Late to the party but... if you can play Pathfinder Kingmaker then you can play any Infinity Engine game really. Baldur's Gate has less dialog and story than that game, and Icewind Dale even less than that. Also Pathfinder is harder than Baldur's Gate... Icewind Dale I don't remember the difficulty enough to say, but Baldur's Gate is 99% easy outside of typical D&D early game randomness. Just quicksave a lot.

The RTwP game like these that is most story focused is probably Pillars of Eternity.

Don't forget Tyranny or the follow up from the past Torment, Tides of Numera. Both games offer fairly unique approaches to the genre.

But yea, personally i would choose Baldurs Gate over Icewind Dale. Icewind Dale feels a bit more difficult for all the wrong reasons. Level setup and enemy engagements for example seem to be even more outrageous then they are in Baldurs Gate. Though in all honesty, in Kingmaker, when you face against that dude who ransacked the whole province, that fight is also from a different order.

quicksave IS your best friend

I don't mind games where the randomness at character creation doesn't matter in the long run, or is at least fixable eventually. Wizardry 1-3 and 5, Bard's Tale 1-3, Dragon Quest 3, and many of the Japanese Wizardry-likes come to mind here. In these games, you can eventually max out stats, and stat growth in some of them (particularly DQ3) will eventually dwarf the character's starting stats.

What I *do* mind, however, is when those random rolls are more or less permanent, like in D&D-based games. You roll stats, and stat increases are extremely rare or non-existent in these games.

(I have other issues with BG and IWD, but that's not the point of this reply.)
The problem with thieves is that, quite often, they're arbitrarily necessary, but not actually useful. Wizardry 1-3 and 5 fall into this category; you need them to deal with trapped chests, but they don't contribute to the party otherwise. Essentially, this limits party construction for no good reason.

BG and IWD also have a problem with traps, as it basically makes a thief necessary (and the shortage of thieves in BG2 doesn't help matters). I don't mind thieves being *useful*; what I mind is them being *necessary*. Also, I consider traps in these games to be bad design, particularly since you can't control your characters' movements directly (clicking and relying on pathfinding is the *only* way, which I find to be a major step down from the likes of Ultima 6); you're essentially punishing players for the bad pathfinding in many cases.

(There's also the JRPG thief, whose main function is to acquire items from enemies who wouldn't otherwise drop them. I'm not sure whether I like the mechanic (I think it's OK if there aren't unique steals from non-repeatable fights), but it's better than making them arbitrarily required, even if it doesn't make logical sense. (I can steal a potion from this goblin, but if I kill it instead (and the goblin doesn't use the potion), it doesn't drop. Does that make any sense?)

It's OK to occasionally miss the enemy.

It's *not* OK when I keep missing the enemy over and over again, and then the enemy gets a lucky hit in and kills one of my characters, forcing a reload through no fault of my own. This is a big problem with low level D&D, and is an issue in games that inherit this mechanic. Something like Dragon Quest handles it better; a beginning character's attacks hit reliably, but the damage will be low (unless using a much stronger weapon than would be expected, and ignoring the Metal Slime case).

Also, you mention that getting hit by bad luck is no biggie; that's not always the case:
* The hit could kill a character, meaning it's time to reload (unless you have resurrection magic, which is common in BG2 but not BG1, but even in BG2 there's the problem that the character drops all their equipment on death, and if it hits the main character it's game over even if someone else in the party has resurrection magic). (Even worse if the game has roguelike-style permadeath, so reloading isn't an option, and particuarly if resurrection has permanent side effects; Fortunately, BG and IWD aren't like thatl.)
* You could have your party hit with status effects, preventing you from doing anything, so you just have to wait it out or reload (and not every game allows reloads during combat).
* In BG and IWD, status ailments don't disappear at the end of combat, so you still need to wait for them to wear off, and hope that your confused party member doesn't run into a trap (and then you need to find them afterwords).
* Don't forget games with multi-target instant death and limited saving. Final Fantasy 1 has one dungeon in particular that's notorious for this. Dragon Quest 8 has enemies using a dance that can one-hit-kill multiple characters, which can result in you having to choose between losing everything since your last save or losing half your money (and this cam happen on the island that has the bank, which appears far too late in that particular DQ game).

Actually, in the Classic Edition, you can change your party through character arbitration. The new character will start at level 1 unless you import, however. With that said, XP requirements scale exponentially until around level 9 or so, so if you haven't reached that point, the new character will be at most 1 level behind once your other characters have gained a full level's worth of XP. (Or you could use the console to make up the XP difference, if you prefer.)

You can do this in Icewind Dale 2, but note that doing so will result in your other characters getting more XP, possibly enough to break the game, as the XP distribution rules are flawed. (In this case, I would recommend using the console to set the new character's XP to an appropriate level and then level up, even if you're the type of player that wouldn't normally cheat, because not doing so in this situation could make the game too easy.) (The problem here is that XP rewards are based off *average* party level, so introducing a new level 1 character will lower the average, increasing XP rewards.)


I've heard that the situation in BG1 is even worse; early in the game there's a mandatory cutscene (barring glitches, but I don't think there's one you can do at this point) in which you take 2 points of damage. Ordinarily, this damage wouldn't matter (and would be healed easily), but with such low HP that damage can kill you, making the game basically unplayable.

(It's possible some version may have this flaw fixed.)

This is pretty much my main complaint about Baldur's Gate 2, especially how timed quests would be started not by the player's action, but by an NPC initiating conversation.

(There's also the fact that I don't like Real Time With Pause combat, but that issue affects all the IE games.)

I'm the opposite:
* I prefer higher level play when the player has a lot more options, and (in a properly balanced game) challenges actually require you to think about them (but not require a very specific strategy if the game allows character or party customization, unless it's easily changeable with no cost).
* I prefer level-less systems like in the SaGa games, where your characters are constantly improving. This way, I can constantly enjoy one of my favorite common RPG elements, character growth, rather than waiting for a level up to happen. (If the game uses levels, I prefer more frequent level ups with higher caps over games where a single level has a major impact, especially since that can sometimes get ridiculous (like in Crystalis where, if your level is too low, you can't damage the boss at all)).

I am quite a big fan of the floor traps in the BG games. Imo, they work very well and it's great that the engine includes them, rather than leaving them out entirely (like some other WRPG engines I could mention). To me, it makes sense that there should be floor traps in some places, although perhaps BG has a few too many and they are a bit overused. In BG you can have 6 characters in your party and even 2 or 3 thief levels would be sufficient for most situations, so I don't see it as a huge burden on the party. I don't recall having any major issues with traps and pathfinding.

Imo, the complete lack of floor traps in Morrowind is quite conspicuous, which makes rogue character builds less interesting.

Another point to bear in mind: I don't recall about 2nd ed D&D specifically, but in later D&D versions it is possible to detect and disarm traps using magic, so a thief is not always essential to deal with traps (unless there are loads of them).

Ok, fair enough. It's been about 20 years since I played IWD.

I don't recall a cutscene early in BG1 where you forcibly lose hit points (although again it's been a while). But yes, I also am not a huge fan of the general dicey-ness of low-level 2nd ed D&D. Tbh, that is another reason I generally prefer the second game, because things get a bit more reasonable once characters reach a higher level and the ratio of hit points to the average amount of damage done by a hit in combat increases. I also think BG1 spreads the levels out a bit too far. The BG1 campaign spans levels 1-7, which is not that many for such a long game. The first 2-3 levels in D&D (imo) tend to be a little dull and repetitive and BG1 stretches them a bit too far. On the other hand, BG2 spans levels 7-17/18 (roughly, more if you include ToB), so the level ups tend to come a bit more frequently.

Well, they could do a cyberpunk, you meet Imoen on the steps of candlekeep, the game then fast forwards to the drow home world. TBH, I don’t think it’s unfair as such, just that certain classes are so underpowered when low level. As previously fighters are powerful up to perhaps level 15 as mages have no health or offence. However get a few spells like wish, time stop, prison and they massacre everything. It’s just the DND system. I expect when they wrote that they didn’t expect the game to grow, hence it doesn’t have the branching or improvements the second brought. Like Morrowind, that had guild quests to level your character and they were tailored to the class, but boy the mage ones were boring.

If it isn't unfair, why did you die so often? Git gud! ;P

To me, pitting a level one mage against the surprise attack of a melee fighter in a tight space is highly unfair. I don't remember if you get attacks of opportunity against casters in the Infinity engine games already or if that's a 3rd edition thing, but a mage with 4 hp or so is not meant to be a match for a melee fighter. They need their distance or meatshields as a distraction. Playing a mage on low levels isn't as bad in D&D as everyone keeps saying, IMO, it all comes down to the encounter design. If spawning enemies close to lone mages without giving them any way of escape isn't unfair, I don't know what is. You shouldn't have to rely on luck and reloads only to be able to win a battle, that's no fun.

Balders Gate 1 can't be beat it's just too pure.

I am unsure if they are really necessary. From what I can tell, the traps usually just cause some damage to your character(s), or some temporary status ailment. Very rarely they e.g. kill anyone in your party, especially if you use a tank fighter as your "scout". So he runs into a trap and takes some damage, no biggie. Just keep your weaker characters away from him if it is some fireball trap or similar.

With a thief who can detect the traps and disarm them, it is cooler. I am unsure if there was also some spell that spellcasters can use to disarm traps, but anyways.

Also, using a hidden thief as a scout to detect enemies is also useful, but not necessary. It grants you an element of surprise and you can even start casting some area of effect spells before the enemies have noticed you, but that's about it. If you don't have such a invisible scout, I guess you just start fighting the enemies as they approach you, without a true element of surprise on either end.

So yeah, I like the role of a thief character in BG and IWD games. I practically never use them for pickpocketing or even backstabbing, too much work for too little benefit (usually; it may be that in the BG2 big dragon fight, I did backstab the dragon from behind at least once with the thief/rogue character, not sure...). It is their scouting and trap disarming abilities that I like to use.

True, but the inside encounters in general are close quarters and not suitable for mages. Am trying to avoid spoilers, but had to almost cheat at the end by blocking the route to me with summons and party members who all died, and I just managed to win. BG2 has a lot more open areas, and with the better spells, can quite happily be thrown in with anyone.
So you could say 1 is designed for fighters, 2 is more mixed, but more towards spellcasters.
Oh, and yes, git gud, take the head out of the book and:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShKGdQO6G4U

Icewind Date, on the other hand, is designed for clerics. (Although, this isn't about spacial considerations but rather due to the distribution of items and enemy types.)

DnD is designed to peddle PnP products, which are very diff to a CG at least in one but crucial regard.

it's the dev's job to make it work for their game. Usually their don't.

As for the Infinity games, in no way you're req'd to delve too deep into the quirks of 2Ed (AFAIK it's not that "faithful" anyway, but it doesn't matter).
Just get the basics, do the right stuff and don't do stupid things. That's enough.