@purpleblob
I've just remembered another trick you can do with your Icewind Dale II problem. (I know you're probably not overly interested for other reasons, but this might help other people if people remember and know about this trick).
In the Icewind Dale series you are not permanently tied to your characters. So, if you have more than one save game (I normally have about 6 or 7 per game all from different stages of the game) and you have a save from a good while back (a few thousand XP worth) then you can perform the following function:
1) Save a second save state of your current position.
2) From this save Export one of your characters so you have a gap for one new character.
3) Open up the old save and save that again in a second save state.
4) From this save Export one of your characters so you have a gap for one new character.
5) Create a new Sorcerer at lvl 1 in the older save-game where there is now a character gap.
6) Play the game until the sorcerer is allowed to choose Knock as a spell.
7) Export this Sorcerer out of the old save game and into the current save game that has a gap.
8) Once their job is done, export them out and Import your correctly leveled Sorcerer and continue where you left off.
(all the various extra saving is just so you never lose a character if you get a bit lost while practicing with the Import/Export character function)
All your exported characters should be saved somewhere so that when you select Import you will have a list to choose from. I can't remember how user-friendly this system is and its best that you practice a bit with it first, that's how I remember doing it anyway.
(if you have no old saves, you can just start a new Sorcerer and play 'till lvl 2 spell choice, but this is more long-winded than killing a few 1,000 xp monsters later in the game)
It should work a treat, and, in an RPG sense, you can just imagine that you're hiring an NPC