Well...Would you choose assassin/fighter or swashbuckler/fighter for a powerful, not useful character? And at what Lv dual-class? Assassin gets backstab x7 at what lv?
I asked this question, not that I am going to play with a assassin/fighter or swashbuckler/fighter soon. But I'm the type who likes to think,plan and create my character in advance... :tie:
Hope any or best of all, everyone who see this topic will give his or her comments. Explanation on why choose which one will be helpful too.For example, I think that the thief's HLA: backstab for normal combat(no need to stealth) for a time limit makes aassassin/fighter very powerful as he is a master of backstabbing.(I may be wrong)
Thanks in advance! :)

[ July 16, 2003, 15:33: Message edited by: Skywind ]

Assassin all the way. The backstabdamage and the poison are just great. There's no way to convince me that the swashbuckler is better.

I would also take Assasin, since the Swashbuckler is more of a fighter, you don't need him if you're dualing to one...

Maybe you should have a fighter dualed into an assassin or swashbuckler instead of the other way round.

Swashbuckler/Fighter-Will get awesome fighting skills.
Assassin/Fighter-You would be able to do some toe-to-toe fighting instead of "Drink Invisibility Potion, get behind enemy, stab, repeat."

Given the choices, yes take the assassin fighter. The only thing a swashbuckler fighter gives you is more thief ability points, which won't matter at high levels. You're going to get the ability to place multiple proficiency points into weapons once you turn to a fighter anyway. However, keep in mind that you aren't going to get thief HLA's if you dual to a fighter. You are only going to get fighter HLA's. I suppose you can wait until the assassin gets to 3 million XP, take what HLA's you want and then dual him to a fighter, but I don't think you'll have enough XP left to get your thief abilities back.

@ Deathmage. He can't do what you suggest. If you start as a fighter, when you dual class you can't pick a kit. He'd only be able to be fighter dualled to a thief. That being said, I think it's the best option. You get more hitpoints, more usable proficiency points (remember, if you start as a fighter you can put multiple proficiencies in the slots, whereas if you start as a thief, only one per slot until you dual class), and a better THAC0 in the middle part of the game. Plus, you seem to want to get thief HLA's, and you will by going this route.

If you dual from a swashbuckler to a fighter, do so at level 11. That's when they get a bonus to THAC0, and an extra point of damage, as well as a bonus to armor class. Finally, it still allows you to advance very high as a fighter (you can still get to level 39, as opposed to 40 if you just played a fighter!

If you dual from an assassin to a fighter, ideally, you would want to wait until you were a level 21 assassin, to get the X7 multiplier on your backstab. The only problem with that is you need to get 2.4 million experience points to reach level 21, and then another 3.5 million experience points to hit level 22 as a fighter and regain your old abilities. You'll be thief-less for a very long time, and since you'll need about 5.9 million total experience points to use both classes, you'll be almost done with the game by the time you re-activate your assassin abilities. That's the big problem I have with a high level assassin/fighter. It takes too long to get the assassin good enough, and then to regain those abilities once you turn into a fighter. It's like you're playing two single class characters (thief in SoA and fighter in ToB) rather than a dual classed character.

If you start as a fighter (or a kensai, or a beserker), you should go at least until level 9 to maximize your hitpoints. I would definitely consider going to level 13 for the extra proficiency and the extra half attack per round that occurs at that level, plus level 13 is the highest level you can get as a fighter, and still reach level 40 as a thief. Every level you go beyond 13 will start costing you thief levels at the end.

As a final suggestion, did you ever consider playing a multi-class fighter/thief? That way you get the HLA's of both classes, as soon as you reach 1.5 million XP in each of your classes. Remember the rule with HLA's - if you multi-class, you chose HLA's from both classes as soon as you have 3 million total XP (1.5 million in each). If you dual class, you only get HLA's from the class you dualled to, and only after the second class reaches 3 million experience points. So, if you do the assassin dualled to a fighter, you won't get your first HLA until you get a total of 5.4 million XP, and it will be a fighter HLA. But the time you hit a total of 5.4 million XP as a multi-classed fighter/thief (2.7 million in each), you will have 11 HLA's that can be any combination of thief and fighter. Imagine greater whirlwind combined with the "every hit counts as a backstab" thief HLA!

I guess I'm too narrow-minded as I kept thinking only of dual-class.Now I think multi-class is much much better but...
To Aldeth:
I played once with a swashbuckler/mage and I did make sure that I got my bonus -2 to AC before I dual-class to mage. Once was at Lv5 and the next was at Lv10 where I start to dual-class...Unless you also tried before but was at Lv6 and Lv11?? :confused:

Assassin/Fighter-You would be able to do some toe-to-toe fighting instead of "Drink Invisibility Potion, get behind enemy, stab, repeat." Your backstabbing will also be more succesful. Slightly lesser damage than pure assassin, the difference will be unsignificant on higher levels (9 levels of fighter cost 225.000 XP which is about one thief level cost on higher levels). In exchange you'll hit more often and your backstabbing won't be wasted.

Definitely start as fighter and dual on level 9 or 13 (costs more XP but you get + 1/2 attack per round). I think I would take 9.

If you dual to swashbuckler from fighter, you're going to have tremendous AC. You could take single-weapon fighting style and deliver critical blows on 19-20 instead of just 20 (effectively twice as often). AC +2 from this style will be only 3 AC less than the best shield you can get and your AC will hit 20 anyway. Dual-wielding is also a good option (more attacks per round, effects from two weapons).

@ Chev - how do you dual to a kit like Swashbuckler without Shadowkeeper?

@ Skywind

I think it's 6 and 11, but check your personal messages, I won't post all that info here that no one else wants to read. Anyway, bottom line - whether you dual from thief to fighter at level 2, or dual from thief to fighter at level 11, you still can max out fighter levels at 39, so I would go to 11 as you get one more set of thief ability points to distribute, and it doesn't hurt your fighter at all.

@Chevelier - I don't think that works - you can't pick a kit on your second class - could only be a fighter/thief.

Why even bother dualing? By doing so you'll miss out on thier most powerful weapon: the time stop trap.

Definately go multi. In SoA dualing may have been the way to go because of the low exp cap (2.95 million IIRC) and the lack of HLAs, but in ToB multi is the only way to go. You'll have one hell of a backstab for the duration of SoA and then once you get into ToB it's all over with UAI, Spikes, G Whirlwind, and Assasination. That's a lot of damage.

(To: Aldeth
Got your point. It seems your idea is a better one.)
Multi, multi, multi, multi!!!! Got to remember to think of the benefits of HLAs in multi-class...
By the way, is a dual-class thats really rocks compare to multi-class? Everytime I want to try dual-class, you guys convinced that multi-class is better. I do believe that swashbuckler/mage is one of them, as he can be a powerful mage with high unlock locks and disarm traps skills to save my party space to add another npc instead of putting Jan as I had always done(like a more powerful version of Jan).
Oh yeah! Thank all of you for giving such useful information to me! :)

[ July 17, 2003, 07:44: Message edited by: Skywind ]

well, if youre not patient enough to wait for 7x backstab (or unwilling to use that many exp points), you COULD take the assassin to 6x, wait for the poison weapon skill, then dual to fighter.....
youd still be a better backstabber than the conventional fighter/thief, AND youd have the poison weapon......
but its too bad on the HLAs.....you could go multi, unless youre convinced on an assassin-fighter or swashbuckler-fighter

If you dual class a fighter to a thief, technicaly you should be able to dual to an assasin, but BGII doesn't allow you to. (There was a post about this somewhere...) I used shadowkeeper to change my second class to an assasin, as my first was just a plain fighter (for four stars in long sword :D ) A swashbuckler is a fighter in itself, so I wouldn't dual him/her, but an assasin/fighter could be amasing, you just have to wait be able to use the thief skills again, but it could work. I think you need to be level 21 to have x7 backstab, but I could be wrong. Make sure you can level the fighter half to above the thief level before you dual, otherwise those thief levels have been lost... :(

The only time I would really chose a dual-classed character over a multi-classed characters are in the cases where a character class needs a lot of experience points to unlock their bests spells/abilities. This is because if you multi-class, you really have to wait a long time to get enough experience points to reach that goal.

For example, if I want to play a regular druid, I would probably start him out as a fighter. I would get to level 9, then dual-class him. That way there, I'd have more hitpoints, and a much better THAC0 while waiting to get to the 3 million XP mark where they get all of those abilities and extra spells. While I do use Jaheira, you are waiting forever for her to reach 3 million XP, because she's a multi-class, so you really need 6 million XP. So for druids, where they don't get really good until they hit 3 million XP, I'd recommend dual-classing them.

The other case I would go for dual-class is if you are playing a mage. In this case I would start with either a fighter (until level 9) or a swashbuckler (until level 11) in order to get proficiencies in weapons that mages can't use. The reason I support dual-classing with mages is the same reason I do so for druids - they don't get to cast level 9 mage spells until they get to 3 million XP, which means you need to get 6 million XP if you multi-class, which means you're almost done with the game by the time you can cast level 9 spells.

Characters that I would never dual-class into include fighter (although I might start as one and dual-class into something else), cleric, and thief (again I might start with them though). The reason here is simple - they don't need a whole lot of XP to get their best abilities. With fighters, you may as well multi-class them, because once they hit level 20, they really don't improve any more other than getting HLA, which you'll get whether you are single or multi. With clerics, they start getting level 7 cleric spells at 1.5 million XP, so you'll still have a lot of high level spells even as a multi-class character. With thieves, they have the fastest level progression of all the classes. They hit level 40 and can advance no further when they reach 6.6 million XP, which basically means there's 1.4 million XP of cap room that the theif doesn't use. So, obviously, you're not losing much by multi-classing them as they can't use the maximum allowed experience anyway.

Note that some thief lovers will argue that the extra 1.4 million XP that you don't use is the very reason you should dual class into a thief. You raise your first class into whatever the highest level they can get to without exceeding 1.4 million XP, and then dual class. For fighters, that would be level 13, for clerics, it would be level 14. Then, you can still reach level 40 as a thief, and have fairly decent abilities in your first class as well.

For me though, I will almost always multi-class, because you can't beat being able to chose HLA from two different classes.

Another note on Swashbucklers: if you dual at a high level, you'll get (theriotically) insanely low AC. My straight Swashbuckler got a -17 AC...

personally id got multi-classed fighter/theif and use SK to make you part assassin

Multi-class is the way to go. You'll only have 2 points in any weapon, but your THAC0 will be that of a fighters all the way, your thief skills will always be improving, plus you'll get double the amount of HLAs - one each time you level up as a fighter and one each level for a thief and you can choose from the entire fighter/thief HLA pool I believe. You are limited to elf, half-elf, halfling, dwarf, etc... but this isn't a bad thing as they generally make better thieves than humans anyway. Choose Half-elf if you want a romance with Viccy or Elf if not.