My character is a swashbuckler/mage, so no backstabbing for him. I had Valygar in my party for a short while b/c Iiked the fact he could sneak around, scout, and backstab. Ever since I got my cat though, I dumped Valygar whose sneaking around was no longer needed. I miss the backstabbing, however. I'd like to make use of the several nifty daggers I have. I'm toying with the idea of using Nalia?! Giver her a minor spell sequencer with invisibility and strength and let her give it a whirl. Sure, it's only a x2 mulitiplier but hey, it's fun. Any thoughts? Wasting my time? I just like the extra strategy option, I'm sure Jan and Yoshimo would be better options, but I don't know, they rub me the wrong way,

well having jan around isnt the best option but if you like a good laugh take jan ,

but joshimo is a better thief i think ,

i always use him .... i havent realy used jan mutch he is good in a way but joshimo is a better backstabber .... [img]smile.gif[/img]

If you use Jan, he will level up as a Thief (whereas Nalia does not), and eventually will have far better thief skills than Nalia (Yoshimo too, for that matter.....).

Also, he would provide a solid backup to your protagonists mage skills. I'd say Jan's the way to go.

Same for me - backstabbing is a nice gimmick but my preferences are in other tactics. Personally instead of backstabbing I use my best fighter with haste, invisibility etc. equipped with my weapon of choice for the occasion and let him do the deed. I rarely use thiefs for other tasks than lock-picking or detecting / removing of traps.
But this is a matter of taste naturally ...

I also never used to backstab, but recently I went int he guarded coumpound with a low level party, and that thief with a stack of invisility potions was totaly destroying my party. Since then I have been stocking up on invisibility potions.

So now when I am in a hard fight, I have Yoshimo go invisible and have him backstab something. Then I have him take another potion and again backstab, you can do that as long as you have potions.

Also, an assasin with the use any item ability is a god. He can just equip the Staff or the Magi and every single attack he will make from then on will be backstab, and assasins have a very good backstab skill.

I have problems with backstabbing. I've finished all the quests in BG 2, so the level of Jan was very high. But whenever I would backstab, he would do very little damage. I did go invisible, and sneak behind the enemy, then backstab, but the damage would never go over 8. Why is that?

I ran into this same dillema. I started a game with a bounty hunter and eventually dual classed him to mage. Once he had levelled up high enough that he could use 'any weopon', he was really awesome. I would send him in and lay 'spike, time-stop, and exploding traps', then send him in 'hidden in shadows' for a nice quintuple backstab, then switch over to 2Handed "Gramm the sword of Grief". Once it got too hot, I would lead them back through the traps, time stop trap goes off, then have him cast some nasty spells. . He was a lot of fun.

Well, I just started a new game with an archer as my main character and a pure thief (I used the multiplayer-converted-to-a-single-player mode. Highly recommend since there are no pure and FAITHFUL thieves). IMHO I would say that the backstab is more then a gimmick. If you can get your thief behind an opponent (especially those damn spell casters) and lay into them with an initial backstab to start the fight off, it makes the rest of the fight go a lot easier.

A home-grown bounty hunter thief (dualed up from a level 8 fighter helps the hit points) can make even dragons easy, but the negs are finding and disarming traps, unlocking stuff and sneaking around, must have much patience, many potions and good hit points to survive, especially in the early going.

[ 03-27-2002, 03:02 PM: Message edited by: Rolper ]

People - how do you get a thief to backstab? I never did it with Yoshi before I dumped him but would like to try it with Jan Jansen since he's dual class.