The Most Valued thief ability?

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This is really 3 questions.
1. Which thief ability would you pick if you were only allowed one thief ability?

2. Which thief ability do you use most?

3. Which thief ability do you consider the most valuable?

 

Detect and disarm traps for all three. You can use other character's skills to substitute for the other abilities. Such as knock/bash for open locks and invisibility for stealth. I've never really bothered with pickpocket I tend to just kill someone to get what I want then you get XP aswell. If your playing a good character and wont kill them because of RP purposes you shouldn't rob them either.

 

I agree with with Duffin.

 

Find traps x3.

 

And you can use healing for traps. Especially with the buttload of potions out there. I find Open Locks to be the more important skill, as there are locks that even a 25 STR couldn't bash, nevermind Minsc's natural 18/9x or the GoOP's 18/00 or even a late-game PC's 19. Heck, even 19 STR only qualifies as a 50 in Open Locks, and there's plenty of 70s out there that I want to get into, to say nothing of 90+s in the TotSC areas.

In the end, I get Open Locks first and Find Traps second. Early on, you don't need Find Traps above 15 or so, and by the time you do you'll be putting points in it.

 

TRAPS!

I found some very deadly traps in one old dungeon. A fireball, for instance, is extremely deadly at such low levels. Charred and permanently killed my NPCs, they were gone for good. Sniff.

Lucky I am not playing a no-reload game.

 

1. If only allowed one thief ability, it would definitely be find and disarm traps.
2. I probably use open locks the most.
3. The most valuable is probably find and disarm traps, especially in no-reload games.

 

Open locks can be replaced by knock
Stealth can be be replaced by invisibility
Pickpocket can be done using bards
Traps can be found but not disarmed by clerics
So, I'm going with disarm traps.

 

1. Search unless I had it from a different source. I could at least walk around them or something. And I would get to find hidden doors and such things better.

2. Search, of course. Have to see them to disarm them. And if I don't see them and get to disarm them, I still have used Search.

3. Disarming traps. You could search for them with a priest. Stealth was nice but your ranger could still sort of do it. Pickpocket wasn't my kind of thing. Traps... I don't think Baldur's Gate I is a game where you really want to walk on traps to save time. Not even with a high-stat paladin with uber gear.

 

In solo run I find hide in shadows most important ability for my thief. Later also detect illusion and traps will be very much needed.

 

Backstabbing all the way. You can bash locks, get a mage loaded with mirror images to trigger traps without taking any damage and use invisibility potions/rings to hide. It is the only skill that will allow a thief character to bring down a heavily armoured enemy in a couple of hits. Look at the final battle with Sarevok. have a couple of potions of invisibility and the ring of invisibility on hand and the big man will fall in 2 or 3 hits.

 

Detect Illusion is Baldurs Gate 2 only.

Backstab is not classified as a own "skill" per say, he is refering to: Pick pocket, Stealth, Open Lock, Detect Trap. Those four that you can upgrade at level up with your thief skills. Optionally one could just translate your post to Stealth.

Im with the Detect Traps myself. But i can see how Stealth might be more important for a Solo character.

 

Depends on the # of party members. For a solo thief stealth is more important to be able to kill Sarevok. I use stealth most of the time and there aren't enough potions of inv.

Lock pick is important too. It's impossible to bash the locks of chests that holds tomes of str+1 and wis+1 under Candlekeep. I tried it with a 18 str thief. So, if you're going to import your char to BG2 lock pick could be good.

If you've a party with a mage or PC is (f/)m/t Detect Traps.