Imoen Development Strategy (BG1 Vanilla)
Heindrich
Member, Moderator Posts: 2,959
As I said in a previous thread, I intend to stick with most of the canon characters for BG 1 and its expansion (When I import my protagonist from BG 1 to BG 2, can he keep his party? Or are their stats re-rolled randomly again?)
I have just done a few odd jobs on the South Beregost Road and I am about to return to Beregost to collect my rewards when another random encounter against a Ghast (surprisingly easy given 650 xp reward) boosted Imoen to level 3.
Although I definitely intend to stick with her to the end, she is the one character I have no clear ideas for development, from a gaming and RP perspective. So some suggestions and answers would be much appreciated.
Oh, my Imoen’s randomly rolled stats are: (I think it’s a pretty good roll, right?)
Str: 9
Dex: 18
Con: 16
Int: 17
Wis: 11
Cha: 16
Given that the canon-party is light on Divine Magic, (and my protag is a Mage/Fighter) one vague idea I have is to eventually dual-class her into a Thief/Cleric, but I have no idea when I should begin the process if I do go down that path.
In the immediate future, which of the thief stats are most important? I have not had much success with picking locks and I haven’t tried to pick-pocket very often, but so far, I have never used stealth or detecting traps either. I guess my question then is does stealth become very important and will traps feature a lot in the game in the future?
I have just done a few odd jobs on the South Beregost Road and I am about to return to Beregost to collect my rewards when another random encounter against a Ghast (surprisingly easy given 650 xp reward) boosted Imoen to level 3.
Although I definitely intend to stick with her to the end, she is the one character I have no clear ideas for development, from a gaming and RP perspective. So some suggestions and answers would be much appreciated.
Oh, my Imoen’s randomly rolled stats are: (I think it’s a pretty good roll, right?)
Str: 9
Dex: 18
Con: 16
Int: 17
Wis: 11
Cha: 16
Given that the canon-party is light on Divine Magic, (and my protag is a Mage/Fighter) one vague idea I have is to eventually dual-class her into a Thief/Cleric, but I have no idea when I should begin the process if I do go down that path.
In the immediate future, which of the thief stats are most important? I have not had much success with picking locks and I haven’t tried to pick-pocket very often, but so far, I have never used stealth or detecting traps either. I guess my question then is does stealth become very important and will traps feature a lot in the game in the future?
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Comments
2.) You need 15 wisdom to dual class her to a cleric so it's not possible.
3.) Most people dual class her to a mage at level 7
I guess that shoots down my Cleric idea... hmmm... my party will be seriously divine-light unless I drop somebody canon... I was already contemplating letting Minsc die (after I get him) so I can go back and keep Kivan, who is my most effective character at the moment.
Maybe I should sacrifice Jaeheira for a full cleric at some stage...
Imoen does not have the requirements to dual to cleric. The requirements are 15 minimum in the prime requisite(s) for your current class (Imoen qualifies because Dexterity is the prime req for thieves, and she exceeds that) and 17 in all primes reqs for the class you're switching TOO. So Immy can only switch to mage.
Since your character is a fighter mage, and you have Dynaheir, I would think you're best off just letting Immy be your thief.
Also how does is lock-picking success rate calculated? Like Imoen now has 40% lock-picking, but it seems she is either able to pick a lock or not. Only on one occasion did I succeeded on the 3rd or 4th try. Mostly I cannot succeed and give up after 4 or 5 tries, or it works first time. I just wondered if it's ever worth keep trying if success rate for a really tough container was 2% or something, but it might contain something very good.
Oh and I guess I will just focus her as a utility thief in BG 1. She is not bad with a bow either, but sadly cannot use long bows...
I'm not exactly sure how lock picking success is calculated; but locks are rated for difficulty, and that compares to your skill level. So especially early in the game there will be some locks you just can never get, and others you'll get quite easily. Once you get Open Locks above 90% you'll hardly ever find a lock you can't open. I'm not really into thieves so I'm not sure if it gets harder on multiple attempts. I'm sure others will know a lot more than I do about it.
And yeah, thieves don't use long bows, but Immy is great with a short bow!
Oh yeah, just to quickly check... I have reached Nashkel, it feels like the game is encouraging me to head towards the mines... but I wanna rescue Dynaheir asap so I can complete my party and she can start accumulating exp points that is currently being wasted on Xzar. Looking at the map, it is a rather big detour with no friendly inns along the way.
Will a lv1 protag with lv 2 or 3 NPCs be able to mount a rescue before the Nashkel Mines? Or is the Dynaheir rescue meant to be done with a stronger party? Gnolls haven't been too difficult so far, but I guess their stronghold will be tougher than a few random raiding groups.
A lot of players would be fine with three arcane casters in BG2, but there may be reasons to rearrange your party too...
I like Safana over Imoen; Kivan over Minsc; Branwen over Jaheira; Coran over Khalid; and Edwin over Dynaheir.
In regards to Imoen's BG development (if I take her along) I will dual her to Mage when she reaches a level 4 thief. This enables her to get 100 in Find Traps, and she'll recover her thieving abilities much quicker.
Also when I do this, I guess she will lose all her thief skills... so what other means are there of opening locked doors, finding and disarming traps? For example I have just explored the Ulcaster Ruins, and Imoen was critical to my team not getting blown to pieces by the traps there... I'd have no idea how I could have got around them otherwise.
When you dual Imoen and have no second thief, the best way of dealing with the situation is simply to earn XP doing things where you don't need a thief, until Imoen has her skills back.
I know her stats will be reset at the start of BG 2 anyway, so 'dualling her' a level earlier would be an insignificant deviation from canon for RP purposes.
Edit: there are some potions that can help. Potions of Master Thievery grant a 40 point bonus to pick locks, last 3 hours and are not particularly rare. Potions of Perception boost pick locks and find traps by 20 points each, last 6 hours and not particularly rare. Potions of Power boost pick locks and find traps by 20 points each, last 4 hours, but are fairly rare. Increasing dexterity (there are potions for that too: Potion of Mind Focusing, +3 dex, last 12 hours and are not particularly rare) also helps.
When she does dual, I would recruit another thief temporarily (Coran is my next favorite). With the canon party I would replace both Minsc and Dynaheir. Then get them back when Immy gets her thief skills back. I guess the other option is to do some things that will generate experience without the need of a thief,, but you will need quite a lot.
In that case I might as well just focus Imoen as a pure thief in BG 1 and deviate from the canon here. I already have Dynaheir and my PC for mage spells, so I didn't need to do this from a gaming perspective.
Honestly, I just always use fighter/mages as archer/range types. It is certainly possible with the right buffs to make them very effective tanks. But I just let my tanks be tanks; and have a F/M do missiles and crowd control.
In PnP, they do work on a raw % chance system, where if you have 10%, you have a 10% base chance to open any lock, with some locks having modifiers to the roll, depending on how easy or hard to pick they are. But on the other hand, you cannot re-attempt to pick in PnP, until your open lock skill has been raised at least 1 point more then the last attempt, which is highly unlikely to happen.