anamorphic: Probably not, but remember on the level up screen, you have to scroll down the list of skills to put points into Set Traps. I completely missed that my first level.

In the beginning I found targeting the trap over the circle marker (or portrait) of the thief seemed to work a lot more often, but this could just be my imagination.

As to the well-balanced party, I'm just saying you can find that balance during the natural course of the game. I picked up almost every NPC (besides the fact most of them have their own quests that are fun and worth experience anyway) for deciding who to keep. First hand experience is better than second hand.

@AndyBuzz - LOL at "wtf-just-happened mode" (I know it too well!)

anamorphic: Probably not, but remember on the level up screen, you have to scroll down the list of skills to put points into Set Traps. I completely missed that my first level.

In the beginning I found targeting the trap over the circle marker (or portrait) of the thief seemed to work a lot more often, but this could just be my imagination.

As to the well-balanced party, I'm just saying you can find that balance during the natural course of the game. I picked up almost every NPC (besides the fact most of them have their own quests that are fun and worth experience anyway) for deciding who to keep. First hand experience is better than second hand.

@AndyBuzz - LOL at "wtf-just-happened mode" (I know it too well!)

Cullen12: I appreciate all of the comprehensive responses from the members of this community, however I fear this lengthy discussion has been in vain. I have finally found the time to apply my decision, and it seems that because I once spoke to Jan, but did not ask to see his wares, the game will not let me talk to him again. That seems retartedly counter intuitive to me. I have tried talking to him in the day as well as the night, with nothing doing...

AndyBuzz: It's actually a bug, not how it was designed. I recently encountered it myself and from little I managed to gather it seems that there's a variable set in the current iteration of Jan (there are several versions of each NPC on different levels and the one closer to yours joins your party, the first time you meet them only). So if you decline his offer to see the wares, go adventuring and return at a higher level the new Jan doesn't have that variable set, so the dialog doesn't fire properly.
Messy explanation, eh?

The simplest solution to that would be to Ctrl+Y the Jan in front of you to kill him and create a new one with
CLUAConsole:CreateCreature("Jan#")
where # is one of 8, 10, 11, 12. The higher the number, the higher Jan's level.

Otherwise you could fire up NearInfinity, open your latest savegame, find the stored version of Jan in there and set the "# times talked to" variable to 0.

Pangaea666: This site explains it quite well: http://www.pocketplane.net/volothamp/bgguide.htm (click on 11 Cheating)

The baldur.ini file should be in root folder where you installed the game. For example C:\Games\Baldurs Gate 2

I quote from the site:

Now we move on to real cheating. The first two methods were built-in by BioWare, largely so they could fix bugs in the game while they were playtesting it. The game engines of BG1 and BG2 are based on something called a LUA platform, which may be issued commands in the middle of a game by using the CLUA Console. To access this console, you'll need to quit the game, open up the directory that contains the game (the default installation paths are C:\Program Files\Black Isle\Baldur's Gate and C:\Program Files\Black Isle\BGII - SoA for BG1 and BG2, respectively), and find the file BALDUR.INI. Open it up, and add a couple of lines: Find the line that says [Program Options], and directly underneath it, add the lines

Debug Mode=1
Cheats=1
CheatKeys=1

exactly as you see them written here. Then add those 3 lines again, underneath the line that says [Game Options]. The "Cheats" and "Debug Mode" commands allow access to the CLUA console, and the "CheatKeys" activates certain cheat commands for BG2. Both the Console and the CheatKeys were originally added for game-testing and bugfixing purposes. To show the Console, during a game of BG1 (while you're on the Main Game Screen) press CTRL-TAB to show or hide the Console. In BG2, the Console is brought up by pressing CTRL-SPACE. The Console itself is just a small window in which you can type text, which tells the game to do certain things: