Tue Mar 11 20:15:17 2008

At 8 o'clock PM, Day of Deception, 23rd of the Month of the Ancient Darkness
on the Theran calendar Calprecia perished, never to return.

First serious character after a couple of months hiatus. This was my first Imperial. Mostly I play Outlanders. I also rarely play thieves.

Okay, so I do have some experience playing trappers and I wanted to play one after the trap effect changes. Firstly, when knockout traps DO work, they are awesome and last for hours at a time. However, there were plenty of times when I'd buy/find the highest level trap ingredients that I could, much higher level than the people I was trying to knock out, and they would fail over and over and over again. It was very frustrating. I would say that knock-out traps fail close to 90% of the time (I would buy ingredients in packs of 10-15 and see how many would fail). Also, I thought I remembered damage traps doing more damage. I realize the trade-off for being able to potentially knock out/damage/glow a room of people is a lower success rate, but that seems a little harsh for what the path is good for.

Look at it this way: I have shield block, parry, dodge, second attack, weapon trip, and kick. How am I supposed to PK at all if my speciality is severely hamstrung? That, and bugs I had posted several years ago still hadn't been addressed. But, I digress.

Thief waylay was neat, but they lose their distraction if you fail the steal (while they're awake, no less). I guess you can waylay and then call in your friends to come kill, but I've never been a fan of that kind of fighting. When the knockout trap worked, I could steal everything and run away several hours before they woke up. Didn't do much good to backstab since it was pretty much a death sentence. Umm.. combat steal is still awesome. I've always wanted to combine it with pickpocket's deft touch. All-in-all, I feel like the trapper path is only useful if combined with another path entirely. Maybe I just have no clue how to play trappers, but I did what I could. There wasn't anything about the path that wouldn't have been done more effectively by any other path.

n/t

...and basically useless traps.

Man do I hate thieves. Trapper is annoying in that you can engineer a situation where there's a chance for me to be knocked out with virtually zero risk to yourself. I mean, I either walk into the room or I don't, and in most cases I'm pretty much forced to. It may have seemed like I had the unquestionable upper hand when it came to melee, but I've fought trappers in the past who did some pretty filthy stuff with grenades. Maybe you weren't that far in the path yet? Anyway, sorry to see you delete. My...uh..."zeal"...in the palace wasn't personal. I was just annoyed at getting cleaned out. At least you left my water jug!

>Man do I hate thieves. Trapper is annoying in that you can
>engineer a situation where there's a chance for me to be
>knocked out with virtually zero risk to yourself.

More often than not, the chance of getting knocked-out was very slim. Do you remember that time chasing me where you ran through six of my knockout traps without getting knocked-out once? Half of those traps were higher level than you were.

>fought trappers in the past who did some pretty filthy stuff
>with grenades. Maybe you weren't that far in the path yet?

Grenades are poison path. Yep, poisoners can use trapper path items.

>Anyway, sorry to see you delete. My...uh..."zeal"...in the
>palace wasn't personal. I was just annoyed at getting cleaned
>out. At least you left my water jug!

Yeah, I would have been extremely pissed about losing that dagger. I understand why you did what you did. Sorry about being annoying and cleaning you out. Not much other choice since actually knocking someone out is a rare occurance.

>More often than not, the chance of getting knocked-out was
>very slim. Do you remember that time chasing me where you ran
>through six of my knockout traps without getting knocked-out
>once? Half of those traps were higher level than you were.

Huh. Maybe bad luck? I know I've fought other trappers before (though, not with this character) and the rate of knockout was better than 1 in 6. I could be misremembering though.

>Yeah, I would have been extremely pissed about losing that
>dagger.

Not a big deal. I was actually more annoyed about the sword, since it had been forgecrafted by Juhldalor.