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Ranger/rogue - how many rogue lvls needed?

Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 2:47 am
by 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?

Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 5:55 am
by der Moench
Join the club

CE! What are you doing outside of SYM! :eek:

Actually, I can't answer you. :o I am playing a Ranger, and refuse to put any levels towards rogue! :mad: 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! :mad:

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

Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 6:29 am
by 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.

Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 8:54 am
by Wyvern
You might try to bash them with arrows. Sadly, that doesn't always work (you get a weapon ineffective message)...

Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 10:05 am
by 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.)

Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 11:09 am
by 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.

Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2002 1:56 pm
by C Elegans
Thanks for the replies all :) and @Monk: Hello, aren't you surprised to see me here? :D

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 :D 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.