NPC thief?

Remove all ads!

The lack of good thieves in BG2 is starting to anger me :/ Are there any mods that give a good thief or fighter / thief NPC?

 

Valen is a fighter/thief, but she's also evil and pretty unbalanced. Fun though.

 

Turn Imoen into a pure vanilla thief with Shadow Keeper. I think there is a one-day NPC mod called Hessa that gives you an assassin NPC. I recommend that one.

 

He might be a bit slower levelling, because he's a multi, but Jan is an excellent thief. By the time you finish SOA, he should be getting those HLA points.

 

Your best bet is Jan, considering he is the only NPC theif who levels up.
Yeah, sure, Yoshi does too. But how long is he gonna be around?

Jan is gonna be restricted to search and open locks pretty much. If you want someone to hide and backstab, pick Valygar.

 

I found Jan's most valuable skill is detect illusions, since I usually place him in an evil-esque configuration, I don't have Keldorn to help me with that.

I'm actually really, really surprised that there isn't a popular mod for a single-class thief. I mean, it's the most needed NPC in the game. Why hasn't someone clued in on this and put out a good-aligned thief to balance things out.

 

Actually, as Tassadar said, Hessa is a One Day NPC who is a thief. If memory serves, Alassa, another One Dayer is also a single class thief. I haven't treid them yet, since I always forget to look for them when I start a new game, but either one should do ya fer.

 

Well...as others before me have mentioned...there IS always Jan. But if you're so keen on having a thief in your party, there's no better candidate than Charname him/her self!

Assassins, Bountyhunters, Swashbucklers...they're all great, and vanilla Thieves kick some boo-tay as well.

 

The game is designed with the lack of NPC thief in mind. There are only a few situation where thieving skills greater than Imoen's are truly needed even in ToB. Otherwise is Jan a more than adequate thief.

 

Like Geoff, I used to be annoyed with the lack of "good" NPC thieves. Yoshimo gains few thief points slowly, Nalia is stuck at level 4 thief, Imoen is gone. Jan is probably the only reasonable choice, albeit he can't backstab reliably. So I had the PC be at least partly a thief for a while.

But then I realized you don't need 200 thieving points in anything to do the job; 100 is enough for most traps and locks, and backstabbing is rare with a party to control. Plus there are potions to boot. So suddenly Jan, Nalia and Imoen all became "good" thieves and this problem went away.

 

I have found so far that Nalia almost had enough thief skills but not quite. Jan has more than enough (unless you want to hide and backstab, but if you want that, make your PC a thief).

 

But having your PC as a thief is kind of restricting. And with the thieves in the game, there is a lot of room for some more personality.

 

Plus - I have noticed that there is a real shortage of powerful arcane spellcasters amongst the NPCs (if you don't want Edwin). The lack of arcane spellcasters is more noticeable than the lack of thieves.

 

But that is fixed by an assortment of well designed mods, whereas the thief problem isn't.

 

Yeah thats right.
Edwin is the only mage with 18Int.
Viconia and Cernd are the ony devine casters with 18Wis.

If you rush to get Imoen, you can do a few quests where you dont even a thief. Give her a couple of items which you will get on the way and she should be just about enough.

 

Immy's skills are good enough for 98.9% of the SoA traps, you need more, then all I suggest is that you have a potion of Master Thievery, of a Potion of Perception. There are also items that add to her abilities is you don't like drinking potions.

 

But therein is the problem. Which items do you give to Immy (or Nalia or Jan)? Items more geared towards thieving or magery?

 

You could always equip the "rings of better thievery" when you need them for thievery. There's never any rush to disarm or pick locks so take your time making the switch. So long as you don't mind switching rings and lugging them around in your gem bag. The only time this may cost you is when unequip a "ring of memorize more spells" you will lose the spell slot if you haven't casted any spells.

 

I have actually gone throuugh the game with thieves in my party only about 5 times out of the umpteen times i've been thru. THere is actually NO need for thieves, traps can be walked over by tanks or heavily magic resistance chars(a.k.a. monk) locks can be handled by someone with Crom or call upon Heavenly Might or any number of ways or items to increase strength and bash the crap out of them, and alternatively Knock can be cast on them> As for backstabbing take along Valygar or make the Charname a Stalker or some such, at least you can fight when you are no longer hidden, or whip out some sells to be able to run away quickly and hide easily and return to backstab again. Detecting illusions can be handled by mages clerics or Keldorn, and laslty if you're into setting traps take a bard to give you the ultimate cheese traps offered by ToB to all rogues.

One could also install the Ease of Use mod which eliminates all traps and locks in the game.

 

HB, I dont think you need to worry about lack of arcane spellcaster. Even if Edwin is vastly superiour to Nalia she is more than adequate and you might encounter other arcane casters as well.