As subject says, when it's time to go on to bigger and grander things, should I be worried about how I've trained Imoen, or will she default to following her dreams of being a mage? It's been such a long time since I've played this that I haven't the slightest clue either way.

The characters you meet in BG2 are unaffected by what happened in BG1.

there is some mod, check the post about must have mods. But it is a mod that makes BG and BG2 one whole game.. Not exactly sure how it all works but suposibly the characters are how you make them in BG1 with it. I havent tried it so you would have to ask someone else if you want more info..

But in normal BGII all characters are default, and only thing that transfers is your stats, and the golden pantaloons

I think you're thinking of the Baldur's Gate Trilogy mod. No, it doesn't transfer your party with you. I don't think there is a way, since the old NPCs are elsewhere in the game world now, and some NPCs didn't even make it over to BG2.

Darnit. Well, it looks like those tomes are all mine then.

Yes you can.. i am suprised nobody has told you.. immediately before killing Sarevok, export your characters..

Then in BG2, select multiplayer game, add back those characters and start the game.. after 1st movie save and exit, copy the saved game from multiplayer dir to singleplayer dir, then reload again. Now you can play it with your Bg1 characters, allthough i guess youll ahve 2 imoen and 2 minsc, but you can just kick them out and Imoen isnt with you for the better part of the game anyways...

You can only export your main character from BG1 to use in BG2. The NPC characters in BG2 assume a canon storyline was followed in BG1.

Nope. But I'm sure there are fan-made NPC mods somewhere that add in characters from BG1. I know there's one for Xan and one for Kivan, but really, in my opinion, the characters in BG2 are good enough that you won't need to rely on fan-made stuff if you are playing through for the first time.

Alright, that's clever. I could drop the strength and intel tome on Imoen instead of my 18/00 fighter, since he's already sporting a sweet 80-point mix.

For the pièce de résistance, I'm thinking that I need to redo this guy as a paladin. Not the whole time, just for one level, then multi-class into fighter. The moment that I escape the dungeon in BGII, it's time to go on a Holy Avenger quest. Keldorn's habit of killing the best cleric (Viconia) and best mage (Edwin) make having him around a righteous pain in the rear sometimes.

I've also heard it's possible to pause the game the instant BG II starts, hit "H" and you will see your character's inventory- WITH all the goodies you ended BG I holding. If that's the case I can haul the Strength and Intelligence tomes with me, make Imoen Edwin's peer, and I'd be sitting on a four-character Party of Buttkicking.


edit: Okay, that "Take a level of Paladin to be able to walk around with a Holy Avenger" idea? Not working so well. Turns out that unlike the 3.5 rules I'm used to, Paladins aren't allowed to dual-class.

Sure it does, but only to a limited extent: All the characters reappearing in BG2 are the same builds you've made in BG1. And I'm sure I've also seen a mod for Kivan - there's probably more