Replies: 12
I think there are enough issues in thief mechanics to be worth their own thread. Further, I think a lot of thief characters will be fighters from stealth as well, so we might as well include stealth-fighter issues in the same thread. (Here by “Thief” I mean somebody who loots safeboxes, steals from locked houses, pickpockets, or otherwise steals stuff.)
So, in no particular order:
1. The Thieves Guild and Legerdemain skill lines are obviously useful to thieves. But is anything from the Dark Brotherhood line of significant use?
2. There are a bunch of mechanics in guard interactions that are not obvious unless one has more experience in guard fights than I do. In particular:
- Can guards be cced?
- Can guards’ ccs of you be broken/averted in the usual ways?
- When is it practical or impractical to go invisible or stealth do escape a guard. Do you have to break line of sight first? If you can escape in that way, how good are they at re-breaking your stealth?
- Is there anything special to know about surviving guards’ ranged attacks?
3. What happens if you get into a fight indoors in a one-room building after committing a crime? Does the fight necessarily end in a death, or is it possible to break out of combat long enough to use a door to the outside? Does the answer change if the building is bigger?
4. Please remind me of the basic bonuses to attacking from stealth. And do these all depend on hitting an enemy from the correct “backstab” angle?
5. There are multiple buffs to stealth — lowering the stamina cost of being in stealth, lowering your detection radius, or bolstering your move speed. What I’ve researched and tested includes:
- The crafted Night’s Slience set eliminates the speed penalty to being in stealth.
- That seems to stack fine with speed buffs such as Major Expedition from Retreating Maneuvers or the Concealed Weapon nightblade skill.
- However, Sprint cancels Sneak.
- It’s not hard to reduce the cost of Sneak to zero or near-zero. A Legerdemain passive knocks off 40%. A Medium Armor passive can knock off 35%. The rest can come from one armor set bonus.
- In particular, if one gets 3 pieces of Night Terror gear for the stealth-radius buff, one also takes care of the remaining stealth-speed penalty.
- Ditto if one gets the Night Mother’s Embrace 5-piece bonus, although that set has the issue that most armor drops in it are heavy. (I do have some medium “Dungeon-Delving Mittens of the Night Mother” for defeating “the giant Wasp known is Egg-Eater in the cave known as Taleon’s Crag”. Their trait is Prosperous.)
- Also, for lack of a better use, I’ve spent 71 champion points in Shade in the Shadow constellation as part of the 75 points needed to get the Treasure Hunter bonus, which is discussed in http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/treasure-hunter-passive/ This gives a 13.1% reduction to sneak’s stamina cost. Tumbling would probably be a better choice, but I don’t have my gear assembled yet.
6. What kind of loot drops from safe boxes? 
How does it compare to what drops from treasure chests? Is it affected by the Treasure Hunter bonus?