what do you do with your thieves?

[StarVid]

I've yet to buy ToB, but from what I gather, it's all the mages and fighters that take care of all the fighting in ToB (with Clerics doing support). What do you do with thieves in a fight? You obviously can't send them to the front lines (even the swashbuckler would have trouble surviving in the front lines). Is there anything more you can do than sit them in the back with a bow? How do you keep your thieves active?

[Mitro Jellywadder]

Traps. Invisibility and backstab. By the time you get to ToB
you'll have enough money to stockpile potions of invisibility.
Other than disarming *deadly* traps and opening locks, they're
pointless.

I only use them to disarm traps. Most of the time, Jan would be killed in battle and I had to ressurect him afterwards and I just hate the procedure.

[masteraleph]

Swashbuckler have trouble on the front lines? My swashbuckler, Dread Pirate Roberts, has an AC of -18 and regenerates slightly over 5 HP/round (2 rings of gaxx and blackrazor). Add in a familiar to up the HP (find familiar using Use Any Item), and you've got a pretty darn good fighter.

[StarVid]

What's his natural/modified THAC0 and level?

[Dundee Slaytern]

My Thieves? Er... lockpick, disarm traps, set traps and...

PICKPOCKET!!!!

I got 1,200,000+ Gps and counting.

Might try backstabbing in the future... but I dunno, nearly everybody dies by my Mages anyway in one round.

[Amergin]

Originally posted by masteraleph: Swashbuckler have trouble on the front lines? My swashbuckler, Dread Pirate Roberts, has an AC of -18 and regenerates slightly over 5 HP/round (2 rings of gaxx and blackrazor). Add in a familiar to up the HP (find familiar using Use Any Item), and you've got a pretty darn good fighter.

2 rings of gaxx. oh, well if we're counting cheese and cheats, you can use shadowkeeper to dual wield two crom faeyrs. don't forget to up his hp's to 400 while you're at it.

[Fuzzy Animal]

Most of the time if I have a thief in
the party they have magic abilities that
I use. I did try backstabbing once and was
REALLY impressed (I used it on a mage) SPLAT!!!

[Nazgûl]

you can get two rings of gaxx if you pick pocket him just before he turns hostile. so it aint a cheese.

------------------

and the sky will rain fire...

[Tuor]

Originally posted by Nazgûl: you can get two rings of gaxx if you pick pocket him just before he turns hostile. so it aint a cheese.

Just because the gae lets you do it doesn't make it any less cheesy, the game lets you cast mislead on your fighter mage and send him off to slaughter virtually anything without being hit back if you hide your image out of sight and thats dead cheesy.

I've finished the game with a kensai/thief kit, -18AC thaco of about -6 (I think) 180 or so hit points and he truly kicks arse. He dualled at 9th level by the way.

As a sub-point I actually cocked up my character selection a bit and I got all the way through SOA and ToB without a character using a bow or any other misile weapon..