Imoen (Spoilers)
Permidion_Stark
Member Posts: 4,861
Is it true? Imoen can't join your party?
I can't play Baldur's Gate without Imoen in my party.
In fact I'm not sure you should even call a game Baldur's Gate if Imoen can't join your party.
I can't play Baldur's Gate without Imoen in my party.
In fact I'm not sure you should even call a game Baldur's Gate if Imoen can't join your party.
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Comments
Imoen doesn't come with you because she's training to be a mage under Liia Jannath. So while it may be a let down not to have her in the party, she's just getting ready to be the powerful mage we know and love from BG2 and ToB.
Now, if you really need it, you can cheat and use CTRL+Q on her to add her to the party, or mod it.
SoD is supposed to provide a link between the end of BG1 and the start of BG2 but I can't see any reason why this meant they had to make Imoen an non-joinable NPC.
The reason they had to make Imoen an non-joinable NPC is a good decision. Think about it, in term of Role-Playing you cannot learn magic overnight. The study of Magic Art needs time. Time you don't have in Siege of Dragonspear, because you need to stop Caelar Argent and her crusade.
Imoen chose herself to learn magic because she doesn't want to be a burden for the main character, and want to help her/him better than before. And for that even if she wants to come to help, she decides to stay with the Grand Duchess Liia Jannath to learn magic. Magic needs focus, and in Baldur's Gate, Imoen is far for that, her studies with her mentor give her that FOCUS. This is why in BG2 Imoen is far more will strong than before.
So get over it, it's not a big deal.
In the world of Baldur's Gate you can learn magic very quickly. It may not make a lot of sense but everyone can do it. No one else has to go and study, you just Dual Class and away you go.
You can start out as a first level mage in Candlekeep and shoot up levels without ever stopping to read a book or even talk to another magic user. Again it doesn't make much sense but that is the world of the game.
The point is that Imoen is one of the principal characters in Baldur's Gate and to remove her from the party when she could just as easily have been left in strikes me as a perverse decision.
Not getting over it and it is a big deal.
As a thief she can add some utility and long range support with a bow but as a mage she adds the perfect magical balance my party needs. I have come to terms with it though. I will probably just tough it out and keep her as a thief on my first trilogy run. This will make things more challenging for me for sure. I wanted the dev team to address the issue of Imoen learning spells so that it would make sense if you didn't dual her but I was hoping it could be done in a way that wouldn't interfere with her logical progression if she did dual class already. Still, it's not too big of a deal for me.
The people who use Imoen in BG1 will either have kept her as a thief or already dualled her to a mage. Obviously, there is no way to cover both these possibilities so it seems to me the sensible thing to have done would be to start SoD with her as a thief but have her announce that she is going to dual to a mage. That way you could play through the game with her in your party from BG1 to ToB and keep a reasonably consistent through line for her character.
And just because she is unavailable for half of BG2 I don't see why she should be unavailable for the whole of SoD.
instead of deciding for us, they should have allowed us to make the decision as to whether or not we wanted her in our party.
not a big issue for me, but obviously a big issue for you. and it could easily have been avoided. i say give us as many choices as possible. for me, i really wanted jaheira to be my healer, but she wasn't available until very late in the game so i reluctantly passed on adding her to my party since i'd already spent alot of time and exp developing other chars.
On the downside, it does usually mean I get killed before I get there (and since I always play no reloads it means she never escapes).
If she is a joinable character, then she can die and be unable to fill this role. From a narrative perspective, Beamdog would have also had to write separate content for her if you decided *not* to have her in the party, which would have complicated things considerably. They needed a character that would unconditionally do (and be alive to do) what she does at the end of the game - Imoen was the most logical choice. Actually, I think it enriches your relationship going into BGII and makes her kidnapping (and your drive to rescue her) all the more fitting.
She is one of my favorite characters in the whole saga, but SoD is just a brief interlude - I treat it like the first part of BGII.
The only time I didnt speed run BG2 to rescue her was the first time, when I put all that time and XP into Yoshimo.
I won't complain about how that turned out, fair play, good plot, but I didn't make the same mistake again twice either.
I thought it was a bad decision to leave her out, she was already a mage by the end of bg1 for me and I would guess most people dual her too. Could of made her auto dual class at the start and have her explain why she choose to start learning magic at the start.
Didn't really like Safana or Glint so really wanted a alternative for thieving
In the end of Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition I got 250 000 Gold
In the end of Siege of Dragonspear I got the same amount
Right now in Baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced Edition I have 0 gold, because I'm beginning the game with Caelar voice and portrait for my female Paladin.