Thieves and their armor

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Hello all, I started up BG2 again, did a search for some info. and saw this post referenced elsewhere but the link seemed to have disappeared. This was some stuff I looked into long ago and posted here. It was so long ago that I'm not particularly confident in it, but I believe the methodology looks sound and should be easily testable if you have the desire. Given some posts about thieves I've seen lately I thought, what the hell? and am throwing it out again. Hope it is of some use -- please respond with inaccuracies or blatantly stupid mistakes : ) Cheers.

I asked earlier in another thread about the effect of armor on a thief's abilities. In my playing I found numerous inconsistencies in the way things were supposed to work and the actuality of how things played out in the game so I decided to learn how to cheat using the CLUA Console in order to determine how armor actually affects the thief.

My methodology was simple. I created a new human thief to avoid any racial bonuses. I gave her a dex of 13 to avoid and dex bonuses. I did not add any points at all to her Find Traps ability in order to have her start the game with a Find Traps ability of only 5. I then took her to the trapped picture on the wall with the golem in the room right next to where you begin the game. I used the CLUA console a few times to level her and found that she discovered the trap when her Find Traps ability was at 50. At 49 she would not find the trap, 50 was the key number.

Having discovered the threshold number to find the trap I proceeded to try on the studded leather armor found in the chest. According to the manual studded leather should reduce the Find Traps ability by 10. This is the number also reported in Ragusa's helpful "Why Thieves Rule" treatise which I assume he took from the manual. When you put on such armor though no change is reflected in the information page and this initially piqued my interest. So, once I put the studded armor on I was still able to find the trap which I would not have been able to do had it actually reduce my thieving abilities as the manual indicates it should.

Conclusion: the manual is wrong. Studded armor does not actually affect your thieving skills. I tested many armors and found the only armors that do have an effect on your thieving skills are the various elven chains along with hide armor and the effect that they have ARE reflected on you information page in game.

The following are the elven chains that effect your thieving skill negatively and the ONLY ARMOR in the game other than simple hide armor (Alger's armor has no effect) that I found have any negative impact on your thieving skills at all: Elven Chain/ Elven Chain +1/ Sylvan Chain +2/ Melodic Chain +3/ Aslyferund Elven Chain +5/ Blade Singer +4/ Dark Elven Chain. All of these armors have the exact same effect which is NOT what is reported in the manual. The actual effects are as follows:

Open Lock: -5
Find Traps: -5
Pick Pocket: -20
Move Silently: -10 there are no other changes even though the manual and elsewhere indicate there are.

There is armor that has a positive impact on your thieving skills. They are --

Shadow Armor: +15 Hide in shadow
Night's Gift: +20 Hide in shadow
*****Human Flesh: +20 Move Silently, the Human Flesh is VERY interesting because this bonus isn't in the description of the armor that I saw but shows up on the infromation page when you equip it.

Also, I then leveled my thief to the max and got Use Any Item so that I could test every armor in the game. In addition to the above information I found the following I thought might be of interest to a thief.

Chain mail while not having an effect on thief skills does disable your steath ability with the exception of the elven chain listed above and also Mithril chain, White Dragon Scale, and Shadow Dragon Scale.

Final Conclusions: If you are a straight thief or a kit then once you can use any item White Dragon Scale (AC -2) or Shadow Scale (AC 1) may suit you because both have good AC for a thief, allow you to go stealthy, and have no impact on your thief skills.

Prior to the Use Any Item ability Human Flesh really shines with an AC 3, a great +4 saving throws and magic resist of 20% as well as a hidden +20 to move silently. I'm tempted to say this is the best armor in the game for a thief even though its AC is higher than the dragon armor of above. Of course, you need to be evil and it's damned ugly. If you are not evil or not partial to it I would go with either the Night's Gift with AC 3 and +20 Hide in Shadow, Grandmaster's Armor with an AC 1, or possibly Aslyferund Elven Chain which has an AC 0 and immunity to normal weapons (you may not need that at that point) but does reduce your thief skills as stated above. However, this reduction in thief skills isn't so great if you're into powergaming because you can remove armor to pick pocket and the other penalties are relatively minor and easily made up by other equipment you'll have when you are at a high level and have found this armor.

Now then, if you have a mage/thief (as I do) then I feel that you are best served by going with some of the elven chain or a robe. The elven chain and its cousins are the only armors in the game that allowed me to cast spells. The thieving penalties are minor given that only the pick pocket penalty is large and you can easily remove your armor to pick pocket. The other possibility are robes. The Robe of Apprenti is AC 3 and you have to sacrafice 50,000 XP to get it. Also, it won't help your AC much if you already have some good bracers but you can combine it with a Ring of Protection. The other possibility is the Robe of Vecna which will help your casting greatly. I would say this, if you use your M/T as a caster, go with the Robe. If you like to use your thief to do a lot of backstabbing and then casting as well I feel you are better served to give one of the powerful robes to a party member and use one of the Elven Chains. If you are going solo I'd go with the Robe of Vecna.

That's about all I know about that. If you see any mistakes please let me know. Also, I thought much of this would be very relevant to the SOA forum and if it's worthwhile and allowed I'll post it there or edit out the TOB refrences (I'm not sure if there are too many or not.) Thanks for your patience.

 

I suspect your find/remove traps ability may be split into two separate abilities even though they display as one. I seem to recall that while wearing plate maile (with use any ability) a thief can detect but not remove traps. This may have a bearing on the numbers in the manual (i.e. perhaps you can detect but not remove said trap requiring 50% while wearing studded armor).

Also, I think I remember a stalker being able to wear blue dragon scale and still use stealth, which inclines me to suspect a thief can wear it too without disabling thieving skills. Have you tried it?

 

Same goes to bard. When wearing chain mail his pickpocket ability is decreased by 20

 

I do not think Dragon Scales can be used in conjunction with thieving abilities, and stalkers cannot use more than Studded Leather armour. The exception however is the Shadow Dragon Scale (the Ranger stronghold quest), which counts as Leather Armour AC1.

Big thanks to Laches for doing this! It's saved myself countless hours. Nice one!

 

I just reloaded an old game to see what my stalker was wearing -- it was the white dragon scale, not blue. White dragon scale appears to function as leather or studded leather. It doesn't disable or lower theiving abilities on my thief, and it doesn't disable or lower stealth on my stalker. At AC -2 it gets my vote for best armor for a thief.

Another good armor for a thief in a larger party is the Grandmaster armor at AC 1 that increases your movement like boots of speed, since there aren't enough boots of speed to equip your entire party if you have 6 people (or 5 with the upgraded Ilasera).

 

White Dragon Scale is chain mail (at least, it's supposed to be). Bioware forgot to disable it's use by stalkers. I'm not sure how that thief was able to use it Bombur, unless he had UAI.

Most of the information in the back of the manual was never programmed into the game. Ignore it.

[ August 23, 2002, 22:51: Message edited by: Rastor ]