Quote Originally Posted by dianakingston View Post
Shar-Teel is useful on the front lines with the right equipment, but she doesn't seem to do anything in the plot - even with the restored-content mod, she's really only relevant to a single scene in the entire game.
In fairness, that's true of about half the NPCs in BG1. Possibly more.

I'm confused about Neera, though - the manual says Wild Mages are basically random wizards; is that actually helpful in a serious fight as opposed to someone like Edwin or Dynaheir, who will at least cast the spell I tell them to cast?
They're not completely random. Most of the time they cast spells with (IIRC) a 5% that a 'wild surge' occurs on casting, which is the random thing (which can be good, bad, or just weird). They also count as specialist mages (so gain +1 memorisation slot) without having to bar a school of magic. They have two unique spells which play off the surge mechanic, one of which can potentially let you cast higher level spells out of 1st level slots, assuming all goes well on the surge.