i Don't rea;;y agree with you GW

reason is that if you make a generic thief and put all of the points in find traps and open locks you can duel just about straight away. by the time you are out of the first dungeon and have done a few thing you get back the thief class.

if you do it at the right level you will still max out at the same level and you don't need a thief in the party. the benifit of this is that it saves a party slot and as your fighter is generally the front man he can find the traps as well. if you time it right you can get both strongholds.

also thief class aren't much use after about level 10 if you only want them for find trap and open locks as these will be 100%. use SK if you want to play a fighter kit.

hope this helps

Jan may not go up as high in level, but since he is a specialist, he gets and extra spell per level, more than making up for the fact he ends the game at 14th level as an illusionist.

I'd be dualling a fighter to a thief over a thief to a fighter. The rewards are greater, there's no need to continue levelling up a fighter after you've got all the proficiencies you want, and thieves have skills that are better to continually boost throughout the game, like set traps. And a berserker thief would be neat, too.
Sylves, Jan doesn't need to get to higher levels to be good at what he does (thieving) since he's also an illusionist, but if you're dead set against him... perhaps the reason you can't dual class is because your character's lawful good. From what I seem to remember, thieves can't be lawful good, and you can't perform a dual class which will result in a conflicting alignment.

I've dualed my swashbuckler to a fighter (did it right away) and I like it fine. Mainly because I wanted to be swashbuckler which you cannot dual into. But in retrospect, I guess I should have waited till level 10 so I could get another "every five level" bonus for my swashbuckler. Also, I didn't have a place for a thief in my group so I had to solve that on my own... and if I would have started as a fighter and dualed later I would have been in like chapter 5 when I could get my finding traps skill... etc etc. Blah.

Well... i've decided.. i'am going to a make a berserker till his got 5 stars in longsword and 2 in singelhanded weapon and then make him a theif.. or perhaps just take Jan with me =)

Tnx alot for all help guys ! i'll remember ye =)

Dualling from a fighter to a thief gives you the HP advantages and saving throws of the fighter, if you are dualling a fighter/anything it usually makes sense to be a fighter first. Only disadvantage would be if you wanted to have a specific thief kit like swashbucker/assassin etc in which case you'd have to do the kit first.

One more thing - only humans can dual class.

Yep, starting out as a fighter is better because you can roll a high strength. Getting 10 levels as a thief to get back your fighter skills takes much less experience than getting 10-11 levels as a fighter to get the thief skills back.