How much Search and OL is Enough

[Jakarr]

Title says it all, I am building a cleric/rogue and was wondering how much search and OL is enough, I c 10 Search and 12 Ol being an avg on most builds, Dont want to over do em if I can use the skills on Dip or something else. Also UMD and DD will be Maxed ranks

[Zenako]

Somewhat depends on your goals in the game and how you expect to be playing. For most quests on normal, some skill and stat and a good item will be enough to find most trap boxes.

Finding Secret doors is easy and there are clickies to do it too. True sight reveals them as well.

Finding traps boxes (Search) can be the hardest skill to get high enough for the elite top shelf traps. There is a nice thread in the Rogue forum on that, BUT, to hit the hardest search roll in the game requires a character built for doing that. By just keeping Search maxed out, having decently good stats and a good items, you can find pretty much any trap on normal or hard, and most traps on elite. You need to also consider pushing up your Skill boost as high as possible for that extra margin.

[sigtrent]

Well.... it depends....

If you don't mind the occasional re-roll or failure you can get away with verry little of them.
If you want to never fail anything as a rogue, you need to beef them up a bit.
Also it really depends on your level. At mid level things tend to be the hardest trap wise, at low and high levels things are generaly pretty easy with a few standout exceptions.

There are tons and tons of ways to boost these skills via items, spells, enhancements, stats etc...

When I do a rogue build these are my general rules of thumb....

1. Start with 14 int as a base... a bit less if don't mind being a tad poor at trapping, a tad more if you want to be a trap god
2. Max out Disable & Search. Max Spot if you can afford to (some folks tight on skills will skip spot all together because they know where all the trap boxes are anyway) Open Lock should be maxed until you get 8-10 ranks at which point you can stop spending skill points on it unless you have a low dex, then take it up to 12-14. You can max it but you really don't need to if you have good items/buffs.
3. Don't take any feats for trap skills.
4. If you want to be a really good trapper, take 2 ranks in search and disable enhancements, and if you really want the extra boost, take way of the mechanic as its a great deal for skills. Don't take any more enhancemetns than that unless your int is just horrible.
5. Take rogue skill boost up to 3 or 4 ranks. Its super handy, especialy at low level, especialy for UMD but also good for search and disable.

Thats it. Generaly by level 16 you will hit high 40s to low 50s on search, spot, open lock and disable with appropriate (and easy to buy/find) gear.

[krud]

what kind of level split is it? For elite content you will probably need max search as well. You can always find a clickie for detecting secret doors. Usually, you can get away with as little as half rank for the average lock (you'll just go thru more tools from rolling more times), but there are a some high level ones (e.g. fleshmakers) that have a pretty high DC.

[Impaqt]

You can make a very effective cleric/rogue with just 2 levels of rogue. See my sig for the rogue skill guide and follow my build index for my cleric rogue build.

[Jakarr]

=) thats were I am pullin the build from Impa. But went Human and 14 int skipped spot,

[Varr]

For my multi classed rogues, that are typicaly 2 level rogue then .......... I target 19 search, 19 umd, 14 dd, 14 ol, and what ever else I can afford in either a socal skill like dipomacy, or concentratino for a caster. 14 Int, +1 tome +5 item gets ya to an easy 20 int (+2 +6 for 22 even better) and the level 1 rogue skill boost with +5 picks gets ya where ya want to be for most all content at any level. Minus A Cabal for Ones super trap and a little struggle on the ol for the Chains of Flames bonus chest.........You can be the rogue you dreamed aobut as a kid.