Thief playthrough?

[Giant Wasp Face]

Ok, thinking of starting my 3rd play through (it's been a very, very long time since the last), and I was wondering how the Thief class fares?

I played fighter when I first got the game, and Mage on my second playthrough (I remember havign that high int and wis was really useful), but I never bothered with thief because, well, they seemed a bit pointless. Locks can be bashed, after all. Plus I never understood the right time to multi-class, so I never bothered at all.

So, how does thief fare in a play-through? Any perks, or are you just making it harder for yourself?

[figmentPez]

Playing as a Thief is great. Way back I did a (mostly) solo run through the game, and it was as a Thief. Worked really well because backstabbing is insanely powerful, when abused. If I'd known about mods at the time, and the mod to add bags of holding had been available, I could have done the entire game without any party members. (Being solo means not sharing XP, which means TNO gets to crazy high levels. 6x or 8x backstab, easily.) My most recent play-through with a thief was with a full party, and that worked well, too.

Backstab, run away, hide, backstab again. It's a surprisingly effective way to fight. Especially if you have Morte tanking for you. Against some enemies it's more effective than being a fighter. (If you're looking to farm rare loot in Undersigil, Thief is the class to do it with, and a team of TNO and Annah working together works well, too.)

There are, also, a few areas of the games with traps to detect. Granted, most of those are when you'd have Annah in your party, but it's a still a minor bonus.

The right time to switch classes is ASAP, in my humble opinion.

[Lord Of Dorkness]

Had some fun with Thief my very, very first run a million years ago. It's a finicky class to play at times, but there's some cool stuff exclusive to them.

The backstabs (as mentioned) let you just wreck quite a lot of enemies, if you're patient enough. And there's some cool bits of loot you can only pick-pocket.

Did on the whole prefer Mage myself, however. They just get so many cool toys, tricks and bits of dialogue.