I have Jan in my party and he's a pretty decent thief/mage (little slow finding the traps, though). Anyway, I've tried to backstab and pickpocket several times, but always seem to do it wrong. Can someone explain it to me? Also, if you hide in shadows, do you come out when you backstab and pickpocket? I assume so. Thanks.

To backstab:
You must be hidden in shadows or otherwise invisible. You have to place yourself behind your target, and then attack. Your attack will make you visible once it strikes (or misses). Jan especially has trouble connecting because of his poor THACO.

To Pickpocket:
You can be hidden or not when attempting to pickpocket, but it's MUCH better to be hidden. Approach your target and use the thief skill button (the cursor should change to a little loot bag when over a neutral person. You cannont try to pickpocket hostile characters (red-circled). Every time you pickpocket, you have a chance of being caught by your target which depends on your pickpocket skill and their difficulty factor. Pickpocketing is generally not a good idea unless you have gotten your pickpocket skill to high levels.

Backstabbing requires:

*Your thief character to be hidden in shadows
*To use a thief weapon (no two handed swords etc, if in doubt stick to daggers and short swords)
*Approach the enemy from BEHIND before attacking with the character

And thats how you backstab :D

Pickpocket only works on non-hostile creatures (i.e. white circle). Simply select the thieving icon and click the non-hostile creature as a target.

And yes, after a backstab (whether it hits or not) the thief character becomes visible again.

Cool! Thanks, everyone. I'll have to give it a shot. Oh, one more question, why does Jan's THACO affect it? See, I don't know much about this game. [img]smile.gif[/img]

His THAC0 is his chance to hit (armour class 0). The lower, the better (since the number is what he has to roll to hit the target). Since Jan's THAC0 isn't too good, he often takes a stab and misses his target. Most unfortunate.

Note that the backstabber doesn't need to specifically hide in shadows. It is only imporrtant that he is not visible. Any invisibility spell (especially in Jan's case) will help. Mislead will help very much.

And, actually, you DON'T automatically become visible upon a failed Backstab. Attacking an enemy merely causes you to come out of Stealth: Depending on how many points you have in Move Silently, you may have time to attack, miss, silently curse yourself, run back behind a rock and Hide in Shadows again, without ever having been visible.

If you roll a Critical Miss, however, then you DO instantly become visible, no matter your Move Silently score. Think of it as missing so badly that you knock yourself off balance, try to catch yourself but stub your toe instead, and crash to earth with a loud thud, causing the room full of Orogs to turn and stare at you.

One more thing about Backstabs: You have to be behind your target. Your enemies do not. You're going to be taking most of your Backstabs from people who are right in front of you.