Thief-less

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How do you get through this game without a thief?

To deal with traps, I try to suck in the damage and heal from it. But even though I know where most of the traps are in the game, it still gets tedious (especially if no healing readily available). And of course there's the death traps that you load from (cheesy?) if you fail your saving throw. There's got to be a better way...

For locked containers, mages can use Knock, and I think I've successfully forced open a lock a total of ONE time (is it just me?). Otherwise, I relunctantly leave the chest unlooted. Again, there's got to be a better way...

 

I love playing thieves, so I can't say I've ever had a group without one, but there is a priest(I think) spell called find traps. Also, some of the other classes have some thief abilities, like bards or even monks

 

My caracters are always so powerfull becasue of my powergaming so the traps ain't hurting me, the locks can you just bash up and traps and "Hide in shadows" are just funny, but usefull, things that you really don't need.

 

Thieves are really very useful though not strictly nescessary. It is possible to beat it without but this game can be beaten by every class singlehandledly so thats no biggy. But I just love to sneak around with a thief and backstab, perfect way to start a fight and take out a pesky mage.

 

Wray reminded me of something too: what's the point of detecting a trap with the cleric spell or a monk but not being able to disarm it? Does it improve your saving throw when you trigger it? ie: can the character "brace himself" for the impact so he takes less damage than when the trap takes him by surprise?

 

No, it doesn't do that. They just detect the traps so you can try to avoid them. Pretty useless for veterans of the game because it's usually known where the trap is, the problem is dealing with it. Another problem is that most of the deadly traps are in your way so there's no way to avoid them.

 

That's pretty dumb that you can only detect traps but not disarm them...the spell should decect and disarm all traps dected within a few rounds or so.

 

Well... if you think about it, your average priest probably couldn't disarm a trap.
And anyway, a spell to disarm traps? considering the hundreds of types of traps there are, that's just silly.

 

the spell i use to disarm traps if i don't have a thief is summon monster I
this ofcourse would only work for floor traps
as for the chest ones : after discovering there is a trap i send whoever my strongest guy is to go and open it (usually minsc ) so as not to accidently kill off anyone too importent
having your main char petrified or just drop dead kinda sucks

 

The bonus for me is that you get experience points for disarming traps.
The easiest are worth about 400, but some bigger ones are worth over 2,000 experience points. That's a lot of experience points (and levels!) you miss out on by not having a thief.

 

That is completely untrue! You can very easily avoid every single deadly trap.

 

How about the trap near the end of Irenicus' dungeon?
It's just before you enter the big room with the long bands of trap area that you have to switch off by turning your keys into wands.
To enter this room you must cross a narrow bridge and there is a trap completely blocking your path.

 

I tried summoning spiders to trigger a floor trap... it didn't work! I didn't detect the trap yet, so could that be the advantage to detecting a trap?

Furthermore, floor traps don't go away after I walk over it. Could this also be explained by detecting traps first?

Edit: Nope. Tested it with a monk. Found the trap, sprung it and it was still there. /Edit

[ November 30, 2002, 22:07: Message edited by: Blog ]

 

Unavoidable - yes. Deadly - no.

 

You can avoid the traps in the Iranicaus dungeon by staying close to the walls.

 

I noticed that abjuration spells protect from traps too. So a mage with stoneskin and perhaps elemental defense combined with Knock can serve as a makeshift thief. Still can't get rid of floor traps permanently, but at least don't have to rely on healing so much.

 

Mirror Image actually protects against traps. A must-have for Solo Sorcerers.

 

Find familiar also lets a mage do some thievery, so I think it is well established that mages can made do without a proper thief. As for the other classes...

 

I think that is difficult to complete the game without a thief.