thieves can use their skills all day. and do you really want all your mages spell slots taken up with knock ? or your cleric loaded with find traps ?(well maybe, there's a severe lack of lvl 2 priest spells worth memorising). Do you really want to waste Shield of the Archons avoiding a trap ? Adding in their ability to stealth and scout ahead, or backstab, or lay traps... isn't it worth having a character who can do all that AND infinitely find/disarm traps and pick locks ?

The point is, every job a thief does IS possible by at least 1 other class/kit... but when you have them all-in-one and unlimited use with a thief, why limit your other characters options ?

Thieves are great, and, good fun and all. My point is, thieves are the least needed class. Nalia works just fine for the most part, easily filling the role. Or Imoen. Depending on who I am bringing with me depends on if I memorize Knock or not. If I can bash the lock, so be it. If I have several mages, one of them memorizes a few Knocks. My Cleric's level 2 spell slots are as follows. Slow Poison, Flame Blade, Silence, Find Traps, Resist Fire. (Flame Blade is actually pretty handy for some situations)

I like thieves actually, Bounty Hunters being tops on my list. Assassins are fun. I like Bounty Hunters more from a roleplaying standpoint, although in BG an Assassin fits the bill as well. Swashies are fun, but, if I want to dual wield and make mass kills, I use a Blade :D

Blade as in a Bard kit?

Yes.

actually my thief of choice would be either a fighter->thief dual class or a halfling fighter/thief multiclass. While the thief kits give some nice abilities, thief is a class with the most abilities already and I'd rather keep the standard ones and +25 skill points each level. That being said... I'm currently experimenting with a halfling fighter/thief that I've hacked to give the assassin kit. So far, I'm not overly impressed with poisoned traps. being slightly limited in points by the assassin kit, I've maxed out stealth and now working on setting traps ability. find traps and lockpicks will be next, I've got nalia (and minsc) with me for the meantime.

Swashbuckler's can't backstab, so if you want to backstab pick another kit.

Oddly enough, my view is quite to the contrary: You should only Dual to a Thief if you want Use any Item and the Traps. The Thief is a wonderful class to Dual from, as you can quite easily get 100% (or close to it) in all the skills you want in only a few levels. Look at Imoen: She's got 100% Locks and 95% Traps, the only two Thief skills that are really vital to a party, and she's only Level 7! Give her some Boots of Stealth and the Mercykiller Ring and she can actually Stealth for you, too. (She certainly doesn't need any other equipment.) Now, let's pretend that Imoen didn't Dual until Level 15, and was a Swashbuckler to boot. That's why the Swashbuckler->Mage kicks butt. I know it's been dissed earlier in this thread, but come on: You don't miss out on a single bit of Mage power, you get EXP for all the Locks & Traps you find, plus you get a -4 bonus to AC and a -3 bonus to THAC0, and you can put 2 stars in melee weapons that you couldn't even use as a straight Mage! Sure, you can't Backstab, but you completely own every other Thief skill there is, and you won't even need equipment to do it.

Other considerations:
Assassin->Fighter. Sure, you've got the hitpoints of a Thief.....but the THAC0 of a Fighter. Hoooooo boy!
Swashbuckler->Fighter. Same hitpoint problem, but the AC and THAC0 bonuses might just be worth it. I've never heard of this class being done, but it should be quite interesting.

Well, like I said before. backstab is one of the main reason why you want to dual to a mage, so you can take advantage of the Mislead + Backstab combo. A Swashbuckler completely misses out on this, and for a mage, the rather puny combat bonuses added by a low level Swashbuckler definitely doesn't outweigh that. That's why any other sort of thief is a better choice.

A Swashbuckler/Fighter would be more interesting, though ultimately, I think a pure Swashie or even a multiclassed Fighter/thief would be better off, and that without the pain of playing an extremely low lvl fighter for a while.

I mentioned yesterday that I was trying out the Assassin for the first time, but so far I wasn't impressed with poisoned weapons.
Well now I need to take it back. Right out of Chateau Irenicus my halfling assassin/fighter cleared out all the trolls on level 1 of Nalia's keep on his own with a longsword +1. All on the first hit.

1. poison the blade & drink potion of speed, 2. hide, 3. backstab, 4. run away from other trolls, 5. goto step 2

I never realised poison could kill trolls, thought it was only fire and acid. The bonus of poison and potions of speed is this. You can backstab and run away out of sight before you're spotted. 'leaving shadows' seems to take a while, long enough to get away unseen, and the poison takes effect so you only need 1 hit with a backstab.

Sixofspades, I see what you're saying about dualing from thief, but I guess I'm just lamenting Nalia and Imoen sucking in the roles I want from my thief. I guess you probably could build your own thief->dual character with a particular role in mind, but I like to have ALL the options available to a thief. That's why I now alternate between Jan Janson, and using the multiplayer trick to create my own NPC thieves everytime I play. Jan is the only thief NPC in the game worth spending the time to develop, and he is good but has a few flaws I don't ALWAYS want to deal with.
1. he's a multiclass, so he's levelling slower. to be fair, he has his cool gear to boost all his skills while you wait for them to develop.
2. being part mage makes him a great 2nd spellcaster, pity about his lack of necromancy and again we have him levelling up slowly.
3. you don't always feel like dealing with his personality. like all comedians, it was funny the first time...

What´s the best armour for a thief? Is it the shadowdragon armour?