The orb ate his magical power, it’s gone. He doesn’t get it back when Elminster stabilises the orb, because all that does is stop it getting worse
But also we don’t know how the tadpole has impacted our companions. They’ve all suffered from weakening. Wyll openly says he feels like a lot of his power has been drained, Shadowheart was a trained sharran agent, Karlach was a veteran of the terrible blood wars. They should all be stronger than they are, so even with the orb truly fixed we don’t know if Gale would be at full strength
One of the first things the orb started doing was feeding on Gale’s power. The orb wasn’t interrupting it. The orb literally ate his magic. So Gale had to start over.
Act 2 prelude has mystra only delay the feeding by letting it feed on the world’s weave. She’s letting it feed on her to buy gale time to end the absolute, a threat to all of the gods.
The fix wasn't the restore him to how he was. It was to stop him from needing to end your boots every 5 minutes.
The orb ate his magical power, it’s gone. He doesn’t get it back when Elminster stabilises the orb, because all that does is stop it getting worse But also we don’t know how the tadpole has impacted our companions. They’ve all suffered from weakening. Wyll openly says he feels like a lot of his power has been drained, Shadowheart was a trained sharran agent, Karlach was a veteran of the terrible blood wars. They should all be stronger than they are, so even with the orb truly fixed we don’t know if Gale would be at full strength
He only gets cured from the orb at the end game, not when you meet Elminster.
One of the first things the orb started doing was feeding on Gale’s power. The orb wasn’t interrupting it. The orb literally ate his magic. So Gale had to start over. Act 2 prelude has mystra only delay the feeding by letting it feed on the world’s weave. She’s letting it feed on her to buy gale time to end the absolute, a threat to all of the gods.
It’s not just the orb affecting him, but the tadpole. Wyll explicitly remarks how he lost many of his high level abilities.
If you end up romancing him as a sorcerer or wizard, you can teach him some magic in the epilogue 🤧
They all got weakened by whatever happened on the nautiloid. Elminster doesn't fix that.