If you pilfer Algernon's Cloak at the Feldpost Inn in Beregost, you can abuse the charming powers that the cloak bestows quite early in the game. Charm anything: humanoid, animal or monster. Just about every new location has an NPC who normally isn't recruitable or an OP monster that is quite tough. But if you charm them... they fight for you instead till you leave the area. And the cloak recharges about once every game turn, so it's more like playing a mage with unlimited charm spells.

Specialist wizards (especially illusionists or conjurers) are more fun and more powerful than pure mages since they get an extra spell per day and level.
But most fun and most powerful is sorcerer if you have access to the BG2 engine.


If you want to know where the secret hidden ring which doubles level 1 spells is (spoiler) :

http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Evermemory

Errrrrr, how so? The big fights in BG2 were like playing rock, paper, scissors, you either had a flawless victory or a crushing defeat and mage fights were the worst for this. Depending on the protections in the sequencers, breach + big scary sword = instant mage sausage for the most part. The wrong move however and your party would get dire charmed / confused effectively ending the fight then and there.

Like Holy Avenger?

I try to never lose sight of the fact that D&D is a set of rules for role playing. The different classes give you a different experience and there is nothing to say that it should be an experience of equal difficulty at any point along the journey. Everyone is different, but for me taking a whimpy wizard that can be knocked over by a Kobold in the early days and eventually becoming a weapon of mass destruction is the ultimate D&D experience. The Monk is good too- fragile early but an almost unstoppable killing machine in the end. But if the experience is not for you, then no one can tell you otherwise.

Relating to BG1 and Wizards in particular, there is probably a reason why there seem to be scrolls and wands lying around all over the place...it's the developers simply trying to make the early going a bit easier for them without resorting to breaching the D&D rules and buffing the class.

That was the point. BG2 had many interesting and challenging fights, although that Holy Avenger thing was true. You picked up that paladin kit with immunity to Level Drain, give him HA and you have half of the game already won.

But my point was once you figured out the right combinations, those same fights were no longer challenging. I'm just going agree to disagree here as I already opened up this can of worms in another thread.