I am only really interested in the Locks and Traps abilities.

I know the other Thief abilities are useful, and I plan on using Yoshimo until she comes back.

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This poll contains 1 question(s). 53 user(s) have voted.
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Poll Results: Is Imoen good enough to be the only Thief? (53 votes.)

Is Imoen good enough to be the only Thief? (Choose 1)
* Yes, she's good enough for Locks and Traps only - 72% (38)
* No, you need somebody who's better at these skills (Jan or Protagonist) - 28% (15)

No.

There is not a single worthwhile thief in Shadows of Amn.

Sometimes Jan can be your thief but you must take him early and only give him lockpicking and trap detection. However I usually make the PC a multi-class of a thief in some way.

imoen with a few potions and the odd item or two will suffice for the game in terms of opening locks, disarming traps, the more essential of the thief abilities

if you need pickpockets, go haerdalis

if you want stealth and backstab, go valygar

potentially the best NPC thief in the game is jan, but the best thief in the game will be your PC if you make him/her one

She is fine based on the criteria you have specified. If you wanted a back-stabbing, lock-picking, trap-setting rogue, she's obviously incompetent. But, if all you want is someone to clear out the traps and locks, she's perfectly fine, especially spiced up with the available items for boosting certain stats. Beren (under the name Dave Milwad) wrote an excellent walkthrough on this site where, in his "good" party, he uses Imoen as the thief.

(OT - Pay no attention to his Jaheira ravings, he's got a cornrow-elf fetish. :D )

Well, I'm currently playing an Illusionist/Fighter as my protagonist (but it's early, and I'll probably start another character to see which I like better anyway), and I've read about a "Ring of Danger Sense." This ring grants a +25% to her Detect Traps skill. Does this improve her enough to handle really tough traps late in the game?

She will do just fine. Just make sure you carry BOTH Potions of Mastery Thievery AND Potions of Perception. The former will help you pick locks while the latter boosts disarm traps.

This was one of the mistakes I made the first few times around: assuming Mastery Thievery boosts all thief abilities... not true.

Imoen IMO is the best thief in the game.

She may be absent for some of the game but if your quick to rescue her you can get her only about 50,000-100,000 point's behind you.

On my second game I managed to get her as soon as I did the quests for Blood Scalp, this will make the Underdark harder if you go there A.S.A.P but there's more then enough good item's that you can find doing a minimum of quest's to see you through safe (I did all this on insane btw)
in total in SoA there are about 10 trap's and lock's she cant disarm which can be fixed with a potion, for about 2-300 gp which is very insignificant

With some items she's sufficent for me... The second best mage and the best thief... Who cares about the backstab... Find them all and make them sorrow... :)

Not surprisingly, no one mentions Nalia. If you just want a thief for locating and disarming traps and picking locks, Nalia is just as good as Imoen and you get her very early in the game.

Using the same potions and items you would use for Imoen (ring of lock picks, ring of danger sense, potions, etc), Nalia is just as competent as Imoen.

Otherwise I'd agree with everyone else -- the best thief in the game is the one you create.

One difference between Nalia and Imoen's theif skill's is Nalia need's ring's and potion's most of the time and Imoen can do most of these skills with just a potion or two (or something like 10 if you want to pick pocket and set trap's ;) )

It was a surprise to me too. Imoen's skills are enough to bring you back from spellhold. After this, the locks/traps she can't handle without help are very rare indeed. With 2 rings, she can handle everything.
Nalia is OK too, but she really needs potions.

but dont mind my opinion I'm just a biased Imoen fanatic, don't ask why :) ;)

...Nalia need's ring's and potion's most of the time ...:hmm: That hasn't been my experience. It was a rare occasion that I found a lock or trap that Nalia couldn't take care of the first time around. In the rare instances that she couldn't, one potion or a quick ring swap and she was good to go.

Imoen is fine without any potions or items. I've found one trap that she couldn't disarm, but neither could Yoshimo with 255 points in detect/disarm traps.

Nalia is fine through the first couple chapters. I've never taken her beyond that, so I can't be certain of her skills later on.

There are a few traps in the game that are miscoded as undisarmable (I'm sure that's not a word). One of the traps in Neb's house in the illithium quest is an example.

Thanks to the potions and items available in the game, anyone with a single level of thief skills will be sufficient for the entire game.

Jan has the skills to be a VERY good thief. If you completely ignore hiding and stealth then you can get all of his other thief abilities up to 90 or 100.

Imoen has enough thief to get you through any trap or lock, particularly with the Baldurdash fix pack, which gives her another 30 points to pick lock, traps and pick pocket IIRC (not 30 each, lets say 10 points each).

Imoen is fine for what you want her to do. Nalia will work, but is definitely second-rate. (She can't even pick all of the locks in her own keep for God's sake!) Still, I would highly recommend taking either Jan or make a PC thief or thief multi-class, because there are definitely other thief skills that are really useful. Jan can be quite the thief if given enough points in stealth and set traps.

There are a few traps in the game that are miscoded as undisarmableTrue, but what makes you think they're miscoded?

She can't even pick all of the locks in her own keep for God's sake!The only one in her keep that she wasn't able to disarm is one of the ones that is not disarmable.

I think he was talking about locks, not traps.

Fair question. For me, if a trap is so good that it can not be disarmed, then it should be undetectable as well. A trap that can be found--logically, to me at least--should be able to be disarmed as well.

No! Let's say I put a bomb in your house, and you must disarm it. Will you? Yet you know where the bomb is. There are instances in movies, the heroes know where the bomb is, but disarming it is a pro's job.

I found traps Imoen couldn't disarm, but Yohimo could, with 100%. There is an example in DeArnise hold. They weren't important. But what matters is that the higher your detect trap score, the sooner you will detect traps (preferably before you step on it).
For backstabbing, Yoshimo and Valygar are very good. Valygar makes up for his lower multiplier by a far lower Thaco.

It all depends on what you want out of your thief. Backstabbing is nice, but there are other ways to win the battle. Detect Illusion's can be taken care of by another party member (Keldorn, or a cleric).

As DMC has noted, Imoen with the Ring of Danger Sense, and later on a different item, is up to the task of disarming all the traps in the game. Her Lockpick skill is already good enough as it is. What Imoen presents is a mage who can also handle another function, freeing up a party slot for another character.

BTW:

(OT - Pay no attention to his Jaheira ravings, he's got a cornrow-elf fetish. ) 'Tis neither fetish nor ravings, but the expression of love. :)

** shameless self-promotion ** For anyone who believes Jaheira's useless, my walkthrough will also show how it's done with her.

in my opinion,yes
give her a ring of lockpicks of mercykiller ring and she should be fine

Beren (under the name Dave Milwad) wrote an excellent walkthrough on this site where, in his "good" party, he uses Imoen as the thief.Wow, after locating this walkthrough, it's amazing how close our two parties are!

I use a Gnome Fighter/Illusionist (instead of an Elven Fighter/Mage) and I use Aerie instead of Anomen (maybe not as powerful, but less anoying -- besides, I need Aerie is I want a romance). Every other character is the same. I do the quests a little differently as well, but no big deal there. I believe it's a toss up between who's is "better" (more powerful), as he's got more tank and a better cleric, but I've got an extra mage, and the illusionist vs. mage gives me an extra spell each level (I'm not really interested in Necro spells, so the Illusionist restriction doesn't bother me).

Imoen can pick pretty much any lock in the game and find and remove any trap, especially if you use the Ring of Danger Sense (found in Planar Sphere) and Ring of Lockpicks (found in Shadow Thieves' guildhall). The only traps that she can't remove are ones that nobody can remove (e.g. the one in Neb's house). Opening locks and removing traps is all she can do, mind.

In fact, if you don't mind taking damage from a couple of traps here and there, you can muddle along with Nalia.

Just don't forget that Imoen is a mage as well... A Knock spell could handle the locks she can't handle by thieving skills. Btw, does knock work on traps too? In that case you could have a cleric cast the Find traps-spell and then have Imoen disarm it... that is if you don't have potions which is quicker and saves some spell slots :rolleyes: Of course, plain 100% would save you a lot of trouble. I think Jan is a better choice, but Imoen is definitely capable.

No, the trap would still go off.

Come on, guys. How can Imoen be a good thief since she cannot level-up? She's stuck in 7th level (or maybe 8th... I don't remember).
But Jan... Jan is able to level up and thus give him more points to his skills.

She is good as long as you don't expect her to do any thieving besides opening locks and disarming traps. Her skills for this are high enough so she doesn't need to advance in thief levels anymore. That would only be necessary to do something else like Backstab, Scouting, pick pocket.. etc. But those actions weren't included in the original question so for what Klorox expects of her she is good enough.

She's more than good enough with the proper thieving equipment you can get in the game and via the bonus merchants. I had her as the only thief in the party throughout the whole game and expansion.

Good enough for me; I have never taken anyone else for that purpose (picking locks and finding traps). Also, if you consider it, you could allocate her ability points where you wanted in BG1, so using SK for this purpose is pretty much okay. ;)

I voted no, but now that Ive seen the other replies , I have to agree, for the main functions she is just good enough. It saves you a slot for a different NPC. She isnt top notch, but if you want that, you have to make your own character as a thief.

She's more than able, especially if you give her the extra thieving points she deserves (she's also missing a weapon profficiency but that's another story). And if you want her to scout, cast Invisibility. If you want her to backstab, cast Mislead. If you want her to detect illusions, cast True Sight.