Why does Nalia get such hate?
bman86
Member Posts: 115
I've always dropped her after the keep quest, this time I've hung on to her. I find her fairly versatile as a mage, especially with the bow and moderate thief abilities chucked in. Her personality doesn't seem too obtrusive either
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That being said, she's a perfectly fine mage, especially since Imoen is out of the party for a significant portion of the game.
And I like her personality. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's likable and consistent.
That being said, she ahs some postives; even her carrying capacity is fairly good considering she is mainly a mage
Ignore her Thief levels and use her as a pure mage, and without her the vanilla game would be sorely lacking in pure Mages.
The truth is that Nalia exists as a replacement for Imoen, because Imoen was originally intended to die in the second game. When the change was made to keep Imoen, it leaves Nalia as largely redundant.
As for the attacks on her personality, everybody has preferences. While I agree she that her personality can be grating at times, I have always found her more tolerable than several other characters(Aerie and Anomen) and at least she HAS a personality unlike a couple other characters (Cernd and Valygar.)
I find her self righteousness a bit silly, and she's clearly naive in how to accomplish her goals. I kind of imagine her as a typical spoiled vegan with an admiral yet completely oversimplified desire for social justice.
I like her development in TOB though, especially when you summon her. She seems to have grown up. Her quest is also outstanding and really fun... plus the stronghold is cool.
So as a personality I find her annoying, but as a character I find her interesting. I took her in my first completed play-through of SoA as a placeholder for Imoen alongside Yoshimo, Aerie, Keldorn, Minsc and most importantly Boo. I dropped her for Sarevok, yet it was my first time having THREE arcane casters in my party... and let me tell you dropping triple fireballs and laying triple skull traps was a ton of fun.
I think the best description of Nalia was one I saw in a different thread, where a user called her a "fantasy limousine liberal."
After someone pointed that out I started to like her more as a character even if I do end up rolling my eyes a lot if she's in my party. I guess putting into words the thing about her I couldn't describe that was irritating to me, made her less irritating lol.
The problem is she's grating on my nerves in the otherwise neutral or evil party I have. I usually try to walk a middle line with alignment because I enjoy mixed parties, but like Aerie, Nalia is a character that's very difficult to take along with any evil NPCs. She just starts whining too much. For a good party, her sort of misguided attempts to be a good person despite all the prejudice she was raised with actually aren't so uninteresting for a character. Just annoying among the wrong crowd.
@booinyoureyes OMG that analogy though. Brilliant. I'm so done, there's nothing left to say.
1. She's an inadequate thief. 7 levels gets you through TOB with a potion here or there. Four doesn't even come close with all that stupid pickpocket.
2. Imoen's your sister
2. I don't see how this is relevant to anything I wrote.
2. She's your sister!!!!!
Personality wise, I find her to be a lot more interesting than other characters. She is not perfect, nor totalisingly good - in ToB particularly she becomes very interesting and I do wish the developers had been allowed the time to place a sidequest for each of the NPCs before ToB was released, however it seems as though any controversy was relegated to a small dialogue between her and Keldorn towards the end of the game. Her flaws permit a lot of cool character interactions, including an endearing conversation between Yoshimo and herself; an amusing chastisement from Mazzy; and multiple conversations with Jaheira that ultimately result in a friendship come ToB.
Considering the shortage of mages, frankly I find it hard to believe people can avoid her from playthrough to playthrough, unless people tend to run with the same parties often.
PS. That banter with Mazzy she has is really entertaining because Mazzy essentially gives a voice to what the majority of the community later thought about Nalia: she essentially says "Nalia, everyone's in the group is trying to do the moral thing, but lay off a bit - take it easy, have a drink. You're coming on way too strong, okay?"
From a personality point of view, I find her really annoying and out of touch with the problems she wants to help with, which I find irritating. Some people might like her, I don't.
I never liked her, mostly because she is always pestering me with the same line everytime I enter the Copper Coronet. I do enjoy her quest, though. But I don't hate her.
Because she is ginger.
In all seriousness - like many people in the thread - I find Nalia vastly inferior when compared to Imoen - being someone who plays Imoen in maybe 1 out of every 4 of his playthroughs (due to personal group system I use to ensure I use every NPC in within 4-5 playthroughs). My favourite in terms of Thief/Mages has to go Jan > Imoen > Nalia. She's just not that great.
Her base stats are better than Imoen's. She has better strength (although carrying capacity may or may not be as useful), same dexterity, and 16 constitution gives exactly the same bonuses as 18 constitution for non-warriors. Intelligence is the same. Wisdom is useless (except for wish, but Imoen's wisdom isn't good enough either). Charisma is useless with the ring that sets your charisma to 18.
Winner: Nalia, but only barely
Her equipment is great. Nalia's ring is one of the best rings in the game, only rivaled by ring of Gaxx and ring of Wizardry.
Winner: Nalia
Her thieving abilities are good enough. I'm almost near the end of Shadows of Amn and with the rings of thievery I've been able to disarm/unlock almost all traps and locks. The few potions of thievery/perception that I've found in the game have been enough to take care of the rest. I didn't even have to buy any potions at all. I've literally unlocked 100% of all containers without any notable effort.
Winner: Imoen, but only barely
Her mage abilities are superior, given that she has on average 1 MILLION more experience invested in the wizard class by the time you get Imoen back.
Winner: Clearly Nalia
Don't get me wrong, I like Imoen. I don't discriminate against NPC's and will play with any of them in my various playthroughs. But Nalia is significantly better than Imoen.