My approach is no doubt an unpopular one, and I probably am not giving you a proper answer. But I suggest that you not worry about getting the most powerful character and focus on getting the character that you think is fun to play. As long as you aren't soloing, you can cobble together a party that can get you through the game with any of the available race/classes available to the player. If you like to swing steel (or wood) then do that. If you want to cast spells, do that. Just make a character you like and live inside him/her for a while.

-edit- fixed a misspelling

Fighter or paladin. Easy to play, get to use great gear, and is consistently good at any point in the game.

Alcaray's is the most Proper Answer imho. I think whatever character/class appeals to you the most is the "really good" character that you should run with. You can then recruit a party of NPC's to fill in whatever you think is missing.

With that said, I think Warriors rule BG1, and Wizards rule BG2.

So, if I were power-gaming (which I wouldn't), I would think the best character to start BG1 with would be a human Fighter. Then at some point in BG1, probably around reaching Fighter Level 7, dual into a Mage. By the end of BG1, you'll be Level 8 as a Mage. Then you play the end of BG1 and all of BG2 as a strong Wizard.

I'm not a fan of dual-classing. I like a party of characters each having their own roles. But, if you aren't familiar with dual-classing and it's something that interests you, speak up and we can elaborate on the in's and out's of dual-classing.

It's not about powergaming. It's more about users posting about how X or Y class is a "super powerful and fun class" ... once you hit 3 million XP and get HLAs. But before then, they are squishy as hell and you're going to have to babysit them constantly or else reload constantly.

I just wanted to get people's opinions on which class people think are consistently good - not, "really awesome for 25% of the series and really terrible for 75% of the time."

If I want to play a monk I'll play a monk. Been there, tried it. Loved the idea of being Bruce Lee and killing things with my fists, Hated the fact that I had to run away all the time or get one-shot by an ogre.

I'm into SOD now with my sorcerer, and I don't feel like he's terrible but he doesn't feel super powerful either. Everything he can do, Edwin can do better. He's level 13 now and his best damaging spells are skull trap (which isn't party-friendly and has to be positioned perfectly) and magic missile.
By contrast, my buddy Keldorn is tearing everything apart. I kinda feel like, uh, oh yeah, I helped too. The same way my 5-year old nephew "helped" us build a shed by passing us some nails.
My sorcerer feels useful, but not powerful if you catch my drift

The problem with alcrray's answer is that a class that is too weak, like a Wizard in early BG1, just isn't that fun to play.

I would honestly consider dual-classing at the start of BG2, rather than late BG1. You will be weak in BG2's starter dungeon, but that part of the game isn't that difficult, and BG2 gives you XP when you scribe scrolls; you can exploit this by dismissing your companions once you get to town, scribing some scrolls then, and then re-recruiting whoever you want aftwerords. You may end up with a bit less XP in the long run (as some BG1 XP will be wasted), but this pushes the part of the game where you're weak into an easier part of the series.

(Note: This is assuming no Siege of Dragonspear.)

Why, here one could write a wall of text about the possibilities.

For example: If you want Use Any Item and Spike Trap but dont like playing Rogue, you can always go multiclass. Like, a Halfling Fighter/Thief or a Gnome Thief/Illusionist are both super stylish, and hardly worse than a pure Fighter or Illusionist.

But the TL; DR is simple: Play what you enjoy.

The reason why AD&D is so complex and allows to make so many different characters is because different people like to play different things.

P.s.: Oh and by the way, Sorcerer isnt "2/3 of the game either completely useless or only occasionally useful".

P.p.s.: Also, its very important how you skill your characters. A Sorcerer with a poor spelllist for example isnt fun to play at all. Neither is a fighter who has picked the wrong weapon skills and cant use the really good weapons, at least not as well as they are supposed to.

----- WHY DOES THIS STUPID FORUM REMOVE MY NEWLINES I ADD FORMATTING FOR A REASON ----- Running away, i.e. in circles, while the rest of the group pierces them with their ranged weapons, thats exactly how even my regular tanks tank Ogres in BG1 ?

D&D is based on dice rolls. If you roll a 20, thats a critical hit, and you hit the opponent. Thats why you dont want to tank an Ogre on a squishy lowlevel tank.


---- Sorcerer is the class I've played and replayed back in the day. Its still my favorite class. Picking the right spells on Sorcerer is such a fun problem to solve.

But its not about damage output on wizards. In a system based on spells per day, you will only kill the really tough foes. Critter is left to the warriors.

Keldorn is unfortunately an Inquisitor. They are the best magekiller class (that isnt a mage) but they aint the best tanks.

Anyway my personal list of solid classes:

1. Cavalier - Doesnt lose spells like Inquisitors, which in ToB means they are a prime tank and Inquisitor isnt. Thats by the way a fix of the EEs; in the original game Cavalier was stuck as a level 9 spellcaster after level 17, Armor of Faith (the one thing Inquisitor is missing in comparison to Cavalier) only ever gave 10% damage reduction. The loss of ranged weapons borders to irrelevant; if at all, its stylish. Just use Throwing Axes (sparingly; they are amazingly heavy and take a lot of inventory space) until you can get magically returning Axes.

That said, your skilling should be obvious. Start with Axe++, Two-Weapon Style++, go for a blunt weapon of your choice (I typically pick Flair/Morningstar because so many others have Mace or Hammer) on third level so you're able to handle opponents that want blunt weapons (like Clay Golems later, but for example Skeletons are much better with blunt, too), then go hard into Twohanded Sword because thats what Carsomyr is.

This way you have Axe ++, Flair/Morning Star +, Twohanded Sword++, Two-handed Weapon Style+ and Two-Weapon Style++ at level 12. After that level what you want.

At lowlevel, their immunity to fear and their ability to cast resist fear on the party is also awesome.

Inquisitor is fine through most of the game, by the way, the IMHO best magekiller aside from other mages. And Keldon gets some kickass items to make him even more appealing.

Undead Hunter is still better than the plain Paladin, but nothing to write home about.

2. Blackguard. I dont like them and thus dont play them, obviously they cant use Carsomyr, but yeah they are strong on paper.

3. Berserker - Why ? Rage ? Duh ? Many immunities, even against Imprisonment (Barbarian doesnt get that one).

But most importantly you can dualclass. Berserker(9)/Cleric is just awesome, gets 3 rages (you usually only need one anyway), a lot more hitpoints (especially also from constitution beyond 16), can have percentile strength (thats a 18/xx score), and with dualweapon and an Improved Haste from a friendly wizard you get up to 7 attacks per round (ignoring dualwielding haste weapons like Belm or Kundane, who are pretty rare anyway and are limited to +2).

Btw Berserker(9)/Druid isnt nearly as good. You only can dualwield Clubs and Scimitars. And as a Druid, you cannot buff yourself as a warrior. Also, the Druid kits arent just fluff, they actually change a lot, so they are interesting to pick.

If you stay pure class, you wont tank as well as the best. Berserkers are fine but they dont get physical resistance or Armor of Faith.

4. Barbarian - Except for the lack of immunity to imprisonment, their Rage is clearly better than the Berserker one. You only get five rounds (Berserker gets 10, and by the way Minsc gets 20) but you wont be winded for five rounds afterwards - meaning once you get multiple rages, you can simply chain rage.

And sure, you get less defenses, but in the late game defenses are meaningless anyway, your opponents hit you even if you managed to get every defense possible. So the extra hitpoints and resistance against physical damage comes into play. Not as good as Armor of Faith, since that also works against spell damage and gets higher than just 20% in the end (Paladin level 29+ or Ranger level 28+, EEs required). But still, with Hardiness and the Defender of Easthaven you can get to 80% reduction of physical damage.

Their runspeed is also great.

5. Dwarven Defender. I dont play Dwarves so I never tried that one, but yeah, it looks good on paper.

6. Archer. If you like them, you probably love them. They get extremely low THAC0 very quickly and their damage is also amazing. Kinda squishy when targeted by opponent archers though. Also they cannot use ranged weapons in melee. I mean they can, but they get the same penalties as everyone else doing so.

7. Druid kits. No reason to play the pure class. They are kind of very squishy compared to a Berserker(9)/Druid, but otherwise they are fine.

8. Shaman. You need to know what spells to pick, and like Druids they are kind of squish. Thankfully level like a Mage or Sorcerer, not like a Druid. They can be Halforc, and can use Axes, Darts and Slings, all of whom get damage bonus from strength.

All in all, with the EEs and the sad demise of the mighty Ranger(9)/Cleric, I think Shaman are the best way to get Druid spells.

9. Swashbuckler. Can make really nice dualclasses with Mage. I wished Imoen was a Swawshbuckler.

10. Sorcerer. You need to know which spells to pick and how to play them, but then they're awesome.

11. Ranger/Cleric. Clerics are great at buffing themselves as Warriors, so this multiclass should work great. Never played it myself though.

12. Fighter/Thief. Still drowns in Thief skillpoints. Gets all thief HLAs and all warrior HLAs. And they are acutally a solid Fighter who can, with Use Any Item, not just for example wield Carsomyr, but actually do so competently.

13. Fighter/Mage. The infamous OP class. I mean they are nice. I dont play them that often.

14. Cleric/Mage. And here you said F/M is overpowered. Again you need to know your spells. With a C/M the possibilities are near unlimited and frankly insane. Takes a while to get to the real highlevel spells though.

There is one difference here (though I really do think the game would have been less awful with some way to respec character choices):
* In the fighter case, there is no good indication of the trade-offs of the different weapon choices. You don't know, unless you look it up ahead of time, what weapons are in the game and whether there's some interesting weapon you want to use. This can be a problem if you find a neat weapon with interesting properties, but you weren't psychic enough to know that and therefore didn't put proficiency in the weapon type.
* In the sorcerer case, on the other hand, the game gives you the full details of each spell you can pick (aside from some edge cases, which can be fun to explore if you're like me). Hence, the choice of which spell to pick feels meaningful, unlike the choice of weapon proficiencies. (There's still the issue that a spell that looks good on paper might not be good in practice, and vice versa.)

I still maintain that weapon proficiencies, like how Baldur's Gate and its sequel do thins, are bad game design. (And I note that the problem is actually worse in BG2 than in classic BG1 because of how they split the weapon proficiencies into more categories.) Or, against those weaker enemies, you can either:
* Take advantage of the fact that spell resources are segregated by spell level (something that never made sense to me), and use your lower level spells against weaker enemies.
* Look for spells that are specifically good against groups of lower level enemies, like Death Spell. Unless you stacked it, though I'm not sure if it's worth the trouble.

(Remember that Armor of Faith stacks in classic but not enhanced. Personally, I prefer having this spell, and many other short-duration spells, stack.) Are levels 8 and 9 of Berserker worth being weak for longer?

This is actually my favorite multi-class in AD&D. I remember enjoying this in Dungeon Hack: You get Improved Identify (can identify items), reliably get all the Cleric spells (very useful in a game where you're usually at the mercy of the RNG for what items you get, particularly since there's a spell that will solve all your hunger problems), and if you're lucky, you can get Vampiric Touch (overpowered due to a bu that makes the temporary HP stack and never expire, though the game unfortunately gives you no indication of how many you have).

In BG2, they're quite good, being able to do things like putting cleric spells into contingincies (very useful for all those short-duration low-level spells with long casting times, like Bless, or for double Mass Cure at high levels), and even being able to go in the front line with the right equipment and spells. Yes, you can make even Aerie into an effective front-line warrior.

Why yes, I agree that the BG2+ weapon skills make little sense, and are stupid on many levels. However they implemented the original rules from AD&D.

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Wizards can do all kinds of things. Disable opponents, summon help, buff the group, etc. But direct damage spells in a system thats based on spells per day wont be too effective. On highlevel of course you can do trickery to regain spells (Spell Trap, Wish, which are however both spell level 9).

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I dont know if its worth it to you. I prefer to dualclass them at level 9 but level 7 is perfectly valid choice as well. The only really painful level is IMHO 13.

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I havent played much pen and paper. Just never found a group.

Except that those rules aren't exactly good, and many of them (like the weapon proficiency rules) are poorly suited to a CRPG.

At least they didn't implement racial level limits. (If they did, non-humans would not be fun to play in Throne of Bhaal, though it least those rules aren't as bad as 1e, where clerics can only be humans or half-elves and half-elf clerics are limited to level 5 (which is before they get even the second healing spell, and before BG2 even *starts*).)

(Also, I'm glad they didn't implement the female strength limits from AD&D 1e (which were fortunately dropped in 2e, anyway).)

Or if you work out the highest level you can dual-class and still regain your former powers. This might be a fun exercise in optimization, but it leads to your character being useless and not fun to play for a large portion of the game, and I believe you won't get that many HLAs. At this point, you're probably better off with a multi-class build instead, particularly since the BG (and IWD) games limit dual-classes to valid multi-class combinations. (In tabletop, you could dual class arbitrary classes, so going Paladin/Wizard, or even Paladin/Ranger, is possible. The SSI games that implement dual-classing follow this rule, though there can be some bugs in cases like the Fighter/Paladin dual-class.)

HLAs are interesting for fighter (various) and thief (traps). For spellcasters one quickly just learns stuff one will never use anyway.

I've only ever tried Kensai(13)/Mage and thats right now in Black Pits, which allow to speedlevel anyway. I still was quite underleveled for the early fights. Especially since I was the only group mage.

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I have strong doubts anyone ever used racial level limits, not even in pen and paper. In BG they would obviously be highly disruptive and enrage the players.

Spellcaster HLAs can be useful.

Improved Alacrity, when combined with the Robe of Vecna, allows a mage or sorcerer (especially a sorcerer) to go nova, spending all of their spell slots at once to do enourmous amounts of damage in no time at all. Meanwhile, Summon Planetar has uses like reviving your party's dead cleric (if you don't have a Rod of Resurrection to use with Project Image and you don't want to roll the dice with Wish (even though you can keep re-rolling if out of battle by loading your save, it can still be annoying to do so).

If you're not playing a recent EE version, Mass Raise Dead is a nice healing spell at a level that doesn't have the best healing options (and it allows Druids to revive regardless of version). (In the EE, apparently a later change made it so that revive spells no longer heal the living, a change I *strongly* disagree with, and will be looking for a way to revert (via mod?) if I ever decide to play IWD: EE (the only EE I intend to ever get).)

There's also one, for both caster types, that's basically an upgraded minute meteors spell, ans as you might know, minute meteors are really good (cuts through many protective spells rather quickly by sheer volume of attacks).

I don't know if they'd actually come into play in BG1.

Worth noting, however, that SSI's AD&D games did use the level limits, and as a result in Pools of Darkness the best racial mixup to use is all humans. All those racial choices, but most are non-viable.

Yes they were in the rules, but the parts of the rules that we didn't like, we ignored. Also we had various ways to make sure that if people rolled a 1 on hit points at character creation, they did not have to play an untenable character. Also, if the stats you rolled were useless, etc.

When I ran campaigns the system I used was only about half the ADD rules. The rest came from other systems that I liked and stuff I made up (you should see all the graph paper charts I made - I've looked back at them and I can't figure them out any more because I didn't label anything). This is because I had strong feelings about what a campaign should be like to be fun. I wanted realism (ish) over gaminess.