in theory u could survive as a survivor with just their skills eg trap planting/ disarming embrace shodows assasigns kiss. in the dungeons u could turn off the torches and creep places. sleeep duringin the day and only moving at night.
Here I go sounding picky again <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />, but why do that when you can just be a warrior or mage (Unless you're doing it just for fun, that is)? With a warrior or mage there's no sneaking, traps, etc. You see an orc, you kill him. Simple and direct.
Yeah, in a dungeon you can sneak around in the shadows, but why would you want to sneak? I'd rather herd 6 enemies together and kill them with one spin attack for the expirience. And IMO, traps in DD don't count. They're too gimicky. They essentially turn your survivor into a wannabe mage.
I think it would be a hell of a lot cooler if a game just let a survivor be an expert at one stab kills. No "double damage" or "backstab" damage. Instant kill. Didn't Dark age of Camalot do this? Isn't there an assasin type character with a "pierce artery" ability that let him instantly kill somebody? I think that would be a viable way to make thief types hold there own in combat. It'd be balanced because they could still only attack one thing at a time, while a warrior or mage could attack lots of guys simultaneously. As a master of one stab kills, a thief would have to rely on stealth and hit and run.
This still has problems however. Could a theif kill bosses in one stab like this? Maybe, but would that make sense if he were fighting an ultra-powerful creature like a dragon, for example? I still think that developers need to reevaluate the nature of theif characters in CRPGs like DD and possibly not make them have to compete with warrior and mage types on a kill for kill bases. This, of course, is hard when the point of the game is to become a savior and hero who vanquishes the evil forces in the land.
As long as you becoming "The Hero" is the end point of a game, I think thieves and assasins will always be the odd class out. The only way around this is to have thousands of quests where the player doesn't ever really have to finish the main story (ie. Morrowind). And even that doesn't solve the problem! It just delays it almost indefinatly. Maybe thieves, spys, assasins, are better suited to non-rpgs like Thief, Splinter Cell, etc. eh? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/think.gif" alt="" />
