Greetings fellow GoGers, picked up BG1 on advice from a friend, have played bits of BG2 so I am somewhat familiar with 2nd edition rules, however I could use some tips on character generation, party building in regards to background chatter versus combat efficacy. Thanks in advance guys. Looking forward to setting foot in Fauerun once again.

Well, two main things - Pick up Minsk if you're good, and Tiax and Shar'tel if you're evil >:D

Also, you might want to peak over at Sorcerers.net's forums - Not only do they host mods, but their forums are full of long-term bg fans, who're prefect to advice you. I'd offer some advice past the meager tidbits I offered, but I've only played through BG1 three or four times. It's BG2 where my knowledge base rests :D

First off: I hope you enjoy this kickass game. You've played bits of BG2 but I hope it wasn't enough to spoil the charm of BG1 for you; it's noticeable more primitive.

As far as your character, the build really depends on what you want to do. In general, among the NPCs there are decent choices of every archetype, so there's nothing that you NEED to do. However, in general being a Mage is probably hardest because of how squishy they are at low levels, while being a Fighter is easiest because of how important HP is at these levels.

At these low levels, everything mathematically is "on the margins" so a little difference in any stat can be a big boon or bane.

No matter WHO you are, Dex is always useful because it improves your AC directly, regardless of your armor. As a CLERIC, you want high Wisdom because of bonus spells, HOWEVER, as a MAGE Intelligence is not as important as you'd think. Just as long as it's high enough to actually cast the spell (and give a good chance to scribe it), there's no bonus spells for higher Int.

Con is VERY important and should be 16, 18 if you're a Fighter/Ranger/Paladin.

Charisma is surprisingly less important too. It shouldn't be too low, but Baldur's Gate has surprisingly few dialogue skill checks and stat-based roleplaying compared to, say, Fallout.


As for NPCs and banter, BG is mroe anemic on the banter compared to BG2. In general, the only NPCs who will banter are the "natural pairs": pairs of NPCs who either come together or tell you they need to find the other.

As for efficacy, few of the NPCs are so bad that it will make much of a difference. Some are noticeably BETTER than others (like Minsc is a better fighter than Khalid, and Edwin is a better mage than Xan), but there's no accounting for taste, pick who you take a liking to! The aforementioned Xan and Tiax are quite the characters, I assure you.

Check out the mods if you want, they can add more banter and romances, but just between you and me I've actually never been impressed of the quality of fan-writing overall. There are a few exceptions, but the banter pack, last I checked, is not one of them.

I'd just play without mods, honestly. It's excellent on it's own and very raw and fresh. Tutu/Trilogy can improve the graphics by updating BG1 to BG2's engine, but I prefer playing the game with the original constraints.

Speaking of constraints, Bows and archers are OP. Seriously, make sure everyone has a missile weapon of some sort, it will save your ass.

Neither of you mentioned Viconia? Really? Oh well, Viconia is the best pure cleric in the game. If you don't mind staying neutral (just kill an innocent every time you hit 15 or 16 reputation, EASY!) or going evil, she's your girl. She is also about 500% more polite and less whiny than... well... 75%% of the NPC cast.

All in all, you can't really go wrong with the 'canon' party: Minsc, Dynaheir, Jaheira, Khalid, and Imoen. No matter what character class you play, you are going to have a balanced party backing you up.

As for character generation advice, everything Cliftor wrote is spot on. In my experience, the easiest character to play would be a cleric/ranger (paladins are a close second), and the hardest would be a pure mage. Pretty much the more hp and healing ability you have, the easier the game will be.

Whatever type of character you play, I suggest rerolling your stats until you have a total of 90 or more when you add up all your stats. It will take a few rolls, but it has never taken me over an hour, regardless of class. This will allow your characters to have very nice stats without needing to resort to an obvious dump stat.

EDIT:
Whatever you do, don't get carried away with rerolling. There are some threads out there that go into the math (I think on the Bioware forums, actually), and anything around 95-98 or so in total statistics (depends on class being rolled), is going to take you, on average, 12 hours of continuous rolling. There is a point at which you might as well just find and download a trainer and assign yourself the stats you want rather than rerolling forever.

But it's part of the game! Reroll for at least 40 minutes, and do not mute the music for the complete BG experience!

(I seriously only thought of muting the music last time I played o_o )

Ewww. I wonder how many hours I've spent rolling in BG I & II. Anyways, on topic.

I suggest you play as a fighter, paladin or ranger on your first playthrough. Fighter/thief multiclass is acceptable too. Like the other posters said, more hit points = easier. Mages are weak and cant cast a lot of spells.

As for the stats, for pure power gaming as a fighter type, just max out STR CON and DEX. The rest don't matter at all.

HOWEVER if you want to roleplay your character just give him the stats that he should have. In the end the game is not exactly too hard to beat even if your stats aren't optimal. I never feel comfortable playing a character that's dumber than a chicken or has the charisma of a pile of cow dung.

Ranged combat is far more powerful in BG than in BG2. Put as many proficiency points as possible into to bows (if this isn't possible (priest, mage) specialise in slings).

You can choose any class you like, it doesn't matter whether you play a fighter and hire a mage or play a mage and hire a fighter.
When choosing your NPCs don't look only at the stats, Khalid can do more damage per round and survive longer than Minsc for example and the most powerful NPC has by far the worst stats.
Choose depending on what the NPCs can contribute to your party and how you like them and the phrases they repeat again and again.

If you want to play a mage don't play a pure mage, play an illusionist instead. You get better rolls at creation and the extra spells per day do make a huge difference.
Cleric is a nice class to play, you can wear heavy armor, get quite some hitpoints, many bonus spells for high wisdom. The game is harder without cleric spells and it will take a long time until you find a good aligned cleric NPC.

Do both at the same time: play a gnome cleric/illusionist (an extra mage spell per level from mage school specialization, and cleric spells to boot). This goes double if you plan to port the character to BG2; spell triggers with cleric spells can be quite awesome.

EDIT: Warning, very minor spoilers on BG2 below (just talking about characters that can be romanced, but I figured I would put a spoiler warning up, just in case).

The only drawback that I can think of for this class is that Viconia isn't attracted to gnomes in BG2, so unless you install a mod (99% sure the tweakpack allows you to turn off race/sex limitations on romances) you are not going to get her romance. Since Aerie would be redundant in your party (since she would just be a less good version of you), you'll probably be left with Jaheira as a love interest (bleh for me, but ymmv).

Only Aerie is attracted to Gnomes. And Jaheira > Anomen and Aerie when it comes to the romance ;)

Yeah, I was uncertain about Jaheira, because I frankly can't stand her. Not in either game. I chose Aerie in my playthrough with my Cavalier. In my current playthrough with my gnome cleric/illusionist, I plan to allow him to romance Viconia through mods, because he is Lawful Evil (so it kinda makes no sense for him to romance Aerie OR Jaheira) and I have never seen Viconia's romance before (only 2/3 through BG1 with the guy, so it is a ways off)

Thanks everybody. Your replies have given me alot to think about and more help than I could have hoped for. Am looking forward to putting these ideas into practice and hoping for a swift release of BG2

Roll your player character to hell until you've got as close to perfect stats as you can. Games that rely on parties of characters are very, very friendly towards min/maxing, so unless you want to make a "jack of all trades" or something different for the sake of role-playing, you're going to want to have extremely strong, specialised characters who are able to make up for each others' weaknesses. However, for the sake of the story, you might want to pick characters who are more interesting for you... it's a shame that so many games force you to decide between gameplay and who you prefer personality-wise. Even Dragon Age has this issue, but at least you can get a respec mod to help...

IGNORE ALL OTHER POSTS!!!! I don't mean that as an insult to everyone else but, you are about to play one of the seminal RPGs of all time ... in fact THE rpg series of all time as far as I'm concerned... and guess what that means? It's an rpg as in role playing game... play the role you want because if you don't you will have robbed yourself of one of the greatest experiences in storytelling you could ever have... otherwise you will have lived someone else's vision of the story... at least in part... This isn't a game.. it's a story that you have the opportunity to live... go with your gut and what you feel (or your character feels)... there are actually more possible companions in this game than any other game and you can use them all and as for character generation this is pretty close to d&d, almost anything is viable... take who you want and do what you want... Honestly I cant tell you how many times in rpgs i have looked online for some mundane thing and some fuck decided to add some type of spoiler in there (no matter how small) that forevered ruined some small mystery or chance to experience the game myself for me. So play your own game, however you want, please.

I like BG a lot to and played through it a few times, i love all the easter eggs and enjoy the atmosphere of the game...having said that i do think you sound like a guy who is drinking way too much coffee and not getting enough sleep.