GameBanshee Forums

Sorry to bother you guys again. But I've read the threads and still can't decide about Duel Classing Imoen.

My party is as follows and everyone is Lv5 and I'm still in Chapter 3

My PC-Fighter
Minsc
Kivan
Imoen
Branwen
Dynaheir

For what it's worth. Her lock picking is 65%, find traps 41%, stealth 45%, pickpocket 40% and back stab x3

Just wanted to get some ideas. As I've said before, playing the game for the first time so keep that in mind.

Thanks in advance. Sorry about all the questions. Just don't want to do something to late and then regret it.

With your party I'd keep her as a rogue, and concentrate on her Find Traps and Lockpicking until they were both at least 80.

I assume that you are playing Tales of the Sword Coast, which puts the experience cap at 161,000 points (and provides enough adventure for your characters to reach that level). With a party like yours, I would let Imoen be a Thief for the rest of the game. She can backstab the heck out of anything when she's 9th level, and that will come in handy when you meet the toughest enemies in the game. I'll address her thieving point distribution after I make my next suggestion.

I would also dual-class your Fighter to a Thief at 6th or 7th level (assuming that he or she is human and meets the dual-class requirements). Again, the reason is because backstabbing is so effective in BG1. (It also constitutes the "perfect character" in BG1 according to some people.) If you do that, your PC and Imoen will both need a lot of thieving points in Stealth, but you can split their duties so that one of them is good at finding traps and the other one is good at picking locks. In other words, you should give one of them a lot of points in Find Traps and give the other one a lot of points in Open Locks. I've found that pickpocketing isn't very useful unless you know exactly who to pickpocket or unless you want to steal from stores. If you do want to steal, a Potion of Master Thievery makes up for a shortage of points.

We had a discussion last year about "the perfect character". Among other things, we debated whether a Fighter should dual to a Thief at 6th level or at 7th level. You might find it interesting.

By the way, you're not "bothering" us at all. We love to talk about these games, and we welcome your questions and comments. Can't you tell?

Keeping in mind that BG, with TotSC installed, has an experience point (XP) cap of 161k, this would be and example of how dualling Imoen would work:

At level 7 (40k XP), dual her to a mage.

Except for her current total hit points remaining unchanged, she will essentially be a level 1 mage, and will only ever gain XP & levels as a mage. Her thief skills (using a bow, opening locks, etc) will become inactive.

(You will have to pickup, or live without, a thief for the next 90k XP of the game.)

When she hits level 8 (90k XP), her thief skills will become active again. But since she never advances in level as a thief, her thief percentages will forever remain as they were when she was first dualled.

The end result is you got a wizard with a few more hit points, and can shot a bow, open locks, and find traps, which means nobody else in your party needs to be a thief for you to get through the game. The bad news is you have to go through the middle portion of the game without any thief skills, or temporarily add a thief NPC to your party.

If you dualled her at level 6 (20k XP), then you'd just have go through the next 60k XP of the game, before her thief skills would become active again. But, if you care about consistency between BG1 and BG2, then highlight the following to check out a minor spoiler:

Spoiler

Imoen appears at the very start of BG2, dualled to a mage from thief level 7. She also has all her gained percentage points poured into Open Locks and Find Traps.

Sorry, I should have given more information.

I'm playing Baldur's Gate The Original Saga which according to the box includes Tales of the Sword Coast.

As usual you guys have been great. Glad to hear I'm not being a pain with all the questions. For what it's worth, I do try to search the threads first.

VonDondu, took your advise and checked out the 'discussion' you guys had last year. Printed it out. When you print it, it's 14 pages long.lol

Good read though. Now you really got me thinking. I'm going to leave Imoen as is. However this Fighter duel classing to thief is very interesting.

Thanks again and have a great day.