Talk:Fighter / Mage / Thief/@comment-66.63.177.130-20180218174240/@comment-99.120.144.121-20180426200245

FMT doesn't hit its stride until the second game, unfortunately. It is a great class, but it takes a lot of investment. A multi or dual fighter/mage gets more powerful more quickly, but you don't have any of the utility/cheesiness from thief abilities. Once FMT gets access to powerful "caster only" buffs, it doesn't matter what his/her AC or HP is. These are mostly around spell level 6 (mage level 12, 750k XP * 3 = 2.25M XP), like Protection from Magical Weapons, Mislead, contingency, etc. This is well beyond the BGEE XP cap. There are some good low-level buffs too(e.g. shield, mirror image, ghost armor, blur). But honestly, in BGEE the only reason to take FMT is maybe for a solo run, if you know what you're doing, or if you really don't want to bring another thief along with you. I played through it because I wanted to import that character into BG2.

Here's why FMT is good in BG2EE:

You really need to judge all the aspects together, rather than one aspect to each "pure" class. An FMT has almost as much HP and THAC0 as a Fighter/Mage multi (even at the start of SoA), can get max in all the important thief skills, and can reach the full x5 backstab multiplier. This means you don't need to bring a thief with you. I love Imoen, but her thief levels don't do much except let her disable traps and open locks (which is fine, because she makes a good caster, but there's Aerie/Edwin for that). The cheesy part of this char is being able to use Improved Haste + Mislead + Critical Strike to get 10 backstab crits per round (that's around 10x damage per hit). Of course, many difficult enemies are immune to backstab/crit. Critical strike is still worthwhile for automatic hit successes, though.

The main drawback of this class is that you don't get access to lvl 9 spells (and thus mage High Level Abilities) and have limited spell slots at 6/7/8. This can be somewhat mitigated with items that add spell slots like circlet of netheril, ring of wizardry, and/or ring of gaxx (can use improved haste as special ability 3x/day).. You get time traps as thief HLAs if you need it. The major things you miss out on are chain contingecy, improved alacrity, and wish. NOT having access to wish means you can safely dump WIS, making it easier to get a good stat roll. An FMT won't be able to replace a dedicated spellcaster, but it WILL be able to rock as your party's only thief, and do it quite well. Think of it as a Fighter/Thief, but with mage buffs to protect them or provide them with backstab opportunities.

Something else to keep in mind is that a dual fighter > anything will never get fighter HLAs (maybe 1 or 2 if you dual SUPER late). Multiclass characters can get HLAs in all classes (barring mage HLAs in triple multiclass as stated above). They also gain access to HLAs as soon as their TOTAL experience = 3million (duals need to wait until their current active class is 3M), meaning they will gain access to HLAs earlier than dual classes, and will finish the game with more than a pure class.