[karlosovic]

I mentioned yesterday that I was trying out the Assassin for the first time, but so far I wasn't impressed with poisoned weapons.
Well now I need to take it back. Right out of Chateau Irenicus my halfling assassin/fighter cleared out all the trolls on level 1 of Nalia's keep on his own with a longsword +1. All on the first hit.

1. poison the blade & drink potion of speed, 2. hide, 3. backstab, 4. run away from other trolls, 5. goto step 2

I never realised poison could kill trolls, thought it was only fire and acid. The bonus of poison and potions of speed is this. You can backstab and run away out of sight before you're spotted. 'leaving shadows' seems to take a while, long enough to get away unseen, and the poison takes effect so you only need 1 hit with a backstab.

Sixofspades, I see what you're saying about dualing from thief, but I guess I'm just lamenting Nalia and Imoen sucking in the roles I want from my thief. I guess you probably could build your own thief->dual character with a particular role in mind, but I like to have ALL the options available to a thief. That's why I now alternate between Jan Janson, and using the multiplayer trick to create my own NPC thieves everytime I play. Jan is the only thief NPC in the game worth spending the time to develop, and he is good but has a few flaws I don't ALWAYS want to deal with.
1. he's a multiclass, so he's levelling slower. to be fair, he has his cool gear to boost all his skills while you wait for them to develop.
2. being part mage makes him a great 2nd spellcaster, pity about his lack of necromancy and again we have him levelling up slowly.
3. you don't always feel like dealing with his personality. like all comedians, it was funny the first time...