[karlosovic]

If you're still planning to dual to a mage, get the bonus merchants add-on. I know you can definately download them as an official mod, they might also come in certain game patches, not sure. In any case, one of the new merchants will sell you The Katana for cross-class mages that dual wield katanas: Dak'kons Zerth Blade. If you want to be part swashy, then you will have to be human and start as a pure thief (swashbuckler). You will then need to dual to a mage at some point. When creating your character, make sure you set it up so it's possible to dual later. Read your manual to check these but from my memory this is what you will need. Human, minimum 15 dexterity, minimum 18 intelligence and NOT be Lawful-Good. I would give stats something like this

str 13
dex 18
con 15
wis 10
int 18
cha 10

That requires 84 stat points when rolling, which is a good average roll. If you want to keep rolling to get more points, put the extras into strength and take con up to 16. For a thief/mage there is no point making con more than 16, you don't need much from charisma or wisdom either. You might also want to drop your charisma to 8 for some extra points on strength, I recomend getting it as high as you can, but intelligence and dexterity are the most important.

For proficiency points, put them in dual-wielding, katanas and long or short swords. Take a bow if you want, but remember you can't have any ranged weapon in a quick weapon slot while you're dual wielding, so you'll have to keep swapping over (and if you have the Zerth Blade I mentioned above, taking it out of your hand means losing all the bonus spells it gives you). As a thief mage, stealth and speed are your best weapons, and use magic missiles etc instead of a bow.

The only other thing to consider is dual-classing. Whenever you choose to change to mage class, you won't ever get higher as a thief. For this reason you might want to consider a different race (half-elf, maybe halfling but I can't think if they can be mages) and being a multiclass Mage/Thief. The advantage is that you will be able to keep advancing in both classes. The disadvantage is that you won't be able to choose the swashy kit you wanted, and levelling up will be a little slower (but dual-classing will put you right back to level 1 mage with thieving disabled for a while, so it's a toss-up).

[ 01-26-2003, 08:56 AM: Message edited by: karlosovic ]