Chronicler
Habitué
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- 399
In Baldur's Gate right now, playing a single class thief.
Hearing the siren call of the fighter/thief.
"What if this thief could land a hit?"
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Shadowdancer has always sounded really cool to me. Traps are kind of my least favorite thief skill. They give it up and in return they can use stealth spontaneously in the battlefield instead of having to plan ahead with the player's foreknowledge.
But it's always seemed like a pain to go through the initial 4 levels without any backstab modifier.
Seemed like such a big moment when I finally got to level five and could do 2x backstabs. So it felt like a bit of an anticlimax to try it out in the next fight, against an unarmored mage, only to whiff three times in a row before the rest of the partied killed him without my help.
After having some time to meditate on it though I think it'll probably even out a bit as I get some more levels. I'll probably find gear I can use to boost my Thac0. Everybody kind of has a hard time landing hits in the early levels anyway.
The stealth in plain sight is really useful just for aggro management. Keep the hits off you.
Though not perfect. I tried backstabbing a vampire wolf and it just immediately turned around and held me. Can't restealth if you're held.
Moving this into its own thread so I don't clog up the "What Are You Playing" thread.
After playing the shadow dancer a bit more, I think it probably shines more the higher levelled it gets.
Even when I manage to land a backstab, the difference between a x2 backstab modifier and a x3 backstab modifier is honestly pretty huge. These are some absolutely weaksauce backstabs.
But at by level 13 it'll be a difference between a x4 backtab modifier and a x5 backstab modifier, which shouldn't be nearly as profound a difference.
That being said, the shadowdancer doesn't hit x3 until level 9, which is way later in the BG1 campaign than I remembered. I think the shadowdancer might actually just not be all that good through most of BG1.
Though I'll reiterate that hide in plain sight is a god send for aggro management. Such a boon to be able to just pop that steal button whenever a monster starts chasing me instead of getting into a whole yakity sax routine while I try and direct the monster back to one of the fighters.
I've been kind of getting distracted by other runs but I'm trying to keep coming back to this shadowdancer because it's been on my bucket list for so long I've just gotta see it through.