Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General How critical is it going to be to have a thief in your party?

I've played a lot of BG1 & BG2 over the years, and having a thief in my party was critical (at least in my opinion) for traps & locks (of which there were a lot of), but in BG3 there's only one companion with thief skills. If I don't take him along, and I don't create a thief-type character myself, do you think that will be a problem? I know there's the "knock" spell for locks and the "find traps" spell, but those take up precious spell slots. Also, we only have 4 party members total instead of 6 like in BG1 & 2, so it's going to be harder to chose who to take along.

Shadowheart is an urchin so she can be used as your lockpicker.

She is also a trickery cleric so it's kind of her thing. Astarion will still be slightly better but won't be mandatory, especially with the power of save scumming.

The skill "Sleight of Hand" is actually needed to disarm traps and open locked chests as well as picking pockets because BG3 doesn't have thieves tools, which would normally be requires in 5e. So all in all I'd say, rather necessary, unless you wish to miss out on a lot of loot.

5E is more forgiving in this sense. You can have a non-thief character take on the role of a thief. They won’t be as good at it, but it is serviceable.

Also, because of the way Larian’s maps are designed, it is unlikely you will be confronted with a trap that you just need to walk over and eat the damage if you can’t disarm it.

The Knock spell can be used to open locks at least.

In EA, familiars can disarm traps and any locked object can be broken.

I've also noticed that you can "creatively disarm" some traps. Typically, by shooting at them.

Technically, anyone can disarm a trap if they have enough hit points.

Rogues do a lot more than open locks and disarm traps. For me, a rogue is a must. In EA, if Tav is not a rogue, then Astarion is always in my party,

Cleric's Disarm Trap.

One thing I really enjoy is not having to have the classical "Fighting man, Cleric, Magic-User and Thief" classes.

I will experiment with other classes to take over some of the tasks, or even forgoing it completely. Because if we have mandatory classes, we *need* more group slots. And more variety.

Ditto. One of my first playthroughs is going to be 2 druids and 2 barbarians. I’m really looking forward to running oddball party builds.

I love it.

What I hate is not having any room to maneuver around it, on the other hand.

Protip: many of the puzzles and traps can be defeated by putting rocks/crates/barrels on the holes/flowers in the ground. Also every trapped chest I've encountered has a key (or scroll with a prayer). I wouldn't be terribly concerned about traps.

Protip 2: while it is helpful to have someone with good Dex and Sleight of Hand dexterity, the only penalty for failing a lockpick is that the pick breaks. You can keep trying until you run out of picks and you get tons of picks.

Wow, all this fixation on traps and locks.

True, we forgot stealing!

And more. If PnP Thief got two bonus actions, I'd never play any other Rogue sub-class.

Since I often play high dex characters myself, I just give them Sleight of Hand or I use Shadowheart, since I can't stand Astarion. So far, it worked well.

You don't need thief - in 5e a lot of other characters can fill their role - lockpicking and disarming traps aren't exclusive to them anymore. Just make sure that a character with decent dex invests into relevant skills.

But Expertise is tasty and I'm not going to play a bard anytime soon.

(Or am I?).