Thief skills from D2:
Steal
Assassination
Duel
Posion
Reshuffle battle orders (forgot actual Name)
Infiltrate

Currently only Duel and Posion are in D3 and the way they are handled is rather cheap. Like in D2 poison had a % chance and if it failed, then the thief died instead. In D3 you simply use posion, always works, no harm to thief ever.

Steal could only be done by the devs programming it in and apparently the engine won't support that. So they say.

Well I hate thiefs as they are designed, to actually gain levels and have other units in a party. I think I have come up with a way to give them 2 of thier orginal skills and make them solo expendable special units again.

Assassination. The thief is given enough damage to kill any unit in one hit but with a very low % chance to hit. The thief has high ini, so always goes first. Finally the thief only has 10 life. There may be a limit on what the maximum chance to miss is in game. I currently am working in a mod where all units have 100 agility. I gave the thief 1 dex (I will try 0 dex later) and the thief has a 64% chance to miss, or a 36% chance to hit.

Wallah! The thief now enters the arena, gets 1st swing on a target, if it hits, the target is assassinated. Wether it hits or misses the thief will die in the 1st round as the thief will have maybe only 1 agility so the enemy can't miss.

A couple things to work out yet. The thief needs enough move points to reach its target in its 1st turn. Enough to reach any first row, but not enough to be too selective. The thief could also be given teleport, but then it could pick any target.

Problem 1. Cover, if the thief triggers cover and the enemy goes 1st, the thief never gets to attack. Hence perhaps either enough move points to get to the flank of the front row, or teleport.

Problem 2. With Resurrections ini system, a thief might get 2 attacks before the enemy can do anything. So this is meant more for Renassaince.

Problem 3. Cost.. Having an opportunity to remove one of the more powerful enemy units is POWERFUl. Would really change a battle. So what is that worth to balance it out? Call the % chance to hit of the thief 1/3rd. SO on average it would take 3 thieves to assaainate 1 unit. Then again 33%CTH never seems to act like 33% CTH. In D2 40% CTH behaved more like 20% CTH. Have to do more trials to see ie 34%=34% in D3.

Problem 4. THe stupid AI probably would have no idea how to use a modded thief for offensive support. This is the main reason D2 is still superior to D3. Worldmap AI. THen again, if the thief has 80 ini, 15 movepoints, how could the AI not at least get to a players front row for a 36% chance to assassinate the randon unit it attacks.

The cost is a tough one. $200 as in D2 seems low, because Assassination was random in D2. You didn't have a achance to select which unit had a chance of getting killed.

Poison Skill Even if Assassination can now be added in game, a thief with 1 skill isn't too exciting. I don't like how posion was implemented in D3. There is no penalty. So how about having the thief do x amount of poison curse over 3 or 4 turns, but casting the poison kills off the thief? THis might encourage one to use several thiefs like in D2. 1 for poison, a couple more to attempt an assassination. The poison curse wouldn't start until the main hero entered the arena and then the curse turns would take effect.

Fog of War Spell Since infiltration isn't an option. The Thief could have a special global skill to cast its own remove fog of war spell over x amount of hexes after it used up its movement points. This would be the 1 free skill, that has no risk to the thief and aids it in scouting.

I think all 3 of these could be done effectively in Renassaince. The Assassination is dependent on every unit having the same agility like I currently use 100 agility in my mod.

My big question is, what are these 3 skills worth? If the cost is too high, it becomes prohibitive, if the cost is too low, it becomes a game exploit. This is all the thief could do as it would have a leadership of zero and no way of leveling.

UPDATE- Did a very small sample of 16 attacks and had 5 hits. So the % to hit works out as intended, close to 33%. Which somtimes means 6 misses in a row and then 3 out of the next 4 hit. This is similar to when I used 10 thiefs to get just 1 or 2 poisons to a city with a powerful AI stack in D2. It would add a bit more uncertainty as buying 4 thiefs might be throwing much needed gold away, or it could be a huge benefit.

I'd like to hear thoughts on cost. I'm thinking of trying it with $500 just as they cost now. Perhaps increasing cost on the guild as well, to keep it from being used to early. In addition to poison, I might add a skill that reduces enemy chance to hit by 10%, this would also sacrifice the thief. But then it has more choices. Too bad these global skills can't also be made to have a % chance to miss.

(21-10-2011 07:11 AM)redgreen Wrote:  Thief skills from D2:
Steal
Assassination
Duel
Posion
Reshuffle battle orders (forgot actual Name)
Infiltrate

I'd would love to have the thief mechanics of the series repaired. I have not delved into D3Ren/Res modding much (beyond retex).

I have three questions about this:

Is it impossible to implement assassination & poisoning as spells (cast on the world map).

How do NPCs on the world map give and take items (during dialog), if the engine does not support stealing?

Is it possible to clone a store but with $0 prices, and a [killing] spell cast (the reverse of a fountain's heal), if the thief were determined to have failed?

(27-10-2011 03:43 PM)Gizmo Wrote:  Is it impossible to implement assassination & poisoning as spells (cast on the world map).

Poisoning should be possible as a global skill. But there is no way to give a % chance to work for it. It would always work with no cost to the thief.

Assassination - no way of doing it from the global map. That would probably take more lines of codes than the devs want to deal with. Having to make the game randomly pick a unit to kill off and a % chance. I think it would be worthwhile in game.

The thief can be made to assassinate a unit within the arena at the cost of the thieves own life. Sinply give the thief tons of damage and 5 life. THe % chance of success is the thieves chance to hit. IF he misses, the enemy 1 hits him. Give the thief only 1 in agility, so the AI never misses. The thief needs 11 arena move points to always reach the AI front line and highest ini in game.

Oh and as Wabbit pointed out in another thread. Even if you make a solo thief with no leadership for the player, the AI will always add garrison units and use it in a party. That part is hard coded. I have a work around for this in the "How the AI cheats thread" It actually makes the same thief have 2 different sets of stats, one for the player, 1 for the AI. Only snafu is, if you camp out at the AI's capital, the level 1 thiefs it spews out will be the same stats as the players. The stats don't change until the AI thief makes level 2. Which may happen as early as the second turn the AI thief is in game.

(27-10-2011 03:43 PM)Gizmo Wrote:  How do NPCs on the world map give and take items (during dialog), if the engine does not support stealing?

Well I personally believe if they really wanted to have thieves steal, the devs could make it work. For all these skills, they need to have a % chance. It probably is just more time then they have and they made other priorities.

(27-10-2011 03:43 PM)Gizmo Wrote:  Is it possible to clone a store but with $0 prices, and a [killing] spell cast (the reverse of a fountain's heal), if the thief were determined to have failed?

hmm... The building profiles are hard coded. You can actually turn any building into a potion shop in game. But the new potion shop would read the same script file as the stock potion shop. The devs would need to make a new building script profile so the two potion shops could be distinguishable.

The killing spell, I've done that with summon skills in the arena. It might also work in the arean map, not positive as haven't tested it out.

Your thinking along the lines like I have about thiefs. I really think stealing could be done. They could limit it to the potion shop and only small potions. As a thief stealing 2000 gold cost potions would throw off balance.

(27-10-2011 03:43 PM)Gizmo Wrote:  Is it possible to clone a store but with $0 prices, and a [killing] spell cast (the reverse of a fountain's heal), if the thief were determined to have failed?

I'll have a 2nd go at this one. I see there are two different scripts that pertain to potions. One is shop_alchemist.s and the other is Potion_shop.s THe alchemist one is the one that is used for the potion shops in campaigns. I'm not certain if the game is using the 2nd potion script. There are a lot of unused files in the game. If the Potion_shop.s is coded into the exe then it could be accessed as a working script. Might be worht looking into. I'm knee deep in my current mod, and actually repricing ruins and changing which runes and potions are available. Stuff like this, takes up as much time as balanceing unit stats, but it is just tedious.

It might be possible to make a different building use that 2nd potion script. Then make a 2nd set of potions with different costs and/or stats. Its not really worth the effort without thieves having a steal function though.

I can see where it might get involved to make a thief steal from any building in game, but a special building that only thieves could access would be simpler. For one thing the devs would need a new interaction window.

(28-10-2011 09:39 PM)redgreen Wrote:  I can see where it might get involved to make a thief steal from any building in game, but a special building that only thieves could access would be simpler. For one thing the devs would need a new interaction window.

Consider an inventory shed, just behind every shop.

Like the inventory shed idea. Could also make the thief very unique in game. Have a special AI unit guard the inventory. This unit would be immune to all magic and physical damage. Only weakness is divine attacks. Then the thief is fairly week but is the only roaming unit in game that does divine damage. Make it so it takes 3 to 6 thieves on average to take out the inventory guard. Randomness in how many thieves to take is balance between %CTH and damage and luck.

Once the guard is defeated, that shop inventory can be plundered of all its stores. Make the value of the inventory equal to the cost of 4 and 1/2 thieves. So it balances out cost wise. Or maybe favor the player slightly.

Then the thief needs reverse battle orders again. A 35% chance to have one enemy mage placed in the center of the arena for 1 world map turn. If that unit gets attacked in that turn, the mage is a soft target in the middle.

I bet something more could be done with thieves. But I don't want it done half ass and have it be all bugged either. So I don't go to the devs site and push the thieves on them. They must know not to bite off more than they can chew given the time frame for release.

They have to come up with a way to mow the in game grass.

I can't get the thieves to do even duel or poison at all. The manual and tutorial explain nothing and I've tried everything I could.

(12-02-2012 07:11 AM)Elorthio Wrote:  I can't get the thieves to do even duel or poison at all. The manual and tutorial explain nothing and I've tried everything I could.

There is an eagle head icon in the down right corner (where the other icons are, like move, inventory and so on. If I remember correctly.) If your thief has the necessary ability, you can click on that eagle icon and use the ability on global map.