I was going to suggest Cleric/Ranger as well. The one I created for the EE version has been a blast to play. Certainly one of my overall favorite D&D characters ever made. =)

Flynn

Actually, damage reduction doesn't overflow; it is capped at 125% reduction, which results in damage becoming negative. Here's something to try: Cast Resist Fire and Protection from Fire on the same character (or just stack Protection from Fire), and then cast a Fireball on the character. The fireball will heal the character not because of an integer overflow or underflow, but rather because the spell does -25% of its normal damage.

One thing to be aware of: This will disrupt spells. No abount of damage resistance can prevent a spell from being disrupted. The Sunfire spell gives the caster 3 seconds of 100% fire resistance so that it doesn't hurt the caster. However, if you put the spell in a Contingency and it activates when you are trying to cast another spell, the other spell will be disrupted. (It might also be possible to observe this by casting Improved Alacrity, casting Sunfire, and then starting to cast another spell before Sunfire goes off, or alternatively, casting Sunfire and starting to cast Nahal's Reckless Dweomer before Sunfire goes off (remember, NRD ignores the one spell per round rule).)

One bizarre way to tank damage in BG2, if you have a high enough level cleric, is to have the cleric cast Armor of Faith and then use the Cloak of the Sewers to transform into a rat. This will give you a character with 100% or more physical resistance. If the character is a Cleric/Mage, you can launch a minor sequencer with (Spiritual Hammer or Shocking Grasp) and Draw Upon Holy Might and you now have a character with 100% physical resistance, high Strength, and a weapon that gets Strength bonus. (In the case of Shocking Grasp, you will have to attack first, and then can start attacking with normal weapons, as your rat form's natural weapons are gone.

One other build that works nicely in Baldur's Gate 2 (though not 1) is to dual class from Ranger to Cleric at level 7, which happens to be the starting level in 2. (In BG1, if you try it with the expansion installed, you will end up with a level 7 Cleric with Ranger HP because of the XP cap.) This gives you an extra half attack and access to Druid spells while still allowing you to advance as quickly as a single class Cleric.

I quite strongly disagree. Correct me if my familiarity with 3.5 is misleading me here, but IIRC, Raise Dead will restore the target to life with 1hp. Resurrection is then a combined Raise Dead and Heal put into one spell - it restores life to the body, and then cures all the injuries the person had suffered. When it's cast on a target that's still alive, the "Raise Dead" part has no effect, but surely there's no reason the "Heal" part wouldn't then take effect as usual and heal the character? It's the sam principle as casting Cure Serious Wounds to heal 6hp because you've run out of CLW and CMW and know you're about to fight a dangerous battle: it's kind of overkill (overheal?) and a bit of a waste of a higher level spell, but the spell is perfectly able to heal minor injuries if that's all that's wrong.

The exception to this is the Heal spell, which will fully heal the character it's cast on and is well worth casting in combat, especially if the recipient's about to die.

Also, Greater Restoration (casts quickly and heals the whole party (assuming no EE), but fatigues the caster) and Resurrection (fully heals with infinite range). Mass Raise Dead isn't so bad if multiple characters have been injured, as the spell does cast quickly, unlike Heal and Mass Cure.

Also, Rods of Resurrection are instant cast full heals. One of my favorite strategy is to have a Projected Image or Simulacrum use it so you don't lose charges on the real rods.

*Sigh*

Intended use:
Raise Dead. Restores life to a deceased humanoid.
Resurrection. As Raise Dead, plus heals to put the restored character back in action.

They are not for healing scrapes and burns. To do so is exploiting their intended use. Just look at the names.

Just a difference of opinion. Sometimes when I don't have a clean butter knife I'll use a steak knife. What am I suppose to do a whole load of dishes for one piece of toast? These men and women keep getting giant eyeballs and dragons attacking them and they just want to stay alive. Give them a break.

So, you'd inject adrenaline directly into somebody's heart if they had a broken ankle? Riiiight!

I would if that person needed the ankle to better fight a bunch of dopplegangers and I didn't have any potions of cure ankle. What good is that powerful spell when you're dead. Might as well just hand it over to Sarevok.

Of course you would, because pumping adrenaline into a healthy heart is what idiot doctors would do, instead of splinting the ankle -- there's always a way to improvise. That otherwise healthy person you just pumped full of adrenaline is probably just as dead as the next corpse because of your actions.

Of course it was.

So if I understand you correctly, you're concerned that if the setting was real and not using abstractions like hit points, healing somebody using a spell that was too powerful would run the risk of "overhealing" them and causing damage, possibly by being pumped too full of positive energy? (Please correct me if I misunderstood your point, by the way!) It's true there *is* in fact a precedent for that in the game: being in a major positive dominant plane (in 3.5, at least) gives you fast healing, and if you're at full health it instead starts giving you temporary hit points. If the temporary hp exceed your normal hp cap, you have to make a saving throw every round to avoid "exploding in a riot of energy, killing [you]".

However, that's the only positive energy effect I know of that carries that risk - even living in a minor positive dominant plane doesn't carry a risk, and indeed I believe that in-lore, people live happily in such places. I therefore don't think that a single spell - even one as powerful as Resurrection - would be capable of overfilling you with positive energy to such an extent that you risk problems developing. Perhaps if you cast the spell round after round on the same recipient without them taking damage it might happen, but that would be a rather odd thing to do in game and not something anyone's suggesting.

Sorry, this is a ridiculous argument.

The "intended use" of Resurrection is to 1) raise the dead and 2) heal them. One of the two intentions of Resurrection is healing. Whether I need both or not is immaterial. Using the spell to heal a character is using it for what it's clearly intended to do.

If there were a spell that did 4 points of damage and doubled armor class, your argument is like saying that you shouldn't use the spell against an enemy if they have four or fewer health points remaining, because then you'd be wasting the armor class debuff part of the spell.

Don't be bloody ridiculous.
No, you don't. I've made myself quite plain.

Sorry, bro, you've lost this one.