I made a new character last week, and am quickly realizing that I won't have enough skill points to do what I imagined. (I usually end up screwing myself with that 700 skill cap )

I looked on the wiki and didn't see a template quite what I was going for. And keep in mind, I've never done thieving or lockpicking on a char before.

I imagined thieving from NPCs and town chests, then moving on to Dungeon chests, and thieving monsters (maybe with some rly good armor). I want to be able to pick the highest level chests, and eventually collect spawning rares.

My intended skill set is:

SKILL - intended (actual/current)
Detect Hidden - 100 (100)
Hiding - 100 (100)
Lockpicking - 100 (50)
Remove Trap - 100 (30)
Snooping - 100 (100)
Stealing - 100 (50)
Stealth - 100 (75)

I also have some fencing, 30 magery and some resist

I definitely need enough magery to recall (and mark would be nice - even if I have to use scrolls). So my question is - what skills on my list above, are not that critical to GM, so I can have a few more skill points to pass around?

I am considering dropping fencing and not having any fighting skill, since PvP/PvM is not my intent with this char. Is that a mistake? (I guess magery can fill this gap some also) - What level should I aim for on magery? (and can I do this without evaluate intelligence?)

Am I doing anything stupid on this character? I hate to find this stuff out after spending weeks of work on skills.

I look to your UO wisdom.

Well, I have a character that does similar things, and you do not need detect hidden and remove traps. Just gm magery. Telekinesis will take the place of both skills. Then you can throw on resist or wrestling, both of which will help you survive.

Might even take meditation over wrestling so you can cast when needed and not have to wait for an eternity, but I agree with johtten.

100 Lockpicking
100 Hiding
100 Stealth
100 Stealing
100 Snooping
100 Wrestling
100 Magery

100 Magery because you lack any real method to heal, with 100 magery you can do 50pt heals in the blink of an eye, you can drop an EV should you need it, you can gate your dead friends or massive loot home. You can mark runes, invis yourself (and then stealth away!), magic reflect, recall, cure poison, teleport (and then hide!), telekenisis, and so many other awesome things.

100 Wrestling is good for preventing some melee damage (50% hit/miss against characters/NPCs with 100 skill)

Exactly the same as my town & dungeon lockpicker/thief. Works great for dungeon chests.

Hello

I thought you would need detect hidden and remove trap as are the chests not trapped? I know you can use telekinesis on low level chests but I thought it would not work on high level chests?

telekinesis will work on all trapped chest. Basically its opening the chest with a spell, just remember not to be to close.

You do NOT need either telekinesis, or remove trap to safely open dungeon chests, simply move one tile away from the chest and open, you will not take any damage from the trap, remove trap is a waste of 100 points. If you have stealth its simply a case of moving away, if not just cast invis then move 1 tile and target yourself before opening the chest.

Its been this way since I started here, I keep repeating this, people keep claiming you need remove trap or telekinesis, you do not need either.

If you aren't stealing from PCs then drop snooping.

Remove Trap
Detect Hidden
Stealth
Hide
Magery
Lockpicking
Stealing

You can remain stealthed when opening chests including those in houses which may very well be trapped. Opening up a chest in a high PK area without it exploding on you for all to see is a good thing. It's also good if you happen upon treasure hunters who just dug up their chest with a heavy spawn.

You can hunt for rares and steal from monsters as well. Snooping is unnecessary.

Also remember you can can cast gate, hide and venture through the gate hidden. So being able to cast gate in this non-aggressive template would be critical.

I'm looking to create a similar template. These posts are very helpful, thanks guys.

Does the templates ability to profit come from picking dungeon chests or stealing from higher level monsters?

Picking dungeon chests. It takes 10 seconds PER ITEM to loot from a monster. And most of your steals end up being a very small portion of their gold, or their crystal ball or something.

Also, don't ever listen to anything archaicsubrosa77 says. He is/was wildly incompetent in his forum postings. Remove Trap is nearly useless. There is also no reason to put Stealing on a dungeon chest picker.

I particularly like meditation in a template that has little/no fighting skills. You'll find your waits between gates/recalls are much shorter, and you'll be able to paralyse pesky mobs and such after or before a gate.

Uhm my pickers template:

100 hiding
100 stealth
100 magery
100 med
100 lockpicking
100 detect hidden
100 item identification

About detect hidden: i only have detect hidden because i am not gm lockpicking yet. I was told that you need 60 detect hidden + 90 lockpicking to be able to pick level 5 chests, once gm lockpicking i'll drop detect hidden skill.

About item identification: you mostlikely won't need to gm it to id items.

For you dh and id can be replaced with stealing and snooping I guess.

My t-hunter/lockpicker:

100 Cartography
100 Hiding
100 Provocation
100 Lockpicking
100 Magery
100 Musicianship
81.9 Meditation
18.1 Evaluating Intelligence

I've been experimenting with variances of med/eval, its really tough because not enough med and you can get screwed with the "you cannot meditate" message, not enough eval and it can be tough to finish mobs.

Can easily tele-hide by chests in dungeons, provocation gives you more play with your char as you can still farm mobs or even just solo all level tmaps.

Unless you are rare hunting...then stealing is necessary.

Maybe not to Gm though, so adding in smidgets of tracking might be useful.

Remove Trap doesn't alert everyone in the area you are there, keeps you in hiding and is useful when looting houses...where tinker traps are concerned...I actually made a locksmith with remove trap and tinkering so that I could blow myself up on an alt in front of a chest with a tinkertrap in his pack and rearm a more deadly trap in front of people who would believe the chest was then harmless. Especially lower level chests where the traps are not deadly.

Incompetence and outside of the box, are too very different things.

Being a member of cA I really wonder how many times you passed up on good loot due to deaths to tinker traps, or neglected to even try to get them in risking having your cover blown, as well as yourself. You can check a box without investing into remove trap...but getting it open undetected is another story.