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and angles from which your party's Sorcerers and Wizards can get maximum coverage for their highest-damage spells.  Look for defensible areas for your
Fighters.  Are there animals present that your Druids can dominate?  Undead for your Clerics to turn?  Note their locations and concentrations.  Carry this information back to the party with you, and you will certainly be invited back for the next mission.

Scouting ahead of a party can be exciting on all kinds of levels, but if you're smart about how you do it, your work scouting will soon make you the most valuable member of any adventuring group.  And damn, is it fun.  ;-)

Finally, a couple of notes about scouting in the single-player missions.
Honestly, there unfortunately are not a lot of areas where this is of help.
Because you can't communicate upcoming encounters with your AI henchmen, most of the advantage of scouting (preparing tactics and weapon types, getting the applicable items ready, setting down the heavier bundles) doesn't really apply.
However, all of these advantages DO apply to YOU.  You can therefore order your henchmen to stand their ground, drift ahead of them a bit in Stealth mode, and see what the next encounter or two is going to be like.  This is particularly useful in areas where you're not exactly sure what kinds of creatures you're going to be facing.  Your change in tactics might be as simple as changing out fire arrows for ice, or getting your mace ready due to the skeletons ahead, but wouldn't it be nice to know what you'll be up against?


9.3 COMBAT TACTICS
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"I deprived your ship of power, and when I swing around, I mean to deprive you of your LIFE." -- Khan Noonien Singh, Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan

I include this line because if you can keep it in the forefront of your thoughts during your combats as a Rogue, you will do very, very well.  Rogues have one and only one rule for combat: if the bad guys are paying attention to you, you're in the wrong place.  None of your strengths are brought to bear, and all of your weaknesses are exposed.  Turn around and RUN.  Risk the attack of opportunity and get clear.  Get back to the edge of the fight.  Rogues work best when at the edges of combat, not the front lines.

Of course, your sneak attack ability will make this obvious, but how do you use it most effectively?  There are some very simple things you can do.

First, WAIT BEFORE ENGAGING.  Let someone else go first.  Let EVERYONE else go first.  Paladins and Rangers, Fighters and Monks, Barbarians and Clerics, familiars and summoned creatures, all of them will be only all too happy to rush the bad guys for you.  Let them.  That's their job.  This stuff is what THEY get paid for.  The Bards and Druids, Wizards and Sorcerers, they will rush to one side or the other and begin wielding mighty magic or special abilities.  Let them do that, too.  If you've scouted this room out already, you might have even told them where to run when they got into the room (and if you didn't scout this room already, why not?).  You're the Rogue.  Your job now is to assess, judge, and evaluate.  Think of yourself as the party's General.  You're the eyes of the troops, the one thinking strategically.

Take a round and decide where you'd like to be.  Let the battle lines form.
You'll see them form.  On one side, the good guys, brave and true.  On the other, the bad guys, deserving only death.  They will flail away at each other enthusiastically without any assistance from you.  But wait... see those guys far behind the enemy lines?  The spell-casters, archers, the enemy generals?

Ah.  Interesting.

THOSE are your targets.  Find locations in the room where you can exploit their vulnerabilities.  But before you attack them, you need them distracted.  You need to get them engaged with someone else.  Only then will your sneak attacks fall home.  Therefore, you need to punch a hole in the bad guy's front line.
Once you do that, your stalwart fighter-types will be all too happy to throw themselves into death's maw.

Or maybe, just maybe, your stalwart fighter-types are perplexed.  Their attacks have no effect!  The enemy is overpowering!  Why is this thing immune to my weapons?  How come there are so many of these damned things?  Where are they coming from?  NWN features many locations where creatures are spawned by the horde or are rife with immunities.  Flashing lights, burning pillars, altars, rituals, sarcophagi, and portals to the Abyss... you name it.  These things either spawn creatures or grant immunities.  It's entirely possible you've stumbled into just such a situation.  The other characters are far too busy with their battle to notice this happening, but you are not.  You are the Rogue, the eyes of the troops.  You can see from whence these infinite creatures are spawned, the altar that gives them invulnerabilities.  The troops are too busy... you'll have to handle it, and save their bacon yet again.

There, now that you've taken some time to evaluate the situation, don't you feel better?  You should.  Your hit points are pristine and you are therefore not diverting the poor Cleric, who is surely quite overworked by now.  Feel free to point out the dangers you have seen.  They'll hear you better if you're facing them.  Therefore, run to the other side of the room, behind the enemy's front lines.  There.  Now you can see your allies, and they can see you.  Now would even be an excellent time to punch a hole in the front lines... see that... hm... that THING with its back to you, slashing away at your party's best fighter?  You'd much rather have your fighter available to deal with the sorcerer o'doom or the pillar o'death that you've spotted, right?  The thing's back would be an excellent place to put your weapon of choice for a moment.
Your party's best fighter will bless your effort and be only all too happy to stomp the rear-echelon target of your choosing.  Just point him or her in the right direction.

You are the Rogue.  You don't have to wield spells or mighty weapons.  You can wield PEOPLE instead.

The point here is that as the Rogue, you are not a front-line combatant.  You are not expected to throw down mighty magic or the wrath of your deity.  You are expected... nay... required to see the big picture and then communicate it to your fellow players.

Sometimes, however, that is not enough.  Sometimes, the task is clear.  There is but ONE dragon, but he is angry.  In these cases, direct intervention may be called for.  However, watch as the rest of the party valiantly lines up in a little row before the danger.  It's a bit crowded up there.  The best place for you is behind the dragon, beside it, over it, across from it... anywhere but the front.  After all, a person could get hurt standing in front of a dragon.

After a successful sneak attack or two, though, even the most dim-witted dragon (or ogre, or fire giant, or enemy Sorcerer) might realize that you are a threat.
It might turn to look at you.  It might even turn to fight you directly.  You are suddenly at the forefront of the action!

Why in Olidammara's name are you still standing there?!?

Your place is not at the front; your place is at the edge.  Turn around and run!
The thing of the moment might not respect you, might even laugh at you.  But its attention will go elsewhere.  It will turn its back to you.

Rogues know what to do when they see a back.

I call this move the "swing around" in honor of Khan's line above, and you should learn it.  It is the Rogue's primary tactic in battle.  Unless you are completely alone (and I don't recommend this, it doesn't play to your strengths), never EVER get into a fair fight with anything.  It's just now how
Rogues fight.  Not living Rogues, anyway.

Incidentally, did you know you can run out of the range of most area effect spells?  Watch a second or two of that Fireball's path and you'll probably be able to guess the target area.  If the caster is 60' or more away, there is enough time for you to run out of the area of effect before it lands.  Ditto Ice
Storm -- the damage from this spell come in two waves, cold first, then bludgeoning.  Even if the cold hits you, you can usually swing clear of the bludgeoning damage.  Fighters might stolidly declare, "Ah, I can take it!  I've got a bad guy right in front of me to deal with just now!" but you're supposed to be both smarter and more mobile.  The bad guy will probably still be there.
Get clear!  These tactics also work, to a lesser extent, with the various cone spells.  Don't bother trying to run clear of a ray.  Damn things will follow you all over the room.  ;-)

Stay mobile, and stay alert.  Don't get married to one tactic, one weapon, one anything.  Combat is fluid, and the rest of your group is busy.  It is your job to see the big picture, see where help is most needed, and provide that help however you can.  And if danger turns to look at you directly, go somewhere else until it finds someone else to look at.


9.4 AFTER THE FIGHT
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After the fighting is done, two classes really get to shine: Clerics and Rogues.
While Clerics are patching up the wounded, curing disease, removing curses and negative energy effects, and all the other things that Clerics get to do, Rogues are equally busy.  There are bodies to search, traps to disable (recover), locks to pick, chests to open.  First though, hold down the Tab key on your keyboard.
Some of the bad guys might have dropped stuff, and these items can easily be overlooked, especially in wilderness areas.  The other members of the party are no doubt congratulating themselves and each other on their prowess and are too busy to do this.

In both single and multiplayer NWN, immediately assign your Search mode to one of your quick slots.  If you're Elven, you can skip this step -- Elves are in
Search mode at all times thanks to Keen Senses, one of the major advantages that
Elven Rogues bring to the table.  Much like when scouting, you'll get a good feel pretty quickly as to whether there are traps about.  Trust your feelings!
It is better to take an extra minute or two scouring a room in Search mode than to either encounter a trap yourself or have one of your party do it.  If you're looking at a situation and it's screaming "trap!" to you, and you can't see the trap... you haven't looked hard enough yet.  Rogues get little or no thanks for clearing traps, and all the blame when one goes off, even if it's the big dumb
Barbarian that stumbles through an uncleared area without looking.

In multiplayer NWN, immediately assign a custom text macro to one of your quick slots.  This custom text macro should simply say "TRAP!"  Hitting the function key you assign to this macro will quickly and efficiently let even the slowest- witted member of your party that there is danger present.  In the single-player game, you can advise your henchmen not to blunder into danger using the "Stand
Your Ground" action.  Note that if there are enemies on the other side of the trap, henchmen will blunder right through the trap to get to the bad guys.  So, if you detect a trap beyond which enemies lie, there are two good moves.

The first possibility is to order your henchmen to stand their ground.  Then fire a missile weapon or two into the room.  The bad guys will immediately get excited and run toward you.  Sometimes, for no apparent reason, they will set off the trap themselves (bug in NWN?).  If you're not quite this lucky, wait for them to cross the threshold of the trap.  Order your henchmen to follow you, then run for four or five paces backward.  Turn, and fire your missile weapon again.  By that time, the bad guys should be safely on your side of the trap and can be dealt with at your leisure.  Even better, since your henchmen were following you, they're already the ones closer to danger.  Following the encounter, you can clear the trap.

The second possibility when faced with a trap behind which enemies lie is a bit more dangerous.  Go into Stealth mode, and order your henchmen to stand their ground.  You can disable traps while in Stealth mode, so if your Hide in Shadows skill is high enough, you can often clear the trap without being noticed.  This probably won't do you much good if the trap is in plain view of the bad guys, but if it is somewhat out of their sight, this is often a good alternative.

Beware that the trap disabling points in NWN tend to be on the corner of the "long axis" of the trap.  In other words, if you find a long, cone-shaped trap, the disarming point is quite probably going to be on the longer pointy end.
Your character is generally not smart enough to walk around the trap to reach these points when necessary, so if you see yourself on course to run through a trap to disable it, stop yourself quickly and manually put yourself close to the proper place.

As noted earlier with Skills, it is usually fairly profitable to recover traps, rather than disable them.  You also have two other options that are often much less used.  Flag Trap will immediately tag the trap so that you and your party do not set it off.  Thuggish Rogues will be using this skill the most often since they will generally lack heavy-duty trap disabling and removing skill.
Once a trap is flagged, you can (usually) safely move around it without setting it off... unless of course, it's blocking the whole corridor.  Forget opening a flagged chest, though -- it will still fry you if you try.  The final trap- related skill is the least used and lets you evaluate the difficulty of a trap before working with it.  You only need use this skill if you are attempting to disable a trap while one or more of your party is actively engaged in combat.
Otherwise, by "taking 20" on the trap, you will never accidentally set it off.

Henchmen also have a nasty habit of blundering into you or blundering right by you while you are in the trap-disabling mode, pushing you or themselves right into the area of effect.  If you detect a trap in anything approaching close quarters, take the extra second or so to order them to stand their ground.
Finally, in any single-player scenario, quicksave before EVERY trap and/or after
EVERY big fight.  You'll be glad you did.  The one time you forget to do a post- fight Search will be the one time you blow yourself up right after the truly nasty engagement that you don't want to repeat...

Locks are generally much simpler to deal with -- either you can pick them, or you can't.  If you can't, you'll probably have a Fighter or two about willing to bash the thing open for you.  Make sure to tell your henchmen in the single- player game NOT to help you if you encounter a locked object.  If you find one you can't deal with, you can always talk to them again, letting them know their help would be appreciated.  Try to open the locked object again, and when you fail, they'll go after it.  If they can't bash the object, they'll let you know right off.  Linu's way of letting you know is fairly amusing.

If you suspect a chest might have a particularly good treasure in it in a single-player scenario (here's a tip, if it's guarded, locked, and trapped, it probably does), a profitable but somewhat unethical tactic is to clear the chest of all locks and traps... then save the game.  Then open the chest.  If the item is not to your liking, load your saved game and reopen the chest.  Yes, it's cheating.  You're a Rogue.  Get used to it.  ;-)

Finally, if for whatever reason you want to do this, it is quite possible to pick the lock on a locked, trapped object before clearing the trap.  (Rogue humor: pick the lock first, then step back and invite the big dumb Barbarian to