Help choosing difficulty and class

Path of the Damned for your first play-through? Personally I'd go with Hard at most, for the very reason that you don't know yet how everything works.

Originally Posted by Elel
I mean, early on, just one fighter vs. them all, that doesn't even sound realistic. And that other guy we saved fell unconscious from fatique real quick.

He's a rogue, make him run away first, then pound on things from behind that are being attacked by Calisca (flanking) or are otherwise prone or blinded (-> sneak attack). With one of those special dialogue choices (INT?) he won't even get a scratch before combat starts.

Also… Only four spells per level for wizard, seriously? Any way to increase that?

There are some rings that give +2 to some early level spells, but ultimately it's not really necessary. Starting with character level 9 or so, first and second level spells start being per engagement, not per rest. At that point you'll have more than enough spells to cast.

In BG at least the mage had a sling. This one tries to shoot something from staff instead, but I couldn't see that working out successfully. It doesn't seem like it even hits. So without spells wizard basically just stands there.

The first talents I picked for my mage were Blast at level 2 and Penetrating Blast at level 4: Two AoE attacks per engagement, really helpful in early levels. Wand damage will also get a bit better IIRC and do splash damage.

You'll have to be economic with spells in the first few levels (or rest often).

I managed to win that battle by restarting the game with a cipher. Wizard was way too weak, but with the cipher it was such a cakewalk! I think I don't like the mechanics of rest for a wizard, at least in BG you could rest in wilderness, yet here I can't see any option to rest at all (yet), so the wizard is sort of useless.

I was considering the druid, but he has only two spells in the beginning and is rest-dependant, too.

Well, I'm going to see how the path of the damned works out with a cipher! Thanks everyone for advice.

The only question I have left is whether it's somehow possible to respec spells I chose for cipher via some save game editor? One of those is useful (dire charm), but another one I find useless\too weak after trying it out (shock something or other). It's quite possible I'm going to be messing up choice of spells in future, too.