while the tadpoles inhibited skills had prior to the game, how much do you think Alara grew skill wise?
Is she at the same "level" she was before the game started or higher?
this is such a good question!
she absolutely grew by leaps & bounds, & ended the game much higher level than she was before.
before the game, for most of her life, magic was centred on social situations for her. amn being deeply anti-magic meant she never got to practice it much outside of controlled settings, & always with an eye for developing control. i often think about the "if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid" quote for her, because trying to control fundamentally uncontrollable magic is the metric she's up against, so of course she believes herself bad at magic as a whole. she doesn't have enough people who know about it who can say what she's got going on; magical education isn't high in amn, so in her case, it's chalked up to a deficiency. a deficiency heaped on the deficiency of having magic in the first place (like, couldn't even do that right).
mini tangent to say & she still kept it largely under wraps, & learn how to silent cast, & from great distances. of course, the point of the sorcery class is that a lot comes innately, but she still manages it so well for the most part.
but, yes, most of her magic was socially-inclined – charming, distracting, probing thoughts, etc., with some elemental training, as lorroakan is an evoker & that's his specialty. luck, while she doesn't know it's an actual mechanic, is also a big part of her toolkit for survival, & something she learned to negotiate. it's something she relies on her whole life from getting magic, in amn & in the game, also uses it to course correct & mitigate her miscasts too. & i just love the idea that it's also something she develops a feeling for, & some control over.
i still don't have my timeline 100% (which is why no one has seen it shh) but she's outside of amn for about 5 yrs before the start of the game. there's a lot more freedom to use it away from home, but she's still trying to keep it under wraps to a degree. (the age old dilemma with her where she knows she should not take credit & not be obvious, but can't resist, so there are areas outside the gate where she'd made an impression using it to help with odd jobs here & there).
anyhoo, psychologically it's also still so much of an afterthought to use, unless she's in real danger, or wants information.
i think i mentioned somewhere (on lunch so won't hunt it down now) that, even at the start of the game, she doesn't use magic as much as you'd expect for a magic user, & doesn't think to use it in most cases. some of this is down to the surges, but it's also just a lifetime of not seeing it as a gift & not being able to use it freely.
in fact, at the very very start of the game crashing on the beach, she doesn't have a single combat spell apart from burning hands (narrative reasons, she refuses to use it). :) yes, the tadpole nuked her skills, but she's not a combatant, either. she used to be able to do some elemental effects, but it's also part of why she's so cautious casting for most of her life; she knows if the wizard police shows up, those who have had actual training, she's cooked.
it's such a good thing their first real foes are goblins; in other games, like inquisition, where you're up against the most well-trained templar army from day 1 in the hinterlands, she has a much harder time & lives behind cassandra's shield. like, fun reminder that she hasn't really carried a staff around 24/7 before the start of the game. so that's fun new learning that happens, trying to keep hold of it & cast with foes in melee.
what it comes down to, though, is the fact that the game is really where she has to start heavily relying on it like she's never had to, & that means practicing & learning & growth.
everything they go through really rounds out her ability to cast beyond just the social. as well, she has others to copy; she's looking at gale, wyll, even shadowheart to try & mimic what they're doing, or see if she can do it in her own way, also trying to learn from her surges & the ones that produce helpful effects like teleport (& of course making use of the magical shit they find, like the necromancy, which plants spells in her head but also takes her down more dubious paths so shhh) & it all helps tremendously with building up a repertoire of more traditionally dangerous spells. in some ways, the game takes her from a better social caster to a better combat caster by the end just by the sheer amount of shit & powerful opponents they face, & all of the consistent repetition & practice she gets. thunder & lightning quickly become her bread & butter.
in wizard verses, she goes even farther, of course, actually learning a bit more of the workings of magic, & what wild magic is, how it feels to cast compared to using the weave, & all in all gets more of a front row seat into why she struggled as she did. & its bittersweet, a relief & a torment. but it's also knowledge, & means her spellcraft is stronger, & she develops a better understanding of what she's doing & how. but still a bit on vibes because vibes have gotten her this far.
by knocking her on her ass, the tadpole kind of forced her to build a better foundation, & not rely on what she had managed to learn up until then (even if the authority it provided her to the other absolutists, to turn on each other or force certain outcomes was similar to some of her social casting abilities & something she still made great use of – in fact, because she had some social sway with it, & just by being in the middle of nowhere, it also freed her up to focus on other spells; if they landed in baldur's gate first, she might've gone down the same route of repeating what she knew, social spells & subtle casting.) it gave her a blank slate & while it was annoying to lose control, it was also the reset she needed.
all that to say, she grows tremendously in terms of the ability of being able to defend herself more traditionally, & in just using her dang magic. & she learns to appreciate it so much more, because she knows for all its temperamental fits, she would not have made it through without it.
