Thief/Rearranging
Contents
Rearranging & You
Rearranging your stats is one of the most important things you can do for your character. It will shape how your character develops and place realistic limitations on how high you can advance your skills. Should you rearrange wrongly, you can find your character hard to play, or even useless. Only rearrange when you are 100% sure you know what you're doing. Feel free to ask the guild Monitors for information regarding rearranging, although hopefully there is enough information on this page.
There are many ways to play a thief, but three types are common. That if the fighting thief, the covert thief and one in between those two. Lets take a look at them in more detail.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What sort of thief am I? (See the list above)
- Do I want to learn other things not in my primary skills, like magic?
- Will I be happy with my bonuses a year from now?
Now is the time to enquire on (Thieves), not for help with what your stats will be, but for examples of what people have chosen as rearranges. This is often far more helpful than simply asking for "the best rearrange". Talk it out, ask questions.
The website http://bonuses.irreducible.org/ is a great resource to test thigns out for yourself before making pemanent changes to your character.
The Fighting Thief
The fighting thief needs to be agile, strong and resilient to damage. This means the primary stats will be dexterity, strength and constitution. Constitution means more hit points to absorb damage. Dexterity gives you your basic covert skills and ability with dagger/sword type weapons. Strength gives you the power, the ability to use sword/mace/polearm weapons and carry a lot of extra weight in the form of armour. A lot of fighting thieves choose high strength, medium dexterity and some constitution. Constitution also gives you the stamina to swing maces and polearms a bit better.
The Covert Thief
The covert thief needs to be agile, intelligent and fit. They have high dexterity, low/medium strength and high intelligence. This will give you good covert and dodge type skills. With your lower strength you'll find you need to rely on your skill and common sense more than a fighting thief who can use brunt strength or armour to get around problems. Remember that to have good dodge you will need to sacrifice armour to keep your burden low, but also remember if you do get hit, it will hurt a lot more than without armour. So do try to strike a balance between your burden and armour. Although some thieves operate on 5-10% burden all the time, you can get away with 20% and when you're better you can get away with 45% burden.
The In-Between Thief
The most common of all three is the flexible thief, one who tries to cut a balance between covert and fighting. These tend to have medium stats in dexterity, strength and intelligence. Preferring not to sway to any one particular side due to not wanting any weaknesses. They will never be the best at a skill, but they won't be the weakest either.
The Numbers
You can rearrange all but once, so when you decide, plan it correctly, take your time and use -all- the points in the stat pool. There is a way to alter your stats permanently, but it's very slow and moves only one point at a time. I would consider this a luxury, don't base your rearrange on the assumption you can change it later.
The tables below shows how skills are split up into their stats. The stats are shown as XXXXX, each X is replaced with the starting letter of the stat and represents 20% of the weight. So DDDII means the skills is weighted 60% towards dexterity and 40% towards intelligence. If you wanted good bonus in this skill you'd want some dexterity to increase it.
From looking at the covert section you can see dexterity is the prominent stat, with intelligence close behind. Thieves are somewhat lucky that dexterity features strongly in both covert and fighting trees, this enables you to attain decent skills in both trees should you plan wisely.
Someone with 16 con, 16 dex, 17 str, 8 int and 8 wis would have abnormally high hit points, high maces (muggers) (most people set a limit at 10/11 for con), they'd also have good general fighting along with average covert. Nothing exceptional, but not bad either. This is not a recommendation for stats, just an example. It would be remiss to not metion http://bonuses.irreducible.org as an invaluable resource in calculating your optimum rearrange.
Some Actual Rearranges From Various Specialisations
| Specialisation | CON | DEX | INT | STR | WIS | Notes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mugger #1 | 8 | 21 | 14 | 14 | 8 | 4 GP / heartbeat regen | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mugger #2 | 8 | 21 | 10 | 18 | 8 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cutpurse #1 | 8 | 21 | 14 | 14 | 8 | Good general rearrange for a PK thief | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cutpurse #2 | 9 | 19 | 16 | 13 | 8 | balanced, nice bonuses, not too dex weighted, plus it has 4gp regen | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Smuggler #1 | 8 | 19 | 16 | 14 | 8 | balanced, nice bonuses, not too dex weighted, plus it has 4gp regen | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prowler #1 | 8 | 18 | 17 | 14 | 8 | focused towards covert and crafts bonuses, not very dex weighted, with a 4gp regen | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prowler #2 | 8 | 20 | 13 | 16 | 8 | Heavy dex and strength for stealing. Pack-rat thief carries everything with, str helps keep burden from being out of hand while carrying a lot of loot. Dex and Str also important for sword and parry. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Safecracker #1 | 8 | 21 | 16 | 12 | 8 | Heavy focus on dexterity and intelligence for melee (as safecracker does not have melee primary) and stealing, lockpicking-related covert primaries. Has some strength to carry some burden |
|
|
