When to make Imoen a mage?

GDI_JeffL

I plan to play a Swashbuckler as my main character, I am curious if it would be best to make Imoen a mage as soon as possible, or wait until level 7 or so?

ilduderino

You don’t need two thieves if you cover disarm traps and open locks so you can dual her straightaway if you value convenience.

A later dual would give her higher hp and give you more thief backup, she could cover pickpocket for instance which gives some cool items and is not essential at any point of the game, so you can work around the thief downtime and your pc doesn’t need to use points on it.

It basically depends on your tolerance for the dual class downtime vs her being a slightly more powerful character at the end of the game. A compromise would to dual at say level 4 or 5. You could develop pickpocket, get higher hp and finish the dual much more quickly.

GDI_JeffL

Thank you so much for the quick reply, great advice that I will definitely put to good use!

Verticor

I always pick level 6 to start her off as a Mage. You can get 9 levels of Mage in BG. That's 135.000 XP. That'll leave you with 26.000 XP to dump into the Thief class. Might as well use all of it.

Sure, she might be missing her Thief skills for an extended duration of time, but I always seem to manage somehow.

sarevok57

plus imoen can make up in thief skills for what your swash wont get, because in bg1 you wont be able to max out all thief skills for your swash, so usually i go with pick pockets, set traps and detect illusion for my swashes and then have imoen hit 95 disarm traps/90 open locks at level 6 then dual her over to wizard and she will still hit level 9 in mage so thats a win/win

GDI_JeffL

Thanks everyone for the advice, really good, useful information here.