Thief (Baldur's Gate)

This page about thieves is specially made for the game of Baldur's Gate. For the oter games, see Thief

Thieves can open locks, steal items, hide in shadow and find and disarm traps, as this the only class with these abilities, there are essential for a good party. All races can become a thief as a profession and the only alignment which is not available is lawful good for obvious reason. A thief wears leather or studded leather armor and can only use bucklers as shields to protect themselves. The array of weapon for a thief consists of lightweight weapons such as daggers and throwing daggers, short bows&swords, staffs, clubs, darts and slings. A thief can't wear any metal helmets.

Character abilities
Note: For the information of this table the human race was used, because they have no character bonunes/penalties related to race and therefore act like a 'neutral'. For other races this may be slightly different. See Character Abilities and Thieving Abilities for more information.

Abilities of the thief.
Every thief gains +20 thieving ability points when they level up. The race of the thief determines how many points are gained as a bonus. Halflings have the best best overall bonus to thieving ability points.

Dexterity determines how many points are added to each skill during the game as well.

Find/disarm traps
A thief can find traps if they activate their find traps mode. Any found traps can then be disarmed if the find/disarm trap percentage is high enough.

Hide in Shadow/stealth
All rangers and thieves can hide in shadows if they wear studded leather armor or lesser armor. A thief who is hidden in shadow can attempt to perform a backstab, which does increased damage. The modifier increases with the level of thief. The chance to hide succesfully in the shadow depends on the time, at night this is much easier to than at daylight, whether the thief is standing in a shadow or not and the chance in percentage to hide in shadow from the character self.

Pick locks
A thief can lockpick locks from doors and containers to open them. The chance to open a door/container depends on the percentage of the character.

Pick pockets
A thief can steal items from characters. The chance to steal an item depends on the percentage.

Backstabbing
When thieves are invisible, a thief can try to execute a backstab upon an enemy, which inflicts more damage than a normal hit, but it makes the thief visible once again.