there've been a few recent posts asking about thieves so ill waste some more time pontificating for the masses.

thieves can be broken down into 2 areas: scout and pilferer.

the scout will focus mostly on stealth and trap finding. obviously with a high stealth he could also backstab, but because this is usually a once-per-battle kind of tactic, its fairly secondary unless he's a dual/multi fighter because even with +4 a thief's THAC0 is rather crappy.

the pilferer spends points on find traps, open locks, and pick pockets. as a high DEX is de rigeur, he makes a decent archer as well. this is the best route to go with thief/mages as stealth is redundant considering all the disappearing spells available.

if there's only one thief in your party, he should lean more toward the utilitarian pilferer.

trap setting is excellent for when you know where the enemy will pop up (especially for creatures that you can talk to and turn hostile after, like Maevar and several liches). imo, unless you've got a bounty hunter (special snares are worth it) leave this ability alone until the other majors (for scout or pilferer) are max'd out.

detect illusions is worthless outside of the wicked circus tent.

That's pretty accurate, although I think you might have underestimated backstab. This is more in ToB, but an Assassin (7x BS) in ToB can do 120 or so damage backstab without a critical hit... Just thought I should mention it.

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