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Another Baldur's Gate coming, at some point

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Alex C:
Yeah, my mages always started with Sleep and Charm Person as their first spells, no exceptions. Magic Missle may get all the publicity, but unless you've got a couple of mages to focus fire it with, it's not really all that great, even if tagteaming magic missiles with Dynaheir or Edwin is one of my favorite tactics for killing enemy mages.

I do agree that beholders can be annoying with a melee based party. It was never a problem for me my first time through though, since my plan for most encounters is to become virtually immune to magic then run around spaming AOEs all over the place anyway.

KvP:
The necessity of wizards in BG2 wasn't a flaw of the game, it was a flaw of D&D. In order to fight magic you need magic, and by necessity the higher you get in levels the more common magic becomes.

The Baldur's Gate series clearly illustrates an inherent flaw in D&D, at least up until 3.5 (haven't played 4th edition) - At low levels, casters are hilariously weak, with one or two guaranteed damage spells per period between rests, becoming fairly useless when the spells are used up (clerics, with their bonus spell slots, are slightly better in this regard). Fighters, on the other hand, are quite powerful, on a relative scale. You saw this in BG1. In fact due to weird walking speeds ranged weaponry was incredibly overpowered in Baldur's Gate 1, especially when combined with immobilizing spells like entangle.

But when you get to mid-upper levels and better protection magics and especially area of effect damage spells become prevalent, the paradigm inverts itself. Fighters without buffs become fodder and mages become the power hitters. Really all you need to get through the majority of BG2 is a fighter/mage who tops out his spells at level 5 or 6, enough to memorize breach (far and away the most useful spell in BG2) and any of the spells that lower magic resistance.

When you get to epic levels fighters don't even matter anymore. An epic-level sorcerer in BG2 with the amulet of power you get from the Shadow Thieves and the robe you buy from the lady in the Adventurer's Mart is unfuckingstoppable. Throw up a time stop, trigger improved alacrity and then another time stop if you feel like it, and you can unload all your 1st through 5th plus a few 6th/7th/8th level spells in under a round. Of course, when the time stop ends and all the spells actually go into effect you run the risk of overloading your game.

But WRT the Mind Flayers and Beholders, there are a few strategies to employ. At the aforementioned bonus store in the Adventurer's Mart you can buy a shield that lowers the wearer's strength by 1, but it causes all beholder eye rays to be reflected (by the time you get to the beholder lair you should have a bag of holding that will allow for easy switching between normal and special equipment) causing whoever wears it to be untouchable, except by the imprisonment spells cast by elder orbs. So watch out for those. A fighter using this shield can take on a hive of dozens of beholders singlehandedly.

As for mind flayers, there's a 5th level cleric / druid spell called Chaotic Commands that will immunize the recipient of the spell from the otherwise irresistible stunning attack of the mind flayers. Again, by the time you encounter mind flayers you should be high enough level that your clerics can use it on the whole party, or at least, on your front line. The flayers can still two-hit kill you but if you use a doorway as a bottleneck (there's a reason you never run into mind flayers in open areas) they're much easier to handle.

PizzaSHARK:
Combined with the fact that Mind Flayer stats are abysmal, they'll rarely land a hit on someone with decent AC.  And even if they do, just watch your INT and either pop potions of genius or mind focusing or just pull them back.  Chaotic Commands (which is cleric-only, by the way), Greenstone Amulets, potions of Magic Protection (which gives you autosave on all spells and spell-like effects), and brine potions negate their psionic effects.  Barring that, Animate Dead summons work well (undead are immune to psionics and the skeleton warrior you get at lvl 15+ cleaves right through em), and Mordenkainen's Sword works perfectly well, since it's immune to physical damage and the INT drain.  Just blockade the doorway with your frontliners or summons and then just bombard them with arrows, bolts, spells, whatever.  You will never encounter mind flayers without the ability to create a chokepoint with the single exception of the Ust Natha quest chain - and there, you can just pre-position everyone out of range of them until after they show up.

With a little forethought, the entirety of BG2 is laughably easy.  The Tactics2 mod makes things a helluva lot more enjoyable. 

Mages follow a protect-buff-attack AI script and start out buffed with most common buffs (Stoneskin, Pro-Fire/Elec/Energy/Elements, Melf's Minute Meteors, etc) so that you can't cheese your way along with a thief (most common use being to just backstab them for an instakill; thieves with decent STR can quite easily do 80+ in a single hit.)  Liches start with said buffs plus a permanent pit fiend pet.  Pit fiends (and all demons) are buffed to be more in line with their PnP versions - 6 attacks a round, vorpal hit, poison-and-disease bite, improved invisibility whenever they want, fireball every now and then, and the ability to Gate in another pit fiend once (who can then Gate in another, who can Gate in another...)  They still retain their immunity to +2 and below, high magic resistance, and high AC.

All undead (excepting liches and a couple other notably powerful varieties) get minor buffs, to make them a little more threatening; minor shadows get Spook, major shadows get Hold Person or Greater Command, etc.  Powerful undead like liches and Kangaxx WILL notice you beating on them with Pro-Undead scrolls and WILL use dispel magic on you.  Pro-Magic still works, but those are rare, and now you'll draw the attention of that pit fiend since Pro-Evil is gone...

Sahuagin City is totally redone.  All Sahuagin (except the specific named ones) are now Archers, at least Lv.12, using paralytic bolts (1d10, save vs. spell or be stunned 4 rounds) or +3 spears in melee.  When you kill them, they resurrect as skeleton warriors.  The priestess that carries the cloak of mirroring can summon a minor avatar of sekolah, who can eat characters whole (vorpal attack, permanent death.)  She also likes to summon glorified frost salamanders if fighters get close.  In short, Sahuagin City becomes EXTREMELY FUCKING HARD.  But it's optional.

Major bosses and encounters get a huge buff.  Bodhi is actually hard now; good thing, since she's worth 91k XP - more than anything else in the game, except Demogorgon (who is effectively worth 600k.)  Dragons will take exception to you summoning monsters or setting traps in their sight range, and use their wing buffet and breath attacks much more frequently - they're still too easy, though.  Mind flayers get several new abilities to prevent cheese (they will dimension door to the rest of your party if you try to blockade them, they get nasty knockback attacks, Emotion, and improved stats.)

In both versions of BG2, Breach is the most useful arcane spell in the game (I'd say the un-nerfed Conjure Animals is the best divine; those bearweres are sick.)  It will kill Pro-Magic Weapons and any level of Mantle, as well as Stoneskin.  Unless they're protected by Spell Trap (9th level spell, usually only see liches use it frequently), which you can counter with Ruby Ray of Reversal, among other things.  You can get by pretty well without any arcane spellcasters for the first half of the game - I've played games where Imoen was my only wizard, and I did most of the quests in chapter 2, before rescuing her.  Pro-Magic Weapons and the Mantle spell only last four rounds - just go hide or tank the damage till they expire.  If they don't require magic weapons to hit (like liches), just go low-tech.  Stoneskin can be dispelled by Dispel Magic, or you can just beat it down.

Death Spell or Death Fog will instantly kill any summoned enemies in range - use it if you're getting mobbed by summons.

Beholders are worthless with the Shield of Balduran.  It's pretty cheap - about 14k with a decent reputation and good CHA.  Tactics makes them less stupid about it, though; they'll just bite you instead of fry themselves, or ignore the shield bearer and fry everyone else instead.  They've got surprisingly good attack values, and their bites carry powerful poisons, Hold Person, and other assorted nastiness.  A single well-buffed warrior can STILL clear out entire hives, but it's not quite so easy.

Unimproved BG2 is stupidly easy if you're willing to put a little thought into your spell selection and plan of attack :P

Alex C:
I would say it's more than a "little" forethought, depending on your level of experience with AD&D and the AI scripting. KvP really nailed it in his previous post because honestly, AD&D becomes about having the right "I Win" buttons for the job past a certain point, which is a bit of an issue with the Vancian system, because suddenly, it's no longer just about pacing yourself, it's about pacing yourself and hoping you've got the right mix of spells prepared. The ability to easily rest in most cases saws off most of the rough edges, but I could never really sit here and argue that the whole setup is truly a virtue, even if it didn't really interfere with my enjoyment of the game at all.

KvP was right about both games being "unbalanced" but in different ways as well, which is something I vaguely implied in an earlier post. In BG2, a party fares better when it's loaded with a stupid amount of win conditions, and the best way to get there is typically via a boat load of casters and some multiclassed melee competence dashed in for good measure. In BG1, the win conditions are typically long bow specialization and enough hitpoings to survive taking the occasional kobold arrow to the noggin.

PizzaSHARK:
4th level spells are Stoneskin and Greater Malison.

5th level arcane spells are Breach.  Maybe a Chaos or two if you've got many spell slots.

6th level are Lower Resistance.  One or two Death Spell.  Maybe some True Sight if you can't get it elsewhere (hi, Keldorn.)

7th level are a mixed bag.  Mordenkainen's Sword, Mass Invisibility, and Finger of Death are ideal.  Always have at least one Ruby Ray of Reversal.

8th is Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting.  If you've got a lot of fire resistance things and are willing to do some pre-fight setup, Incendiary Cloud is phenomenal.  Unless it's immune.

9th is Time Stop.  At epic levels, Time Stop and Improved Alacrity.  There are exactly two enemies in the game that are immune to Time Stop - Demogorgon and Amelyssan.  Balthazar can become immune, but you can just Breach the buff (it's Lunar Stance.)

That's about it.  If it's protected, Breach.  If Breach doesn't work, Ruby Ray until it goes through (Immunity: Abjuration and/or Spell Trap are the likely culprits.)  If it's resisting your spells, Lower Resistance till it doesn't - most monsters only have about 55-70%, two casts will handle it.  Greater Malison + Finger of Death kills.  Toss in the divine spell Doom (1st level) to make it even more ridiculous - save vs. death at -8 or die.  Even ToB-level opponents have issues making that save.

Breach, Breach, Breach.

EDIT:

Give your primary mage the robe of vecna.  Time Stop.  Improved Alacrity.  Spam Abi-Dalzim.  Watch everything die.  Try using your warriors to gather them all up before doing this; do this trick in the oasis on the way to Amkethran.  It's very funny.

Oh, and the priest spell Sunray more or less autokills undead.  Or just go grab Daystar and have a warrior use its on-use Sunray.

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