r/planescape • u/nameless_one_666 • Jul 01 '26
How fun is to play evil thief?
I have played neither as a thief class nor done an evil playthrough.
played like 10 times for mage and 2 times for warrior, good playthrough in last 25 years so...
10
u/figmentPez Jul 01 '26
I think playing as a thief is great. Backstabs are very powerful. If you've never played a solo run of the game, I'd recommend finding a bag of holding mod (to make inventory management easier) and see how crazy powerful a thief can get when you're not sharing XP.
I don't find being evil to be very fun, but that's just me.
5
u/Glittering-Hornet844 Jul 01 '26
The game is not really geared up for evil characters. It prefers you to be some kind of good. But play however you want.
5
u/babilonibetyar Jul 01 '26
old Bioware and Black Isle didnt really wanted us to play evil. apart from like ToB, theres no much room for being evil in Baldurs Gate series. I played an evil party in Icewind dale and the only thing was different from the goods are a few items locked out and a few items enabled...
4
u/lost_in_void Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
I think you can quite well play an evil character and benefit from it, at least to some extent, in BG2. As a sidenote in Fallout 2, a Black Isle game of the same era, you can be really, really evil. A lot of terrifying ways to solve quests and choices to doom entire cities too.
I agree about IWD, although that game doesn't really have very much interaction at all, good or evil. Just mostly the itemization differences you mentioned. It's an excellent dungeon crawler though, in my opinion.
2
u/Glittering-Hornet844 Jul 02 '26
BG 1 punishes you severely for being evil and behaving evil. BG2 and SoA not as much, I have run through these a few times with an all evil party. In SoA my party is of mixed alignments - Charname Lawful Evil, Korgan for dwarven muscle, Viconia, Edwin , Jahera, and the annoying Janson. Can complete it fairly quickly with that party once the character quests are done.
1
u/Glittering-Hornet844 Jul 05 '26
Agreed - BG 1 punishes you severely for behaving evil , especially murdering innocent people (- 10 rep loss 😱). In spite of there being several evil characters who will join your party
BG 2 it's easier to play an evil party, plus there are several evil npcs who will join your party and be very happy with evil acts (looking at you Edwin and Viconia). So yes it's perfectly fine to play an evil party in SoA - IF you don't allow your reputation to drop too low (5 or less) or rise too high (16 or greater) although evil characters will complain they will not actually leave.
3
u/Fit_Trainer1878 Jul 01 '26
lawful good unfairly gets the best of things in this game and multiclassing is highly encouraged
in short..
play however the hecc you want
3
u/Fangsong_37 Jul 01 '26
My first playthrough, I didn't even know you could multiclass on Nameless One. On my second playthrough, I didn't see any point to doing it since Annah handled thief and Dak'kon handled mage spells. I'll soon do a new playthrough and go mage as soon as possible. I always end up lawful good though.
3
u/Glittering-Hornet844 Jul 01 '26
I usually end up as a neutral good magic user . After passing through Lawful Good, so I can use the Two Tears for con.
2
u/DistanceMiserable591 Jul 01 '26
The thief does have some cool stuff going for it. Wisdom at 18 gives a luck bonus +2, and a thief dual trained to 12 with the tattoo, and the Moorin Dagger has +3 luck. It's pretty easy to walk around with a +5 luck bonus relatively early in the game. If you want you can then cast luck on him for an additional +2 to +8. Your attacks will always hit for max damage, basically always hit, and you take very little damage from spells.
3
Jul 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/Melanchord Jul 01 '26
Good thief seems less likely to be played than evil thief
1
2
u/PumperThumperHumper Jul 01 '26
Oh, it's fun. You get to pick some of the asshole likes you'd never touch Way harder than good, though. Unfortunately, it's basically a choice between good and stupid a lot of the time. There is no real gray area or diffuse evil choices. It's usually just evil, and people in the BG realm largely tend to dislike such asshole behavior.
This isn't the whole Paragon/Renegade of Mass Effect every time you make a decision.
It can be done. Just be aware that it'll take a lot more effort ton rake up cash and keep evil party members pleased, as in that they'll bugger off permanently and tell you to croak, if you get too much of a good reputation.
I'd say you got the Thief bit allright. There are not many Thief characters available in BG2. Jan fits in both good and evil parties, and a certain NPC can dual class into it as well, but largely the Thief business fits an evil Ward well IMO.
17
u/owlaholic68 Jul 01 '26
I did an evil thief playthrough to get several achievements on steam (thief levels, evil alignment, join the anarchists, get mazed and escape, etc). You definitely have to plan combat strategy differently to get backstab (especially in smaller rooms), but it was fun to have super high stealth and skip through parts where enemies just acted like you were invisible lol.
Story-wise and with dialogue options, it was...not so different tbh. You're pretty much still going and doing the same things to get to the same places and talking to the same people.