Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Help/Tips/Tricks The Thief

So for my second playthrough, I wanted to build a thief/rogue type of character. Now problem is, I'm a caster at heart so building outside of my comfort zone, I usually require a little help; so I'm, turning to the boards I usually ghost for help.


Things I already know;

Its common acceptance that dex base character seem to be underpowered.

Nasty deeds can easily be replaced by equipment/magic/ generally cheap things.

This isn't the thief series.

I'm basically trying to create Garrett here


Things I'm avoiding at all cost;

Giving the rogue magic of any sorts, meaning he/she he be purely skill based, I'm not trying to make a spellblade here. With the exception of the magic arrows of course.

Yes I will be using nasty deeds.

As far as min/max goes, I usually put my characters theme/rp above it.


I'm already prepared to cry my eyes out...lord knows I've been doing it up to now with some of my fights.

So any thoughts?

Optional info;
As far as the second character goes, I was thinking of either trying for a witch mmmm, witches..... -cough- or a type of paladin build that heals and buffs.

Currently I'm running a pure glass cannon wizard who has one point in every magic but focuses on Fire/earth/witchcraft. My second character is a tank that buffs with a sword and shield.

So, I think I covered my basis here.....


edit:
Of topic, a little disappointed that we don't have a fan art section, I was thinking of doing some.

I have a pure lone wolf rogue, and he does just fine. The extra recovery AP and vitality bonus are very useful, the important thing being that it allows me to (somewhat) safely ignore con as a stat.

You'll want to decide if you want to be lone wolf or not, and foremost a dagger or bow user (there is a lot of room for switching around however). If you want to be a bow main, you'll probably want to pick up some points in perception. If you do, you might want the character to be the dedicated trap spotter.

With my build, I've actually started using a bow half of the time now against CCed (but not frozen) enemies. My mages control the field, and if there is too much fire or poison I don't want to 'get my hands dirty'. I put most points into dex (13 maybe) and I think 7 base speed at level 16. 1 Con from the (single) non-cheaty book.

The scoundrel 'offensive' skills include very good CC. But you need a dagger equipped to use them. The problem with a dagger user is in staying alive (if you aren't going to use sneak invincibility at the end of every turn). I imagine without lone wolf, my rogue would have a hard time, but then again I'd have another character (and maybe summon) for the enemy to hit/use CC on.

What you really need to do is work out a team strategy you think will work. I built my team with the idea of my mage/jahan CCing enemies and buffing the rogue to allow him to kill everything, and it works incredibly well. Anything you want to do will probably work. Examples off the top of my head include:
your thief as the damage dealer (backstab or quickdraw, maybe bully) with support from other team members
dagger thief spamming CC on the enemy (there's a charm (2 with rapture from marksman, which is just better), trip, stun, blind, poison, bleed) without really doing much damage.
using special arrows along with your other characters to set off combos.
creating summons and using charm with the 'thief' to sow disarray into the enemy ranks.

Off-topic: I really would like a talent that removes the AP cost for switching weapons. It would make pure dex characters less 'underpowered' I feel.

Don't worry about ability points put into nasty deeds. I have 3 wasted weapon points, high bb/wp and 6 points in sneak which I rarely use. Your build will be more streamlined than many in terms of skills.

I assumed that I was going to need both bow and daggers to use the rogue t his best potential in combat, but is it better to specialize in on or the other?

As far as nasty deeds go, I was going for them either way. IT defeats the purpose for me to just putting points in combat oriented skills or states, if I wanted that then I would make a fighter.

I actually planned on trying to use sneak just to see what fun I could have with it.

I wasn't looking at lone warrior because I assumed I would need a team capable of working with the character who would try to stay away from the frontlines unless it was time to pick someone off. This is assuming sneak is something that can be used in combat.

You can use sneak in combat. Base AP cost is 6, minus 1 per point in sneak. It's actually an incredible damage buff if you get to 5 sneak with Guerilla (doubles damage from an attack made while sneaking).

You can switch, and you CAN use both, but as an example, if I want to be a great (damage dealing) dagger user and archer, I need:

Talents

Backstab - dagger damage without this is next to nothing
Quickdraw (requires 5 marksman) - reduces AP cost of bow from 4 to 3

Attributes

Speed, high enough movement (can also be boosted with equipment) to position myself behind the enemy without too many APs used
Perception, high enough to hit enemies that aren't at very close range

If you specialise in only one of these areas. It's a far more difficult thing to balance the attirbutes than the talents, and you could just trade excess talent points for attribute points later in the game if you want.

That said as I alluded to above, you don't have to be the one dealing damage in the party. Another perfectly viable strategy with an archer would be to not join combat until after the rest of your party (unlink), join while already in stealth, then use haste and save AP your first turn, on the second turn fire a few arrows/special arrows and use Walk in Shadows. This way there is no threat to you assuming you're behind the enemy. Later when Sneak is high you can use that instead of Walk in Shadows.

The game is incredible in the amount of choice it gives you in how to build a viable party, but I think a lot of people just end up focusing on a per character basis.

Some people claim that dex builds are underpowered, but my melee rogue is a crazy dps machine. 5 metres per AP guarantees huge mobility, 2 AP per attack, 1 AP for sneak wich doubles damage, oath of desecration, haste, bully... it gets ugly really fast.

Haste and oathe are magical abilities; the rogue I'm designing will be purely skill based with no magical training out side of the enchanted arrows.





I had figured it would be something along those lines, it seems that I will need to do a lot of trial and error to get what I want.

Fast Track is a level 1 Scoundrel skill that self Hastes, does this violate your "no magic" proscription? (It's even one of the starting options)

Oath of desecration can be casted by someone else on the rogue, but you don't need it.
With Fast Track you get Haste and Walk in Shadows you get invisibility.

You will be delaying your turns a lot/passing (Other characters won't have as much initiative or speed), but it will be worthwhile. Sometimes opponents that can't see you end their turns right beside you which leads to their inevitable deaths.

The most important thing is, you don't want to be in the middle of battle, but in the borders, otherwise all enemies may be looking at you making it impossible to sneak to get your damage boost.

So a good pair would be a rogue and a shield-bearing warrior. Or buffed madora to attract attention.

No it doesn't as I consider that a skill, and not a spell. But as a level one self haste, I might take that with walk in shadows.




You are correct, I wasn't taking my companion into consideration with my last post. I also think I might be confusing some people right now. When I speak of sneaking, I'm actually refering to the walk in shadow. I kinda let the "press C and enter sneak mode" fed from my mind since I never once used it.

Is there a talent that helps characters generate threat? I see that there is one that causes it to be lowered abit but I didn't find one that increases it, or is thier a ability in the warior path that does it?

the talent you would be looking for is stench ( decreases world attitude by 25 but melee opponents will find you less attractive in combat)

Yea that is the talent I assume would decrease aggro on a character, I'm talking about one that increases the aggro on a character.

Nothing like that exists.

Also, you can only use Walk In Shadows once per battle (it has a long cooldown).

Edit:If you have high dexterity, the cooldown will be reduced. Whysper is right, only int has this behaviour.

Walk in Shadows is only used for 3 things:

Stealing stuff.
Getting a better position before the battle.
Escaping attacks when you're in the middle of battle (And if you are, in my opinion, you are playing rogue wrong).

Sneaking is powerful together with Guerrilla, test it out on one hireable henchman before starting a playthrough which focuses on it.

Edit:

And no, unfortunately there is nothing that increases enemy interest in you inherently, this is not one of the main mechanics of this game.

HOWEVER, enemies tend to attack characters that have lots of buffs (Put fortify and oath on Madora and see who they will attack ;D).

Str/Dex do not reduce cooldown of MaA/Sc/EM skills.

Only int with spells

Oh thanks, i was hopeful that was the case T_T

Unfortunately I learned this yesterday when I made a knew game and messed around with a rogue and a witch build. I'm assuming at higher ranks, actual sneak can be re-initiated during battle.




I have never noticed that ai attacked the highest buffed character. I usually have Madora buffed with a multitude of thingd (haste, oath, rage, power stance, magical armor, ect) but I thought they would focus her because she stayed in their face.

Don't let anybody tell you, dex chars are weak I love my markswoman (dex/speed/per build). She has no scoundrel talents at all so I put all "leftover" points into sneaking and now, her sneaking is good enough (5 sneaking) that she can drop into it almost in front of the enemies and she can sneak fast enough to actually make it tolerable...eg. last playthrough I had to use invisibility to get to the big blood stone (Northwest Lukullah); this time I just sneaked through

On my first playthrough I played around with a scoundrel/marksman mix (I didn't know what I wanted and changed my mind halfway through without respeccing which I didn't know existed at the time ) and he was quite good, too but not as powerful as the markswoman is this time.

As for being attacked, I am noticing everybody goes for the fighter (Madora, Fighter summons) this time whereas last time, everybody went for the summoned fighter/spider and then for the mage I had. This made that game a lot harder than it is this time

I'm use to everyone going for the summons.... with the amount of summons in this game, I almost questioned if I could design a summoner character. The whole idea would be based on buffing and dbuffing. I might play around with that a little more in the future.


I think I will really need to plan this character a lot ahead of time to make sure it turns out how I want. Warriors and mages seem a lot easier to create work around then dex characters are.

Dex char are pretty straightforward to build but not to play.

For build, just go expert 3 marksman/3 or 4 scoundrel/5 sneak with dagger as main weapon and bow as backup. All you need for talent is backstab, guerrilla with an optional bully depending on the party composition; the spare talent points are not important, it's actually better to "convert" them.

Expert marksman key skill are: tactical retreat, rapture, infect and to a lesser extent mute, first aid and doctor.
Scoundrel key skill are: charming touch, eye gouge, trip, razor edge, walk in shadow and to a lesser extent fast track, cloak and dagger.

This type of character has 2 charm and 3 different crowd control move. Due to how charm works, that is to say a dex character can have 2 summon (charmed enemy are usually better than summon) and has the potential to disable 5 enemies at once.
Defensive wise, sneak + a lot of disabling move means you will never be targeted. And even then, you have 2 teleport move as well as 1 invis move for tough situation.
The character is better in melee situation but has the potential to fight at long range thanks to special arrow and easy sneak + bow attack.

Thanks to sneak and guerrilla, wether range or melee, you have the highest single target dps of all builds.

The only downside to dex character is they are not as straightforward as warrior or mage. There is a lot of possibilities (attack? disable? hide? fight at range? go in melee?) which means they can either shine or be completely useless according to player choice.

As a general guideline, the first and second turn should be used to charm and disable melee enemy. On the third turn or more, it is good to sneak behind and take out the enemy ranger/mage.