Wanting to play through BG which I haven't done in quite a while. I'm thinking of going with a thief. Just not sure if I should go pure or multi/dual. I want to mainly backstab. So any suggestions on this would be much appreciated. Thanks again.

Why not go with assassin then? I did in my last playthrough and she was killing machine. Much more than Montaron (fighter/thief) who also was in my party. I needed only 2 potions of invisibility and 2 backstabs to kill Sarevok.
Of course this is possible only if you use Tutu or BGT.

Hey man, thanks for the reply. I will be using TuTu but I guess I was worried that using kits would be overpowered. At least, that's what I've heard. I just got done playing BG2 for, like, the 3rd time through. Figured I needed to come back to the beginning. Now the assassin's only advantage in BG is poison right? He'll have less thieving points and his backstab multiplier will be the same as a regular thief. But I guess the poison ability was pretty nasty.

It depends on what you want to use your thief for. I use mine mainly as archers and trap detectors, and then a multi-class works perfectly. You get better bows and THAC0 from the fighter class, and just enough skill points to stay on top of traps and locked doors.

It sounds like you want to play a pure thief though; if so you should install BGTuTu which allows you to play BG1 in the engine for BG2. It takes a bit of work to setup, but it's really worth it.

Start by downloading EasyTutu, as well as both BG1 and BG2.
Install BG1 and 2 as normal.
Run the EasyTutu installer which will walk you through it.
Finish off by using the Widescreen mod to set a custom resolution (this part is optional, but recommended).

Thanks for the response. Yea it's been a loooonngg time since I've played the orginal game. Yea I wanted to build a backstabber for sure. My worry with the pure thief is the THACO issues. My worry with the multi-class is the slower leveling. I guess I could maybe dual-class though I'm not a huge fan of it. I guess I could maybe do Fighter3/Thief X or something like that. If the pure thief's THACO is manageable then I would rather go that route I think.

An Assassin would indeed be the best choice if you want to backstab.

However a multi-class mage-thief is also very good for this. Using invisibility spells you could backstab throughout a battle.

Okay maybe I'll go the assassin route. Now I have the rogue rebalancing mod for BG2. Should I uninstall it?

I don't understand why you should. It is for thieves (and its subclasses) after all, why uninstall it?

Well it reworks the abilites a bit and most are only available at higher levels which you won't reach in BG1. So for an example: The modded assassin loses his bonus +1 to THACO and damage. He gets death attack but it not till level 16 I believe. Also poison is weaker in a way. So I'm just thinking maybe I should use the original assassin for lower levels.

Also: I guess I'm a complete idiot. I followed the newbie guide for on the forum here for installilng TuTu and it's not working. I click the TuTu shortcut and I get a -1 followed by assertion failed in ChDimm.cpp at line number 834 error. I guess I'm well below the newbie with this. I guess I didn't install it right. But the only thing that was unclear to me during installation was unpacking TuTu in one directory and then installing it in another which is what did. I hope that was correct? At any rate, its not working. Any help would be great. Sorry I'm a complete idiot with this.

Well if you need it this way then you probably could uninstall it. But I am ot sure how does it work with enabling later at start of BG II.
I played with it and had no problem in BGI.

Have you used original unmodded BG1 files for its installation?
Yep, it was correct, Tutu installator should be elsewhere than installation itself.

Yep. I'm using the GOG version of BG Original Saga. I downloaded in and install it. I then installed TuTu. At any rate I decided to just uninstall everything and start over. I didn't have an easy timing doing that because the process kept saying it can't find the uninstall.ini file. I started getting frustrated so I just deleted my BG1 and TuTu folders completely. I then took a registry cleaner to remove the existing files. I now just installed a fresh version of BG1. The funny thing now is I'll try to load it up just to make sure its working and it crashes to my desktop after the intro movie. It worked when I first tried it before all the TuTu madness. So anyways, nothing seems to go smoothly..lol

Anyways, back to the pure thief or multi. Will a pure thief be able to land backstabs or will I miss more often than not? I may just go with the conservative modders guide and not use TuTu.

Thanks for the response. Yea I played some last night. The biggest issue is alot of times when I click an NPC to talk to them, nothing happens. It took me forever to turn in a quest there in the beginning cause my character wouldn't talk to the damn NPC...ugh. I guess I might need to try TuTu again.

Yea I've heard of that dagger for sure. It will probably be might first purchase. Still not sure whether to play pure thief, multi, or dual. Has anyone tried any of these combinations for a backstabber? I know in BG2 pure thieves are pointless but I didn't know if was different in BG1. Man I feel like fish out of water with the original...lol.

^

It all depends upon how you want to roleplay. Do you want your thief to have martial training (for fighter/thief); do you want him/her to use the thief class as a means to an end (starts as a thief, then dual-classes to something else after reaching a certain level); or you can have your PC be a fulltime rogue in however you roleplay that. Lots of rooms for roleplay in each, I feel.

My PC is actually a Bard, which is directly akin to the Thief class. While he's not Minsc at all (only 15 STR), he's quite awsome in combat still, scoring critical hits now & then unto quality kills. I have him frontlining my party. Pretty cool to see a 1st line fighter who wears no body armor (I like the option to cast spells) taking on & besting foes wearing chain mail or better armors, and then stepping up to fearsome monsters the same.

Juss sayin that so you know you aren't limited, in however you want to play your thief. They can wear armor too with no penalty, as they aren't arcane spellcasters like bards.