Of Fighter/Thieves in SoU

[lennon]

So its been a while.

I am playing SoU with Vulcano's Mischa Waymeet add-on and so thought I'd need some thieving in the party as SoU is quite trap heavy. I am running a fighter/thief for the first time ever! I am not sure that 3rd edition is a great place to do this but hey! I am taking each class on alternative levels and it seems that the 3rd edition progressions make this much less attractive than the earlier editions I am used to.

I should really have concentrated on what I need which is find & remove traps, but the ability to enhance the fighter's combat with the backstab and sneak attack has proved too attractive and I suspect I have made irrecoverable errors in the build. I have spread the thief skill points over a wide range of skills and thus while I have a mighty hide score, have pretty low on move, detect and trap skills.

1./ Level progression is no longer geometric and within class. i.e. Once upon a time, a dual class fighter/thief would divide their XP into two parts and allocate them equally to a geometric scale of each class. The Thief scale was the shortest,and the fighter the next. Basically, one was giving away only one level by choosing to dual class. Today scales are short of geometric but the difference betwee levels still grows, and cumulative so a second level fighter requires the same XP as 1/1 Fighter Thief, which looks quite good. Howver, this gets much worse as points increase, a 7th level fighter has the same XP as a 7th level thief or a 4/3/ fighter/thief.

2./ The massive loss of levels for a given dungeon, makes using the thieves skills hard, we'll see but it could be real problem for the fighter as well. This isn't helped by my slow start in allocating points to the traps skills. I have just done the Stinger treasure room and I was a long way short of opening anything. I used both a lock pick and potions of cats grace. (This is presumably because the dungeon master wanted it to be challenging for a true-class thief and I am 5 levels short.)

3./ Despite these factors. Dorna Trapspringer seems competent throughout, even if you let her level evenly.

Any comments?

Should one limit one of the classes to a lower ratio than even?
Should one focus the thief's growth on fighting or thieving?

Have I made any other obvious mistakes?

[Rastor]

1./ Level progression is no longer geometric and within class. i.e. Once upon a time, a dual class fighter/thief would divide their XP into two parts and allocate them equally to a geometric scale of each class. The Thief scale was the shortest,and the fighter the next. Basically, one was giving away only one level by choosing to dual class. Today scales are short of geometric but the difference betwee levels still grows, and cumulative so a second level fighter requires the same XP as 1/1 Fighter Thief, which looks quite good. Howver, this gets much worse as points increase, a 7th level fighter has the same XP as a 7th level thief or a 4/3/ fighter/thief.

I agree, and this is one reason why I almost always take single-classed characters.  WotC tried to come up with a system that would allow players to multi-class their characters in as many different ways as possible (stemming from criticisms about the AD&D system used in BG).  I guess that the belief was is that a character that had 7 character levels in multiple classes would be just as effective as a character that has seven levels in a single class.  While this may be true in melee characters, it is not true in magic-users (10 sorc/10 RDD vs. 20 sorc anyone?)

2./ The massive loss of levels for a given dungeon, makes using the thieves skills hard, we'll see but it could be real problem for the fighter as well. This isn't helped by my slow start in allocating points to the traps skills. I have just done the Stinger treasure room and I was a long way short of opening anything. I used both a lock pick and potions of cats grace. (This is presumably because the dungeon master wanted it to be challenging for a true-class thief and I am 5 levels short.)

Which thief skills did you take?  I have found most of the skills in the game to be basically meaningless, the exception being the disarm traps and open locks skills.

3./ Despite these factors. Dorna Trapspringer seems competent throughout, even if you let her level evenly.

Does she cheat?

Should one limit one of the classes to a lower ratio than even?

I would.  Honestly, I see no reason at all to keep advancing that fighter class - unless your character is an elf or gnome.

Should one focus the thief's growth on fighting or thieving?

I'm not sure what you mean.  The combat skills are useless and there are no good thieving feats that I can recall.

[lennon]

Sorry, but I have butchered your post

...stuff about level progression by Lennon deleted...

...stuff where Rastor agrees also deleted...

... Lennon whinges about the poor quality of his thief build...

Which thief skills did you take?  I have found most of the skills in the game to be basically meaningless, the exception being the disarm traps and open locks skills.

I have tried to get some tumble and use magical devices are meant to help with backstab, sneak attack and using magic such as scrolls, I can't open the game at the moment but I have also dispersed them over the spot, listen, hide (to help with sneak attacks and in looking for the shadow hart). I am using UMD to cast scrolls which a pure play fighter can't and so I assume that I am tested with the UMD skill against the device.

3./ Despite these factors. Dorna Trapspringer seems competent throughout, even if you let her level evenly.

Does she cheat?

This is what I was asking?

Should one limit one of the classes to a lower ratio than even?

I would.  Honestly, I see no reason at all to keep advancing that fighter class - unless your character is an elf or gnome.

Should one focus the thief's growth on fighting or thieving?

I'm not sure what you mean.  The combat skills are useless and there are no good thieving feats that I can recall.

I don't understand what you're saying, as I level up as a fighter I get cheaper fighter skills, and access to fighter feats, but I thought a Fighter's probability to hit i.e. THACO increases with level, but you say that its pointless, can you explain?

Thanks once again for you reply.

[Xenshail]

Fighter at level up gets, BAB increase, Fighter bonus feats.

Thief gets 8 skill points, Sneak Attack.

Wizard/Sorcerer gets Spells, Pixie familiar(thief class in the familiar = rocks my socks off).

I think it's clear what class we want. 

In all seriousness. With your example, I wouldn't take more than 1-2 levels of fighter, if I didn't drop them altogether(if your playing Human, Halfling, Half-Orc or Dwarf(can do a couple levels, and not suffer XP Penalty), versus anything else). Sure his BAB increase can be helpful, but the loss of your thief skills is a bit high for price.

And thief skills to increase in NWN (in general order of importance) Open Locks, Disarm Traps, Search, Speech Skill(Diplomacy and/or Bluff), Lore, UMD, Tumble, Hide/Move Silently, Appraise (and Appraise might go before those other two.)

In the NWN series Hide/MS doesn't do much. Why? You have your blasted baboon following you everywhere, screwing up any scouting you plan to do. If you're only taking one Speech skill, go for diplomacy. Lore is good, it will save you money, and has some interesting speech options occasionally. UMD is good, especially in a caster-less party. Tumble gives extra AC every 5 points, and better chance of avoiding AoO when you move. Helpful. And the first three are obvious. Go ahead and throw spot and/or listen if you want. They can be helpful for finding that stag, and only that.