Perhaps thieves should be given a flank skill, that allows them to circumvent the front rows of an enemy group during combat. And i dont know how BS works, exactly, but if you cant BS someone in the back row from rest (ie not during combat) you should be able to.

Humm, interesting idea being that thieves are such sneaky little buggers. But the question then is, if you flank a group, does your target then have to be in the very last row of the group? For example doesn't seem that you could not flank a person of they had followers in rows in front of then and in rows behind them....i dunno

Grael's idea of infiltrate skill sounded better than flank.

Been playing a low level thief and yeah i didnt notice but he has 4round lag on backstab or trash atm. It will improve to 3 on stab and maybe 2 on thrash since its based on str only. When stats maxed. Atm i get kicked in the butt since after i stab mobs headbutt me all the time. Im not sure why headbutt isnt coded like kick,bash those 2 if u have good dex u sometimes avoid em, no skill involved just natural ability of stats, people never miss headbutts specially mobs. That is killer for thief class.

Should be able to avoid the occasional headbutt too with good dex. If not then something is buggy.

I never seen anyone avoid a headbutt unless the target is on the floor nor miss one. Must be buggy probably. I see bash and kicks gettin missed or avoided even if u goto 99% on skill occasionally thats cool but hb never.

Just a reminder to be taken under consideration for future combat rewrite

thiefs should be able to avoid from time to time kicks, bash, headbutts with evade style.

Dodge should be easier to get since its funtion matches parry for warriors. And thiefs arent as strong.

Thiefs should be considered to get a nice offensive skill during fight such as circle backstab or ripguts that i idead sometime ago. Why? most classes have nice skills to use during combat examples:

warriors,bks,paladin double their dam with headbutt alone,
mages do soul strikes,use charms, chain lightning , cast meteros
cleric (pure and halfbreeds) got meteor, rebirth ,sanc, could have headbutt
rangers got archery that im sure does more damage than kicks
shaman got mental attacks, animates,insanity
druids pets, deadly poison,heal
necro animates, mindflay, poison gas
and of course those classes combined with a minor bk or paladin they get headbutt.

Thief during fight does kick,gouge,thrash all of em dont do more than 40hp dam
slit throat can be useful but with microticks its damage could be like 100hp spread in 2 ticks tops.

At the moment if u dont combine with a class that does have headbutt some classes or pure classes are just not very fun to play since most mobs headbutt and in this case for thief you wont kill by just standing and doin normal damage without some form of offense power.

definately agree here....should be on a teacher as easilly accessable as the teacher for parry (any level 1 can get to him)

I know I posted about this just above, but I want to comment further about dodge.

Dodge is a thief skill somewhat similar to parry for a melee character. Putting this item as a tome, and further more as a tome on Balzic is just silly. A level 1 character can walk to the teacher for parry! This skill is not as powerful at slit, twin, ground smash, or even simple skills like headbut, backstab, soul strike, monster zombie, etc etc yet it is probably the single hardest tome to obtain in the entire mud. That just makes not sense to me. It should be taught by common thief teachers.