Just dumping some random thoughts on you guys.

General thief ideas to improve ranking with a thief.

Lvl 11: Surround

The thief skillfuly positions himself right behind the opponent, dividing the victim's attention and effectively lowering it's defensive capabilities. Those in the thief's group will have an easier time hitting that opponent. Be warned that the dangerous position may invite a blow every now and then. It's known to be completely ineffective against those souls that follow the Ehren path.

Boosts hitroll of group members against that opponent.
Once activated this skill is active for the entire battle unless deactivated (with the same command)




Lvl 20: Dirty Tricks

With this skill the thief reduces his ability to do damage and times his attacks to those of his opponent, effectively ruining several of the opponent's attacks. This skill is unusable with Surround.

Reduce damroll of the thief and hitroll of the mob, less effective against players.
Once activated this skill is active for the entire battle unless deactivated (with the same command)



Lvl 32: Agile Coordination

Once the thief have surrounded the victim, he may choose to time his attacks with those of his group, exposing the victim right before a friend's attack the thief lends a boost to the group members' ability to do damage at the cost of his own.

Reduce damroll of the thief while improving the group members' at a better rate, less effective against players.
Once activated this skill is active for the entire battle unless deactivated (with the same command)



Trapper Ideas

Lvl 16: Alarm Trap

This trap does nothing more than warn the thief that someone stumbled on the alarm. As the thief's skill improves, the alarm will be triggered without the noticing of the triggerer.



Lvl 37: Hasty Trap

When in a hurry, the trapper may produce a weaker version of the trap he intends, using the same components, but in much less time.

Bleh. Just got through with a trapper. They still are as bad as I remember them being.

Okay, here's some radical suggestions for a minor thief revamp:

Give all thieves plant - or at least put it in the trapper and poisoner path as well, since it's a hell of a lot more useful for their paths than for pickpocket.

Give all thieves knife or something that is the equivalent. Before I "delved" into other thief paths, my options for trapper thief were kick, trip or weapontrip (assuming they even had a scratch on them and thus could not backstab). A class that is supposed to be scary to assassins but is easily one of the most laughable solo melee classes in the game (falling behind healers)

For trappers especially - thief waylay doesn't make any sense for what it does. You.. distract someone in a corner, so they're basically neuroe'd? Sure, it may be annoying in the game, but it doesn't really make any sense for the trapper. You could get rid of the skill, or change it to distract someone just before they fall into a trap and make the trap a lot more effective. If I shouted "Hey, stupid!" just before I knew they were about to stumble into my trap and they looked at me, they'd be less likely to dodge whatever was coming.

Knockout traps need to be more effective, or higher-level traps need to be purchaseable. For something that's supposed to be a "basic class" that any newbie could pick up, there are a LOT of easter eggs just for this one path that are hard to get solo. The annoying prep time in addition to low-level traps with mediocre damage/knockout success makes any other path seem more attractive. Traps still need some more oomph to be scary.

How about a "deathtrap" skill? They have to be built in a civilized area and last for several hours, but will hit someone every time they walk into the room? Sort of like civilized brambles, except you have saw-blades trying to slice your head or poison gas trying to fill your lungs? THAT would make a trapper scarier, in addition to expendable traps already placed.

It, however, still doesn't address the utter lack of imagination in a thief's repertoire for combat, but at least it would be a slight improvement on what exists.

You can lay a trap as fast as your macro for the pain-in-the-ass command syntax is. The problem is you then have to wait out the timer.

What trapper thieves really need is grenade!

That said, under the right circumstances, trappers might be deadliest at high ranks as solo killers. Just a lot of luck and patience to create those circumstances.

or if you implemented the others, I'd make them only work against mobs (to avoid making ganking favourable).

Trapper ideas are excellent though imho.

I don't see why loading up on damroll and a vuln dagger with circle is better than the first three.

Even in conjunction with those options I'd probably rather use the extra rounds to circle or spam trip even against a mob. Plus they don't need skills at those levels, they need either more power or survivability at hero.

Thieves aren't built to be a versatile class (as far as multiple paths or strategies in combat). It'll be interesting to see what edges do to them in the six months or whatever it'll take to bring out the edges, but the trick here is that most of the proposed edges in Santa Zulgh's long term projects make good skills better and mediocre skills good.

There's a conflict here however: the percieved notion of what's happening with AP's could happen with thieves as well given the fact that thieves are not designed with versatility in mind and do not need it, but edges are not designed to make a character more powerful directly, instead rather tweak their options. Considering that utility path thieves need a power boost overall, a necromancer or shaman is still a far better bet to wreck someone's day than a poisoner, especially a duergar or svirfnebli, and your opponent honestly has to be dumb as rocks to hit more than 2 or 3 traps before wording.

The PK path thieves could use a boost at hero, thugs go from really ruining someone's day to utterly useless once the most common defensive prep flight comes into play or the arial race since parting block on the whole isn't made to keep someone in place for a whole fight, it's designed to let you squeeze out a few precious extra rounds on someone almost dead or just been jacked/backstabbed but at it's current success rate it doesn't even manage that. While it doesn't matter much to people who aren't trying to up the damage on knife, push is subject to the same limitations as bash protection making thugs slightly weaker at hero. The fact that thugs need to finish their fights quickly but the raw dam redux/counterattack/raw HP totals/lack of -dex skills available at those levels makes it a pointless exercise for your average 2500-imm-exp thief or so at level 45ish even when they get the jump on someone. Let's not even go into how many areas explore or otherwise have a mix of wilderness, various caverns and burnt desert rooms and a blend of both civilized and uncivilized rooms that makes tracking/getting the drop on other folks outside of protect cities really difficult.

Or when someone with a clue gets ahold of the somewhat common hero level nodisarm options your already interesting-but-likely-to-get-you-killed grapple/separate skill goes from 'likely-to-get-you-killed' to 'surely-going-to-get-you-killed', or a mage/bard simply wears an item with the keyword helm or helmet instead of a circlet, hat, cap etc.

Binders have trouble killing anyone that is caballed due to the cavalry and can't retry a failed binding on a jacked target, and communers for the most part completely laugh at and word from the ones that didn't practice what many people view as the near-essential thief PK skill cheap shot. Also the unfixable design of dual wield leaves bards without an instrument, period, against bind hands rather than the choice to wield an instrument over a weapon, more a quirky bug than anything else that even the resist-offhand-disarm skill doesn't help against to my knowledge.

They aren't useless by any wild means, being a thief is an exercise in patience, being a wily player and choosing a primary thief path and associated strengths/weaknesses that suits your playstyle because going halfway up two paths generally isn't an option that it could possibly be if expensive edges to enable that were in place. Ideally I'd like to see people decide cheap shot or truss isn't the be-all end-all skills of a PK thief and not be limited to knife spam when fly comes into play, while keeping a 'vanilla' thief right where they are now at every level. Some folks call a lack of versatility a 'one-trick pony' class, but then that means it's their responsibility to play the class and realize just how much timing and finesse goes into playing it without ganking everyone you see. It's a tough job even as a thug path and even a ranger is considered more dangerous on the whole.

Thieves right now are only 'good' at toe to toe, slightly better than so-so because they can wait to catch their opponents with their pants down. There are plenty of warriors, shifters, mages and even orcs who are far better than many thieves, even when considering 'steal' so they need some help in that area. However, the only thing they have going for them in group versus group combat is traps (take too long to set up, + ingredients) and the poisoner grenade skill. I haven't used it and neither have alot of other folks precisely because it takes several playtime hours to level up a mediocre to crap character to take advantage of one single ability at the top of the tree which has barely been seen in logs and whose power is even this many years later largely not fully evaluated.

Because of this, it's easier just to muck around with mind control poison which I think still suffers from not being able to force people to quaff potions now because of that jackass Tremblay abusing PWK potions which were combined with fillets obviously unbalanced even against folks with mediocre spell saves. Potions also can't be poisoned due to coding issues from what I understand, leaving your options with mind control very limited in what you can do unless you know your explore areas... and even in that case your more powerful options outside of poisons are still very difficult to obtain, the better of which often resides in older areas with still perma-hasted mobs.

As a final aside, earthbind/dispel magic/shaman dispel scroll options probably need a bumping up. The one I managed to find the actual location of in a year straight of experimenting with the class requires, as far as I know, oodles of time and Cabdru-like area explore tactics to get as a solo thief. Considering the lag on scrolls is two rounds and earthbind itself is a combat opener causing one to forsake backstab, allowing any half decent player to simply flee or outdamage the thief, it probably wouldn't break group versus group or player versus player dynamics to tuck those options in the more trafficked areas similar to how a/b/s locations are already frequently done. It also would go a long way of not wracking your brain for implementing edges in these areas by implementing an obvious medium-to-low success counter to flight. (####ty thief success rates with scrolls being what they are)

"I have to admit I hate pretty much all of these ideas. " - Nepenthe, on New Ranger Skills

Hey,

I agree with a fair amount of the things you've said about thieves, but with the information specific to poisoners I disagree a little.

Grenades can be very useful in two respects:

Firstly they do a lot of damage (usually ranging from MANGLES to DEVASTATES). This makes them good for launching at people who are attacking your guild guard or cabal guard, or as a combat opener.

Secondly, most poisons can only be applied in a certain way. Like through inhaled means, or by putting it on food and weapons. Grenades allow you to launch any poison at someone, and you can stick it on them without having to rely on weapon-nicking, making them inhale, or making them eat something. It is especially useful for poisons like emetic or neurological which can only be applied through more difficult means than inhaling.

With regard to mind-control and items to use with it:

I've found one or two very easy to get items that I won't name here that are very useful to make people eat/drink/otherwise ingest in combat. Without being too specific I can say that one lowers the moves of anyone who eats it a massive amount (about 75%), one can do energy drain, and one can cause rot. Not to mention you can stick your own poisons such as knock-out, emetic or neurological on anything you want to make someone eat for added nastiness. Unfortunately some of these tactics take time, and if back up arrives you're in the same boat as a binder.


My thief is far from powerful, so you can take this information with a grain of salt if you want. But I'm fairly sure if I grew a pair and stopped chickening out of attacking people I'd actually manage to beat one or two enemies with some of the tactics I've come up with.

-Q

Do thieves get credit for a kill gained by making someone eat something nasty? Say that you make someone eat that certain rot item by using mind control, and they die from the rot, does it go on your record?

My gut says no.

Kill enough and it doesn't matter if it goes on your record or not. Your reputation will do the rest

I get annoyed by people who just keep thinking of their pk stats. It's a really dumb way to play this game.

Which isn't terribly surprising or impossible, but it's a topic for another thread.

Like it or not, killers keep the competitive scene moving no matter how well or poorly roleplayed. Killing gives material (game-wise) and psychological rewards far more often than RP does. There are not enough roleplayers who stand out outside of a cabal without whoring themselves to an immortal or being an empoweree.

When applied to poisoners, it's probably not worth the effort and many of your abilities are surpassed by other maladictions still.


"I have to admit I hate pretty much all of these ideas. " - Nepenthe, on New Ranger Skills

What I meant was people who are so obsessed by their stat, they'll deride someone for taking the final blow, or delete when they think they've died more times than they've killed.

Motivations for most people to kill are winning, looting shiny stuff and roleplaying. The small subset who just want to dream of publishing a pbf with something like a 90% kill ratio are destined to lose. And probably degrade their gaming experience (and by extension others) with the frustration.

Just look at most of the top pkers, they all had their share of deaths. Probably at vulnerable times in their lives. The really good players persevere and hike their mediocre scores into triple didgets later in life with perfected skills.

There's a difference between "killers" who are capable of killing newbs often or use their ooc connections to prop themselves up, and KILLERS who give the experienced and knowledgeable players something to worry about (without needing to use ooc connections).

In other words if you're playing poisoner, knowing what you know about pbf mechanics, you're probably not going for edges via PK count.

While what Q-bert said is true, the effort versus return on the character seems quite out of whack. Take just grenade by itself without considering how long it takes for neurological or fear poison to have it's full effect in the middle of a fast-paced combat where your opponent can just ensure he's flying before combat starts and he'll probably just walk out alive from your low damage output.

You're spending 42 levels on a character whose most threatening skills are trip, backstab and circle. Everything else in your repertoire requires your opponents to be particularly dumb, or for you to practice the plant skill from the pickpocket path instantly denting your thief points just for dipping into another path assuming you need skills from a third one such as possibly push/knife *just* to have an actual mid-combat opener. Once you get grenade... you need about 5-20 of them just to kill a single individual. There's no denying it's useful during cabal raids, but then, an invoker or shaman or AP is vastly more useful than you. There's no denying that either.