Interesting Berserker->Thief weapon proficiency fact
FredN
Member Posts: 603
.....As my Berserker->Thief has progressed in levels, I noticed something I hadn't expected. I had initially put 3 pips into proficiency with 1) Bastard swords (for Foebane, of course) and 2) Longswords (for backstabbing purposes). Thieves only get to learn a weapon proficiency every 5 levels. However, when tne time came, I saw that I could still train even more in both Bastard swords and Longswords. The end result is that at this point I have Grand Mastery wirh Bastard Swords, and Mastery in Longswords. In 5 more levels I will have Grand mastery in Longswords as well.
.....Now, there are other skills that have remained static. I only get 2 berserks per day, sof example. That is because Berserking is not a thief skill at all, hence I will never get to train any more in that skill. No problem, twice a day is sufficient for most situations. But I can, if needed, stand in the front line and melee. I have more HP than anyone else in the crew, and with good plate mail I can pump my AC up to -9, and have an APR of 5/2. And, of course, if I berserk, I am immune to just about all status effects. That ncludes level drain; I was whacking Vampires right and left with Daystar. Nice.
.....Now, there are other skills that have remained static. I only get 2 berserks per day, sof example. That is because Berserking is not a thief skill at all, hence I will never get to train any more in that skill. No problem, twice a day is sufficient for most situations. But I can, if needed, stand in the front line and melee. I have more HP than anyone else in the crew, and with good plate mail I can pump my AC up to -9, and have an APR of 5/2. And, of course, if I berserk, I am immune to just about all status effects. That ncludes level drain; I was whacking Vampires right and left with Daystar. Nice.
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Once you have again your fighter class active all the abilities you had when you begun the dual process, including the ability to reach GM and the rages, become active again but as you stop to level up as fighter you don't get fighter abilities you did not have, like more rages or fighter HLAs (unless you dual at very high level, in that case you get back the fighter's HLAs that you had but can not add more leveling up.
Be aware that the fighter part of a F->M dual is very strong in SoA but as the game progresses becomes weaker, a dual at lev. 9 has base Thac0 12 that will never get better then 10 when your thief part caps its Thac0, a dual at 13 has Thac0 8 and will never improve. So if you want to still be effective in late SoA and in ToB you have to boost your Thac0 in any way possible, probably the best option is to use Crom in the OH for that +7 Thac0 you get having 25 STR, with it, the helm of balduran, the gauntlets, GM and a good weapon you probably will get a negative Thaco in the end game so you will still be relevant in mlee.
And by the way in ToB a lot of enemies hit quite easily AC -9 so save every blur scroll you can find that give you a -3 bonus at the AC as well as every stoneskin, mantle line and mirror images scrolls your mages don't need to learn the spells, in late game with UAI will be a great help in the toughest battles when AC alone is not enough to protect you (as well a the Mislead scrolls if you like that cheese, a Bers->T under mislead and improved haste can backstab many times/round for massive damage).
When you are buffed with holy power, righteous magic and duhm you have the Thac0 of a fighter of the same level of your cleric one, 25 str without items, a buff in hp and every hit automatically hits for maximum damage, the high level Anomen of the party I am running now when buffed has 219 hp (I don't play with maxed hp gain on level up other way would be even more), -17 Thac0 MH and -14 OH and hits for 34 damage with FoA +4, not bad for a lev 7 fighter...
You will have fun!
In IWD, I always dual at level 29, in particular, I played with Berserker29/Cleric30! 😸
So for example, your 7th level Berserker had a 14 Thaco. When you dueled to Thief you had a 20 Thaco as 1st level Thief. Once you hit 8th level Thief your Thaco dropped back to 14 *until* your Thief Thaco was lower (Probably around 14th level? I don’t have the table in front of me).
Yes Yigor, I understand that is possible and popular as a power gamer move. Since IWD uses a level cap (30) instead of an experience cap this is an optimal sort of move.
But, in a single play at Core difficulty (the only way it’s actually *AD&D*) you won’t come anywhere near doing this. I find it completely immersion breaking.
Before you dual, you're just a single-classed character.
The moment you hit that button, you have a new class. For most purposes, you're treated as a single-classed character of the new class. No abilities from the old class like thief traps or berserker rage or kensai passive bonuses. No THAC0 and saves from the old class; you use the new class tables exclusively. None of your old proficiencies, and your new proficiencies follow the rules of the new class. Just about the only thing you keep is your hit points - those are what you had from the old class, and you don't get anything new until you complete the dual by passing the old class's level.
Once you complete the dual, you regain your old class abilities. Abilities like berserker rage and kensai passives are back. Your THAC0 and saves look to both class tables and choose whatever's better. Your old proficiencies are back (if you had proficiencies in the same weapon/style from both classes, you keep whatever's better) and if either* side is a warrior you can go beyond proficiency to whatever that single class would allow. Everything's back - except you're still leveling up in the new class, and all future level-ups go that way too. High-level abilities will be from the new class's table, not the multiclass table.
That's what "regaining" a class means in a dual.
*This part, about proficiencies, is specific to the "Infinity Engine" games BG/BG2/IWD. In most versions of the 2e ruleset, a dual class character can only take proficiencies as the active class; a completed fighter -> thief would still know how to use the weapons they mastered back then, but would only be able to take single proficiencies in thief weapons going forward.
The single proficiency stot applies only until you complete the dual regaining the fighter abilities as a thief can only put a single pip.
To make it more clear I make an example:
a fighter duals at 7 so has 6 proficiency points (pips) lets' say
4 in long sword, 1 in bastard sword and 1 in 2 weapon style
then as thief get 4 other pips, 2 when he begins the second class, 1 at lev 4 and 1 at lev 8, the pips that he has as fighter are inactive.
as thief he puts a pip in long sword, a pip in 2 weapon style, a pip in short sword and a pip in dagger, then hitting lev 8 he regains the fighter abilities and the pips from the fighter class become active. What happens?
long sword: 4 pips as fighter and 1 as thief = he has 4 pips, the pip he did put as thief in the down time is lost
bastard sword: 1 pip (from the fighter class)
short sword and dagger: a pip each (from the thief class)
2 weapon style: 1 pip from both the classes = he has a single pip, an other pip is lost.
Total pips after completing the dual 8, pips wasted 2.
To avoid this the rule is to don't put any proficiency point into something that has proficiency points in your starting class until you reach a level more in the second class and complete the dual process as those points will be wasted.
The same fighter, but wiser, could had as fighter 7 4 points in bastard sword and 2 in long sword and could had used the points in the down time putting 1 in dual welding, 1 in short sword, 1 in dagger and 1 in sword and shield and after completing the dual all the points would have been active, no point wasted, total pips 10.
I hope that now is more clear.
Consider a fighter 9 -> mage dual. A level 9 fighter has base THAC0 12 and base saves (death/wand/poly/breath/spell) of 8/10/9/9/11. With 9 levels of mage, that dual is incomplete. The character has the base THAC0 (18) and saves (13/9/11/13/10) of a level 9 mage. Then they get their 10th level. The tenth mage level doesn't have any THAC0 or save improvements from level 9, but the character does get better. THAC0 12 or 18? 12. Death save 8 or 13? 8. Wand save 10 or 9? 9. Polymorph save 9 or 11? 9. Breath save 9 or 13? 9. Spell save 11 or 10? 10. So that's a merged save array of 8/9/9/9/10. As this character levels up, the mage saves get better and eventually match or overtake the fighter saves in all categories, but the mage THAC0 never catches up to the fighter THAC0; this character will have base THAC0 12 for the rest of the game, since a single-class mage never gets past 13.
But the fighter will eventually reach Thac0 0.. and a 7 fighter/25 thief will be at 10.
That's a whopping 10 thac0 difference.. In my oppinion this is a huge number.
It is true though, that a Thief can periodically go lower using buffs from scrolls, and semi-permanent with items a Fighter wouldn't be able to use (such as the -2 thac0 necklace in the sewers) but these items that boost thac0 are normally weaker than what you'd prefer as a fighter anyway.
While a Berserker multiclass has the "win" button in form of Berserk and a Wizard Slayer has some fun niche magic resistance and applies casting failure, I find that i more often than not prefer a multiclass.. or perhaps even a Swashbuckler for a more unorthodox approach, mainly because strengths and weaknesses are mostly the same, but that thac0 really has no way to be entirely mitigated if you dual before 13.
There's another trick to Dual classing that has to do with the pips.
If you wait with leveling up after dual classing until you have enough xp to jump from lvl 1 to whatever you need to re-activate the old class, you can place your pips as if you were a fighter.
This is a good trick to use if dualing at 7, because getting to 8 is pretty easy.
You could do at 13/14 as well, but that'd be quite the wait.
So Berserker 7 -> Thief
You spend 2 pips on whatever as thief. Perhaps Scimitar and Two Weapon fighting, making sure you didn't as Berserker.
Now you hold your level until you get 70.000xp in Thief and jump straight to lvl 8
Those 2 pips you get, you can spend as if you were a Fighter and not waste them on thief class locked weapons.
Perhaps another pip in Two Weapon Fighting and Scimitar
You could say waiting to level up until 8 is boring, but is it really? Once your party is lvl 7, there's nothing you can really contribute with as a thief up until lvl 5 or so.. and then the gap to 8 isn't all that big
I mean sure is possible but what happens to the proficiency point you get at mage 6, can you allocate it as completed dual class so it adds to the fighter proficiencies without overlapping or is wasted if you allocate it to a weapon that already has points from the fighter class?
If it is not wasted that combo gets even more interesting: 11 proficiency points at cap level, but 8 of them right when you complete the dual at 154K xp total, use of all the weapons, +1.5 apr from lev 7 fighter and GM, more hp then a single class mage and kicking all the party members to learn some spells makes possible to get that 90K xp right after beginning the dual, no down time at all and 14 thac0 right from that point while a single class mage gets it after he gets his first HLA. You can have a kit as fighter, 2 rages if berseker, -2 thac0 +2 dmg and 2 kai if kensai.
All that at the cost of a lev9 spell slot that you get very late in the game and the impossibility to have a kit as mage.
For a complicated example, there's the Shar-Teel grandmastery build in BGEE:
- Take Shar-Teel up to level 6 as a fighter (32K XP). Assign both proficiency points to long sword, bringing her to three dots.
- Dual to thief. Take whatever initial proficiencies you want.
- Level up to level 3 as a thief (2.5K XP). No new proficiencies. Don't take it to level 4.
- Delay leveling until you reach enough XP for thief level 7 (40K XP). Level up from 3 to 7 all at once, assigning your level 4 thief proficiency point as a completed F6 -> T7 dual. Assign that point to the fourth dot in longswords.
- When you reach enough XP for level 8 and the next proficiency point, delay again. A character that hasn't reached level 9 isn't allowed to put a fifth dot into a weapon proficiency.
- Finally, level up when you have enough XP for thief level 9 (110K XP). This takes you from thief level 7 to 9 in one step. Assign the proficiency point to the fifth dot in longswords.
So, that lets you build a character with grand mastery in a weapon, within the 161K XP cap of the BGEE campaign. It is impossible for any character to reach that grand mastery without both dual-classing and delaying a level-up.
From your answer I see that if I want GM as soon as I complete the dual I have to delay leveling until I have xp for lev 9 mage so I can get GM in a weapon and specialization in an other as soon as I complete the dual class, other way I have to delay GM until I reach lev 12 mage that is 3/4 of a million xp, I had forgot that you can not get the 5th point before lev. 9, having took a long break from the game my knowledge now is quite rusty...
Lev.9 mage needs 135K xp, something that your thief with some thieving potions makes an easy task to achieve.