Party Members - Stick or switch?

It's best to settle for a certain party and stick with it for a bit until you've reached the city of Baldur's Gate, or at least that's what I used to do. Levelling takes time in the first game of the saga. Later on you'll encounter higher level characters so you may want to make a switch then when you find that you've got too many magic and too little hack 'n' slash or vice versa. I believe (not 100% sure) that levels of potential party members you encounter differ depending on your party average level.

You chose an awesome game to start playing late by the way.

If you want both Xan and Minsc, you could get Dyanaheir first and have her killed by enemies. Minsc will then rage a bit, but it'll free up a spot in your party. Depressed Xan is awesome. I love him.

I agree with you that it is probably not the way the programmers meant it to be played, but that's how I did it anyway. Don't worry about about this your attitude, you come across as friendly as one can be.

I think the Gnoll stronghold is a bit easier to clear out than the mines indeed.

Ditching Kaigan could be a good idea, although the level of Hack n' slash is a bit low then in your party. the axe breaking thing is because of something you'll find out in the storyline soon.

Two mages I'm unsure about but if you can manage it - good luck!

jimothy

Hey, nice of you to return.

Regarding question 1:

Warriors with an 18 strength get something called a "strength percentile": in effect, this gives them a strength better than a regular 18 but not as good as a 19.

Other classes can only get an unmodified 18. It's misleading to say that 18/01 is the lowest in the 18-category, since 18/01 is already better than an unmodified 18 without a percentile.

The percentile is a number from 1-100, though a 100 is written '00'. (This is because in the original D&D game you determine this number by rolling two ten-sided dice with sides labelled 0-9, one for the tens digit and one for the ones digit, and two zeros is considered 100.)

The higher this number, the better your strength, and the better the combat bonuses you get:

Unmodified 18: +1 to hit, +2 to damage
18/01-18/50: +1 to hit, +3 to damage
18/51-18/75: +2 to hit, +3 to damage
18/76-18/90: +2 to hit, +4 to damage
18/91-18/99: +2 to hit, +5 to damage
18/00: +3 to hit, +6 to damage
(A 19 gives +3/+7.)

Other stuff that's influenced is how much weight you can carry and how likely you are to kick the crap out of those pesky locks.

Regarding question 2:

Unfortunately in Baldur's Gate is not listed how many charges a wand has. Boldly answered, guess. I believe all wands have a number of charges somewhere between 10 - 50, but I am not 100% sure about that. I do know that when at some point you reach the city of Baldur's Gate in the game, you can buy unlimited amounts of any type of wands and the big sorcery shop. Quite expensive, but money shouldn't be a problem by then. In Baldur's Gate II (The most awesome game ever ) the wand does list how many charges it has left. Or alternatively, there are several mods you can install that use game engine tweaks from the second game like BGTutu. Mods always kind of influence the gameplay experience though.Uop to you if you want to to try that.

Poor Dynaheir! You got Xan now? Downside about Xan, if I remember correctly, is that he is an enchanter. Enchantment is the opposing school of magic to evocation/invocation. Meaning Xan can't use Magic Missile, one of the most popular spells around. Enchantment spells are much more fun to use though.

Yeah, Xan is an awesome character with his half depressed comments throughout the game. His downsides indeed are the lack of Magic Missile and the fact that he is as weak as a kitten. Try to keep him out of harm's way! Don't force him to use that shiny moonblade of his.

Installing mods properly and getting them to work can be tough to do, so make sure you back up savegames and stuff you want to keep before you do so. It does offer a lot of extra possibilities though!