So I just bought the game during Good Old Games D&D sale because I heard that this game is a pinnacle of the RPG genre and I absolutely love BioWare's other games so it was an easy purchase. Now my problem is I have never played D&D or a D&D video game before so I'm unsure as to how to start this game. For instance what class should I play? What is this multiclassing thing? Should I worry about that? How can you tell how much damage your character does?

So is there a guide out there for people like me or does anyone have any suggestions on where to start?

The game runs off Second Edition D&D. Basically, this means that you want your armour class as LOW as humanly possible. This is because it's subtracted directly from the d20 (that's a 20 sided dice) attack rolls.

I would highly advise against NOT playing a mage - while it does make sense narratively and it certainly isn't as difficult as it was in BG1, the systems involved might be a little overwhelming at first, with memorized spells and being EXTREMELY dependant on preparation.

Also, take a good long look through the options, particularly auto-pause. I highly recommend setting it to automatically pause every time a target dies, so you don't have party members sitting around doing nothing.

Get real comfortable with the quicksave and quickload buttons. For real. The game fully expects you to save-scum, which will become hugely evident when a party member gets petrified or otherwise suffers permadeath because a mage rolled a 20.

there are lots of funny ways to instantly die so I'm gonna say that

@Terramagi said:

Get real comfortable with the quicksave and quickload buttons. For real.

is the best advice possible.

I have not actually played Baldur's Gate so I am also loading up GOG in another tab while typing this but I have spent a bit of time with Icewind Dale which also uses this version of D and D rules. I play alot of actual pen and paper games so I feel like I still qualify to help out here.

The above advise is spot on, I would just like to add a few suggestions. Starting as a Fighter might be your best bet since their name pretty much sums up their role. Plus they dont have alot of bells and whistles to start, you add those with all the feats you will gain as you level up (AKA special attacks or abilities). So that should slow down the rate that new mechanics are introduced.

I believe that besides your armor class needing to be low, in all other cases bigger numbers mean better. A character swinging a weapon with more strength does more damage. Don't worry about multi-classing to start, that is basically mix and matching character classes to create characters for example who can swing a sword ok and cast some magic alright. This instead of making a character that is really good with a sword or really good at casting spells.

If you are looking for guides, I would guess Giantbomb has some, if not hit up Gamefaqs.com I bet there are a ton of guides and one or two of them will bound to be written for newer DnD players. Good luck!

Trust in Minsc and Boo

It doesnt really matter what char you play, you have a party of 6. Just pick a mage, fighter, druid, cleric, thief, and prob another fighter. You could prob not use the thief if you wanted to. Dont dual class anything its not worth it. Turn on the rolls/attack info to see all the information.