I've been trying to figure this game out for a few hours each of the last few days and while I've got as far as Beregost I just feel like I'm doing nothing right and just skating by. Maybe I'm not and I'm just not used to this stuff anymore ruined by JRPGs.

I made a mage, love the class, got a full party too +Neera in holding. I find that fights are just odd, it's like one moment I take a hit or 2 and just die, or I can just keep swinging away (and them) and keep missing, or I just mow something down flat, it's weird. Also what's up with the EXP system? I can't seem to see where it's listed anywhere to know when I level up. It's quite grating to me that I'm a mage and all I do is whack things with a quarterstaff because I can learn spells, but I can not use them and only just select 1 I know of at all to use and can only use it 1x until I go take a nap...which is completely stupid and useless in the middle of a fight.

There some site or whatever around with some benchmarks or general tips that might have something useful on this as I'd rather not give up. Last time I bothered with D&D was in grade schoo/jr high years and it was pencil and paper with like a group of 6 on lunch and I know this too uses that 2nd rule set I think I read.

Also what's with the thief, she can't seem to open crap other than maybe 1 in 10 chests and most doors -- fairly useless. It feels like i should be able to tweak stats or try and level up individual abilities but I'm not seeing how/where to do that.

Yeah, Baldur's Gate is very far removed from a JRPG.

Hitting things is down to two things: THAC0 and AC. THAC0 (To Hit Armour Class Zero) for the one doing the hitting, and AC (Armour Class) for the one being hit. In your character sheet you will see your THAC0 for the equipped weapon -- lower is better. It starts off at base 20 and reduces at certain triggers: some level up stages (more for warrior class, less for others), bonus weapon enchantments (Staff +1 etc.), bonus from STRength score. When you attack, the computer rolls a 20 sided dice. Whether you hit or not depends on the roll of that dice, your THAC0 and the quarry's AC.

Spells per rest is a quirk of D&D, and makes a low level mage pretty useless, especially for role playing -- power gamers don't care about resting every time a fight ends.

"The thief", Imoen, is the best NPC thief in the game. You are simply not allocating her thieving abilities. But she should not need anything in lock picking anyway, since there are other means to open locks: bashing, spells, upping her stats with potions. Her stats are best focused on stealth and scouting, to mitigate traps and give you the advantage of foresight.

Edit: To level up, hit the character record sheet (press 'R') and you will see a button 'Level Up' highlighted if you have enough experience.

You can only allocate thieving abilities on character creation (which you don't do for recruits like Imoen) and level up.

What are you talking about? Every time a thief, NPC or player, levels up (in BG1) they get 20 thieving points to distribute.

If you notice, my parenthetical comment applied to character creation, not to leveling up. The problem is that it takes way too long to get to the point where you can level up.

Maybe you need to be careful how you parse sentences?

In any case, I could point out that the Sleep spell is overpowered at the start of the game; it can reliably disable enemies up to three levels higher than your starting level (in other words, up to level 4), making the early game much easier. (It would also be really unfair if early enemies used this spell against you.)

In any case, many of the issues tanukisuit (interesting user name, by the way) described are things I consider to be design flaws. Mages get too few spells at low levels (and too many for the magic system at high levels), and HP and accuracy are both too low at the beginning (on both sides). It's as if every attack in the game were an instant death attack that worked half the time or less. (Consider, a level 1 fighter (assuming no Strength/Specialization bonuses, and this includes a Strength score as high as 15) only has a 55% chance to hit a target with AC 10 (character wearing no armor with no Dexterity bonus (Dexterity can be as high as 14 and not provide a bonus), which is way too low.)

Many other AD&D based games at least let you level up early and get past the worst of the flaws of low level AD&D; Baldur's Gate, unfortunately, is not one of them, and that's one of the reasons I haven't been able to really get into this game.

No, maybe *you* should be more careful. You stated: "You can only allocate thieving abilities on character creation". Nobody was talking about character creation or initial skills. You, all too often, go off on tangents when replying to people. Don't accuse me of bad English.

You missed the rest of the sentence: "and level up".

(Also, what's wrong with going off on tangents?)

You tell me that I ought to be more careful about sentence structure, yet reading you is like trying to decipher a riddle. You went off on a tangent right from your opening words:
"You can only allocate thieving abilities on character creation"
It had nothing to do with what I wrote. I missed nothing.

Some recommendations for a newcomer to Baldur's Gate:

Consider not playing a mage. For the reasons you've discovered, being a mage makes the early part of the game difficult, particularly for the inexperienced. The low HP, lack of armour, very limited choice of weapon proficiencies and (at the start) minimal spellcasting are obvious problems. Being a mage certainly pays off later (and really really pays off in BG2), but for someone new to the game it may not be worth the early slog. There's no shame in that, and there are wizards you can recruit to the party as you progress.

Consider instead being a fighter, paladin, ranger or cleric (or barbarian if you have the Enhanced Edition). The first three get the most HP and are, of course, the best at fighting; clerics are passable in both those regards (though the difference between them and fighters etc. at combat becomes more pronounced later on) and get spells. Paladins and rangers also get other useful abilities. And all of the above can wear any armour (except plate in the barbarian's case, but you can't afford plate at the start anyway), which, along with higher HP, makes surviving a lot easier. Though a ranger cannot use stealth in heavy armour.

If you really do want to be a mage, be a specialist for the extra daily spell. Conjurer is a good choice because its opposed school is divination and the only particularly good divination spell in BG1 is Identify (reveals the properties of magic items), which is very important but can instead be paid for at shops and temples. For your initial memorised spells, good choices would probably be Sleep and Armour. Sleep, as is mentioned above, is very powerful at the start of the game (though it eventually becomes next to useless as you face stronger enemies), and Armour gives you a nice long-lasting protective bonus.

For a new player unfamiliar with the AD&D system I recommend not multi-classing, just for simpliciy, and because you'll gain levels more slowly if you do.

When you roll your ability scores, don't be ashamed to keep re-rolling until you get some really good ones. Depending on your patience, aim to get as close as possible to the following:

Dexterity 18 (or 17 or 19 depending on your race), for the AC (armour class) bonus. Also helps with ranged attacks. N.B. the increase from 18 to 19 does nothing extra for AC but does for ranged attacks (and thief skills where applicable - N. B. rangers and bards also each have one thief skill).

Constitution 18 (or 17 or 19 depending on your race) if you're a warrior class, 16 otherwise, for the HP bonus. Only warriors (i.e. fighter, paladin, ranger, [barbarian]) get more HP for going over 16.

If you're a warrior, Strength 18. N. B. with the 18/** strength that warriors get, 18/01 is the lowest and 18/00 the highest (18/99 is the next-highest). Go for 18/51 or higher. If you're a cleric, 14 is good to keep you from being encumbered by heavy armour. Otherwise 10 or even 8 is fine.

If you're a mage, Intelligence at least 17 so you can learn plenty of spells at each level. Otherwise it doesn't much matter in BG1.

If you're a cleric or druid, Wisdom 18 for extra spells per day. Otherwise it doesn't much matter in BG1.

A decent Charisma is occasionally helpful but, in BG1, far from essential.

I hope that helps. Do persevere, because Baldur's Gate is a very good game indeed. Challenging to start with, but well worth the effort.

P. S. As for thief abilities, yes, it takes a few levels before you (or Imoen or whoever) can become particularly good at all of them. I suggest focusing on just one or two at first and then having the others catch up later.

The most essential thief skill in the game is Find Traps. Have Imoen (or whichever thief) put most or all of her points into this until she's got at least 70, and get her up to 90 by the end of the game. Only a thief or a cleric with the Find Traps spell can locate traps, and the cleric isn't much use for this purpose because they can't disarm the traps once they've found them.

I'd say the next most important is Open Locks. As has been said above, there are other ways to do this, but doing it by magic is a waste of a spell slot (which will be at a premium at first) and even a very strong character cannot be relied on to force a lock successfully. It's a while before you come across any locks that really need picking, but you will eventually.

Stealth I'd say is less important than the above two. It's certainly useful, but not essential. To elaborate, it's useful for two things: scouting and backstabbing. Scouting is important, but sneaking past enemies can be achieved with invisibility potions, which are among the game's more commonly found potions (there's also an equivalent spell). And backstabbing is simply a way of doing extra damage, so, while it's nice to have, there are plenty of alternatives.

Pick Pockets is the least important thief skill. There are few if any parts of the game where you actually need it.

Mage is the most difficult class to play at low levels. One spell per day and then you're useless. Use a sling or darts to attack from the distance and send heavy armored characters with many hitpoints like Khalid or Jaheira to the frontline.

XP tables are in the manual. Mages reach level 2 at 2,500 XP, level 3 at 5,000, 4 at 10,000, ...

Consider restarting as an illusionist or conjurer. One extra spell per casting level and day makes quite a difference in terms of fun and power. What are your character stats ? Besides maxed int 18 dex (+4 armor class) and 16 con (+2 hitpoints/level) are a must. Wisdom is useless, you can dump it to the minimum (10 avoids a lore penalty but you can simply use identify spells).


About combat:

You can pause the game all the time (you can use autopause) so you don't waste precious seconds while giving commands.
It's very useful if the characters are proficient or even specialized in the weapon types they use, everyone should have a ranged option since ranged combat is very powerful.

I may have to restart, I'd rather not give in on this. I think I said in that first post I haven't touched D&D (paper) in like 25 years but it looked tempting. I got the EE package of BG1+2+IWD from that sale last week.

I made an ELF-MAGE and yes that spell thing is a bitch. I've always enjoyed using range types (wizards/rangers) and second to that the thief/assassin types. The last thing I've ever enjoyed in this stuff has been being the designated meat wall. I don't like standing there taking a pasting and having to rely on potions and the hoped kindness of others not to choke.

You can see how far I've gone so far, it's not much. A restart isn't out of question. I guess I'd need to think out the race, thinking I may have been better off as human to start and going with the rogue/ranger type instead. I think I can fuzzily recall well back in the paper days I had either a human or halfling that was a rogue. Later(much) games like Diablo (all 3), and the duo of Guild Wars (and even the online D&D free to play mmo) I've still stuck with the wizard (not specialized) and rogue type classes. It's just what I enjoy most. I don't like charging in, I like to hit from a distance with precise hits or dropping hell from above with spells.

I don't think I'd like to erase my player, maybe try another for a day or two and see how it rolls out as it was a pain in the ass a bit not getting killed on every screen I ventured into even in the epilogue considering having the armor class of wet kleenex going on there. I had no idea the wizard was so spell gimped for so long.

Am I wrong or right in that if you did magics still perhaps the Sorcerer sucks less as they don't fire and forget spells, they stay with them, only limited by shots per day (which is still a problem at low levels.)

This thread is bookmarked in firefox here I'll keep an eye on further comments or if others want help too as it could all add into a good knowledge base. I'm so so turned off from the greed and avarice in classic console games these last couple years I'm looking to quite jump away into happier distractions (aside from Gameboy currently.)

In Baldur's Gate 1, bow-using characters are the most powerful, especially once you start finding things like Arrows of Detonation. So, maybe try playing an Archer?

In Baldur's Gate 2, mages dominate, so you might try playing one there, especially if you play BG1 first.

In Icewind Dale, it's Clerics who are dominant, especially since there are entire multi-floor dungeons filled with undead. Just because the games are based off the same rule system doesn't make them the same; different AD&D-based games are balanced differently.

Clearly so from that little bit in the post. If I can slog it out and I have no idea what kind of time sink other than 'a lot' by my guess I do intend to attempt them to finish (or until boredom sets in maybe) in order.

I'm going to test drive out an elf assassin this time. Starting with 17,17, 16, 10, 11, 10 stats

The assassin isn't going to be a tank, though his backstabs should eventually get strong. Keep in mind you'll need to either be hidden or using invisibility to actually use the backstab. 16 Con should be okay, but I'd really suggest 19 Dex for the AC and thief skill bonuses. Also roll for 18 str. The Int, Wis, and Cha are all okay (does the assassin get spells? I don't remember).