auroraparadox: I'm encountering CTDs in BG1. The first time it happened was I entered the burning wizard. It has also happened when I was going to load my game. I followed the conservative modders guide to the letter so nothing too exotic is installed.
Is this normal behavior for BG1?
Regarding how I came up with the stats I did. I did a fair number of rolls and then re-assigned a few points here and there. I thought 15 would be high enough for strength. Should I have taken more out of wisdom and intelligence since I'm playing a fighter?
Assuming you don't mind min/maxing (ie reassigning points to give yourself an optimal, but highly unlikely to be rolled naturally, character), you should really be getting strength and constitution to max at the very least, and dexterity too if at all possible. I wouldn't advise reducing intelligence too much below what you have if you plan to play baldur's gate 2, if you can help it: it'll leave you very weak against a certain enemy type. Wisdom, on the other hand, can probably be safely reduced right down to near its minimum (or at its minimum, if you feel really cheap). If you're planning on taking Imoen for the whole of the first game, there's really no reason to put lots into charisma, either, unless your class needs it (which, in vanilla BG1, I don't believe any do?) or you put more than 16 in (at which point the benefits will be marginal anyway). The reason for this is that Imoen has charisma 16 anyway, and you only really need one person to have a high charisma for NPC interactions. If you don't plan to, then maybe there's a good reason to, but frankly I think you'd struggle to get a nonevil party without anyone with a charisma of 14 or higher, making your points spent in it useless outside Candlekeep. At 14, you won't be getting any discount from shops anyway, so you spent a lot of points to get NPC responses up by a small amount. I think that affects 1 interaction before you get Imoen? You won't have had the charisma to get the better result there, anyway. Especially in 2e, charisma is generally considered a go to 'dump stat', one which you can safely reduce in favour of other stats. Just make sure that whoever has the highest charisma does the talking when it's likely that the game will be checking someone's attitude to you (especially quest rewards, and persuading someone of something). I like to make my 'talker' the party leader in towns, so I default to speaking using them.
While it's obviously too late to change it now (without using an editor), my recommendation would have been to reduce your charisma to 7 and maximise your physical stats.
Incidentally, this is a minor point, but you might have had more luck with higher stat rolls had you chosen a half elf. As you're clearly not going to be dual classing, there wouldn't have been any penalty to do so, and they have higher minimum stats below which the game rerolls.
And yes, using ranged weaponry is highly recommended. Let the enemy be shot at while they close the ground with you, rather than letting yourself be shot. Just make sure you keep your (slightly) tanky characters in front of your other ones for when they arrive. Focussing your fire can also be useful, depending on how strong the enemies are. It's better to have 1 full health creature reach you than 2 half health ones, but if everyone shoots at one of the 6 gibberlings then the other 5 will get through; if you focus 2 people on 3 gibberlings, they'll probably be able to kill them all with their first shots.
