I'm thinking about dualing a human Swashbuckler to a Mage (at level 10). What thieving skills should I concentrate on and what values should I try to get those to? Do I need higher than 90 pts in lock picks? What about set traps, is that useful?

Hide in shadows and move silently may not be that important since Swashbucklers don't have backstab multipliers, but I still like to have at least one character in my party that can act as a scout. From my BG1 experience, it seems like NPC thieves are always lacking in stealth. Can I count on any of the BG2 NPC thieves to have decent stealth abilities?

Find/remove traps is the most important
skill for a thief in my opinion. Pick locks
is second, but if you have a character with a good
strength it is possible to force the lock.
Try set traps, I like this ability a lot.
You can just cast invisibilty to scout ahead or
just set some traps and get the attention of some
monsters and they will follw you to your devious
deadly traps!!

how about detect illusion?? how exactly does that even work with a theif?? i created my entire party and my swashbuckling beauty Eve is my favorite character, but i never bothered with detect illusion because i didnt know exactly how it worked......so whats the deal with it?

Detect Illusion activates when your thief detects for traps. You can use it to take down some of the illusion spells that an enemy mage put up - things like mirror image, blur, and invisibility. Keep in mind though that, just as it may take a little time to find a particular trap, it sometimes takes a while to actually bring down the illusion.



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There are mage spells that detect or dispel
illusion, Oracle for example.

I think it depends on if you are planning on using Imoen or not. If so, take all the skills that she doesn't have, especially Pick Pockets and Set Trap. If you have good Pick Pockets skill you can recharge wands free which will help a lot when you dual to Mage. (Obviously pick pocket the wands back BEFORE you dual.http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/no...iles/smile.gif )

In my opinion a Bounty Hunter or Assassin would be a good match for a Mage. No one in the game can lay traps and traps ROCK! Assassin/Mage looks like the ultimate anti-mage weapon... Breach -> Poison Weapon -> Melf's Minute Meteors 8-)

Pick Pockets is way better than Hide In Shadows: you can always steal more Invisibility Potions.
Obviously if you're not taking another thief along with you (Yoshimo, Jan or Imoen) you need to have Find/Remove Traps at 80-90 pts. Open Locks is very good too, though there's a Mage spell which will help. Just decide if you're going to ditch Imoen though... in my opinion not an option for a good PC.

Actually, I was considering having my swashbuckler/mage be the group's main and possibly only thief once I regain my thief skills. That's not to say I won't have Yoshi or Imoen in my party for parts of the game, but I want to design my PC so that I won't necessarily be dependent on having another NPC thief in the party. I've never really been big on pickpocketing. I always got caught in BG1 so I just don't bother with it. Is it more important in BG2?

BTW, which helps stealth more, Hide in Shadows or Move Silently, or are they equally important?

An excellent choice of dual class!

Since your just scouting - forget move silently, just use hide in the shadows and you really only need about 50 points (max) here (because you can always wait untill it works - it's not like you need to be able to imeadiatly hide for a backstab). You can probably get away w/ less points here and use boot of stealth or the like to augment your score. Rangers (Minsc & Valyger) have this ability in plentifull supply so if you have them in your party then you might want to spend the points elsewhere.


#1 open locks (you don't want to be wasting 2nd level spells on knock), figure at least 75 points here.
#2 detect traps, 50 + points.
#3 pick pockets or set traps (your choice, both are capable of offensive manuevers - for pick pockets, if a creature isn't imeadiatly offensive (red)that you know you will be fighting then just go up to it and rob the wepons or protection items off of it.)