Would Imoen make a decent replacement for Edwin late-game/ToB?
GamingFreak
Member Posts: 639
Just can't help but be curious, because while having Edwin in the group means a nice mage with way more spells, I've never actually played in a group without a pure mage before (Edwin was either always in my group or I was a full mage myself).
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Different story if she was a fighter->mage instead. Then I'd definitely take her over a pure mage, all day every day.
pure mage >edwin
imoen can use special arrows and they are neat
However, Imoen is not bad. She can still fill the role of party thief, plus have pretty much the same caster level. If you're doing a good run, she's very worthwhile. That amulet does kind of give Edwin an unfair advantage, but evil has enough disadvantages so it's kind of balancing.
Long answer: No way in hell.
Long Answer: Mages are amazing. Having more spells per rest doesn't make Edwin more amazing than any other mage (in terms of caster level, he's not even necessarily superior to a Multiclass mage outside of HLAs, once they hit level 20 they're both throwing the same spells). Ice Cream tastes great, but having more ice cream doesn't make it taste better.
He has more ways to win an encounter? Sure, but you only need to win an encounter once.
More magic missiles? Sure, but frankly if you're rating a mage on single target 10-25 damage spells then you're doing it wrong, and frankly with Imoen and the Short Bow of Gesen you're looking at 6-20 damage per round anyway.
Longer without resting? If time is of no object, then who cares? Just rest after every encounter if you want. If you do care about resting, then great, except at that point a mage with 18 Wisdom is better than Edwin because they can Wish-rest, and wish-rest is epic. Only Charname can Wish-Rest sans potions, so in this sense Charname is the best mage, they can get all the spells per day.
Sidenote: Since Aerie has 16 Wisdom she can actually use Limited Wish to restore one spell of each level 1-4 (level 1-4 spells include a lot of spells that can turn the tide of battles for the mage, even in BG2) for the whole party's mages without chugging Wisdom Potions, of which only a set number exist. Edwin cannot even get the basic utility uses of Limited Wish without a potion, Imoen can at least get a few.
Edwin has mediocre stats asides from intelligence, and his intelligence is a single point higher than Imoen, which matters only when you scribe scrolls, and even then most people would Potion of Genius them both, which works out to a ~1% scribe failure chance. She still gets level 9 spells, still wins combats pretty much solo, and still wails like a banshee.
That said, for my reckoning Neera's probably overall the best NPC mage now, Nahal's is just that good at high levels.
For those who think extra spell slots don't matter since you can just rest anyways, there's a big difference between only being able to Chain Contingency 3x Horrid Wilting once as opposed to being able to cast it 2 to 3 times in big fight. There's also the fact that there's no way to increase the amount of level 9 spell slots, so Edwin's extra slots there are pretty considerable.
But anyways, you don't need that much power. Imoen gets the job done.