I bought this some time ago, but just recently installed it to really sit down and play the game.
I am wondering about aspects of the game and how to handle them. Here are my questions.
1. How can you tell what is equipped on your character?
2. How do you go about equipping items on individuals in your group?
3. If I try to level up my magic user in a tavern should I rent by the night or multiple nights? Is this cheating since you are clearly allowed to do this; while I have no idea why you would be allowed?
4. How can you tell the hit points left when in a battle so your character will not die needlessly?
5. What items should you buy in the the starting town?
6. Is pickpocket necessary to have in a group (my current group does not have this skill), but I can do well at haggling the price of an item.
7. Any other tips you can think of that will help me survive before I leave the starting town?
Thank you.

Double click on your character portraits to bring up the inventory and stat screens, right click to show different attributes and use the arrow keys to quickly flip between characters.
Simply click on an item and move it to your characters doll to equip/unequip.
To get all your magicians wand spells, just stay one night per try, if you fail you will still have to stay the night and try again the next day.
I think the hitpoints are represented by a red bar on the char portrait, not 100 percent sure though.
The starting town make sure you ask the Hetman for more help (i think) so he gives you a credit note for the armoury. Save before going in the Hetmans hut just so you dont say the wrong thing. The armoury is to the east of the Hetmans place but you will need to use the hintbook map to find it quickly, good place to get some free weapons and items.
Get swords for the fighters, axe for the dwarf and crossbows for the elves. Careful about loading too much armour on your characters, chainmail shirts, plate and iron shields all detract from the attack rating, so stick with leather while you are still at an early level.
Remeber to buy lockpicks, tinderbox and a blanket for everyone. Rope, hatchet and hammer will come in useful during your travels. Use herb gathering to get rich. Make sure you have two characters who can treat disease...i never got sick once during BOD, but i really needed my two healers in StarTrail.
Use the first dungeon in Thorwal for a couple of early fights, but don't venture too far. You get xp just from travelling and encounters. And there is some very nice and magical equipment in the town of Daspota, orc hook, a scythe and a two handed sword i think.
You can pick up NPC's at certain bars, again check the hintbook if you want one, i found them a bit of a pain.
Ignifaxus is a good spell and doesnt cost loads of astral points, somnigravus(?) is a sleep spell and is useful.

Thank you for the help it is much appreciated.

If there are any more helps to play this game well, please let me know. Thanks

I'd say that the most important tip in combat when you face lots of enemies (i.e.: most of the time), is to have two tank characters with shields , high armor and high hp charge forward, side by side.
Dwarves, warriors and Thorwallians work well.
That should be enough to keep most of the enemies busy. You can then go around the sides with your elves and mages and shoot them with crossbows or magic.
That's usually the safest way to take out crowds, since they'll always charge the closest members of your party.
Don't get too hung up on damaging spells for mages. Lightning may only blind someone for three rounds, but that's usually more useful than other spells, and it costs much less mp.
If you're in a difficult fight, then use the elven spell that speeds them up. It basically lets them act twice per round, which is very powerful considering how much damage they do with their crossbows.

Most important for combat is armor class since it's directly subtracted from enemy damage, so if you have 9 armor enemies using rapiers (4-9 damage) won't be able to hurt you. The same applies to your weapons and enemy AC, so use damaging weapons.
Attack and defense values aren't as important as armor class or weapon damage, the attack value helps to hit but the parry value is nearly useless (exception: archers benefit from defensive unarmed when they're attacked).
Only raise strength at level up even for your mage, it's by far the most important stat.
Everyone cn only parry once per combat round, so if everyone attacks someone else every attack can be parried, if you attack the same enemy from 4 directions 3 attacks can't be parried.
Raise the teleport spell to at least -4 so you can use it.
If you don't want to bother about money you can use the barter skill. With some skill and courage (barter for 50,49) you cn get rich by bying and selling stuff.