Your Opinion on Imoen's Magic Missile Ability

[Lauriel]

I'm interested in folk's opinion on how to handle Imoen's magic missile ability in EET when she's not a mage.  At the beginning of SoD she might be a straight thief...or whatever class the player decided to morph her into using EEKeeper.  Yet, she casts a magic missile at the assassins.  At the beginning of BG2, she does so again and it lands her in Spellhold.  I'm trying to plug holes like this in the Transitions mod I'm writing.

I'm thinking about giving her either a wand or a scroll of magic missile for SoD (since she's in training) - have one drop when she drops - and an innate ability in BG2 to equate to her bhaal spawn powers coming to fore like the PC.

Any other ideas?  Opinions?  Comments?  Snide remarks?

 

[subtledoctor]

She’s studying magic for the entirety of SoD, so it doesn’t make much sense to me for her to be a pure thief in Irenicus’ dungeon when SoA starts. 

Here’s a somewhat radical idea: if the player dual-classes her or changes her to a multiclas M/T, then nothing need change. But if the player wants her to be a thief in BG2, then you could implicitly implement 3E-style multiclassing for her: she could be a thief through BG1, then pick up, say, 2-3 mage levels in SoD (while not in the party), then keep progressing as a thief in SoA.

How to implement this:

Create an alternative set of .CRE files from her BG2 ones, setting the “OriginalClass: Mage” flag instead of the “OriginalClass: Thief” flag and setting the Mage level to 2 or 3 and setting her spell slots as appropriate. Set a global variable based on Imoen’s class at the end of the BG1 campaign, and if she was a trueclass thief, then spawn the alternate .CRE at the beginning of SoA. She will be a dual-class Mage->Thief, but from the player’s perspective it will seem as if she picked up a couple mage levels in the middle.

 (OriginalClass flags can be set by Weidu but cannot be set in-game, so the mod would have to set up these alternative .CRE files during installation. I’ve been begging Beamdog for years to add a script action to change these flags, but to no avail.)

Instead of relying on her status at the end of BG1 you could maybe do this via a dialogue - “remind me again what your class is?”

The downside to this is, the player would be unable to dual-class from thief to mage later in SoA. And with the OriginalClass flag set to Mage and no way to change that in-game, there is functionally no way for that version of Imoen to be anything but a thief through the end of the game - unless there is another chance to swap out the .CRE - maybe in Spellhold?

But this might be a dealbreaker, I guess. 

(Sigh. I’d give so much for an OriginalClass script action.)

[Lauriel]

3 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

She’s studying magic for the entirety of SoD,

Maybe - unless you have Imoen Forever loaded...

3 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

it doesn’t make much sense to me for her to be a pure thief in Irenicus’ dungeon when SoA starts.

Me either, to be honest.  When I started this, I assumed she was dual-classed by EET, but she's not.  Probably because you have no idea how she ended up.  EEKeeper and mods can make her be anything.  You'd have to have a lot of CREs to cover all canned combination - and it's impossible to handle the additional modded kits.  I am planning on a really dual-class Imoen option in the future if she's a class that can do that and her stats are still ok, but that's a complication I really can't manage right now.  I'm still a newb.

I like your 3E-style multiclassing idea.  I'll keep that in mind as a possible option.

[subtledoctor]

2 hours ago, Lauriel said:

You'd have to have a lot of CREs to cover all canned combination - and it's impossible to handle the additional modded kits

Well, depending on the player’s tolerance for in-game customization, mods like NPCEE or SCS could cover classes and kits. But they cannot change her dual-class status. That can only be done during a mod’s installation. 

EDIT - sorry, I kind of skipped over the original question. I like the idea of Imoen dropping/using a Wand of Magic Missiles at the start of SoD, in any event. Only the cut-scene in Waukeen’s Promenade at the beginning of SoA is a bit more complex.

Edited July 26, 2020 by subtledoctor

[DavidW]

But using a Wand of Magic Missiles isn't sufficient reason to be arrested by the Cowled Wizards. (From a Realms-lore POV, I don't think there's any suggestion that the Council of Six or the Cowled Wizards have a problem with non-mages moonlighting with magic items; from an in-game POV, using a wand in Athkatla doesn't (iirc) trigger a Cowled Wizard intervention.)

I think you'd do better to give Imoen innate Bhaalspawny abilities that look like arcane magic. (That also pays homage to the fact that she's flirting with magic even if she doesn't dual-class.) 

[Jarno Mikkola]

Well, in BG1, Imoen has a wand of magic missile on her when she joins the party right at the start. I would remember it to be a unique one that only casts at level 1, while the others could cast at higher level(aka have more missiles). So Imoen having Magic Missiles is not a problem... that said, I would always dual her at some point during the BG1's end, to a mage. So DO NOT touch her class/kit, as there's far better mods for that.

[Lauriel]

27 minutes ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

So DO NOT touch her class/kit, as there's far better mods for that.

Probably wise words...

 

1 hour ago, DavidW said:

I think you'd do better to give Imoen innate Bhaalspawny abilities that look like arcane magic. (That also pays homage to the fact that she's flirting with magic even if she doesn't dual-class.) 

Yeah, that'll be fairly straight forward, too.  I just have to remember to remove it after Spellhold and put it back maybe after Bhodi

 

4 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

I like the idea of Imoen dropping/using a Wand of Magic Missiles at the start of SoD,

Cool - so I'm not out in left field on this.

 

Thanks for the input, everyone

 

[Lauriel]

This whole making an innate magic missile ability for Imoen isn't nearly as easy as it sounded.  Trial-and-error-are-us

[Caedwyr]

Take a look at the PnP Celestials mod for how to make innate abilities, including at-will ones too.  I ended up making a lot and commenting everything like crazy because I need to leave notes for myself or I'd forget everything I'd learned up to that point.  In the documentation there's detailed notes about which abilities are innates and how they are applied to the different celestials.

[Lauriel]

4 minutes ago, Caedwyr said:

Take a look at the PnP Celestials mod for how to make innate abilities, including at-will ones too.  I ended up making a lot and commenting everything like crazy because I need to leave notes for myself or I'd forget everything I'd learned up to that point.  In the documentation there's detailed notes about which abilities are innates and how they are applied to the different celestials.

Sweet...throw a girl a link?

[Caedwyr]

It's probably outdated in many ways, but it might still have some value as a tutorial mod.

Most of the innates were created in NearInfinity or the precursor toolsets.

[Lauriel]

Thank you!

[Lauriel]

For future reference: I just mimicked how innate call lightning was done, et voila!  Imoen has a shiny new magic missile ability.  Dos o' doe's (two of them - in a butchered mixture of languages), as a matter of fact, so she can nuke Irenicus good and proper.  Even made her a potion that will refresh her spells before leaving Chateau Irenicus.

Making progress!

[Jarno Mikkola]

2 hours ago, Lauriel said:

This whole making an innate magic missile ability for Imoen isn't nearly as easy as it sounded. 

Hmm, so an innate spell, that uses "cast spell" opcode 148 doesn't work ? Cause that's what it needs to summon in CoW's.

[Lauriel]

2 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

Hmm, so an innate spell, that uses "cast spell" opcode 148 doesn't work ? Cause that's what it needs to summon in CoW's.

Sorry - I'm such a newb that I don't know an opcode from a hole in the ground.  But I did get the spell to work.