Hello,

When I created my main character (a Berserker I plan to dual class as a Mage), I gave him a Charisma of 9 so I could spend more points on Strength, Dexterity and Constitution and Intelligence.

I understand that the party leader should have a high Charisma, and my party member with the highest Charisma is Imoen with 18 (16 + 2 with the Algernon's Cloak), followed by Jaheira (15)
Until now I have used Imoen to purchase/sell from merchants or to start conversations with new characters the party meets on the road.

Some say that from a game mechanics consideration, it is best when the party leader not only has a high Charisma but is a fighter and that some characters will automatically interact with the Charname and not with the party member I have placed as the leader.

Should I place Imoen's portrait at the highest position in the right sidebar to make her the leader?
Or maybe I should I give the Algernon's Cloak to my Berserker to raise his Charisma to 11 and keep him as the leader?

Thank you very much?

I'd stick with Imoen, but use a party formation that puts the leader in the back/middle to protect her.

You mean I should keep Imoen as leader (on top of the portrait bar)?

In areas where combat is highly possible, I never move my party as a group but in two groups: the melee characters in front and at a safe distance, the Archers, Mages and any non melee character or "fragile" character. I move one group after the other, so the melee characters are always in front no matter the order of the portraits in the right bar or how fast each character moves.

1) you practicaly never need a high-CHA leader. Just send forward/make the talk by the high-CHA character if you need that.

2) usualy, stick to bows. Give each character the biggest bow it can use. As BG1 doesn't even have unique bows (at least not many), it shouldn't be a problem. Worry about weapon issues (aside the protagonist of course) from BG2.

2a) this means don't bother with throwing daggers. I don't think BG1 even have unlimited throwing daggers (returns to hand when thrown).
But if you absolutely have to, give it to the mage, if it isn't using darts. Darts are even more stupid than daggers. But if you realy want, give the daggers to someone who put points into daggers. Actualy, daggers are high-end weapons in BG1, so the use of them in melee is entirely established. For order of weapons purely in BG1, I'd put Daggers right after Short Swords. Then comes some competitions between long swords, two handed swords and quarterstaves, but they are usualy problematic to get etc.

According to https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Charisma, this may have been true in the Original Edition, but in the Enhanced Edition, the game uses the Charisma of the party leader, regardless of which character initiates conversation.

Yes Sounds exhausting but whatever works for you :)

It felt exhausting at first, but quickly it became as easy and as fast as to move them as one group. It is like the way I play tactical wargames.

I have found that when moving them as a group, they do not really move in the portrait's bar order; one or two at the bottom of the bar are suddenly in the front line because others on top of the bar move slower for any reason. At each encounter they are all at the same distance from the attackers and I have to micromanage to change their positions according to their function.

As you say: whatever works for you :)

They each have their own movement speed - which annoyingly sees squishy but fast characters like Edwin running ahead of the group. The only formation that solves that is the 'follow the leader' one (symbol is arrows following each other) - I use that one round the couple of mazes in BG1 since they otherwise go all over the place.

Cool, I tried it right now, and it seems to work for me too.

You may have already found this, but if not, you might find it useful:

In Options->Gameplay->Assign Keys->Quick Slots, scroll the right pane to the bottom. You can bind keyboard keys to select predefined subgroups (portraits 1,2 + 3,4 + 5,6; or portraits 1-3 + 4-6). If you arrange your party accordingly, you can have a key that selects the melee members and another key that selects the non-melee members. This works best if you have 3 melee and 3 non-melee, but you might still get some value from it if you have 4 melee and 2 ranged, or vice versa.

the party leader is the character in F1 slot, not always the same as the one that is selected

in some quests but mostly trades party leader is checked i.e, are they evil, good, have high char etc... the rest of the time its just whomever is selected to talk