What would be the best skills for theif i mean i really like crossbow heaps of damage but not fast , bow is good to but what if it is better to wield to swords? i mean cross bow damage backstab would be a hell of alot but it will get boring changing bows to two swords in the middle of combat.Any ideas?

Firstable, you cannot backstab with ranged weapons - this is not 3rd edition.

Try this:
Short Bow
Short Sword
Single Weapon Style

I'm not really in to the thiefs.. but weapons like celestial fury come in mind... also the short bow of gesen maybe...

can't really help you with this.. there are a lot of people here that CAN help you with that I think..

(edit):
short swords
short bows
katana
single weapon

something like that

[ 02-05-2003, 03:10 PM: Message edited by: Annatar ]

Personally, I wouldn't recommend getting dual-wielding with a thief. You are never going to be as good a melee fighter as a warrior, so don't commit yourself to melee all the time. Go for a ranged weapon (crossbows are fine) to soften up the enemies, and single weapon style and your favorite one-handed weapon. You have a better chance of successfully backstabbing with a single weapon anyway, since there are no THACO penalties. Plus, if you get single weapon style, you get crit hits on both 19 and 20 and an AC bonus when using your melee weapon. I can never turn down twice as many critical backstabs!

Depending on your kit though, I might modify my recommendations. For an assasin, I'd say get the short bow for ranged, and use the Tuigan Bow for it's extra attacks. You can use the poisoned weapon skill with ranged attacks, and every hit puts another slug of poison into your victim.

For the swashbuckler, I would probably use dual-wielding since they get to put three *'s in it, and have lots of combat bonuses from their kit.

Don't dual-wield with a plain thief. They got a poor THAC0 to begin with, with the massive penalties that only one star in Two Weapon Style will give you, you will simply not hit a thing later on in the game. What you want for a plain thief is a single weapon that will do huge damage when backstabbing. Staff of the Ram comes to mind for ToB, or Staff's of Striking for SoA - Quarter staffs that is, but Celestial Fury is good enough for SoA. Combine that with a bow, most preferably the Tuigan Bow, since it's the only way you'll ever attain a decent ApR with a bow, and ApR is the king of combat, and Tansheron's/Gesen Bow for monsters that require +3/+4 Enchantment to kill.

If you're going for a Swashbuckler, good for you! It's the by far best Thief kit and in fact one of the best melee fighters in the game IMHO. They can dual-wield just fine, and that is in fact precisely what you should do. As stated before, ApR is the king, and the combo that will give you the best ApR is Belm + Kundane, which is thus my recommendation for the main part of the game. Use this combo until you get Whirlwind, if you have ToB. After that, you can switch to whatever weapons and style you want.

Edit: Meh, just realized Olorin already made most of my points.

[ 02-05-2003, 06:43 PM: Message edited by: Rataxes ]