbing a mage is only the emerging point of a very big iceberg. and i am not even talking of traps, that i never use exploiting metagame knowledge. a soa example? beholders. a thief and a mage can do wonders against them, the thief can spot them, lay a carpet of traps on the path he plans to have them try to chase him. then he goes visible just at the edge of their sight field and lures them into the path, going again invisible in every point he wants to have them stop. as the thief pass by the mage from an invisible position throws skull traps and if he has them delayed fireballs, timing is crucial to avoid that the thief triggers them and sucks the damage. as i usually have more than a mage the poor beholders and gauths will find a carpet of mines and if they will ever reach the party they will on very low health. and they will reach the team only cause i want so, my thief can any time lure them in an other place so the party can rest to have even more traps and spell traps... tactical domination of the field .
i really enjoy to play my thieves in an advanced out of the box way. it is the fastest way to win battles? surely not. is it one of the safest ways to do it, probably. it is fun? for me is the best fun i can have in bg2, followed only by the advanced use of a mage or sorcerer and to send aerie solo mlee against dragons.
to each one his own style and his way to have fun...
but a thief can still ber dominating even in tob, take the oasis, i know that is not too hard, but sometimes my thief lures ALL the enemies in a single place and then the mage goes there invisible and sets the CC 3xADHW on enemy seen. oasis cleared, damage taken 0, spells used 1, move on...
EDIT: actually the mage PI goes there so the used spell is a lev 7 one, not too bad to have a whole area cleared. if needed the PI can also use a greater malison to lower spell throws a split second before using the CC, that ignores the 1 spell round rule. a pfmw will make the PI survive until the CC triggers. and i know that the PI can also use TS, IA and start to nuke, but then all the elegance of the combination is lost, with this game (lob excluded) the point is not if to win, is how to win, style matters...
It isn't much of a spoiler to name the NPC you receive automatically in the first five minutes of ToB. Nevertheless, whether you want to dual "you know who" depends on how you play the game. You'll spend most of ToB trying to regain your fighter levels so for most people the hassle factor will just be too high to make dualing worthwhile. On the other hand if you're the kind of player who measures everything by how strong you are at endgame, the final battle is a complete breeze with a dualed "you know who" due to the auto-win HLA thief traps he will have received by then. Either way works just fine (but do note that, if memory serves, you lose out on his vorpal-hit ability while working to regain his fighter levels).
I have dualled Voldemort to a thief and the end result was awesome. If you keep him low level so as to use his proficiencies efficiently in one big level up remember his low level saves will be terrible and it felt like he was regularly dropping to anything with a save vs death
See playing him as a thief sounds fun, but keeping him at 1 until he's ready to be level 35 or whatever sounds not fun.
I have dualled Voldemort to a thief and the end result was awesome. If you keep him low level so as to use his proficiencies efficiently in one big level up remember his low level saves will be terrible and it felt like he was regularly dropping to anything with a save vs death
See playing him as a thief sounds fun, but keeping him at 1 until he's ready to be level 35 or whatever sounds not fun.
Technically you could level to 3 with no repercussions whatsoever. However, unless you want to grandmaster staves or something, it's really not necessary to hold back on leveling at all.
Edit: If you put all of his thief skill points into set traps he'd even be useful for setting ambushes at level 3!
@jsaving, i never dualed him and i prefer to have a party powerful trough the whole game, in end game my parties are usually so powerful that i don't need some super fighter or super weapon. this is also the reason why i don't care much about the weapons i can have only in late tob, surely there are some really op ones you can find/find the components to upgrade there, but i value much more something like foa that you can get early in soa and upgrade as game progresses, really useful trough all the game and still very powerful at the end.
about traps i often have a bard and almost always a real thief, jan or a charname f/t or fmt, so i usually have already plenty of traps, but for those that go without thief or with imoen/nalia just to deal with traps and locks having some spike and regular traps is a real advantage.
@TraumaDrama as @sarevok57 told you get him at 2.7M xp so is a lev 18 fighter, with 50k more xp you can have him at lev 19 for 3 more hp and 1 less thac0, not a huge bonus that in the end will delay his completing dualing about 300k xp, probably is not worth even if wasting some xp seems to be a bad thing.
then you don't have to wait until he is lev 35 thief you have only to wait until he regains his fighter levels so when he have the xp to reach lev 19 or 20 depending on if you dualed him immediately or promoted him to fighter 19.
this is 1.98M and 2.2M xp, not an hard task if you play wk only in tob, you will have him dualed and useful for a relevant part of the game, without wasting any weapon pip. then he will progress up to the maximum thief level possible, but as a working fighter->thief dual.
absolutely no need to keep him at 1 until he's ready to be level 35.
About your initial question: Youknowwho is a lot of fun to have in ToB , if you haven't played the expansion before then you definitely should! In fact ,I'm having the same dilemma myself with my BG1 character , I intend to play with her in Bg2 as the following party : Charname (female half orc barbarian) ,Valygar, Mazzy ,Nalia,Imoen and Cernd. Since I've already got three fighting characters Youknowwho becomes a bit redundant so I don't intend to keep him in the party for the first time, but Ive been playing this game for 20 years so I havent got anything to lose (or do I? I might ditch Nalia then!).
As for your second question, it's not really worth dualing high level characters with a six person party . ToB is an expansion that you can finish in a weekend and having such a powerful character like Youknowwho spend a major part of it as a low level- one attack per round-dude with lots of hp isn't really the best choice.
If it were a three people party or even less then I'd definitely say "just do watcher's keep and you'll get your inactive class back!".
if we consider illegal editing why not fmt?
every multi of a human is not legal but if we decide to ignore that rule he is the only npc with stats for the triple class.
at the tob levels a triple will only be little behind a multi as thac0 and hp, but will have some advantages.
as a fmt never reach lev 9 spells almost all the hlas can be chosen in the thief and fighter pools, the arcane spells power both the other classes offering new opportunities of protection and invisibility for multiple backstabs and with uai an maybe some proficiency changes he can cover both the role of the ranger, recon and backstabs, and the one of the pally, holy sword user, better then them or stick to his usual weapons and be as effective.
place for some spike traps in the hla choice is left and why not also for a time one as it last just enough to have him cast time stop without interruption.
Comments
If OP's had a 3 person party things might be different but for 6... bleh.
He sticks around in case you want him back, but the game never confirms or implies he statys there in the end.
my thieves have cleared entire dungeons in soa and in tob used the backstab to prepare the ground killing minor but annoying foe or simply having the enemy party members move from the positions they spawn to the ones i like to have them by having some of them follow my thief, as they stop very near the place where he goes invisible.
i find the thieves really powerful in what they can do and bakstabbing a mage is only the emerging point of a very big iceberg. and i am not even talking of traps, that i never use exploiting metagame knowledge. a soa example? beholders. a thief and a mage can do wonders against them, the thief can spot them, lay a carpet of traps on the path he plans to have them try to chase him. then he goes visible just at the edge of their sight field and lures them into the path, going again invisible in every point he wants to have them stop. as the thief pass by the mage from an invisible position throws skull traps and if he has them delayed fireballs, timing is crucial to avoid that the thief triggers them and sucks the damage. as i usually have more than a mage the poor beholders and gauths will find a carpet of mines and if they will ever reach the party they will on very low health. and they will reach the team only cause i want so, my thief can any time lure them in an other place so the party can rest to have even more traps and spell traps... tactical domination of the field
i really enjoy to play my thieves in an advanced out of the box way. it is the fastest way to win battles? surely not. is it one of the safest ways to do it, probably. it is fun? for me is the best fun i can have in bg2, followed only by the advanced use of a mage or sorcerer and to send aerie solo mlee against dragons.
to each one his own style and his way to have fun...
but a thief can still ber dominating even in tob, take the oasis, i know that is not too hard, but sometimes my thief lures ALL the enemies in a single place and then the mage goes there invisible and sets the CC 3xADHW on enemy seen. oasis cleared, damage taken 0, spells used 1, move on...
EDIT: actually the mage PI goes there so the used spell is a lev 7 one, not too bad to have a whole area cleared. if needed the PI can also use a greater malison to lower spell throws a split second before using the CC, that ignores the 1 spell round rule. a pfmw will make the PI survive until the CC triggers. and i know that the PI can also use TS, IA and start to nuke, but then all the elegance of the combination is lost, with this game (lob excluded) the point is not if to win, is how to win, style matters...
See playing him as a thief sounds fun, but keeping him at 1 until he's ready to be level 35 or whatever sounds not fun.
Technically you could level to 3 with no repercussions whatsoever. However, unless you want to grandmaster staves or something, it's really not necessary to hold back on leveling at all.
Edit: If you put all of his thief skill points into set traps he'd even be useful for setting ambushes at level 3!
about traps i often have a bard and almost always a real thief, jan or a charname f/t or fmt, so i usually have already plenty of traps, but for those that go without thief or with imoen/nalia just to deal with traps and locks having some spike and regular traps is a real advantage.
@TraumaDrama as @sarevok57 told you get him at 2.7M xp so is a lev 18 fighter, with 50k more xp you can have him at lev 19 for 3 more hp and 1 less thac0, not a huge bonus that in the end will delay his completing dualing about 300k xp, probably is not worth even if wasting some xp seems to be a bad thing.
then you don't have to wait until he is lev 35 thief you have only to wait until he regains his fighter levels so when he have the xp to reach lev 19 or 20 depending on if you dualed him immediately or promoted him to fighter 19.
this is 1.98M and 2.2M xp, not an hard task if you play wk only in tob, you will have him dualed and useful for a relevant part of the game, without wasting any weapon pip. then he will progress up to the maximum thief level possible, but as a working fighter->thief dual.
absolutely no need to keep him at 1 until he's ready to be level 35.
As for your second question, it's not really worth dualing high level characters with a six person party . ToB is an expansion that you can finish in a weekend and having such a powerful character like Youknowwho spend a major part of it as a low level- one attack per round-dude with lots of hp isn't really the best choice.
If it were a three people party or even less then I'd definitely say "just do watcher's keep and you'll get your inactive class back!".
every multi of a human is not legal but if we decide to ignore that rule he is the only npc with stats for the triple class.
at the tob levels a triple will only be little behind a multi as thac0 and hp, but will have some advantages.
as a fmt never reach lev 9 spells almost all the hlas can be chosen in the thief and fighter pools, the arcane spells power both the other classes offering new opportunities of protection and invisibility for multiple backstabs and with uai an maybe some proficiency changes he can cover both the role of the ranger, recon and backstabs, and the one of the pally, holy sword user, better then them or stick to his usual weapons and be as effective.
place for some spike traps in the hla choice is left and why not also for a time one as it last just enough to have him cast time stop without interruption.