I am trying to play NWN with a Rogue, but my level of understanding of 3.5 D&D combined with the way the game contradicts the little I know about 3.5 is making things rather difficult (not being able to bluff at range to be able to Sneak Attack, for instance). Can anyone help me with the following, both with regards to my character and the game as a whole?

Traps: I like the idea of them, but it seems as if there is very little point in using them, especially since I have yet to find any raw materials for crafting traps, and the one time I found scavengable traps my companion disarmed about half of them.

Sneak Attack: I'm honestly not sure how to make this work. From what I understand, I need to be flanking, but even with flanking, it's very much a crapshoot as to whether I actually get to Sneak Attack or not.

Healing: see Traps; there are just too few healing kits that are affordable, and I have yet to find a way to use the skill without a kit.

Henchmen: I picked up the first available henchman because I wanted to dig a little deeper into his story (after all, as an up and coming thief, it's good to try and keep decent relations with any potential partners for future jobs) and I thought that having an extra rogue would mean that both of us could sneak up on the enemy and cut them down with surprise attacks; sadly, this doesn't seem to work, as whenever he sees an enemy, he beelines for them while giving away both our positions.

More direct control in combat: One of my main strategies at this point involves firing off a few shots, retreating down a corridor, and positioning myself in front of it in order to prevent flanking and get AoO whenever someone falls and another moves in, retreating down the corridor if a big bloke comes by so that he has to trigger traps to get to me; unfortunately, while it looks cool, this is often foiled by the AI constantly dancing around when I specifically want to stand my ground, often pushing me forward into the enemy ranks where I get flanked and killed. Is there any way I can fix this, or at the very least mitigate it in game?

Stat generation: Point buy does nothing for me as opposed to rolling for stats; is there a mod that I can use to roll my stats, or am I out of luck?

There are a few merchants who sell traps, but otherwise you will need to recover traps to set them. If you have a rogue companion, talk to them to change their behavior so you can recover the traps yourself. Many monsters are immune to sneak attacks, most notably undead and constructs. You do not get to sneak attack unless you're flanking and the target is facing away from you. You need a healer kit to use the skill. Don't use them in combat unless you have to; if you wait until after combat, you get to "take 20" on your heal check and you'll have a much better result. You should be able to talk to him to set his tactics. I highly recommend keeping "hold your ground", "follow me", and "attack nearest" orders hotkeyed. . You can always use the debugger to modify your stats to whatever you like.

Keep in mind that the tables are much less backloaded in 3rd edition, so you don't need to have stats as incredibly high to actually get bonuses. For instance, having 12 strength in NWN gives you the same bonuses as having 17 strength in Baldur's Gate.

The problem that I have with the point-buy though is that it really encourages min/maxing and over specialization at the expense of having any diversity in the skill set a character has, as opposed to BG where I could roll up someone with generally competent ability scores so that they could fend for themselves in a pinch. Also, the problem with trying to compare the tables of BG and NWN is that in 2e, bonuses weren't really needed to survive, since 2E was based much more around throwing monsters at you that the average character could take and basing any ability score challenges off of having you roll against the ability score, and if you happened to have a bonus that was just the proverbial cherry on the sundae; in 3.5, modifiers are everything, both for you and the enemy, and since the enemy is fairly min/maxed, you are forced to respond in kind to get a high modifier.

I'll look into debug mode, though; just need to get my dice out and I should be good to go on that front. The thing is, I already do that, but all I seem to be able to do is leave him behind so that I can scout ahead instead, usually leading to me getting spotted and killed because he was too far away to get to me in time or otherwise chose not to listen to my calls for help. I had been hoping that he would be able to sneak alongside me (which he seems to do, because every time I select him while I am sneaking, I have the option to make him stop sneaking), but his bloodlust blows our cover every time.

The rogue might not be your best choice of companion. The half-orc fighter will distract your enemies nicely, giving you more chances at sneak attacks, same with the elven cleric, plus she heals.

You will begin to find raw materials for traps in chapter 2, but I can't say whether it's worthwhile to spend skill points on Craft and Set trap.

Well, I'd strongly disagree with that sentiment. You absolutely can be versatile and competent with NWN's point buy, and aside from dedicated spellcaster classes (wizard, sorcerer, and druid) I almost never max out any ability score. It's just not needed. I find that the earlier IE games have a far greater incentive for min-maxing, since they deprive you of any bonus whatsoever if you don't max (or nearly max) your primary attribute, and they realistically allow you to maximize every stat that matter by rolling until you get a result in the mid-80's while completely avoiding penalties in tertiary attributes.

Anyways, that's not to disparage your preferred playstyle. There's nothing wrong with wanting to have god-like stats all-around, I just reject the notion that point buy forces you to pick between competence and versatility. You can absolutely have both. There is a "stay stealthed until the next battle" dialog option for stealthy companions in the expansions, but I guess it never made it into the original campaign. The "follow me" command is a higher priority than initiating combat, but I'm not sure if that's a reliable method to prevent Tomi from breaking stealth. While in terms of tactics I think you're right, I think the point here is that he wants to make a two-rogue stealth tag-team work. Going for a more "gung-ho" henchman is an easy way out, but trying to make the stealthy one work well is a bit more challenging. For a single-class rogue, it's a worthwhile tactics if that's what you want to do. It's not jaw-dropping powerful, but it's certainly not bad. Rogues have a lot of skill points to go around, so it's totally doable. If you can manage 10 skill points per level (totally doable for a rogue), you can keep Hide, Move Silently, Persuade, Set Trap, Craft Trap, Disable Trap, Open Lock, Search, Spot, and Use Magic Device all maxed.

It's not so much that I want "god like" stats all around as I try to make sure that I have a more generalized set of stats. personally, my first instinct in a point buy, especially in a system where modifiers are key, is to make a generalized character, so shore up all my negatives, maybe give myself one 17-18 and throw in a few 11-13s with 1-2 10s left over; not enough to be considered particularly great at things that don't revolve around my primary stat, but enough to be able to get by with most of my skills in a pinch if needed. In NWN, that isn't quite possible

But honestly, even if NWN had enough points to allow me to do what I want to do, another problem I have with point buy in general is that I just don't trust myself to make an interesting set of stats for the character. Hell, even my generalist approach is min/maxing of a sort, and if I follow that approach for every character I play, they all kind of start to feel the same. Rolling gives much more of a feeling of uniqueness to the character, as it produces results that I wouldn't have probably produced intentionally (like, say, giving myself a negative modifier to roleplay to).

Incidentally, the stats I wound up rolling were STR 8, DEX 17, CON 11, WIS 12, INT 16, and CHA 15. Went with the first roll on principle and the results should be interesting to work with.

I don't see how you'd have any trouble getting scores like that on point buy. An attribute array of 17/13/12/12/10/10 fits your description above (a seventeen, a few 12-13's, a couple 10's left over) and would be a legal combination in NWN. For a Rogue, I'd recommend an array of 16/14/14/12/10/10 Now not feeling comfortable enough with the system, I get that. A strength score of 8 will be very challenging to work with on a rogue. It'll give you a melee damage penalty. The biggest problems with single-class rogues is that they have a hard time damaging undead, so every tiny penalty counts. Make sure to take the "weapon finesse" feat at the earlier opportunity; this will cancel out your strength penalty to accuracy in melee.

That's about as good as it gets in NWN. Seems it was designed more for blunt action than sneaking.

You could always stand somewhat near your hench, and use ranged weapons to get a sneak attack. I can see how that wouldn't be fun if you really wanted to melee sneak attack.

If you have good Tumble, (or Mobility, or Spring Attack), you could always melee strike a foe, then run back to your hench.