I like FMT's personally. My own problem with Mage/Thieves is mainly that they use the Thac0 of a thief until they get Tenser's at level 6. Even playing a straight thief in IWD1 currently, who has a +3 weapon, she still misses about half her backstabs and she has 17 strength (damn halflings).
That said I love playing my FMT solo. Really is a lot of fun.
Let's not forget you can dual-class into a specialized mage kit in BG1 proper. Imoen can become a Conjurer, Enchanter, Illusionist, Invoker or Transmuter.
I usually go for illusionist. Only really lose out on Vampiric Touch and Larloch's Minor Drain. Losing out on Skull Trap isn't a big deal because Fireball and Skull Trap are essentially the same spell til you hit level 11 as a mage, something you won't do in the BG1 engine.
So, I'm gonna have to disagree that there really are "better mages" than her. She's got perfect dexterity and constitution while no other mage candidate in BG1 has both positive dexterity AND constitution. The only one with better intelligence than she has is Edwin, and we all know Edwin is Bestwin.
If you dual-class her at 6, she'll already have more HP than Xan or Xzar can ever muster (they cap at 36 with max rolls per level, she'd have bare minimum 23 if you managed to roll 1's every level, and her potential cap at level 6 thief is 48), and will still be able to reach level 9 wizard, the cap for BG1 no matter what. She'll have better Thac0 than any other mage, more HP than any other mage, access to shortbows, light crossbows and swords, and thief skills. She can kit into Enchanter so she's straight up better than Xan, and Necromancer is kind of a bad kit so she's better than Xzar. She can kit into Invoker, so she's automatically better than Dynaheir. If it wasn't for Edwin's amulet of HAY LOOK AT ME BE RED WIZHARD, she'd be just as capable a conjurer as he except with more HP and bows.
The ONLY thing Xan has going for him is his +3 Moonblade. And even then I might have encountered a bug the other day when I picked him up at level 2 but he only had 2 level one spells instead of 3 like a specialist mage should have had. That said when he hit level 3, he gained another level 1 spell so maybe it fixed itself (3 level 1, 2 level 2) but I'm not certain. I forgot the specialist mage spell table.
i don't. ever. what's the point she's pretty much the best thief in game. as to sticking to the canon, i figured she only becomes a dual classed mage when irenicus taps her "potential" so IMO you shouldn't dual class her in bg at all
i don't. ever. what's the point she's pretty much the best thief in game. as to sticking to the canon, i figured she only becomes a dual classed mage when irenicus taps her "potential" so IMO you shouldn't dual class her in bg at all
Because why be the best thief in the game when you can be the best thief AND mage in the game at the same time?
I don't think Imoen can be both the best Thief and the best Mage in the same game, because the dualclass timing makes her severely weaker as a Thief.
She competes with Edwin for the title of Best Mage. Edwin is the best spellcaster but Imoen is better at everything else.
She competes with Sharteel for the title of Best Thief. She has higher dexterity than Sharteel, but Sharteel can choose her proficiencies from the start, and of course has all the advantages of being a Fighter.
Anyway, I dualclass Imoen if I have Montaron, Sharteel as Thief, or the PC as Thief. And that's most of the time.
Never. I don't really like magic in the game as a player. I miss out on a lot of power that way, I know. My preference is melee and backstabs. Spells are for healing and buffing (for me). I'm not saying I'm good at BG, just that I don't like magic being so extreme.
I don't think Imoen can be both the best Thief and the best Mage in the same game, because the dualclass timing makes her severely weaker as a Thief.
I guess the problem we're running into here is the subjectivity of the word "best." I value versatility in both my mages and in my thieves, and being a super good mage/thief adds up to something greater than the sum of it's parts.
She's the best mage and best thief at the same time in my eyes because all I have to do is load her up with find traps to get all I need out of her thief side. She can open every door/chest with spells and can rely on invisibility to stealth. Honestly, invisibility is better than having a high raw stealth value in a lot of situations simply because you can do it mid-battle without having to run out of Line of Sight. It all supplements each other and that's pretty cool to me.
The ONLY thing she'll miss out on compared to any other thief is x4 backstabs, and even then only Shar-Teel dualclassed at level 6 or before, Safana, Skie and Alora can get up there because none of the multi-classed guys reach level 9 thief.
I guess theoretically you could get Xzar or Branwen up there if you dropped the dex tome on them early enough. I might try that with Branwen some game because she'd be pretty kick-ass as a level 7 cleric/9 thief.
If they implement a BGT-style character import in BG 2 EE and the XP cap allows for it I'll wait until level 9 to dual her and have the best of both classes.
I don't think Imoen can be both the best Thief and the best Mage in the same game, because the dualclass timing makes her severely weaker as a Thief.
I guess the problem we're running into here is the subjectivity of the word "best." I value versatility in both my mages and in my thieves, and being a super good mage/thief adds up to something greater than the sum of it's parts.
She's the best mage and best thief at the same time in my eyes because all I have to do is load her up with find traps to get all I need out of her thief side. She can open every door/chest with spells and can rely on invisibility to stealth. Honestly, invisibility is better than having a high raw stealth value in a lot of situations simply because you can do it mid-battle without having to run out of Line of Sight. It all supplements each other and that's pretty cool to me.
The ONLY thing she'll miss out on compared to any other thief is x4 backstabs, and even then only Shar-Teel dualclassed at level 6 or before, Safana, Skie and Alora can get up there because none of the multi-classed guys reach level 9 thief.
I guess theoretically you could get Xzar or Branwen up there if you dropped the dex tome on them early enough. I might try that with Branwen some game because she'd be pretty kick-ass as a level 7 cleric/9 thief.
Just to clarify: Can we use the knock spell for every chest and door 'pick locks' would otherwise be needed to open? I've been wondering when to dual-class Imoen myself, and if I can just dump 100 points into find traps and use knock I think I'll be doing that. Otherwise I'll aim for like 80/80 in both and then switch.
The only downside to knock @Nem is that you need to know when you're going to need it and save a spell slot for it. It will contend with a large selection of great level 2 spells if you want to keep one always memorized. That said prioritizing find traps is never a bad idea.
@Dragonspear I'm actually planning to take both Imoen and Neeraa along, using Neera as my main mage and Imoen as a backup caster (and for removing traps). So I don't mind using her level 2 spellbook as nothing but knocks, as that still sounds better to me than keeping her as a thief (personal opinion). So I think that's now my plan for BG:EE.
There is rarely a situation in which there is something you might want lockpicked where you can't also go rest. Half the stuff you can open doesn't have anything valuable inside so it's more a matter of knowing when and where it's worth the time.
So, don't totally ignore it so you can get past lesser chests and doors and the like but if you don't max it, no biggie.
I don't dual-class Imoen in my games at all during BG1, unless I plan to build a party that includes Coran as my main thief, which requires the BG Tweaks mod "open the Cloakwood" component, and I don't plan to use either Xan or Dynaheir as my main arcanist, and I am not trying to be my party's main arcanist myself.
I don't use her in BG2 either, most of the time. I assume that her mage dualing was done off the storyboard between the original game and the sequel, similar to how plain-fighter Luke Skywalker all of a sudden gets Jedi telepathy and telekinesis between the first two Star Wars movies. (Although there was a hint of his eventual fighter-mageness at the end of Episode IV when he telepathically "hears" the "dead" spirit of Obi-Wan Kenobi at the moment of Obi-Wan's "death", and at the end of the Episode, guiding him to destroy the first Imperial Death Star.)
I have never played out the potential story between Imoen and Sarevok in ToB. I may want to do so at some point in the future.
I suppose that most of you know that Imoen was meant to die in BG2, as the main story-driving element for the protagonist, but that she became so popular as a character after the release of BG1, that the devs did some very hasty ret-conning in SoA, in order to have her survive as the story-driver. They did this so hastily, that she had more or less no dialogues post-rescue in vanilla SoA. "You will be too late."
The NPC Project mod also ret-cons Imoen's story, and makes it make more sense for her to actually be a mage much earlier in the story, as of the killing of Tarnesh at the FAI. She is given dialogues that hint at her magical talent. (I *love* the NPC Project. I really can't imagine playing BG1 without it.)
What I don't like about using Imoen in BG2, is that she is a very lousy thief in that game. And, she is a lousy, useless thief in BG1 if you dual her. She needs all seven or eight levels of thief to be useable as your thief in BG1. And if you dual her after that, she is going to be a level one mage with no thieving abilities right when you get to the end game - yikes. Talk about useless.
Meanwhile, in BG2, you have access to Jan Jansen, who can use his technological genius and the equipment he has built with it, to give you 100 percent to Detect Illusion, Find/Disarm Traps, and Open Locks, from the very beginning of BG2, and who will also give you very good arcane backup for the whole game.
@Dragonspear Actually it happens that NPC spellcasters don't have the proper amount of spell slots when they first join. That's sometimes the case for Xan and Quayle. But after they level up things should be normal again.
What I don't like about using Imoen in BG2, is that she is a very lousy thief in that game. And, she is a lousy, useless thief in BG1 if you dual her. She needs all seven or eight levels of thief to be useable as your thief in BG1. And if you dual her after that, she is going to be a level one mage with no thieving abilities right when you get to the end game - yikes. Talk about useless.
Meanwhile, in BG2, you have access to Jan Jansen, who can use his technological genius and the equipment he has built with it, to give you 100 percent to Detect Illusion, Find/Disarm Traps, and Open Locks, from the very beginning of BG2, and who will also give you very good arcane backup for the whole game.
I wonder why you think that Imoen is "a lousy thief" in BG2? In fact, she can open ALL locks that are present in the game. She can also disarm ANYTHING but two traps in the entire game, including TOB. She does not get good stealth skills, but as a Thief/Mage, who needs stealth anyway when you can simply cast invisibility? Also, her backstab modifier is only a 4x. Then again, 4x is pretty good, actually, as for a 5x modifier, she would need almost 8 times the experience to reach and sacrifice on mage levels in the early game. Also, she is pretty decent at backstabbing, once you got your hands on tenser's transformation.
Now, we compare Jan to that. While Jan can reach very high thief levels (and get access to thief HLAs), most of the later thief levels are useless in terms of skill. You don't need more than 100% in anything in BG2. In fact you don't even need more than 80% in find traps and 85% in pick locks to open/disarm anything you can find in BG2, so basicly his thief levels beyond level 9/10 are practically useless, except for the backstabbing and better THAC0. But who actually cares? Your THAC0 will be bad anyway, even for a pure thief, especially with the low STR that is Jan's. In the end, Jan also has to cast tensers in order to stab and then it makes no difference wether your thief has a higher base THAC0 than your dual classed Imoen.
Well, Jan can place traps at a 100% success. That's good, I agree on that. But then again, I feel traps are cheating anyway, as they usually require metagaming knowledge to be used (and, let's face it: they are ridicolously overpowered anyway).
Also, Imoen is a kickass mage after dualclassing her. High dex, decent con, high Int ... what else do you need? She even comes with a great CHA for all your shopping needs.
@Zwiebelchen agreed, I think her backstab is x3 though rather than 4.
Jan is great in my view but I use him in different parties. I never have him in the same party as Imoen so I don't really compare the two, I use them quite differently & see them as such. There's also the Amulet of the Master Harper come TOB (which if you're willing to use it in place of the Amulet of Power) is an ideal fit for Imoen.
I keep her as a thief all through and mod her into one in BG2. Then I give her the wand of magic missiles from Irenicus' Dungeon. See, even on my first playthrough I didn't really believe that the Cowled Wizards were taking her because she cast magic missile. That's not usually grounds for the Spellhold treatment in any case. They took her because Irenicus told them to. It was a way to neutralise a huge threat with no downside (from their point of view). Using the wand gives them an excuse (a poor one, but I doubt they care) and explains the opening cutscene, without requiring Imoen to be a mage.
I would dual her at level 7, as per the canonical arrangement. This tends to be a disadvantage to me, however, as she never makes it back up to level 7 before you have to go through the Thief Guild Maze at the end of the game. I should probably bother more with the TotSC content to remedy that.
Could go farm Wyverns. 1,400xp a pop AND you can sell their heads to the bounty officer. If you could manage to kill them with just Imoen and your PC that'd rack up XP at a good rate.
At what level does Imoen's hair dual class to pink? Because every time I go through BG2 she never regains her brown hair abilities. I think there is a bug in the game!
The hardest traps and locks in BG1 need 80% open lock and find traps skill. In TotSC, in some areas you need 100%.
So, two options.
1) You dual her at 6, have 80% in both skills and go mage/specialist mage. For the extra areas that need more skill, grab potions of thievery/perception/whatever. You won't need any more.
2) You can still dual her at 7, to get 100% in both skills and not need anything else, since the xp cap will be higher and probably you'll still reach 9 in Mage. Level 7 is her canon dual-classing as well.
To be honest i think both are viable, although probably you won't need more than 6 levels.
If you go for level 7, then you can grab Coran to fill in until she gains Mage levels, since you're gonna be around Cloakwood anyway.
In BGT I use the Level 1 NPC mod to make Imoen a Swashbucker and dual her to a mage at Level 6, so she gets the second AC buff (-2 AC total, which she seems to retain even before she gets her Thief skills back...) and can put 100% in both open locks and find traps (as under the BGII engine thieves get 40 points per level). My canon party in this case will be CHARNAME (currently am playing a halfling assassin, focusing on stealth/backstabs...), Jaheira (I let Khalid die), Minsc, Dynaheir and Safana (to cover thief skills whilst Imoen is levelling). Safana gets dumped when Imoen gets her thief skills back and Ajantis (Paladin) is picked up to act as an off-tank for the end game.
Comments
I like FMT's personally. My own problem with Mage/Thieves is mainly that they use the Thac0 of a thief until they get Tenser's at level 6. Even playing a straight thief in IWD1 currently, who has a +3 weapon, she still misses about half her backstabs and she has 17 strength (damn halflings).
That said I love playing my FMT solo. Really is a lot of fun.
I usually go for illusionist. Only really lose out on Vampiric Touch and Larloch's Minor Drain. Losing out on Skull Trap isn't a big deal because Fireball and Skull Trap are essentially the same spell til you hit level 11 as a mage, something you won't do in the BG1 engine.
So, I'm gonna have to disagree that there really are "better mages" than her. She's got perfect dexterity and constitution while no other mage candidate in BG1 has both positive dexterity AND constitution. The only one with better intelligence than she has is Edwin, and we all know Edwin is Bestwin.
If you dual-class her at 6, she'll already have more HP than Xan or Xzar can ever muster (they cap at 36 with max rolls per level, she'd have bare minimum 23 if you managed to roll 1's every level, and her potential cap at level 6 thief is 48), and will still be able to reach level 9 wizard, the cap for BG1 no matter what. She'll have better Thac0 than any other mage, more HP than any other mage, access to shortbows, light crossbows and swords, and thief skills. She can kit into Enchanter so she's straight up better than Xan, and Necromancer is kind of a bad kit so she's better than Xzar. She can kit into Invoker, so she's automatically better than Dynaheir. If it wasn't for Edwin's amulet of HAY LOOK AT ME BE RED WIZHARD, she'd be just as capable a conjurer as he except with more HP and bows.
...
God I love Imoen.
The ONLY thing Xan has going for him is his +3 Moonblade. And even then I might have encountered a bug the other day when I picked him up at level 2 but he only had 2 level one spells instead of 3 like a specialist mage should have had. That said when he hit level 3, he gained another level 1 spell so maybe it fixed itself (3 level 1, 2 level 2) but I'm not certain. I forgot the specialist mage spell table.
She competes with Edwin for the title of Best Mage. Edwin is the best spellcaster but Imoen is better at everything else.
She competes with Sharteel for the title of Best Thief. She has higher dexterity than Sharteel, but Sharteel can choose her proficiencies from the start, and of course has all the advantages of being a Fighter.
Anyway, I dualclass Imoen if I have Montaron, Sharteel as Thief, or the PC as Thief. And that's most of the time.
She's the best mage and best thief at the same time in my eyes because all I have to do is load her up with find traps to get all I need out of her thief side. She can open every door/chest with spells and can rely on invisibility to stealth. Honestly, invisibility is better than having a high raw stealth value in a lot of situations simply because you can do it mid-battle without having to run out of Line of Sight. It all supplements each other and that's pretty cool to me.
The ONLY thing she'll miss out on compared to any other thief is x4 backstabs, and even then only Shar-Teel dualclassed at level 6 or before, Safana, Skie and Alora can get up there because none of the multi-classed guys reach level 9 thief.
I guess theoretically you could get Xzar or Branwen up there if you dropped the dex tome on them early enough. I might try that with Branwen some game because she'd be pretty kick-ass as a level 7 cleric/9 thief.
Yes, if its pickable its knockable
I'm actually planning to take both Imoen and Neeraa along, using Neera as my main mage and Imoen as a backup caster (and for removing traps). So I don't mind using her level 2 spellbook as nothing but knocks, as that still sounds better to me than keeping her as a thief (personal opinion). So I think that's now my plan for BG:EE.
So, don't totally ignore it so you can get past lesser chests and doors and the like but if you don't max it, no biggie.
I don't use her in BG2 either, most of the time. I assume that her mage dualing was done off the storyboard between the original game and the sequel, similar to how plain-fighter Luke Skywalker all of a sudden gets Jedi telepathy and telekinesis between the first two Star Wars movies. (Although there was a hint of his eventual fighter-mageness at the end of Episode IV when he telepathically "hears" the "dead" spirit of Obi-Wan Kenobi at the moment of Obi-Wan's "death", and at the end of the Episode, guiding him to destroy the first Imperial Death Star.)
I have never played out the potential story between Imoen and Sarevok in ToB. I may want to do so at some point in the future.
I suppose that most of you know that Imoen was meant to die in BG2, as the main story-driving element for the protagonist, but that she became so popular as a character after the release of BG1, that the devs did some very hasty ret-conning in SoA, in order to have her survive as the story-driver. They did this so hastily, that she had more or less no dialogues post-rescue in vanilla SoA. "You will be too late."
The NPC Project mod also ret-cons Imoen's story, and makes it make more sense for her to actually be a mage much earlier in the story, as of the killing of Tarnesh at the FAI. She is given dialogues that hint at her magical talent. (I *love* the NPC Project. I really can't imagine playing BG1 without it.)
What I don't like about using Imoen in BG2, is that she is a very lousy thief in that game. And, she is a lousy, useless thief in BG1 if you dual her. She needs all seven or eight levels of thief to be useable as your thief in BG1. And if you dual her after that, she is going to be a level one mage with no thieving abilities right when you get to the end game - yikes. Talk about useless.
Meanwhile, in BG2, you have access to Jan Jansen, who can use his technological genius and the equipment he has built with it, to give you 100 percent to Detect Illusion, Find/Disarm Traps, and Open Locks, from the very beginning of BG2, and who will also give you very good arcane backup for the whole game.
Actually it happens that NPC spellcasters don't have the proper amount of spell slots when they first join. That's sometimes the case for Xan and Quayle. But after they level up things should be normal again.
She does not get good stealth skills, but as a Thief/Mage, who needs stealth anyway when you can simply cast invisibility? Also, her backstab modifier is only a 4x. Then again, 4x is pretty good, actually, as for a 5x modifier, she would need almost 8 times the experience to reach and sacrifice on mage levels in the early game.
Also, she is pretty decent at backstabbing, once you got your hands on tenser's transformation.
Now, we compare Jan to that. While Jan can reach very high thief levels (and get access to thief HLAs), most of the later thief levels are useless in terms of skill. You don't need more than 100% in anything in BG2. In fact you don't even need more than 80% in find traps and 85% in pick locks to open/disarm anything you can find in BG2, so basicly his thief levels beyond level 9/10 are practically useless, except for the backstabbing and better THAC0. But who actually cares? Your THAC0 will be bad anyway, even for a pure thief, especially with the low STR that is Jan's. In the end, Jan also has to cast tensers in order to stab and then it makes no difference wether your thief has a higher base THAC0 than your dual classed Imoen.
Well, Jan can place traps at a 100% success. That's good, I agree on that. But then again, I feel traps are cheating anyway, as they usually require metagaming knowledge to be used (and, let's face it: they are ridicolously overpowered anyway).
Also, Imoen is a kickass mage after dualclassing her. High dex, decent con, high Int ... what else do you need? She even comes with a great CHA for all your shopping needs.
Jan is great in my view but I use him in different parties. I never have him in the same party as Imoen so I don't really compare the two, I use them quite differently & see them as such. There's also the Amulet of the Master Harper come TOB (which if you're willing to use it in place of the Amulet of Power) is an ideal fit for Imoen.
So, two options.
1) You dual her at 6, have 80% in both skills and go mage/specialist mage. For the extra areas that need more skill, grab potions of thievery/perception/whatever. You won't need any more.
2) You can still dual her at 7, to get 100% in both skills and not need anything else, since the xp cap will be higher and probably you'll still reach 9 in Mage. Level 7 is her canon dual-classing as well.
To be honest i think both are viable, although probably you won't need more than 6 levels.
If you go for level 7, then you can grab Coran to fill in until she gains Mage levels, since you're gonna be around Cloakwood anyway.