Can I just point out to some of the respondents here that they are not being very helpful in using D&D lingo? Explaining the spellcasting abilities of one class by comparing it to another probably doesn't much to a beginner, apart from that one class is inferior to another, to a small or great degree. I can't imagine "Fallen Paladin" meaning a whole lot to them either.

Now, on to my two cents.

First of all, people have been suggesting to make a Fighter for your first playthrough. That's a good idea. Using ranged weapons (for every character) is an even better one. You can get away with swords and axes later on, but bows and slings are pretty much mandatory in the beginning, especially so because many low-level enemies are armed with such weapons themselves; they will turn you into Swiss cheese long before a swordsman can close the distance.

Baldur's Gate (and D&D in general, come to think of it) is infamous for the high mortality rate among low-level characters because enemies will hit you relatively often, and many of them can kill any of your characters in one or two lucky hits, perhaps three for the Fighter and Paladin. A critical hit (5% chance, double damage IIRC) early in the game pretty much warrants a kill, and because you often find yourself outnumbered, you will be receiving more criticals than dishing them out yourself. Helmets (easy to come by) negate critical hits altogether, but not all character classes can wear them, so be on your toes anyway. In any case, Baldur's Gate becomes much more forgiving once you hit level 4 or so - until then you'll just have to tolerate the constant presence of death.

Alignment is a curious system in D&D, and one that I'm not very fond of. It does have some game-mechanical applications: for instance, certain items can only be used by, say, Evil characters, or Lawful Good or something. I wouldn't worry too much about that, at least on your first go. Certain classes require a certain alignment or prevent others, which is more a nuisance than a real concern. Some weapons and spells damage creatures of a certain alignment more than others, and so on. It also acts as a guideline to a character's behaviour in pen-and-paper games, but this function is nulled in the video games for greater player freedom, and as a result your alignment doesn't really matter.

The exact mechanisms of AD&D are so long-winded that it would be impractical to explain them here. However, this quickstart thing that I found might be helpful in getting you started. It mentions Kits under character classes: these were introduced in Baldur's Gate 2 (and EE, apparently), so they are irrelevant for now.

By the way, there are a few Thief companions available. There is no shame in using Stealth mode and sending them to scout what lies ahead.

EDIT: Also, Baldur's Gate is not an easy game to get into IMO. Restarting a few times is perfectly normal for a beginner.

Oh, one more thing. Before very long you'll need a thief in your party (and a good one offers to join you very early in the game). Thieves have four thieving skills which you can assign points to as they level up. The most important skill is Find Traps - there are many traps in the game, some of them very dangerous, and a thief who can find and disarm them is vital. The next most important, by a large margin over the other two, is Open Locks.

I disagree. There isn't a lock in the game that cannot be opened by other means: bashing or the spell 'Knock'. For a thief, detecting traps and stealth are the most important skills, in that order -- and Imoen excels at both, since you pick her up at the start of the game, and can manage all of her thieving skills right off bat. Next comes lock picking, and pickpocketing should be an afterthought, or left to a bard.

Bashing and Knock are both less practical methods than lockpicking. Even the strongest characters can't reliably force every lock, and Knock takes up a spell slot that could be spent on something more useful; at certain stages of the game there are enough locks to make memorising sufficient Knock spells a significant drain on your wizards' usefulness in combat. And unless you already know your way through the game or are using a walkthrough, you can't predict how many Knock spells you'll need when.

Stealth, on the other hand, though useful, is rarely (if ever) absolutely necessary. It's useful for two things, i.e. scouting and backstabbing. Backstabbing can be very effective but it's by no means vital, and as for scouting, relying on Invisibility spells and potions (the latter are plentiful) rather than the Stealth skill, though not ideal, is much more practical than relying on Knock instead of lockpicking.

You are completely misunderstanding the primary role of a thief: stealth. There are very few locked containers in the game that warrant wasting valuable thief skill points, whereas stealth is, contrary to what you say, an essential part of an effective thief's arsenal. It has nothing to do with back stabbing, since only a fighter/thief is effective at that anyway. A stealthy thief CANNOT rely on potions or spells, since this skill IS required virtually all of the time if you are using your thief effectively, and you do not know the game -- potions are not available in the amounts you allude to, and the amount of invisibility spells would far outnumber the amount of Knock spells. Bottom line: a rogue is not all about stealing everything he/she can lay their hands on -- that's a stereotype.

urgh. Just when I thought I had rogues figured out...

I guess maybe for a pure thief, their combat style will be hiding in shadows, scouting ahead, and so forth, so Hide in Shadows is more important. On the other hand, it's entirely possible to multiclass, or more importantly, out of a thief into, for instance, a mage (which you can do with Imoen, if you want). If you do that, then you can probably get away with not using that combat style much at all, in favour of spellcasting and shooting, especially as you'll end up with lower hp than a pure thief would at that level anyway. With that in mind, if you're planning to dual class to something else, you may want to ignore hide in shadows in favour of getting open locks and find traps to the levels you want them at ASAP, so the time you spend going through the dual classing process is as small as possible. Although you'd use up more invisibilities from scouting between every battle, that isn't necessary. Scouting, in my own experience, isn't that much use in dungeons anyway unless you know where the traps are already (in which case there's not really much need to scout at all), as you can't search for traps while invisible. Outside, it can be useful, but especially in BG2 most of the tough encounters seem to be in dungeons. Also, you'll basically have to wait for it to be night before you can hide, unless you get your skill very high.

If, on the other hand, you decide not to bother with scouting, you can get a dual classed thief -> mage (or something else, if you prefer) who fulfills all the other roles which only thieves can provide (traps, unlocking things), while still being a powerful character in their new class. You may occasionally stumble into something really bad and have to reload, but given that certain valuable quests require pickpocketing people, and you only have about a 1/10 chance (depending on stats) of succeeding without putting any points into pickpocketing, I'd assume that Hickory's ok with reloading in that sort of situation.

The long and the short of it is: I've been playing without scouting for my entire bgt game. While it may have made things a bit more difficult, I've got to about halfway through BG2 without coming across any situations where I've felt 'I wish I could have a full time scout', and the vast majority of the difficult encounters have come from not having the ability to kill things after the fighting has begun. On the other hand, I have had one lock I couldn't open for some reason having got my open locks very high, so...

Yes you can... absolutely you can. And if you are finding that you can't, then you aren't using your thief effectively.

Please explain. If I enter shadows, then press 'search for traps', my thief leaves the shadows automatically. This is with a BGT install, if the BG2 engine changed how that works.

And, as I say, I think I am using my thief effectively in having regained access to her thieving abilities from about the totsc content, as opposed to several chapters into BG2 as I would have done otherwise (or not at all, if I was doing a standard BG1 game).

It's not the same as taking a potion of invisibility. In other words, your thief has to work at it. I's part of what I meant by using your thief effectively: if the cover is strong enough (night time, dark dungeons) your thief will continue to be hidden for quite some time, even when the message shows that he/she is leaving shadows. Stop and wait (duck into cover), and then go back into shadows -- when your stealth skill is high enough, and the cover is dark enough, the option to go back into shadows often comes before your thief actually leaves it. Then search for traps again. Rinse and repeat. I do it all of the time; Imoen is an absolute expert at it. She can even do it in the daytime -- with a much higher failure rate -- by the time we get to Cloakwood, or even earlier if I do a lot of roaming around and leveling up rather than follow the main story plot. I only ever give my thief a potion of invisibility for emergencies; they are too rare, too expensive, and not needed for everyday tasks.

I use Imoen as a scout all the time in BG1 and I turn off the thinking light so she doesn't decide to take on a Ogre Berserker by herself. I usually have the best archer in my group not far behind her to snipe who ever she lights up--- an archer who also has the Boots 'Sense of the Cat." When a large group comes charging, I have my tanks ready and have Imoen and the archer get behind the front line. For those groups that are the tougher fights (Mage Fighter etc), I have her keep the enemy group lit up while a position my team just beyond their "sight path".

I use her stealth skills a lot.

Bob

Fair enough. When a Paladin or a Ranger "Falls", it means that they have been so naughty that their powers get taken away by the gods/powers. This would result in the character having none of the abilities that class had (spells, lay on hands, etc.), making them a sup-par version of a fighter (who can sink up to 5 proficiency slots into a weapon to achieve grand mastery, which equates to more hits and damage iirc). This is a common source of grief in Pen and Paper games of D&D, but it's much more lenient here, making playing a Paladin or Ranger much more viable.

As to comparing Paladins/ Rangers to Clerics, all the relevant tables are for spellcasting are here; to summarize, rangers will be lucky to get a single spell as they only gain spellcasting at level 8 (Paladins can't cast in BG with the experience cap), whereas a Cleric or even a Druid has many mores spells initially and get bonus spells for high Wisdom scores, meaning that a level 1 cleric with 18 Wisdom would start out with 3 spells that could be used for healing.

Turning progression is also graphed out here; Paladin's turn as if they were a Cleric that was 2 levels lower, so they can't even turn until level 3. Of course, Clerics aren't great in combat, as their THAC0 goes down 2 points every 3 levels, while all Warrior classes (Fighters, Paladins, and Rangers) have their THAC0 lower by 1 point per level.

tl;dr: if you want a fighter with secondary healing ability, go Paladin (their Lay on Hands is far faster and more helpful and available far earlier than a single Cure Light Wounds spell from a late game Ranger). If you want to maximize healing, go Cleric/Druid. If you want to get the best of both worlds at the expense of slower leveling, multiclass in both Fighter and Cleric.

One of the hardest locks in the entire game is in the tutorial, believe it or not (it can't even be bashed with 18/00 strength) -- it is possible to open it and get (relatively) rich before you even set out. But that lock is special, and entirely out of place... cheese. On the other hand, even locks that have hard difficulty don't necessarily hold anything worthwhile, or even anything at all. Don't tell me you haven't come across numerous trapped and locked chests, salivating, only to find them empty? I don't put my mage/thief in danger that way, because they fulfill a completely different role, but you are overlooking the fact that Hide In Shadows is incredibly handy in other ways than scouting. Want to put your mage/thief into place for a set piece of your choosing? You have the tool to do it. Need to hide your mage/thief before a difficult battle, so that they aren't attacked first, and have their spells interrupted? You have the means to do it. Stealth is incredibly useful, and anybody who overlooks it, plays it down or dismisses it, obviously hasn't grasped just what it can bring to the game plan. It's a safe bet that the reason a lot of people don't utilise it is precisely because they think a thief is all about unlocking everything in sight for those 5gp silver rings, and nothing more. That thief is a sad thief.

I'm not going to argue the point at length because this thread has now been thoroughly derailed (apologies for making the comment that started the derailing). I merely say that, on the basis of my experience of BG1 (which is of many years, though I still haven't got round to playing past chapter 1 of BG2), I stand by what I said before. I never said Stealth isn't useful, but I maintain that it isn't necessary whereas Open Locks, at least occasionally, is. And I find more invisibility potions than any other sort except healing and oils of speed.

Auroraparadox, I hope our arguing over this hasn't put you off. You can afford to try it out and see what works for you in this regard. Just remember - and I think we can all agree on this (he says, tempting fate) - the most important thief skill of all is Find Traps.