Mayhem said:
The obvious answer is "leave the fighting to the fighters"
Stay out of reach of your enemies swords: shoot stuff, throw stuff, learn a little sorcery, or invest in a reach weapon. Only get up-close and personal if there is a significant advantage to doing so - eg, you will get to use your sneak attack.
If you have no armor and you get into melee, there is an excellent probability you will die... Quickly. :twisted: Your thief should either invest in a cheap leather jerkin (DR 4) and steel cap (+1 DR), or stay out of melee. Actually, anytime you can stay out of melee in Conan, you should, regardless of class. That's how deadly combat is!
If I were you, I would specialize in archery (which is super deadly and relatively safe to practice as long as no enemy can get to you): point blank shot, rapid shot, precise shot. Get a Hyrkanian, Shemite or Stygian bow, preferably a mighty one if you have a positive Strength modifier. You can do ranged sneak attacks with your bow so long as you are at point blank range (30 ft.). The problem is, you will need an exotic weapon proficiency feat to use those bows, since you are not of the bow's creator race.
Another option would be to use throwing knives, but they won't do much against armored opponents. Throwing knives aren't in the book, but I'd treat them as double-priced stillettos with a range increment of 10 ft.
One way to hinder your opponents, especially if they get away, is to smear your weapon tips with excrement. If your GM has the 3.5e D&D DMG, there are disease rules, and excrement smeared weapons would force a Fort save vs. catching filth fever. A D&D character of mine caught that from a rat bite once in the sewers, and he was bedridden for days! Disease would take a day or so to show up. It is a nasty way of disabling tough foes who might otherwise be spending the days they are lying around moaning in bed coming after you. You can bet they'll try and tracvk you down once they recover, though! Hopefully, you've either killed them in bed by then or you are long gone! Poison is too rare and expensive to use willy-nilly, but disease is free! :wink:
General advice for sneaky rat bastards: Run away at the first sign of trouble, use the existing terrain to your advantage, set ambushes whenever possible, take cover, take hostages/human shields, whatever you can to avoid being hit. Another option common to
rich rat bastards in the Conan stories is hiring a gang of bravos (freelance killers) to do your dirty work for you.