imoen dual class

[marypippert]

I usually do this at level 7, however, the last time I did that she lost all of her theif skills. Not that she couldnt imporve them but they just went away. Is this a glittch?

[RMS_Gingermonkey]

No, the way dual classing works is you forever stop all progress in your old class, and instead level up in the new. When your new class surpasses the old one, you can use the old class skills again, but they will never improve. So if you dualed to mage, when she hit level 8, she could use her thief skills again.

[kaiyl_kariashi]

It's mostly a poor work around for how dual-classing actually works.

In PnP, you keep your old abilities, but gain no experience for an encounter if you used them, since you need to focus on learning your new class if you want to progress quickly.

BG simply takes them from you completely until your new class is 1 level higher then your old one.

I've long suggested that just applying a harsh xp penalty (in the 50-75% range) until the new class was 1 level higher would've been a better adaption of the mechanic, closer in both spirit and function to the PnP rule, since they could still serve their original purpose in the group and their new class would simply progress slower until they surpassed their old one.

[danconnors]

If we used that interpretation, though, you would still be able to advance in the first skill. That said, it doesn't make much sense that a 10th level fighter, who just dual classed to mage, would suddenly be unable to put on his armor or pick up his weapons.

I try to mollify the wierdness of it all by having the fighter collect an enormus number of magic scrolls before making the switch. After the switch he dismisses the entire party and starts memorizing those scrolls, over and over again if he has multiple copies. At 1,000XP per scroll level it mounts up quickly, especially since the first 11 levels of mage need less Experience than most other professions. I typically hit at least level 10 as a mage in this one sitting, that takes only a few minutes.

It almost seems as if the designers did this on purpose, making it easier to switch to fighter/mage dual class than any other dual class combination.

[kaiyl_kariashi]

I can vouch they did not, as it wasn't possible to do until ToB came out, and was one of many terrible and poorly thought out features that rushed X-pack added.

You could always cheese it by kicking out the party, but the amount of Xp you could earn from it was pretty limited since you couldn't erase spells.

[danconnors]

Erase spells was added for mages with lower intelligence, who could only learn a limited number of spells for each level. If they had stuck to the spell level limit = intelligence - 10, everyone who made a mage would have made sure that mage had a 19 intelligence. As it is a mage with intelligence of 12 can learn all but 9th level spells, but he may only be able to learn 5 or 6 spells for each level.

The rememorized spells are usually lower level spells, and they don't really add that much to the XP total. But 4 level 6 spells gets your newly dualed mage up to level 5 in no time.

[marypippert]

I know you have tolevel up in mage to level up in theif but she loses all of her theif skills.

[kaiyl_kariashi]

Oh don't get me wrong, it was the correct decision to add it, but the issue is they didn't nerf the xp from learning from scrolls after doing so. Hence the terrible and rushed decision.

Knocking a 0 off the xp given would've put the exp reward very close to the personal xp reward mages could get via spell research (though spell research is no where near as easy as merely learning from a scroll, but it could at least kind of sorta justify it at those xp amounts).

2ndly....9 int gives more known spells per spell level then a sorcerer can ever have (6 minimum and ramps up quickly from there), who already get enough space to cover every possible situation. The only time a mage ever ran into issues with space was if they learned every spell they came across without weighing it's value of knowing it vs simply holding the scroll of it for those niche times it was required.

And int per spell level is 9 = up to 4th, 10-11 = 5th, 12-13 = 6th, 14-15 = 7th, 16-17 = 8th, 18+ = 9th. (since in 2nd edition you're expected for most stats to fall into the 11-15 range at most).

Another area BG stumbled was that specialists were actually intended for low int mages since they gave very little benefit to a high int mage (losing ~two schools of spells to be slightly better at 1 school, but were quite lucrative to a low int mage due to the full benefits package (Learn a new spell of their school per level (up to the highest they can cast), +15% learn chance to spells of their school from scrolls, -2 save penalty for spells of their school they cast, +2 save bonus vs spells of their school, +1 spell per day per spell level (must be of their chosen school), -15% chance learning other school's spells, and has 2 (except Diviner (1) and Illusionist (3)) opposed schools).

Though the only confirmed benefit of a specialist in BG EE is +1 spell per day per spell level. Though there does appear to at least be some evidence that the bonus learning chance for school, penalty to learning chance for other schools, and bonus save penalty for school benefits did get stealth implemented and simply aren't mentioned (though they're still missing the free spell of their school per level, proper opposed schools, and bonus save bonus vs spells of their own school).