Character Guide

Welcome to Baldur's Gate!

First of all, For those of you how don't know what is AD&D, let met introduce you to its concept. It is the oldest and most popular role-
playing game rules in the paper-and-pen world. "This isn't just any role-playing game" says David "Zeb" Cook, creator and game
designer, "this is the granddady of them all". Oh yeah, this baby started back in the days to be a huge success when it was released in
1998. It worked so well, they released a new enhanced edition, which you are playing now, and if you are new to AD&D, aka Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules, you can get lost to its vast universe.

In this guide, I'm going to clear things up a bit for you. Enhanced edition added new classes, kits(subclasses), spells from Baldur's Gate 2 and additional contents which didn't exist in the original game. Enjoy the guide.

Secondly, you start by creating your own character, as going forth : gender, race, class, alignment, abilities, skills, appearance and name.

Gender & Race

First of all, you start by creating your own character, as going forth : gender, race, class, alignment, abilities, skills, appearance and name.

Gender does not affect any of your other stats mentioned before. Enhanced edition added some new portraits to the vanilla Baldur's Gate game for those who played the original one. Pick whatever you like for this one.

On the other hand, it is important to choose the right race for the class you want to take. There are 7 races to choose from : Human, elf, half-elf, gnome, halfing, dwarf and the half-orc being added in this new enhanced edition. I don't recommend any race in particular to choose from as each have their own advantages and drawbacks.

Human

You can't go wrong with picking human as it's the only race who can choose from any class available in the game and has no stats advantages or drawbacks. Moreover, the particularity of the human is you can dual-class into another class once you have become level 2 with your first class/
NOTE : You can only dual-class into another class when you're not a specialist class, such as Paladin, Bard, Monk & Sorcerer(newly class from Baldur's Gate 2, you can dual-class with sorcerer but it's a bug as it doesn't take effect). Moreover, you can only dual-class into a new class when you have at least 17 stats for this new class and have 15 in your main class stats, for example :
If you are a fighter with 15 strengh, 17 dexterity, 16 intelligence, etc, (main stat for a fighter) and you become level 2, you could dual-class into a fighter thief but not into a fighter mage because you only have 16 intelligence. Finally, once you dual-class, you can only use your main class back once you have one level of your new class above your old class, a level 2 fighter, dual-classing into a thief, will become a full-class thief until he reaches level 3 thief, then he can get his fighter stats back and operate as a full fighter-thief.

Elf

Elves have 90% resistance against charm and sleep magics, let me tell you now, I don't think I recall a mage using a sleep spell on you in the game, but the resistance to charm is very useful, especially vs. sirens. You don't want your charmed fighter ravaging your own party now would you? Other than that, They are very skilled with the bow and long sword which makes them excellent long ranged fighter/rangers, I don't say archers as archer is now a kit/sub-class to ranger which paired with an elf is extremely deadly.
They have an additionnal THACO with bows and long swords, THACO is an acronym for To Hit Armor Class 0. It is the number a character, NPC, or even monster needs to attack a Class 0 target successfully, the lower the number, the easier it is to hit. It depends on your class and level, each level decreased your THACO by 1 and fighters/rangers/paladins start with a better THACO than other classes. Elves also gain a +1 bonus to dexterity which makes them even more lethal in ranged weapons and -1 to their constitution, which means they are a bit more squishier then another race. I recommend to either pick up a fighter or Archer for this race with advanced specialization into bows ultimately. Stongly recommended race as ranged weapons are lethal and great in Baldur's Gate with a larged variety. They also have infravision (they can see in the dark).

Half-elf

Born from Humans and Elves, they have infravision like their elves counterparts and only 30% resistance against charm and sleep magics, which is not that great really. Other than that they don't have any major advantage and drawbacks, they can't dual-class like their human counterparts, therefore the only class worth taking is the Bard as it can't duall class, and you'll have at least some charm and sleep magic resistance and infravision, not the best bonuses in the game. But they do have the best multi-class options available to them such as the famous cleric-ranger which makes a great divine spell caster

Gnome

Gnomes are distant relatives to the dwarves, only noticeably smaller and sort of alchemists. They have a +1 bonus to intelligence and -1 penality their wisdom, so obviously don't make a multi-class Cleric/Illusionist. They also receive a +2 saving throws vs Rod/staff/wand and vs spells.
NOTE : When choosing mage class for gnomes, they can only be illusionists, a specialist mage who can cast 1 additionnal spell per level but is prohibited from learing and using spells of their opposite class, an illusion's opposition school would be the necromancy school. Illusionist is one of the best specialist school, especially when paired into a fighter/illusionist, as his illusion spells protects your character very well against either magical or normal attacks. Moreover, you don't really miss the necromancer spell except the skull trap, unless you have another wizard in your party (not another illusionist of course)

Halfling

You could also employ the term of hobbit here, it's basically inspired from Tolkien's universe, same racial features, small simple and happy folk with curly hair and hairy feet and very skilled with slings, they have a +1 THACO bonus with slings, a +1 bonus to dexterity which makes them the best thieves in the game because of their racial modifiers in thievery proficiencies but they have a -1 penality to strength and wisdom, so I wouldn't recommend multi-classing them in either fighters or clerics. They also receive a sweet +2 saving throws vs all save vs. death

Dwarf

Same saving throws as Halflings paired with their great +1 bonus to constitution makes then the tankiest race in the game, if you make a dwarf fighter of course, what other class is worth choosing with this race anyways except for a multi-class fighter/cleric. I don't recommend making a dwarf thief even with their thievery racial modifiers as they receive a -1 penality to their dexterity, their -2 bonus to charisma is not that great of a problem as my main character still has a 19 charisma thanks to a special cloak and from using a tome of charisma which grants 1 permanent charisma point. If you want to create a dwarf fighter (fighter kit/subclass, I really recommend creating a Dwaven defender, it is the best tank class of the game .I was lucky to roll a 18/00 strengh relatively fast and get quite decent stats everywhere, except for the intelligence and wisdom part which are completely uselss for a pure fighter. The 20th constitution point comes from the tome of constitution. Once you have reached 20 constitution, your character regenerates 1 hit point every round (every 10 seconds), not that much you can think, but extremely useful in the long run, he fully heals when traveling to another location and when sleeping, you can save healing potions if you are short on money (which you never are, unless you give it all away lol). The Dwarven defender drawback of not being able to reach Grandmastery proficiency like other fighters is not that big of a deal since you can't reach it in Baldur's Gate 1 anyway because of the experiece/level cap in the game. He does lack ranged weapon weaponry as throwing axes are quite heavy and expensive though.

Half-orc

Nothing much to say except that they have the best brutal force you can expect from a melee attack point of view thanks to their outstanding 19 strength racial bonus and a good tanking capability thanks to their 19 constitution racial bonus. They do receive a -2 intelligence penality which is completely useless because you can't even make a half-orc mage.
Obviously, make yourself a fighter, barbarian or multi-class fighter/cleric or thief (Interesting for Black-pits). They are still outranked by their dwarven counterparts in tanking capabilites because they don't have any saving throws bonuses, keep that in mind whilst creating your main character if you choose to create a fighter.

NOTES

I'm not finished with this guide yet as you can see. Any comments, requests, advices and tips to help finish or improve this guide are welcomed. I'll try finishing it as soon as I can. Thanks for all the support and hope it helps.

[Gr[øø]ve]

Thanks for the feedback. It's been awhile and was quite busy as late but I'll try updating as soon as humanly possible.

[Jynk]

Just a comment on the guide typesetting, not on content: Bold font should be used only to highlight stuff. If you use it for all text it actually makes it harder to read.

[Edonil]

Pretty well done and useful guide. Thank you for your work.

[Johndoe101]

i mean what classes work together well most of the time EX: 2 fighter, 2 clerics,1mage, 1 theif some thing with ing that that line. If possible mention how certain charater aliegence ( evil,neutral ,good ) work in a party so you can have for example 1/2 being neutral wile the other other half being some sort of evil nature.

[Gr[øø]ve]

@Johndoe
Do you mean g[øø]d & bad party design as g[øø]d or evil aligned parties or g[øø]d & bad parties as in worth or not worth character to have in your party?

[Johndoe101]

If possible have asection that cover good party design and bad ones as well.

[Gr[øø]ve]

Thanks for the info, I'll l[øø]k into it.

[chrisavaughn]

If you want the history of D&D you should start with it's predecessor. It's a spinoff of a wargame named Chainmail (created by Jeff Peren and Gygax) which was published in '71.

[mike_hanna211]

"Also, Dungeons and Dragons actually goes back before I was even born, all the way to the 1930's when it was started. Yup, It's been almost 100 years of this game series. Older than the Tolkien series. All hail Gary Gygax, when you, one of the creators, died, I was mortified..."

Dungeons and Dragons came out in 1974 as the original, now highly collectible "white box" set. Not sure where you got 100 years ago, LOL.

Gygax used some of Tolkien's lore in D&D, such as Hobbits. Due to trademarking, hobbits had to be changed to halflings. Also, certain monsters, like pit fiends and balors, are inspired by the Balrogs of Tolkien-lore.

[pelman]

UMM. Dungeons and dragons pen and paper was out in 1976 . baldurs gate most likely was out in 98.