POLL: Is Imoen good enough to be the only Thief?

Remove all ads!

I am only really interested in the Locks and Traps abilities.

I know the other Thief abilities are useful, and I plan on using Yoshimo until she comes back.

Poll Information
This poll contains 1 question(s). 53 user(s) have voted.
You may not view the results of this poll without voting.

Poll Results: Is Imoen good enough to be the only Thief? (53 votes.)

Is Imoen good enough to be the only Thief? (Choose 1)
* Yes, she's good enough for Locks and Traps only - 72% (38)
* No, you need somebody who's better at these skills (Jan or Protagonist) - 28% (15)

 

No.

There is not a single worthwhile thief in Shadows of Amn.

 

Sometimes Jan can be your thief but you must take him early and only give him lockpicking and trap detection. However I usually make the PC a multi-class of a thief in some way.

 

imoen with a few potions and the odd item or two will suffice for the game in terms of opening locks, disarming traps, the more essential of the thief abilities

if you need pickpockets, go haerdalis

if you want stealth and backstab, go valygar

potentially the best NPC thief in the game is jan, but the best thief in the game will be your PC if you make him/her one

 

Well, I'm currently playing an Illusionist/Fighter as my protagonist (but it's early, and I'll probably start another character to see which I like better anyway), and I've read about a "Ring of Danger Sense." This ring grants a +25% to her Detect Traps skill. Does this improve her enough to handle really tough traps late in the game?

 

She will do just fine. Just make sure you carry BOTH Potions of Mastery Thievery AND Potions of Perception. The former will help you pick locks while the latter boosts disarm traps.

This was one of the mistakes I made the first few times around: assuming Mastery Thievery boosts all thief abilities... not true.

 

Imoen IMO is the best thief in the game.

She may be absent for some of the game but if your quick to rescue her you can get her only about 50,000-100,000 point's behind you.

On my second game I managed to get her as soon as I did the quests for Blood Scalp, this will make the Underdark harder if you go there A.S.A.P but there's more then enough good item's that you can find doing a minimum of quest's to see you through safe (I did all this on insane btw)
in total in SoA there are about 10 trap's and lock's she cant disarm which can be fixed with a potion, for about 2-300 gp which is very insignificant

 

With some items she's sufficent for me... The second best mage and the best thief... Who cares about the backstab... Find them all and make them sorrow...

 

Not surprisingly, no one mentions Nalia. If you just want a thief for locating and disarming traps and picking locks, Nalia is just as good as Imoen and you get her very early in the game.

Using the same potions and items you would use for Imoen (ring of lock picks, ring of danger sense, potions, etc), Nalia is just as competent as Imoen.

Otherwise I'd agree with everyone else -- the best thief in the game is the one you create.

 

One difference between Nalia and Imoen's theif skill's is Nalia need's ring's and potion's most of the time and Imoen can do most of these skills with just a potion or two (or something like 10 if you want to pick pocket and set trap's )

 

It was a surprise to me too. Imoen's skills are enough to bring you back from spellhold. After this, the locks/traps she can't handle without help are very rare indeed. With 2 rings, she can handle everything.
Nalia is OK too, but she really needs potions.

 

but dont mind my opinion I'm just a biased Imoen fanatic, don't ask why

 

That hasn't been my experience. It was a rare occasion that I found a lock or trap that Nalia couldn't take care of the first time around. In the rare instances that she couldn't, one potion or a quick ring swap and she was good to go.

 

Imoen is fine without any potions or items. I've found one trap that she couldn't disarm, but neither could Yoshimo with 255 points in detect/disarm traps.

Nalia is fine through the first couple chapters. I've never taken her beyond that, so I can't be certain of her skills later on.

 

There are a few traps in the game that are miscoded as undisarmable (I'm sure that's not a word). One of the traps in Neb's house in the illithium quest is an example.

Thanks to the potions and items available in the game, anyone with a single level of thief skills will be sufficient for the entire game.

 

Jan has the skills to be a VERY good thief. If you completely ignore hiding and stealth then you can get all of his other thief abilities up to 90 or 100.

Imoen has enough thief to get you through any trap or lock, particularly with the Baldurdash fix pack, which gives her another 30 points to pick lock, traps and pick pocket IIRC (not 30 each, lets say 10 points each).

 

Imoen is fine for what you want her to do. Nalia will work, but is definitely second-rate. (She can't even pick all of the locks in her own keep for God's sake!) Still, I would highly recommend taking either Jan or make a PC thief or thief multi-class, because there are definitely other thief skills that are really useful. Jan can be quite the thief if given enough points in stealth and set traps.

 

True, but what makes you think they're miscoded?

The only one in her keep that she wasn't able to disarm is one of the ones that is not disarmable.

 

I think he was talking about locks, not traps.