Had an idea a while back and am finally getting around to posting it.

A 7th Generation plus skill. Thief trains Slippery Mind. This allows the thief to have a chance be !track versus spirit trackers, effectively allowing the thief a saving throw to avoid detection. This would also allow a high gen thief the option of using hell equipment with a chance of avoiding the nasty hunters. Against Hell hunters I would like the chance of the thief to avoid them to decrease with the more items of hell equipment they wear. IE. Maybe at gen 7 the thief has a 50% chance of avoiding the spirit track. He wears two Bracelets of Pain and his chance drops by 5% per item (maybe up to 10% per item?) so that he only has a 40% chance to avoid.

I'd like to see it improve with generations / levels, so that a gen 10 thief could for instance, have a base 80% chance of avoiding detection and therefore could wear more items of hell equipment, but not with complete impunity.

I dunno, I kinda thought this might work well on tempus and provide a nifty high gen skill for thieves. (I believe it's the name of a feat in D&D 3rd Edition, which improves saving throws versus Mind affecting attacks)

Great idea, I love it.

Wouldn't that partially take away from the advantage evil knights and clerics have by being soulless? Not to mention if they're !track that would take away a little from the originality of mercenary.

not really, actually. It would just give the thief, whos whole idea is avoiding detection and using Über Items that they stole. Since most !Hunted items are Über, it gives the thief a chance to show off his eq while not bieng chased by Satan's minions.

it also removes incentive for being soulless since right now only soulless playes can wear hunted eq without, in fact, being hunted.

I think you'd find that most evil knights / clerics don't go souless simply to avoid hell hunters. Sure it's a big part of it, but it's definitely not the only reason.

The idea as I proposed it doesn't take away anything from the evil divine classes in my opinion, and frankly if a gen 10 evil knight thinks it's a good idea, and he's one of the people that would be "adversely" affected by it, I think your objection is, while valid, not a major sticking point.

To address the other concern regarding mercs and !track… Mercenaries elusion does nothing to avoid spirit trackers. Thieves and rangers can wear !track equipment (I believe they are the only classes that have stock equipment that is !track) which achieves the same thing as elusion, so again, your objection is, in my opinion, no longer valid.

Also, Souless characters can use hell equipment without any threat of hell hunters coming after them. The way this idea was proposed there would NEVER be a 100% immunity for a high gen thief, and the more he wore, the less his chance of avoiding the threat becomes.

Know what'd be really spiffy? If thieves got a remort skill for a high gen called something to the effect of "Detect Trap". In essence it would alert the thief when there is a DT room somewhere next to them. Seeing Slippery Mind made go back and play neverwint nights which brought along this idea.

I like that idea. Because we all know that dts are a pain in the ass. I appriciated that skill in the old D+D.

Being told to "Wander and explore…." I've amassed almost 300 deaths on my Thief. Now, granted, about 200 have been from stupidity, but 100 have been from wandering and DTing ect. If Thieves are as sneaky as we're led to believe.. As we're on the topic of High-end Gen Thief skills.. Why not have a high-end Hide like gen 5 that allows Thieves to hide from everything. They wouldn't be seen by any form of sight, they'd not be able to be hit while hidden, unless the person had special training in it (like a counter to sneak/hearing). I mean, if someone is hiding, you might be able to see invisable/transparent things.. but it doesn't mean you'd look in a corner for them.

As for the !DT ability.. how about it would not allow you to walk into that room instead? Like some message about an ill-feeling of danger and you'd not go into your suicide. Or, even -better- which would make Thieves dominant and less PK-scary (something I'm always in favor of) would be let them enter DT rooms and not insta-die. Just have it be any other room to them. (With exceptions to crematorium ect, but for the general ones.) I think it'd give them a huge edge in exploring and looting. What better way to get eq than to be able to go where others could not? Maybe a Gen 4-6 ability?

I like Uncanny Dodge, it's a helpful lil bit of extra padding with melee combat.

Disguise is still a joke thing.. I was hoping to see it tweaked more to allow players to go incogneto and not be harassed by npcs/players alike. The whole point of a disguise is to not be noticed/recognized.. Like backstabbing a Demon, fleeing out and walking in as a fellow "Demon" which the thing would still be alert for. (Which leads me to my next idea..)

Backstab - Damage is fine I suppose at later gens, and seems to be exceedingly scary I'm constantly informed. So, why not set limits on it? Have it work with other commands. Have it miss more if you're not hiding/sneaking into the room un-noticed, have it have more of a failure rate if the thing was recently backstabbed as they'd most probably be -watching out- for it.. Let Disguise play a role in sneakiness.. I was thinking like it'd give a player an additional -5% reduct if you weren't hiding, and a -15% if you had just recently backstabbed them and they recognized you as you (instead of someone/thing else.)

Just trying to bring a little more RP and enjoyment to Thieves as opposed to the standard "Backstab/Flee/Pray I live so I can loop it" thing. :)

David (Strael)

sounds like a decent enough skill. Should only be a ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ chance on the latter ida, though, cuz then if a thief was in trouble they could just hied in a DT until the trouble passed. Otherwise, cool!

You guys do realize that the number of DTs on the mud these days are very small. Are you referring to damage traps, where you die but can retrieve? Or DTs where you come back with all your lifepoints, but no EQ/implants?

I was referring to where it poofs your eq. But upon thinking about it.. damage traps would be more easily "disabled" or avoided. I kind of have always had Thieves envisioned as sneaky SoBs that have to pull on a large group of skills to get the job done and the remort letting the Thief branch out a bit into other categories..

It just always seems like on Tempus, Thieves have an evil rep from a few mass-slaughtering people.. and no one has bothered to want to tweak that or change their image. shrugs Just my two cents.

David (Strael)

give that man 2 cents, since his two were well spent. Good points there, strael. I agree that thiefs have an extremely bad name, but for reasons i dont quite know. Its just the ring of "Thief" sounds like you should always be en guarde around the person.

It is actually ironic that high gen Monks can abuse people with good melee combat, better HPs than quite a few classes, and great skills.. yet Monks are supposed to be neutral/peaceful types.

Evil Knights/Clerics are scary mofos from their insane damaging abilities.. (souless is always a perk too.)

Psi/Mages are great at disrupting one's standard of living, with some beastly spells at higher levels which makes them quite strong all-around later on. (mana shield/no pain/ect reducts)

Borg/Merc/Barb can fall in with Monks to a degree damage and hp-wise, but borg is more focused on melee speed and implants/eq/skills using implants to accomplish it than debuffs. Barbs I've not seen many of anymore, and am not too familiar with how much more useful the proficency in weapons are (slashing/piercing/ect bonuses),

Mercs/Thieves are similar in that both have great opening attacks (hamstring/backstab), but Thieves fall far shorter in the melee department. While stun/steal is quite useful, most higher eq mobs are immune to stun, which means means in order to kill said mobs, you'll have to be able to survive long enough to retreat. Mercs are great as they have nice hps, excellent melee fighting, and an early-on dominant skill (wrench) to help propel them through levels with a minimum of fuss. Their one weakness is no way to stun their target which is easily rectified when they remort, shoring up their one real weakness (that I can perceive anyway).

Rangers/Phys are a bit different.. Rangers I've seen very few and far between.. and haven't played around with one much.. so am unable to say anything for or against them, minus their scarcity. (aside from Entangle, which I think is the one skill/spell in game that prevents a person from being able to exit combat.) Phyz are great from grav well and their misc assisting spells, along with the area-attack fission blast.

Looking at this, Thieves aren't -really- that scary until maybe gen 10. :)

David (Strael)

Getting this thread back on track… This was simply a suggestion for a thief remort skill :p Not a discussion on class vs class balance. While the discussion is perfectly valid, I don't want, what I thought was a pretty reasonable suggestion for a high gen thief skill, (slippery mind) to get lost in the clutter. If someone wanted to start a thread on class vs class balance I'd be more than happy to weigh in, I'd just prefer that Nothing or Logic get a chance to see this and shoot it down in flames or alternatively create it.

So I went back and played NWN again. Yes, I cheated and set my thief to level 20 only so i could see the list of those skills that you can pick from like opportunist, crippling strike, etc. it's be kinda nice if every 3 gens or so, granted some of them simply can't apply to tempus. But it'd still be cool to see.

Strael, mercs actually biggest weakness is no heal, and no reduc, and no really superior remort skills

I know I personally never wore any !track equipment because it was simply not worth it. The negatives are too high, not to mention it would mean giving up a valuable equipment slot.

Even so, your idea would be borrowing from the advantages other classes hold over others, although I don't think it would be too imbalancing, myself.