He’s also not terribly bright, which reduces the number of skill points he gets. Plus, it’s been a while since he took any ranger levels - I think he’s been a barbarian for some time now.
I’m guessing he’s spent most of his points on Profession (Cook) and Craft (Annoy Roy).
Rangers get what? 6+int mod and he’s got some barbarian levels at 4+int mod. His int is probably 10ish so probably around 5 maxed skills and a couple extra points here and there. So if he’s got Hide, Move Silently, Profession(Chef), and Jump I would guess Tumble for the last skill.
As Miller notes, Belkar probably gets 6 minus Intelligence mod; I mean, we know that Wisdom is his dump stat, but I don’t think he’s got more than 10 Intelligence at most. And actually, I don’t think it’s unlikely that he’s got ranks in Handle Animal; I mean, he’s doing so well with Mr. Scruffy that it’s almost a necessity. Unless Mr. Scruffy is his animal companion, I mean.
And anyway, I don’t know if Belkar has more than one level in Barbarian. We’ve seen him level twice; once to take Barbarian and once to have that level immediately sucked away by a ghoul.
Guards are usually Warriors, an NPC class with weapon skill and very little else going for it. It has the distinction of being the only class with a class skill list worse than that of the Fighter. Even the Commoner’s list is better. (The Commoner is otherwise worst at everything.)
Tarquin may have leavened his guards with a few Rogues trained in Spot, Listen and Sense Motive. Even so, the rank-and-file are going to be outclassed by Haley with a Potion of Glibness; her modifier is probably over +50 at this point. That qualifies her to get an effect equivalent to a Suggestion spell, except it’s nonmagical. (That’s an Epic usage of Bluff, true, but Epic skill usages don’t require Epic character level; just the skill modifier.)
I suspect that What Will Happen is that the guards will come in and round up the gladiators, and Elan will be dragged off with them. Haley won’t be able to talk them out of it because of the antimagic.
Actually, I always figured Belkar as having about a 14 Int. Yeah, there are plenty of examples of him being an idiot, but they’re all a low-Wis sort of idiocy, not a low-Int sort, and he’s very cunning when it suits him.
Oh, and he also seems to have some craft (trapmaking), judging from his duel with Miko.
(You would believe it, with photographic proof, except that $#@%ing cell phone cameras are not my friend. All my pictures apparently suffered an existential crisis).
I think that’s the point. Ian never really got out of Greysky City - Tyrinaria/Empire of Blood is pretty much the same. The Starshines grew up in a setting where evil was the norm so they assumed everyone is evil.
But Haley has now traveled around some and seen places where evil is not routine. She now realizes that good is a real possibility.
I just thought of something (probably already brought up on the GitP forum, but what the hell: wouldn’t it be interesting (and by “interesting” I mean “ultra-cool”) if Ian were to buy into Tarquin’s plan as a direct participant?