Ranger/rogue - how many rogue lvls needed?

[C Elegans]

I am playing a ranger, and I wish to keep her as pure as possible. However, I want Daelen as henchman most of the time, and after a while I became so fed up with him or me (or both) dying from firetraps etc, so I decided to take a rogue lvl to be able to put skills in Disarm traps and Open locks without penatly.

Now I am lvl 1 rogue/lvl 7 or 8 ranger. I use Thieves tools to open locks, but I can't find a way to boost my Disarm trap skills. Any suggestions what to do? Obviously I have put 4 points in both Open locks and Disarm traps, and I can't put any more there unless I take another rogue lvl. How many rogue lvls are needed to play through the game without being dependant on a henchman to disarm traps?

[der Moench]

Join the club

CE! What are you doing outside of SYM!

Actually, I can't answer you. I am playing a Ranger, and refuse to put any levels towards rogue! Instead, I have been using Tomi ... sadly, he is proving pretty inadequate for the task. He keeps telling me: "Er, sorry, no can do," while this chest in front of me glows with a malevolent red hue. I step up, ready to take a bit of damage from a trap, and instead I get fried to a crisp and have to re-load!

Well, sorry not to answer your question, but I gave it a bump - maybe someone else will have a more insightful response.

[Astafas]

Get 3 levels. This way you'll be able to take care of all traps much more effectively and you'll get more skill points overall. Not to mention that you'll get a better Sneak Attack! You could take the Skill Focus in Disable Traps later as well.

[Wyvern]

You might try to bash them with arrows. Sadly, that doesn't always work (you get a weapon ineffective message)...

[limorkil]

In another post someone told me that the highest DC trap was 40, which means you need a disable trap skill of 20. You can get 5-6 disable trap from magic items, maybe more. Also, your intelligence bonus factors in, but I am assuming you do not have a bonus because most rangers don't bother with INT.

I'd guess you need about 15 points in disable trap, which is 4 rogue levels if you are putting 4 points in each time. You could cut that down to 2 rogue levels if you put ALL your points in disable trap and nothing in open lock. Daeran the half-orc can bash open a lot of chests, as can you if you find a weapon that does elemental damage, so I'm not sure you really need the open lock skill.

With my monk/rogue I plan on taking 4 rogue levels in total. I am maxing disable trap and putting left-over points into search. Monks have no problem bashing open chests, so open lock is not really needed. (Actually, you could argue that monks don't need disable trap because a monk is fast enough to evade most traps when they go off, but unfortunately some traps are bugged and cannot be evaded.)

[Phantom Lord]

My Ranger/Rogue is 10/6 at the moment and 6 Rogue levels are more than needed unless you want to recover and not just disarm all those traps - my char can theoretically disarm a DC 47 trap. 3-4 levels should be enough, if you concentrate your skillpoints on traps & locks.

[C Elegans]

Thanks for the replies all and @Monk: Hello, aren't you surprised to see me here?

Role-playing wise, I would actually prefer to play pure ranger, but I have found it too annoying with these traps. Unlocking things are not really a problem, if nothing else works I can always bash them with elemental damage arrows. Even more expensive than buying thief tools all the time The same method works fine for trapped chests just as Wyvern posts, it seems elemental damage always works?

In any case, all traps you can't shoot at still provides a problem, like bookcases, traps at the floor. So I have now taken 2 rogue levels, and put max skillpoints in Disarm traps, ie 12. Probably I will follows Astafas advice and take one more level, it seems a pity to waste the few features I have on Skill Focus disarm traps.