I'm just curious because I want to mess around a bit with Baulder's gate. Is there a mod that disables the requirement of resting in order to recharge spell casting? I know in Neverwinter Nights 2 you can do it using the editor but is there a Baulder's Gate mod that does the same thing?

I don't know of any, but the BG2 fixpack from Gibberlings Three includes a 'rest anywhere' component, which is almost as good. There isn't any penalty for resting, anyways.

doesn't it add 8 hrs? seems like a lot of resting would end timed quest quickly. i could be wrong.

How would I go about setting this up?

Well, first you'll need Near Infinity so you can look through the scripts. Then you'll need to familiarize yourself with scripting itself, and the particular style the Infinity Engine uses. Then you'd need to write the scripts, and finally assign them to your characters. However, doing that will essentially automate your characters, as they'll be casting spells based on what your script says, and they may interrupt whatever you were doing. They'd essentially either have to be set up like a Contingency spell, or something like the Mephits where they cast a particular spell every few seconds.

Basically you'd just be using ForceSpell and ReallyForceSpell to cast spells for free based on your conditions... but IMO that would be a lot more work on the frontend and a lot less fun on the backend than it would be worth just to play the game using Vancian magic like everyone else.

Yes, your proposed solution is basically "write your own mod to do it" which isn't what I had in mind and doesn't even sound like it would do what I asked even if I did take time to figure it out. I guess there is no way around this which is a shame as I can't stand D&D style magic rules since resting after every single fight kills the pacing for me especially when I have to reload often due to being randomly ambushed by unbeatable armies while still in a weakened state. I guess I'll have to simply favour melee fighters since they don't have to rest until they genuinely get tired. Shame that enemies don't have this problem as they can cast spells indefinitely it seems.

Don't give up on spellcasters; yeah, they take some thought to get the most out of, but they can easily become more powerful than straight fighters when used correctly. You don't need to rest after every battle, either; just give your spellcasters some ranged weapons, let them use those against run-of-the-mill monsters, and save your spells for the tough battles.

Yeah it would be monumentally difficult to make it work how you described via scripting, but it is still possible from a technical standpoint. In BG2, when enemy mages and liches cast spell triggers, magic tattoos, or contingencies, they aren't casting "real" triggers and contingencies, those are script-based spells that are generally being applied for free (and usually instantly too). Their normal spellcasting is also script-based (all enemy AI is scripted) but normal spells are usually cast through the normal mechanism; only buffing spells and boss spells are free.

There's no real reason to rest after every battle, unless you're actually casting your entire spell repertoire every battle. When you're at level 1, life is hard, but that has to do with D&D's crappy scaling. Once you get to level 3 (with any class) the action really picks up. In the early stages of BG1, just remember that ranged attacks are king. Put your ranged characters like your mage and Imoen behind tougher melee folks like Jaheira and Khalid. Prioritize targets as Shadowsetzer suggested... with a decent-sized party and lots of ranged attacks, you can make your few early spell slots last for quite a while. Once you get into the later stages of BG2, you can end up with more spells than you can reasonably cast in a 24-hour period.

Not to mention, the spells you had will be a lot more useful now. Your Magic Missile that used to barely knock the hats off bandits who attacked you will now blow them to smithereens, thus are more efficient per encounter. So not only do you get a lot more "ammo", you also get more bang for your buck, and don't need to cast as much anyway. Also, don't forget about scrolls! They're basically free spells, well, free insofar that they don't impact your per day spells.

If you really must cheat (shame on you) then you could just use these codes to give yourself spells scrolls whenever you want - so, for example, spawn 10 of each spell your mage has.

but be aware that the spells will be cast as though at Mage-level 10 (some spells this makes no difference but Magic Missile, for example, would be way overpowered at the beginning of the game and some others would be underpowered later in BG2)

There's a tweak in the Tweak Pack to change this so that they are always cast at character level.

You can use Gatekeeper (Baldur's Gate 1) or Shadowkeeper (Baldur's Gate 2) to edit your save games and change how many spells you can cast per level per day. This is very similar to what you could do with the Neverwinter Nights 2 editor, except you will have to reapply the changes every time your mage levels up.

Both of these editor's have been around for ages, and are highly polished and easy to use. Just note that if you modified your Baldur's Gate 1 game to use the Baldur's Gate 2 engine (highly recommended), you will need to use Shadowkeeper to edit your BG1 save games.

In case you are willing to use some editing you could whip out NearInfinity to edit some item to double all available spells. Just remember to create the item again via the console if you already have acquired it from before.

If you are into mods and willing to experiment you could also give iiSpellSystemAdjustment a try. It allows spellcasters to refresh a casted spell in memory after a certain amount of time that you specify during installation. You have options for the timer to be constant over all spell levels, to increase linearly, exponentially or even randomly. Don't forget that the changes apply to enemy spellcasters as well, so if you set the timer too short you will probably encounter gamebreaking situations. I remember a post where someone had 10sec refresh for lvl9 spells and went to fight a lich. Lich timestopped, summoned a pit fiend, then timestopped, summon a pit fiend, then timestopped, summoned a pit fiend etc, until he alt+f4 to break the loop.

If that mod is too far from the original game concept, another idea is to use The bigg Tweaks and install the cheesy/convenient wish component. That allows you to get every wish option regardless of wisdom and randomness always/only out of combat respectively, so you could select the option for the party to rest instantly. Then you could console create wish scrolls (CLUAConsole:CreateItem("scrlb4")) and have any mage in your party cast those whenever you want.

Please bear in mind that I haven't actually tried any of this myself, so I don't know any practical pitfalls, but I have a strong feeling that they are solid.

The only other suggestion I have would be to go into making a usable item that casts that spell, and fucking hell I just went and tried that out and it was ridiculously easy to do... After writing this wall of text, of course I had to figure that out......

So I attached the file I tinkered with. It's named POTN25.ITM (I had to rename it to potn25itm.jpg, otherwise it wouldn't allow me to attach, so RENAME IT after download), throw that file in the BG2\override folder and use console to create few corrupted healing potions (CLUAConsole:CreateItem("potn25")). Of course you must have BG2 & TOB for this to work and if you were talking for the original BG I just wasted all this time for naught.

Please tell me if it actually works, I'm rather curious and completely uncertain. :)

The timings can be fixed by putting in proper values..(as mentioned from Big World Project Document)

Select -> 3) Timers depend exponentially from the spell level
Select -> 3) timer = constant + spell level ^ (exponent/root)
Set *constant* for all levels: -> 30
Set the *exponent* that will be divided by the root you'll decide, next -> 11
Set the exponential *root* or the exponents divider, remember that dividing a number
with 1, is the number itself -> 4

Will result in the following timings

Level 1 spells: 30 real seconds
Level 2 spells: 36 real seconds
Level 3 spells: 50 real seconds
Level 4 spells: 75 real seconds
Level 5 spells: 113 real seconds
Level 6 spells: 168 real seconds
Level 7 spells: 240 real seconds
Level 8 spells: 334 real seconds
Level 9 spells: 450 real seconds

-----

Same values for Both Arcane/Mage and Divine/Priest (Cleric/Druid) spells.

But as @AndyBuzz mentioned, NPC's and enemies also get the cooldown timer. So if you are in very long battles, expect enemies to recast spells again and again.

Note (advanced): This is made worse if you have addition mods which enhances AI behavoir, such as SCS or SCSII, etc. where in conjunction with spell triggers really spirals to insane encounters.

Have you actually used that mod? I found out about it while in the middle of a BiG BGT runthrough and I hesitate to try it out at the moment in case something breaks. It does sound really interesting and would alleviate my dislike of the rest mechanic but I haven't any practical experience with it. If you have I would really like to hear your opinion. It's at the top of my in-my-next-playthrough list. Of course SCS1/2 is a given.

ps: Since you brought specific numbers I would suggest the following for divine spells:
constant: 30
exponent: 326
root: 105
This will result in top level spell cooldown for both arcane and divine casters to be at 450 sec while the first will be at 30 (31?) sec.