Baldur's Gate

Minsc and Boo, series mascot(s).

"OK, I've just about had my FILL of riddle asking, quest assigning, insult throwing, pun hurling, hostage taking, iron mongering, smart arsed fools, freaks, and felons that continually test my will, mettle, strength, intelligence, and most of all, patience! If you've got a straight answer ANYWHERE in that bent little head of yours, I want to hear it pretty damn quick or I'm going to take a large blunt object roughly the size of Elminster AND his hat, and stuff it lengthwise into a crevice of your being so seldom seen that even the denizens of the nine hells themselves wouldn't touch it with a twenty-foot rusty halberd! Have I MADE myself perfectly CLEAR?!"

—The Player Character

Baldur's Gate is a Role-Playing Game series set in the High Fantasy setting Forgotten Realms, using an adaptation of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2e revised ruleset. It was developed by BioWare.

The game's focus is on quests, characterization and dialogue, combined with a solid combat system and a continuous plotline (although the games can be played entirely separately; in fact, many fans will suggest that new gamers start with Baldur's Gate II).

The series consists of:

• Baldur's Gate
  • Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast (expansion pack)
• Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
  • Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal (expansion pack)

The setting also crosses over with Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment is considered a sister game to the series.

The plot centers around a hero who is regularly pursued due to power granted by a Mysterious Parent: some want those abilities for themselves, others are simply fearful of what the hero may become because they know With Great Power Comes Great Insanity. The first game centers around the hero learning about the powers and their source; the second deals with the consequences and choices that come with that power and knowledge.

The series is best known for its memorable selection of sidekicks, which your hero can have up to five of at any time. All have distinct, if sometimes simple, personalities and backstories, and most will drag you into at least one side quest unique to them if they stay on your team long enough. Especially in the sequel, they become fully fleshed-out characters and have a tendency to make comments or suggestions about the current situation, and interact with each other extensively.

Prior to creating Baldur's Gate, Bioware had only developed the Humongous Mecha Simulation Game, Shattered Steel, and ended up switching its company focus from action games entirely and solidified their position as perhaps the most popular modern developer of the Western RPG. Baldur's Gate was the first game to use the Infinity Engine, which was later used for the Icewind Dale series and Planescape: Torment. Since Interplay's license from WotC for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons ran out except for the Baldur's Gate franchise, Interplay made two unrelated Advanced Dungeons & Dragons-based games with the Baldur's Gate moniker: the console exclusive Gauntlet (1985 video game)-alike Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance series, and The Black Hound (codenamed "Project Jefferson"), a canceled game that was actually going to be sold as Baldur's Gate III (one of the original creators apparently intends to complete it in the form of a module for Neverwinter Nights 2, which he also worked on).

A novelization exists, but we prefer not to speak of it.

The fandom has an active modding community, and many elaborate fan-made characters and quests exist. Bioware writer David Gaider, who provided much of the game's dialogue, also created his own unofficial version of Throne of Bhaal with plenty of added difficulty for hardcore gamers. Additionally, Gaider used to hang out at the modding community's forums, helped out with dialogue for fan-made characters, and wrote silly Fan Fiction.

An enhanced version was released between 2012 and 2014 for Windows, iOS, Mac OS, Android and Linux.

In late May 2019, Larian Studios put up a teaser with a mysterious III logo. The mystery vanished with a check of the file's internal data, which proclaimed it "BaldursGate_Logo_III_retouched.png". It was officially announced on June 6ths 2019. It will use 5th Edition rules and take place 100 years after the original game, with Ilithids as the main antagonists.

There's a character sheet, which is where you should put tropes associated with individual characters.

Tropes used in Baldur's Gate include:

• 100% Heroism Rating: Actually, having a high reputation doesn't have as much of an effect as it could. Besides lower shop prices and the occasional dialogue that uses reputation as a script condition, the games are very inconsistent on whether townspeople actually recognize a high-reputation hero, or if they do, whether they care.
• 24-Hour Armor: They also hold onto their weapons at all times too.
• Aborted Arc: Several, from additional romance options for female Player Characters, to extra sidequests, to fairly major changes in the overall story. Some were cut due to time constraints, others because of fan response.
• Absurdly High Level Cap: Throne of Bhaal's experience cap of 8,000,000 is higher than a player character with a full party can reasonably achieve. There's not even much point to reaching it anyway, as most classes will "plateau" and stop gaining meaningful bonuses from their level ups before then. The ridiculously large number of mods available (if you install everything that looks interesting, the game will double in disc space taken) makes the cap a bit less ridiculous
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: In both games, as well as the expansion packs—they seem to be an architectural staple of major cities in this game world.
• Adventure Duo: In the first game, several sets of NPCs come in pairs, and you can't keep one in the party without the other unless you use an exploit. Of course, an available "exploit" is entirely natural—let one of them die. It's easier than keeping them alive, really. Their companion will get over it easily enough.
  • Jaheira and Khalid.
  • Minsc and Dynaheir.
  • Xzar and Montaron.
• Affectionate Pickpocket: Played with in Baldur's Gate II: Imoen suddenly starts acting all love-struck and swooning around Keldorn, much to his horror (since he is Lawful Good, married, and old enough to be her father). After making him squirm for a bit, Imoen chuckles and gives him his ring back.
• Already Undone for You: When attacking Bodhi for the last time, Drizzt and the Shadow Thieves are encountered halfway through the crypt that had its traps and enemies intact. This also occurs in BG:ToSC's Durlag's Tower area. Even though adventurers (a few still living, but mostly dead) have gone before you and have gotten to a certain point themselves, all of the tests, traps and enemies are intact when your party travels through it. Even Durlag's ghost states that you are the first to have ever gotten that far, even though two other adventurers (Clair and Dalton) can be found in the last two dungeon areas. The ghost is standing close to the only staircase leading up or down from this area, so how did he miss seeing them?
• Amazon Brigade: In the first game, a female Player Character can recruit any combination of Shar-Teel, Viconia, Alora, Jaheira, Dynaheir, Safana, Imoen, Branwen, Faldorn and Skie. Four Thieves, an Invoker, two Clerics and two Fighters may not seem like much, but you can always slap a Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity on a male character like Edwin or Kagain to balance things out. The second game brings back Jaheira, Viconia and Imoen, and adds Aerie, Mazzy and Nalia.
• An Adventurer Is You: Most aspects of the game's mechanics are about as standard as they come.
• An Axe to Grind: Unfortunately, it's one of the less useful weapon categories in the first game. In the second, it's one of the best, as there's and anti-undead axe, two fairly powerful axes that deal extra elemental damage, throwing axes that return to the thrower's hand, and in Throne of Bhaal, there's even a vorpal axe.
• And I Must Scream: The "Imprisonment" spell, which traps its victims in a small sphere deep beneath the earth's surface for all eternity. Mercifully averted in that the victim is reduced to a state of suspended animation and doesn't actually feel anything. Played straight with the Soul Prison in the Underdark though.
• An Economy Is You: While there are a few shops that sell household goods (which you can't enter), most merchants in the games sell only weapons, armor, scrolls, potions and other equipment that would be more useful to adventurers than normal people. Furthermore, if you buy a merchant out of a particular good, s/he remains out of it for the rest of the game, and if you sell something you have to them, they'll never re-sell it or otherwise get rid of it.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Don't approach the thieves guild in the first game unless you intend to join them or are prepared for a fight.
• Anything That Moves: Bhaal takes this trope to its logical extreme and for all the implications that follow. Let it be known that the Lord of Murder does not discriminate in this regard. See Shapeshifting Squick. Well, at least they were all alive and capable of sexual reproduction, but that's about all the discretion he showed. He must have slept with every living creature this side of mustard jellies. Also, he must have been at this for a while, considering that he would have had to have sired Abazigal several hundred years ago for him to be the size he is (and for that matter, for his son Draconis to be the size he is. And to a lesser extent, in order for dwarf and gnome bhaalspawn to be adults as well, although Humans, Haflings, Half-Elves, and Elves all reach physical maturity at 25 or earlier.
  • May be a subversion, in that all the clues say is The lord of murder shall perish, but in his doom he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny.: he may not actually have literally slept with the mothers of all of the bhaalspawn, and instead his immortal essence traveled into the past by varying degrees (so that the bhaalspawn all 'came of age' at the same time) and caused a type of semi-mystical parthenogenesis.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Despite the fact that there are more than 30 playable characters among the various games, you can only have five in your party at any one time in addition to the Player Character. Particularly Egregious since the game doesn't even make an attempt to Hand Wave it when you try to add a seventh member to the party, and it's perfectly possible to control more than six characters with charm spells, summonings, and the like. Some have suggested that there were plans at some point to increase the limit for the sequel, as indicated by the room in the interface for such, but that never happened.
  • This is likely an effect of Baldur's Gate being an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game. Official Dungeons & Dragons materials and publications generally state the optimal size of a group of players (not counting the DM) as four to five or four to six, varying a bit from edition to edition and work to work. It was probably the developers' intention that, since they had to draw the line somewhere, they might as well draw it at the point it would be drawn in a real game of Dungeons & Dragons.
• Armor Is Useless: Not the case in game, but the philosophy of the kensai kit, that a true master of his weapon need not enter battle with encumbrance. Actually true in the Throne of Bhaal expansion. Both you and your enemies have so much Thac0 that almost all attacks automatically hit anyway, doesn't matter if you are naked or wearing full-plate armor made of dragon scale, carrying tower shield and being protected by several spells increasing your AC.
• Arrows on Fire: Arrows with a fire enchantment burn after being launched.
• Artifact Title: Baldur's Gate isn't visited at all in the second game (discounting the tutorial section of course).
• Author Vocabulary Calendar: Whoever wrote the love tracks for Jaheira and Viconia seemed to have a particular fondness for the word "maudlin".
• Badass Family: Player's party may become one if you have Imoen and Sarevok in your party. Add one of the four possible love interests and it becomes a complete family (with kids if you chose Aerie) By the end of Throne of Bhaal your party is ungodly powerful and takes on an Almost-Goddess Amelyssan, how much more badass can one get?
• Bag of Holding: Oh, quite literally. You get it sometime after you meet up with Irenicus.
• Bag of Sharing: Averted in that every character gets their own inventory, but as long as they're not too far apart, items can be exchanged between them at any point. If you've run a single character off on their own, get into trouble and have no healing potions on them though... You can have actual bags that work like this if you use a cheat to get multiple copies of the same Bag of Holding.
• Bag of Spilling: Baldur's Gate II; justified by getting captured between games. You get to keep all your skills though, and a few special items are kept in a locker.
  • Though indirectly it actually can be of the variant that your character is inexplicably no longer capable of what he was before. Since Baldur's Gate I had no kits and a different proficiency system, importing a Baldur's Gate I character into Baldur's Gate II allows you to change from your base class to a kit and makes you reassign your proficiency points. So it's possible that your thief that backstabbed his way through Baldur's Gate I will turn into a swashbuckler that can't backstab at all and will lose his proficiency in short swords because he is now specialized in daggers.
  • Averted between Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal. If you start from Throne of Bhaal instead of importing, you start with a lot of good stuff (though not all of the best stuff).
• Baleful Polymorph: It happens to a few characters throughout the series, and if you've got a mage in your party, you can do it to enemies.
• Barbarian Hero: A few characters fit the archetype, though no party members actually use the game's barbarian class.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: The monk class starts out with rubbish AC and low-damage, non-magical fists. By the time he hits high levels the AC problem's cured, his fists outdamage dual Katanas (which in this game are Just Better), and he gains scads of bonuses including 80%+ magic resistance.
• Battle Couple: The player character and their love interest. From the first game, Khalid and Jaheira are a notable example.
• Battle Cry: Every party member has a few.
• Bear Trap: Traps laid by thieves look like this. They're much more lethal than your standard bear trap though.
• The Beast Master: The beastmaster.
• Beat Still My Heart: Baldur's Gate II has one part of a quest where you need to get one of these from a demon to be able to leave a particular dungeon. The expansion Throne of Bhaal requires you to destroy one (in fact, two) in order to make an enemy vulnerable, allowing you to kill him.
• Bedlam House: Spellhold in Baldur's Gate II.
• Beneath the Earth:
  • A good portion of Baldur's Gate II takes place here.
  • Significant portions of the plot occur in mines in Baldur's Gate I.
• Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics: Darts and throwing knives move very slowly and will change direction in midair if their target moves. Arrows will also change direction if the target moves, though they don't move as slow as throwing knives.
• Black and Gray Morality: Particularly in the second game, in which the Player Character is forced to take sides in a gang war between a ruthless criminal organization which tortures and executes its own members and a coterie of bloodthirsty vampires who have slaughtered hundreds of people. It's difficult to roleplay realistically if your character is a Paladin, Ranger or other do-gooder.
  • A popular Game Mod allows the player to instead take the side of the Athkatla City Watch, which strikes blows against both the Shadow Thieves and Bodhi's organization and lets you feel good doing it.
• Body Horror: Many examples, from the "Tortured Ones" in Irenicus' dungeon, to the Skin Dancers, to the main character's transformation into the Slayer.
• Bonus Boss: Aec'Letec in Tales of the Sword Coast, Kangaxx in Baldur's Gate II, and Demogorgon in Throne of Bhaal. To a lesser extent, most dragons in Baldur's Gate II and some in Throne of Bhaal.
• Bonus Dungeon: Durlag's Tower in Tales of the Sword Coast and Watcher's Keep in Throne of Bhaal.
• Boring but Practical:
  • The first level Mage spell Magic Missile and the 1st level Cleric spell Command are spells that are reliable and effective at higher levels. Command knocks an opponent out for a round which, when in melee range, will lead to high amounts of damage. The Mulahey fight in the first game becomes laughably simple when he cannot bring in reinforcements while Magic Missile is the only spell that will always get around Sarevoks magic resistance.
  • Also, in the first game, the first level Mage Spell Chromatic Orb will, at the maximum level achievable in the game, slightly damage and fairly reliably paralyze (for a good thirty seconds or more) most enemies without specific protections or magic resistance, which includes some boss-type enemies.
• Bottomless Bladder: Partly averted in that characters get tired without sleep. Otherwise played straight and lampshaded in a loading screen tip in Baldur's Gate II. The manual states that the characters take care of such things when the player isn't looking. A banter between Minsc and Aerie suggests that a bit of carelessness resulted in a... ah, rash in an embarrassing place.
• Bowdlerize: In the original release of the first game, the opening cutscene shows the blood of Sarevok's first victim filling the depressions in the game's emblem, after which the eyes of the skull light up. In the three-disc rerelease, this is removed.
• Break the Cutie: Imoen gets more serious between games due to this trope. Also, that wraith who impersonates Gorion will break down your lover.
• Brick Joke: In the prologue of the first game, you can encounter two would-be bounty hunters, after the price on your head. Five chapters later, in the city of Baldur's Gate, you can meet a woman named Sanadal Gwist, at an inn in the southeast section of the city, who says she's worried about her missing brother and cousin and asks if you can look for them. She mentions their names, and they're the same as the two guys who tried to kill you. No reason to feel too bad about it though, since she finally admits that she's really looking for them because they both owe her money and then asks you to smack them for her if you see them (way ahead of you, Sanadal).
• Broken Bridge: The city of Baldur's Gate is closed off until you solve the ore problem... it's even an actual bridge, the Serpent's Causeway.
• Burn the Witch: And more than once.
• But He Sounds Handsome: Edwin pulls this in Shadows of Amn when confronted by another wizard who is hunting him.

Edwin: Er... I am no Edwin, as you claim. I know him not. He sounds like a worthy mage of distinction, and I am probably weaker having not made his acquaintance.

• Cain and Abel: Played straight in Baldur's Gate I, then played with for all it's worth in Throne of Bhaal, which is more like "Cain and Cain and Cain and Cain and Cain and Abel". ...Only with Abel murdering all the Cains. And going on to become God.... Maybe.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: You can't hide at Candlekeep.
• The Cameo: A few canonical Forgotten Realms characters show up, some just to say "Hi" and others to play slightly larger roles in the plot.
• Can't Argue with Elves: Averted: you can. And if you don't, Valygar will. And if he doesn't... well, let's just say the elves deserve to be argued with this time around.
• Can't Catch Up: Particularly in the first game, several characters can't be recruited until well into the game. Although they'll be leveled approximately equally to the Player Character if they're added to the party, their skills, weapon proficiencies, spellbooks and/or HP will have been determined by the computer in a sub-optimal fashion. As a result, they're likely to be underpowered compared to characters who have been in the party for the entire game, and since due to the experience cap you can't level them further, there's no way for them to catch up.
• Capital City: Athkatla, the capital of Amn.
• Carry a Big Stick: Clubs are one category of weapons in the game, though it's so obviously limited that investing proficiency points in it is not a very good idea. In the second game, if you don't feel like wasting spells on melting the bodies of downed trolls, one particular acid-damage club makes the proficiency come in very handy.
• Casanova Wannabe: Salvanas the elf.
• Character Development: Particularly in Shadows of Amn, in which the developers incorporated lots of eastern RPG-style character-based sidequests to develop the personalities and backstories of the various sidekicks.
• Character Portrait: Critical characters get them.
• Chekhov's Skill: For about 99% of the game, Detect Evil is only good as an Enemy-Detecting Radar. That other 1%? A sidequest where using it is the only way to get a good outcome.
• Chewing the Scenery: Those Big Bads love their scenery-chewing evil speeches, indeed they do.
• Chunky Salsa Rule: Delivering a hard enough fatal blow (that is hitting an opponent so hard that their HP goes past 0 and far into the negatives) causes enemies to explode into a bloody chunks. The same thing can happen to your allies on higher difficulty levels, preventing them from being resurrected.
• Church Militant: Clerics and Paladins.
• The City Narrows: The Slums district in Athkatla.
• City of Adventure: Baldur's Gate, Athkatla, Saradush.
• Climbing Climax: Inverted in the intro to Baldur's Gate I, which has Sarevok chasing an apparently heroic person up a tower.
• Clown Car Grave: Due to game mechanics, zombies, mummies and other undead can endlessly spawn at times.
• Color-Coded Timestop
• Color Coded for Your Convenience:
  • All spells within the same school will have the same primary color in their visual effect.
  • Also, the circles around a character's feet tell you if they're a recruitable NPC (green), a neutral NPC (cyan), Fleeing/Berserk (yellow) or hostile (red).
• Combat by Champion: The fight with Faldorn, one of the arena types in Ust Natha, and an encounter in ToB.
• Compilation Rerelease: For BG1 with TotSC as The Original Saga, Baldur's Gate II with Throne of Bhaal as The Collection, and now all four in one.
• Convection, Schmonvection: The Temple Ruins dungeon in Baldur's Gate II features pits of red-hot magma. Characters can walk within six inches of them without being affected; they'll only take damage if they actually step on the lava.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Iron Throne in the first game pretty much consists of them.
• Critical Encumbrance Failure: A character carrying more weight than their strength allows will be unable to move.
• Critical Existence Failure: Until they die, the only penalty characters will suffer for taking damage is to their morale checks. However, some spells only work on creatures whose remaining Hit Points are below a certain number.
• Critical Hit: On an attack roll of 20, and possibly 19 with style proficiencies.
• Critical Psychoanalysis Failure: Irenicus takes over Spellhold, an asylum which is supposed to specialize in holding powerful wizards.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Just see the quote at the top of the page.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Done to an extreme in the sequel. The game dialogue and set-up tells you exactly who you traveled with—Khalid, Jaheira, Minsc, Dynaheir and Imoen—and tells you exactly how you behaved—heroically. Needless to say, rationalizing what you are shown and told in the intro level was very difficult if you were Chaotic Evil. Unless, of course, you're Dangerously Genre Savvy, and your character wants to be a Villain with Good Publicity. Alas, given the way the game world works, the difference between a Villain with Good Publicity and a Hero is non-existent. Officially it goes even further, as the Baldur's Gate novels are Forgotten Realms canon which solidifies, among other things, Jaheira as the canon Love Interest, Abdel being a True Neutral fighter with black hair who wore a chainmail tunic, and other details.
• Darker and Edgier: Baldur's Gate I's themes weren't nearly as grim as some of the elements of Baldur's Gate II.
• Deadly Disc: The Energy Blade high level ability.
• Deadpan Snarker: Most of the cast, though some more than others. The Player Character can be plenty snarky as well.
• Debut Queue: How most party members are encountered.
• Defend Command: The Blade's defensive spin ability.
• Dem Bones: A common enemy, as an encounter in the first game and mages' summon in the second.
• Demoted to Extra: Happens to a number of playable characters from Baldur's Gate who don't have bridges dropped on them between games. Altough, as this troper knows from looking at the realm map, the second game is placed over 200 miles away, which means that someone around level 7 (your starting place in the second game) would take several in-game months to get to there without high-level magical help, which would break their bank as a single NPC. Of course, you get teleport-kidnapped, saving a lot of time.
• The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Has its own page.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The Bonus Boss battle against Demogorgon, the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse's most powerful Demon Lord in a straight fight. Amelyssan also counts, seeing as how she was almost 99.99% the Goddess of Murder by the time you fought her. Considering that the remaining .01% of Murder God is the Player Character, any "normal" monster that manages to kill you might also qualify. To be fair, punching out Cthulhu is not all that uncommon in the setting. Forgotten Realms deities are not invulnerable or immortal, and in fact, there's a fair amount of turnover in the pantheon.
• Disadvantageous Disintegration: Disintegration is a One-Hit Kill spell that destroys the enemy... as well as any equipment he was carrying. Since any enemy powerful enough to be worth killing instantly is also going to be carrying loot worth taking, this spell is impractical.
• Discard and Draw: CHARNAME losing Bhaalspawn powers and much of his soul is replaced by being able to transform into the Slayer.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In Athkatla, any mages caught casting any form of magic are imprisoned and horrifically tortured for the rest of their lives. Or simply murdered, as in the case with the player character (unless you manage to just keep on killing Cowled Wizards until they give up).
• Doom Magnet:
  • The protagonist, and it's a major and recurring plot point.
  • Xan seems to think everyone and everything is a Doom Magnet (after all, Life is so hollow).
  • And Haer'Dalis thinks of you as this... and likes it, since he worships Entropy.
• Door to Before: The exit from the Underdark conveniently drops the party off back at the mainland.
• The Dragon: Bodhi for Irenicus in Shadows of Amn. Draconis for Abazigal in Throne of Bhaal. Unmodded, Draconis can often be more difficult than Abazigal.
• Dronejam: Common in the first game due to the atrocious pathfinding. Alleviated in the sequel as party members gained the ability to push other people out of the way.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Several party members from the first game turn up dead in rather anti-climactic fashion. Inverted when, due to the open nature of the games, several characters who should (if you got them killed) be dead after the first game can still show up for a cameo in the second. Lampshaded when the Player Character can actually ask them 'Didn't you die?' This is in fact perfectly reasonable in a Dungeons & Dragons world.
• Drop the Hammer: The Hammer of Thunderbolts + 3 qualifies on its own, but becomes an Infinity Plus One Hammer when forged with a few other things into Crom Fayr... which, aside from being insanely powerful and slaying some golems and giants instantly, increases the wielder's strength to the highest it's possible to attain.
• Dual-Wielding: The style that generally gives the best damage output. If the character has the right setup, dual wielding can be better than a two-handed weapon, but it has its share of penalties such as to: hit penalties and needing one more point for full proficiency than the other styles.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Justified in the first game, as the party's feats are ostensibly being hidden by the Iron Throne. Also justified at the beginning of the sequel, as the citizens of Amn have no reason to care about what happens in the north. Played straight after that. Averted in Throne of Bhaal, in which the party will be showed respect. If you talk to the right citizens in Nashkel, Beregost and Baldur's Gate in Baldur's Gate II, they will thank you for what you have done (sometimes you have to leave town and come back later for it to work).
• Dungeon Bypass: The Underwater City can be skipped entirely by choosing to leave Brynnlaw via a portal instead of a ship. Doing this will cause the player to miss out on one of the best cloaks in the game though. Most of the Underdark's quests can be skipped simply by... heading out the exit. Adalon even mentions this if the questline is completed.
• Easing Into the Adventure: The first game starts CHARNAME off in his hometown killing rats and incompetent assassins.
• Empty Room Psych: Some wilderness areas in the first game are like this. If you explore them thoroughly, you'll find you got nothing out of it besides some fights with a smattering of randomly generated enemies. Small Teeth Pass in the sequel is also particularly non-notable.
• Enemy Chatter: Several scripted encounters which may or may not end in a fight.
• Epic Flail: The Flail of Ages on its own makes having a character with proficiency in flails worthwhile.
• Even Evil Has Standards: More like "Even Chaotic Neutral Has Standards" due to the implications of the alignment system, but the Shadow Thieves are this to the Assassins Guild in the second game.
• Every Man Has His Price: In Shadows of Amn, the mercenary mages an old enemy, a former slaver, of Jaheira's hires to curse her can be convinced to abandon their employer if you offer to pay them more money when you track them down. Pay extra and they will even backstab him the moment he tries to summon them to his aid. You even ask their leader how much you would have to pay to get them to betray their contract. This adds an extra layer of defeat for the slaver since he spent his last savings on this revenge scheme while the few thousand gold you pay to turn his own mercs against him might be chicken feed to you at this point.
• Everything's Better with Chickens: At least two quests involve them.

CHARNAME: Forsooth! Methinks you are no ordinary talking chicken!

• • Alternatively...

CHARNAME: Unholy magics are afoot! This chicken is possessed! This bird is FOUL!!!

• Everything's Better with Cows:
  • Summon Cow, a spell exclusive to Elminster (which you'll normally only see if you pick an unwinnable fight against him), causes a cow to fall on its target.
  • One of the quests in the first game requires you to rescue a farmer's cow from Xvarts. Doing so grants you reputation, XP and a useful tip from her owner.
  • A Wild Mage surge in Baldur's Gate II can cause a cow to materialize and fall on one of your party members.
• Everything's Worse with Bears: Actually, bears are one of the least fearsome enemies that can be encountered regularly, though for low level parties in the first game this only applies to Black and Brown bears. If you went to get Dynaheir for Misc early on and accidentally wandered into one of the Mountain or Cave Bears in the South West of the Sword Coast, then you're in for a nasty surprise, especially if you charge them head on assuming they'll fall as easily as the other kinds.
• Evil Is Petty: Ye gods, has this series got a lot of this.
• Evil Mentor: Dermin.
• Evil Pays Better: Not by a long shot. Good characters get more XP, more rare artifacts, lower shop prices, less bounty hunter chases, and a larger selection of party members. About the only advantage evil gets is that the evil NPCs you can add to your party are better specialists: Korgan (later Sarevok) is the best fighter, Viconia is the best cleric, and Edwin is the best mage. Even that's a mixed bag, however, as unlike, say, Minsc, Anomen and Nalia, all three are one-trick ponies. Besides, you don't have to be evil to keep an evil party and two of the above characters can be convinced to do a Heel Face Turn. Especially since the most Lawful Good NPC in the game Keldorn is the only one who can wield Carsomyr.
• Evil Sorcerer: One of the more common villain types.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Played straight with Sarevok, who was voiced by deep-voiced villain specialist Kevin Michael Richardson. Averted with Irenicus, who speaks in a normal register, as well as major female villains Bodhi and Amelissan.
• Evil Versus Evil:
  • In the first game, you can get caught in the middle of a feud between Umberlee and Talos.
  • In the sequel, the group trying to kill Viconia are fanatical worshippers of Beshaba, the Chaotic Evil goddess of bad luck. And you have to pick sides in a bloody feud between the local mob (Shadow Thieves) and a hidden vampire cult.
• Evil Weapon: You can acquire several weapons that are described this way, though only a few have this reflected in any way in their mechanics.
• Exclusively Evil: Subverted repeatedly. Many of the games' antagonists feel that this is In the Blood for the Bhaalspawn, but the main character can act any way the player likes, to the point of becoming one of the world's most renowned heroes. Lots of other canonically Exclusively Evil beings (vampires, demons, ogres, dark elves, etc) show up in the games, and for almost every one there's at least one individual for whom My Species Doth Protest Too Much.
• Expansion Pack: Both games got one.
• Expecting Someone Taller: Renal Bloodscalp reacts this way to the player character.
• Exponential Potential: The selection of spells available can become overwhelming.
• Eye Scream: The Cult of the Unseeing Eye, membership in which requires Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Fairy Battle: In Baldur's Gate II, even though Drizzt is not hostile unless CHARNAME provokes him, encountering him is still accompanied by the narrator saying the party has been ambushed.
• False Innocence Trick:
  • The first time is while escaping from Irenicus' dungeon. You run across an imprisoned man in a rather luxurious cell, with a large number of booby-trapped treasure chests to boot. If you let him out, he shortly afterward reveals he's a doppelganger and attacks, with rather predictable results.
  • The second time is about halfway through the game, when Yoshimo, who had (potentially) joined you near the start, reveals himself as a Sixth Ranger Traitor for Irenicus, due to a geas placed on him. The next time you meet him after that, there is no way around killing him off for real.
• Fantastic Racism: Having the Dark Elf Viconia on your team will lower your reputation. Keldorn, who's usually quite fair and level-headed, hates her just because of her race, and will eventually try to kill her if they both remain in the team for too long. This can happen in the first game as well. Kivan may attack Viconia because he despises the Drow, although getting this to actually happen is apparently rather tricky.
• Fantasy Character Classes: As a Dungeons & Dragons game, it has the standard selection.
• Fate Worse Than Death: Happens to lots of characters, major and minor.
• Feelies: Some editions of Baldur's Gate II had plenty of extra stuff, and all of them came with a rather nice cloth map.
• Fetch Quest: Most of them optional, thankfully. If you cast the spell Limited Wish and ask for "A quest unlike anything before" (paraphrased), you can embark on one that requires you to go all over an area completing a lengthy chain of deals to get everyone the things they want so you can finally get the thing you're looking for. The only thing that makes it unlike previous fetch quests is the sheer level of its tediousness.
• Fictional Document: Plenty of them, ranging to plot-relevant info to Continuity Porn for Dungeons & Dragons fans.
• Fighting a Shadow: Fighting Demogorgon.
• Final Boss, New Dimension: The final fights in Baldur's Gate II and its expansion both occur on different planes.
• Final Boss Preview: In the second game, Jon Irenicus manages to effortlessly capture the party twice, killing some of them in the process, before you even get the chance to fight him. And in the first game, Sarevok shows up in the introduction to kill your mentor, though he's only identified as "Armored Figure" at the time.
• Final Death: Except on low difficulties, party members who are gibbed or killed in certain magical ways cannot be resurrected.
• First Town: In Baldur's Gate II, the starting town of Athkala is also one of the most active areas for quests and encounters.
• Fishing for Mooks: "Pulling" single enemies away from larger groups is an essential tactic.
• Five-Man Band: It's not immediately obvious, but the people with whom you end up escaping from Irenicus' dungeon count. Your player character is The Hero, Jaheira is The Lancer, Minsc is The Big Guy, Yoshimo is The Smart Guy, Imoen is The Chick, and don't forget Boo as the Team Pet. You could make a similar case for the "default good party" the second game assumes you had in the first, although there is obvious overlap since there are six of them. Jaheira -- The Lancer, Khalid -- The Chick (but only literal if he is wearing the gender switching girdle), Minsc -- The Big Guy, Dynaheir -- The Smart Guy (she certainly thinks she is and her stats say so, and with so little dialogue for the playable characters in the first game that's about as good as you're going to get), Imoen -- The Lancer/The Chick. Although Imoen, despite being of comparable age to the protagonist, could also be considered the Tagalong Kid due to her kid-sister attitude and childlike demeanor.
• Flaming Sword:
  • The Flame Blade spell.
  • Also a +1 (+4 vs undead) sword available in Tale of Sword Coast. It's really cool.
  • And don't forget Xan's Moonblade.
• Fog of War
• Footnote Fever: The manuals, which seem to be at least partly in-universe documents, have the comments of Elminster and Volo scribbled in them.
• Forest Ranger: The ranger is supposed to be this, though since the game doesn't have any mechanics associated with what environment the party is in, it doesn't really affect anything.
• Friendly Fireproof: Weirdly, averted with some AoE spells (e.g. Fireball, Lightning Bolt), but played straight with others (Comet, Horrid Wilting).
• The Fun in Funeral: You can run into a funeral gone horribly wrong in the Athkatla Graveyard District in Baldur's Gate II. Nevin gave his Uncle Lester such a cheap funeral (sold Lesters clothes, closed casket, flowers picked from the swamp that morning, paid a drunken priest to give a eulogy) that Lester rose from his casket as a zombie out of the shear indignity of it. Unless you intervene (and you don't have to), Lester will kill Nevin and then shamble off to find a Calimshite whore he knew because there's "always time for one last quickie."
• Game Mod: Many, many mods, ranging from adding characters with banters to whole quests to making certain bosses harder and smarter. A notable one is the Ascension mod (developed by one of the series' designers), which fixes and adds many things to Throne of Bhaal, one of which is turning the final battle into a fight of truly epic proportions. Another popular mod is Unfinished Business which restores a lot of cut content to Baldurs Gate II. There's also an Unfinished Business for Baldur's Gate I, which does the same.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Imoen always manages to get herself arrested by casting spells illegally upon exiting Irenicus' dungeon, even if she's got none left memorized when you escape. Similarly Yoshimo can't be resurrected despite the fact that in Dungeons & Dragons, it is possible to bring a dead character back from almost ANYTHING, up to and including the total destruction of their physical body (however, it's implied that the character in question won't want to - which prevents all resurrection - as he specifically asks you to take his heart instead of resurrecting him). Conversely, enemies using spells are exempt, such as the Gith trying to retrieve the Silver Blade when you return to Athkatla. In Baldur's Gate II, a cleric of Chaotic Neutral alignment can take the cleric kit "Priest of Helm". According to the rules, a chaotic priest of Helm wouldn't be allowed since the god Helm is firmly opposed to chaos.
• Geas: Yoshimo in Baldur's Gate II is under a geas to betray you at a certain point of the plot. Lothander, a thief in Baldur's Gate I, is under a geas that forces him to do the Iron Throne's bidding. It results in a Sidequest for CHARNAME's party after Lothander reveals that your rations were poisoned by his associate.
• Gender Bender:
  • There's a certain enchanted girdle in the first game that does this.
  • And a sidequest for Edwina which doubles as a couple of Crowning Moment of Funny.
  • A Wild Mage surge can cause this to happen to either party members or enemies in Baldur's Gate II.
• Gender Neutral Writing: The first game is written in an almost completely gender neutral fashion, only a small handful of conversations make reference to your character's gender. It usually works since many conversations are directed to your party as a whole rather than to a specific person. Sometimes it's rather jarring though, like your female dwarf character getting mistaken for a local bounty hunter who is a male human.
• Genre Savvy: Cyric, the God of Madness, bizarrely enough. He has a private chat with the main character in a relatively human form for an avatar. In a But Thou Must! moment, you call him out on this, where he responds with something along the lines of "What, I have to have some grisly form like the Slayer (Bhaal's avatar which the protagonist can turn into), some booming voice from the clouds or a puff of smoke?". Some dialogue options from the main character can indicate this as they portray the main character as someone who is frustrated by having to do what the story demands him to do.
• Get on the Boat: How the player gets to Spellhold.
• Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: The Bonus Boss battle against the Enclave of the Twisted Rune, which was part of a subquest that was only partially implemented in the game's initial release, leaving players wondering what a group of ultra-powerful spellcasters were doing hanging out in the basement of a shipping warehouse in the Bridge District. Fan-made mods filled in the blanks, making this battle a bit less of a Non Sequitur Scene. There's also Semaj, who unlike Sarevok's other "elite" minions (Tazok, Angelo and Tamoka) received no prior characterization or buildup and seemed to be at the final battle just so the bad guys had a wizard on their side.
• Give Me Your Inventory Item: Several quests.
• Gladiator Revolt
• Glass Cannon:
  • The "Kensai" fighter kit.
  • Also a mage class in the first game. Small hp (mage can be easily one-shotted by critical hit), not many spells and very few means to protect himself. But in second game, when he gain higher level spells, mage becomes walking fortress capable of both dealing great amount of damage and withstanding huge amount of punishment because of his protection spells.
• A God Am I: Given that the plot of the series involves claiming the power of a dead dark god, it's a pretty common sentiment among the major villains. It's also possible for the player character to play it this way.
  • "The day comes when Tiax will point and click!"
• A God Is You: Edwin and Tiax are aware of being led by a mouse, Khalid tells it to "c-click on someone your own size", Dynathir tells the player to watch where they place the "pointer", and Jaheira acknowledges the "omnipresent authority figure".
  • At least one non-recruitable NPC acknowledges this as well.

Dunkin: Hey, don't click me! I don't want any trouble!

• Go Mad from the Revelation: What put a few of the inmates in Spellhold. Imoen flirts with it as well.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: Attacking Bodhi's guild in Baldur's Gate II.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: In Baldur's Gate, the only characters with visible scars are Ajantis, Montaron and Shar-Teel. Ajantis has a single scar running neatly along his cheek, which almost adds to his dignity if anything. Montaron's face is heavily scarred, which goes along with him being intended to be an ugly character, and Shar-Teel has single scar on her chin which is barely visible. Scarring is very common in the Baldur's Gate II portraits regardless of alignment.
• Gossip Evolution: After clearing Nashkel Mines, this can be noticed among the commoners.
• Grand Finale: Throne of Bhaal.
• Grid Inventory: Inverted: the sizes of the objects do not matter, but their weights do.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: The Wyvern's Tail +2 is a morningstar with a wyvern's stinger attached to it, and the Bone Club +2 is made from its creator's femur.
• Guide Dang It: If you want to achieve One Hundred Percent Completion, you'd better believe it. Entire areas of the game world can be Lost Forever if you don't go about things the right way. It doesn't help in the official strategy guides for all the entries in the series are not very useful. One look at their respective Amazon.com ratings will tell you that.
  • In the first game, you can find hidden items, such as rare armour or rings. You can find these items later on in the game, but since the items are hidden very early on (an extremely rare ring can be found as early as chapter one), they'll give you a major advantage. Shame said items are in the most obscure, out of the way places, where you would never think to look, and are small you'd have a hard time finding them even if you knew where to look.
  • You can get some pretty great items through pick-pocketing, but good luck finding the right marks on your own. You'll probably just end up with a handful of petty cash or, more likely, everyone just hating your guts.
• Guilt Based Gaming: Trying to quit Baldur's Gate II with Alt-F4 will remind you that "Boo will miss you".
• Half-Human Hybrid:
  • Half-elves and half-orcs.
  • There are also half-ogres in Baldur's Gate I, as well as the Ogrillon, which is a half-orc/half-ogre hybrid.
  • The second game introduced the Orog, another type of orc/ogre hybrid (much like mules and hinnies are two different types of horse/donkey hybrid, although they look a lot more similar to each other than orogs and ogrillons).
• Hannibal Lecture: You get LOTS of these. Mostly from your Enemy Within.
• Healing Hands:
  • Paladins' Lay on Hands ability heals the target with HP equal to twice the the paladin's level. Which means that no matter what level you use it at, it usually won't be useful because either the effect is too little or the damage enemies are dishing out will be too high.
  • Good aligned player characters of all classes receive healing spells after the first two nightmares in game 1. Actually it's based on your reputation at the time of the dream not your alignment, 10+ is good, 9- is evil. In the second game, if you make a fresh character, then it does generic them for your alignment (to a degree; LG has all good, CE has all bad, TN has 1 of each, and the rest are random).
• Health Damage Asymmetry: Averted.
• Hello, Insert Name Here: CHARNAME, as s/he is affectionately called by the community.
• Hidden Elf Village: Suldanesselar, which is an entire Hidden Elf Capital City.
• Historical Domain Character: In the second game, the deputy of Sir Anarg the Fallen Paladin is one Reynald De Chatillon, the notoriously violent and otherwise unpleasant Crusader.
• Hitchhiker Heroes: Several potential party members are met this way, particularly in the first game.
• Hobbits: As with all Dungeons & Dragons based role-playing games. Montaron and Mazzy manage to subvert the typical stereotype of a race of cheery, mischievous, good-hearted burglars by being a grumpy, thuggish Psycho for Hire and an honorable, butt-kicking female knight respectively. Alora from the first game managed to play the stereotype straight though.
• Hollywood Torches: All over the place, including in many areas that have supposedly been abandoned for hundreds of years. They're probably magical.
• Homing Boulders: Projectiles will change their flight path if the target moves. This could actually be justified for enchanted projectiles, but happens to all of them.
• Honest John's Dealership: Borda in Baldur's Gate I, who's encountered in the middle of nowhere, sells cursed items, and then promptly disappears forever. There's also a "Discount shop" in the city of Baldur's Gate that sells mostly cursed items. No warranty whatsoever. The people at the Adventurer's Mart in Baldur's Gate II reek of this, but will never actually screw the player over.
• How Do I Shot Web?: A creature encountered in Waukeen's Promenade who is looking for the Silver Blade has not quite mastered how to cast the specific spell he wants.
• HP to One: The "Harm" spell, which enemies rarely use but which can be extremely powerful when employed by a Combat Medic in the party.
• Hulk Speak:
  • Ogres, half-ogres, trolls, and other brutish monsters tend to talk like this.

Ogre: Me will crush you! Crush you to goo!

• • Oddly enough, Ogrillons don't, even though they're said to be half-ogre.

Ogrillon: Time for some carnage!

• Humans Are Average: They receive no penalties or bonuses to their attributes, and their only special ability is dual-classing, which replaces multiclassing for them. Dual-classing, however, can be used to make some ridiculously imbalanced combinations, which may actually make this an indirect example of Humanity Is Superior. There are a handful of human-only classes and kits, such as Paladins. They get a class specific Infinity+1 Sword, as well as being generally badass melee fighters, and they can help out with healing once they've levelled up a bit.
• Humans Are White: Averted. There are lots of non-white humans in addition to all the dwarves, elves and gnomes.
• I Fought the Law and the Law Won: If the Flaming Fist guards of the first game confront you about a crime, fighting them almost always ends badly. Just run for it, okay?
• If You Know What I Mean: The thief Narlen in the first game:

Narlen: Swiped the Duchess' knickers once... if you know what I mean!

• If You're So Evil Eat This Kitten: The player has to do this at points in the Shadow Thieves quest line, particularly while rooting out Mae'Var. However, since the Shadow Thieves are the gray half of Athkala's Black and Gray Morality, it's not too bad. It's played a little more straight in some other quests, though.
• I Have Your Wife: Bodhi pulls this by abducting your lover and turning him/her into a vampire when you enter the graveyard district to assault her guild in Baldur's Gate II.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Yaga-Shura in Throne of Bhaal.
• Improbable Power Discrepancy: The Amnish guards in Baldur's Gate II are amazingly even more powerful than the Baldur's Gate guards in Baldur's Gate, so much so that if the power discrepancy were "real" instead of merely game mechanics (to compensate for higher-level player characters), the Amnish could simply march their supermen up to Baldur's Gate and conquer the area within days. And then there's the Tethyrian and Calishite legions and mercenaries in Throne of Bhaal, whose rank-and-file footmen carry + 2 magical weapons.
• Improbable Species Compatibility: As stated above, Bhaal seems to have bred with just about anything. His children seem to inherit the ability.
• Inept Mage: The Wild Mage class.
• Infant Immortality
• Infinity-1 Sword: Since Carsomyr is only usable by paladins or rogues who have the Use Any Item ability, Lilarcor is often used by the party's best warriors instead.
• Infinity+1 Sword:
  • Carsomyr, to the point where, when wielded by the already magic-resistant Inquisitor subclass, it's almost a Game Breaker.
  • Crom Faeyr is an Infinity-Plus-One Warhammer Fantasy Battle.
  • In Throne of Bhaal, almost every weapon class gets its own Infinity Plus One variant.
  • Then there's the Staff of the Magi, which despite being for mages only is just as good if not better than Carsomyr. Makes it very good for use by a fighter-mage variant.
• Informed Attribute: The player character's alignment. Since there's no real penalty for acting against alignment, even players who intend to be evil will usually pick a Good alignment for the reputation bonus.
• In Harmony with Nature: Rangers and druids.
• Insane Troll Logic: We get some of this logic coming from an actual insane troll. Here's the conversation if you try to keep a dialogue going as long as possible instead of attacking him right after he says:

Troll Cook: Hello there foodthing. You are just in time. Please just jump onto the grill over there.
Protagonist: Pardon me?
Troll Cook: The grill. That big metal thing. Jump on. Be careful, it's hot!
Protagonist: You speak well for a troll.
Troll Cook: My mother tried hard to give me good learning. She sent me to live with these hobgoblins here. They smart. Trained me how to cook real good.
Protagonist: Do you like these orcs?
Troll Cook: They smell bad, but they're okay. They can be mean sometimes. Chief DigDag sometimes cuts my fingers off and throws them onto the grill. Says they taste like sausages.
Protagonist: Doesn't that hurt?
Troll Cook: Yep. But I'm a troll. Fingers cut off. Fingers grow back. Now quit talking and start broiling! Chief DigDag doesn't like me talking to the food.
Protagonist: I'm not letting you cook me, you crazy troll!
Troll Cook: Uncle Cajum, he was crazy. Me, I'm not crazy. I'm a cook. Now get on the grill!
Protagonist: Why would I want to be on the grill?
Troll Cook: Geez. It's impossible to get good help nowadays. If you're not on the grill, how am I going to cook you?
Protagonist: I don't want to be cooked.
Troll Cook: If you didn't want to be cooked, then why did you apply for the job? I think you'll all make a tasty snack! Boys! Get 'em!

• Instant Allegiance Artifact: The Helm of Opposite Alignment in Throne of Bhaal.
• Insurmountable Waist High Fence: A few instances, though usually not literal fences.
• Interspecies Romance: All the female romanceable NPCs for a male Player Character are elves or half-elves, while the sole male romanceable NPC is human. Of course the player can choose what race their character will be...
• In the Blood: Played with at length (it's one of the major themes of the series), but ultimately subverted.
  • Evil Bhaalspawn are happy to believe it about themselves, but as Imoen and potentially, the protagonist prove, in this universe people ultimately choose their own moral nature.
  • Sarevok is an even stronger subversion: at first, he himself believes it, but his backstory and potential later Heel Face Turn prove him wrong: if he and the Player Character are at different ends of the ethical spectrum, it's not because of their shared parentage, but because of different experiences growing up.
  • Portalbendarwinden will tell the Player Character that their "coin is on edge", which in this universe means that the goddesses of luck have no hold on you and you are free to forge your own path, regardless of what your divine lineage may try to dictate. Whether Elminster or Gorion knew this is never revealed though. Sarevok also only performs the Heel Face Turn once he is no longer Bhaalspawn.
• In the Hood:
  • Some thief avatars.
  • In Baldur's Gate I, all thief and bard avatars have hoods, but this is because the thief and bard classes use the same models.
• Inventory Management Puzzle: Characters have both carry weight limits and limited item slots.
• Invulnerable Civilians: Averted, enemies will end up killing civilians quite often. And if you do it, man will you wind up in trouble.
• Ironic Nursery Tune: "You can't hide, war will find. You can't hide, war will find! YOU CAN'T HIDE! WAR WILL FIND!"
• Irrelevant Sidequest: The majority of content in both games.
• Item Crafting: Cromwell will create items for you if you bring the required components/pieces and enough money.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: The Turnabout mod allows a Player Character romancing Jaheira to choose this by resurrecting Khalid.
• Joke Character: A few borderline examples, particularly in the first game. Tiax and Quayle in particular are severely underpowered and seem to be around primarily for comic relief.
• Joke Item:
  • Several. Some, such as the Golden Pantaloons, turn out to be much more if you hold on to them long enough.
  • In Baldur's Gate I, there is a belt that does nothing when worn except immediately and permanently change the Player Character's gender.
• Just a Stupid Accent: Major characters in these games come from all over the Forgotten Realms and are of different races. All speak grammatically perfect English (except those who tend towards Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe), but to give them each their own personal flair, they do so with a wide variety of accents. There are Fake Brits, Lzherusskies, Violent Glaswegians, Fake Americans and others. It keeps things entertaining, but definitely contributes to the games' distinctive flavor of ham.
• Just Toying with Them: Bodhi likes to do this, although she has some difficulty pulling it off in practice against the Player Character. Firkraag in the Windspear Hills sideplot (likewise in the second game) also messes with the player character and is completely unconcerned about their possible retribution, even after they've destroyed all his minions, which he doesn't particularly mind either.
• Kangaroo Court: In Baldur's Gate 2, your character is subjected to one of these by an ambitious Harper. Granted, he may be right about you if you are playing an evil character, but that isn't why he is accusing you. No matter how you answer his questions, he will find a way to twist them and make you seem like a dangerous monster not unlike an illithid or beholder that needs to be sealed away forever. Jaheira calls him out on this and declares that he cares more about his own advancement than about actually protecting the balance. At least you have the option of being a Deadpan Snarker throughout the whole interrogation.
• Karma Houdini:
  • The player runs across a few wrongdoers who may or may not escape justice, depending on his or her actions.
  • Neb in the first game. Thankfully, he can get what's coming to him in the second.
  • Saemon Havarian: every time you meet him, prepare to be screwed over. Don't try to avoid it because you can't. Don't try to get revenge because you won't. He gets away every time.
    • Even if you kill him in Shadows of Amn, he shows back up in Throne of Bhaal. You can kill him there too, if you're quick enough (finger of death works decently there).
  • In order to have Anomen pass his Knighthood test if you're romancing him, you have to convince him that he should let his sister's death go unavenged, even though that means letting the killer get away with it.
    • No matter how you play it, Anomen's quest becomes a Shaggy Dog Story. If he refuses to kill Saerk the first time, Saerk turns out to be the guy who kills his sister, and the Player Character must convince Anomen to let that killer go free in order to keep him in the party. The whole event is treated like a classic If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him plot, but this is a game where even good characters will have to slaughter dozens of people every time you play in order to advance the story, making it a huge Broken Aesop. To cap it off, if Anomen does kill Saerk the first time, it's later revealed that two random mooks killed his sister, and that Anomen murdered an apparently innocent man and failed his lifelong dreams for no apparent reason at all. Although, given that Saerk was said to have hired the men who killed her rather than doing the deed himself it's likely that he was still guilty, Anomen's just too unlucky to find out that he killed the right man.
• Karma Meter: The reputation level. Unfortunately, you receive a significant bonus for a high reputation and serious penalties for a very low one, so it ends up being in the best interests of even the most psychotically evil of player characters to end up being a Villain with Good Publicity. As mentioned above, you can commit any atrocity you like as long as you donate money to the church occasionally, which is cheap enough to keep the guards off you. So it's not a very accurate karma meter.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Their base stats are significantly better than those of other one-handed weapons in the game, even competing with two-handed weapons in terms of damage output: a Kensai dual wielding katanas is the game's single best melee damage dealer. In an unmodded game, this is balanced somewhat by the fact there is a far better selection of magical weapons for most other one-handed weapon types (although the magical katana known as the Celestial Fury is one of the best weapons prior to Throne of Bhaal), but the underlying assumption is still present.
• Kill It with Fire: The only way to deal with trolls besides acid.
• King Incognito: Elminster is initially encountered as this. CHARNAME apparently forgets what he looks like quick enough for him to do this again in the sequel.
• Kiss of Death: Shoal the Nereid in Baldur's Gate I.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Although unlike in most RPGs, there can be consequences if you're seen rifling through somebody's underwear drawer. Take note: you only get in trouble if you're CAUGHT. Not all NPC's will react to you rifling through their belongings. It's trial-and-error to figure out which ones these are, but the game programming wasn't as thorough in this respect as one would believe. They WILL most certainly react to you trying to pickpocket them though.
• Knight Templar: Several of the Harpers qualify. Not to mention Balthazar.
  • Mazzy (the halfling not-quite-paladin) further subverts the Lawful Stupid half, being just as righteous as Keldorn and arguably more level-headed and fair.
  • Tiax and Xzar likely qualify as Chaotic Stupid, the former as a follower of Cyric and the latter simply being insane.
• Landmark Sale: A thief in Athkatla's slums tries this.
• Laughing Mad: Will happen if you choose to take Brage to the Temple of Helm instead of killing him for the bounty on his head; once the cutscene conversation is over, click on Brage to hear a sound clip of this mixed with him crying for all the people he slaughtered.
• Lava Pit: There's a few. They do very low damage though, and even then only if you're actually standing in them.
• Least Rhymable Word: Jan asks Haer'Dalis to come up with rhymes for some of these in a banter.
• Left-Justified Fantasy Map
• Leitmotif: Party members with a Romance Sidequest have their own songs that play during romance talks. Although there are there are four potential love interests, there are actually only three of these songs as Aerie's and Jaheira's are two halves of the same song.
• Let's Play: Shugojin made a particularly hilarious Let's Play. Of course, hilarity is expected when the protagonist is a cross between a Cloudcuckoolander and Sociopathic Hero and the party consists of Minsc, Jan Jansen and Haer'Dalis as regular members. More hilarity comes from the endless mocking, Squick and sanity erosion of a trainwreck of a romance mod.
• Level Grinding: An option, though completing quests, optional quests, pursuing plot points and exploiting certain quests will net the party almost all the experience it needs.
• Level Scaling: Some monster spawns are level scaled. Many aren't though, so the ultimate effect of this on the game's difficulty isn't as much as it could be.
• Like Brother and Sister: The main character (if male) and Imoen. It's revealed that they are actually half-siblings.
• Lineage Comes From the Father: Even if the player's alignment doesn't match Bhaal's, their Bhaal essence nonetheless gives them non-standard powers as innate abilities. For the more powerful Bhaalspawn, this also means using Bhaal-related artifacts (such as Sarevok's sword and armour) which boost their already considerable power to even greater heights. Little wonder everyone's so afraid of them.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards:
  • And how. At the beginning of the first game, it's much easier to survive if your main character is a warrior of some sort. Melee class characters are still quite effective in Baldur's Gate II and Throne of Bhaal, but by the end of the latter in particular magic-oriented characters can acquire truly godlike offensive abilities.
  • Similarly with enemies, taking out plain old melee mooks becomes decidedly easier in the late game than taking out liches, beholders and other highly skilled magic users. On the flip side, a melee Player Character with the Inquisitor class wielding Carsomyr is particularly adept at putting the squish into Squishy Wizard.
• Literal Genie: In Baldur's Gate II; "Limited Wish" spell, and indeed the "Wish" spell.
• Live Item: The mage's familiar, who can be let out of the backpack but probably shouldn't be.
• Living Doll Collector: Bassilus.
• Living Legend: Most of the Bhaalspawn toil in anonymity, but Sarevok and the Player Character stand out. By the end of the series, though, everyone is moving on a plane that is beyond most mere mortals. At that experience level, everyone who represents a challenge to the Player Character is very nearly a god. In fact, the Player Character can become a god.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: And plenty of them can join your party. Each one has a different, interesting personality: the number of possible banters which can take place between your various buddies in Baldur's Gate II is astounding (though, to achieve this, there are significantly fewer Player Character's to choose from).
• Locked Door: Most locked containers can be picked. Most locked doors, however, cannot.
• Lord British Postulate: Drizzt in Baldur's Gate I was probably intended to be unkillable. A variable tracking whether you killed him carries into the sequel anyway. Technically, the second game just tracks whether or not you started the game with a piece of his equipment... which means that you can still get the same response even if you just pick-pocketed his Cool Sword instead.
  • Several plot-critical characters (such as Elthan and Aran in the Shadow Thief path) are unkillable, and furthermore spawn (equally unkillable) assassins that One Hit Kill you if you make them hostile. It's possible to kill some of them with a combination of Time Stop and Shapeshift: Illithid Form, as they have a Weaksauce Weakness towards ability drain.
  • Elminster, however, cannot be killed in either game. He never stands still, is immune to most forms of attack and walks offscreen before you can harm him enough.
• Lost Forever: The heads of the Flail of Ages from Baldur's Gate II could be fairly easily missed, and some of the romance plots could also be lost pretty easily. The same goes for every unique item in every other area which you can't reenter past a certain point, as well as some other items. This is especially annoying in case of the pieces of certain artifacts. Didn't pay quite full attention in the very first dungeon, and missed a specific jewel? No Equalizer for you. Missed an item in a hidden area in the spellhold dungeon? Forget about ever completing the Gesen Bow. Made the mistake of actually giving a snobby artist the alloy he asked for, instead of taking it to the smith to upgrade that Mace of Disruption? You'll never get the upgrade. Avoiding all of these is well inside Guide Dang It territory.
• Love Triangle: If you've got a male Player Character of the right race and two or more of Aerie, Jaheira and Viconia in the party. With all three, plus Haer'Dalis, it turns into a full-fledged Love Dodecahedron. Skie, Garrick and Eldoth can have this in the first game if they're all in your party. In the second game, a love triangle between Haer'Dalis, Aerie and a female Player Character was planned for, but not programmed in time for the game's release.
• Loyal Phlebotinum: Some equipment can only be used by specific NPCs or people of specific alignments. Or a thief with Use Any Item.
• Ludicrous Gibs: There's a gore setting in the PC version of the game that allows you to toggle this on and off. For some reason, it doesn't work in the Mac version.
• Luke, I Am Your Father
• Mad Oracle: Gromnir in Throne of Bhaal. If only you were given the opportunity to listen to him...
• Magic Knight: The fighter/mage multiclass. The bard, while supposed to be a little of everything, can also be considered this.
• Magic Music: A feature of bards. Not that you'll ever use it. As always Bards are the Jack Of All Trades and a master of none.
• Magnum Opus: Baldur's Gate II is still considered a milestone of the genre and BioWare's high point.
• Malevolent Architecture: In the Drow city this is joined with Alien Geometries.
• Manipulative Bastard: Oh, so many.
• Mayfly-December Romance: In addition to possibly applying to the player's romance in Shadows of Amn^[1], it's also the plot of the play you oversee in the Bard questline. The play is about an immortal sorcerer who meets a woman, and the two of them fall in love despite the sorcerer trying not to become attached to her. Once that happens, the sorcerer thinks of how he will eventually lose her and dreads the day when that will happen. The ending? When the sorcerer's apprentice asks where the woman Karenina has gone, the sorcerer tells him that she wished to join him in eternal life, but that he knew how painful eternal life was and didn't want to inflict that kind of pain on her, even if it was her wish. Still, he couldn't bear to part with her, and so... he turned her to stone. "Now go, my pupil... leave me with my bride. I shall touch her cold and unrelenting cheek once more... tonight a part of me has died inside."
• Meaningful Name:
  • Early in the first game, you meet one "Count Foreshadow", whose dialogue consists of plugs for the second game and for Neverwinter Nights.
  • Ribald Barterman is a merchant.
  • Jan Jansen is a stock character in Dutch jokes (the name simply means something akin to "John Johnson", by the way).
  • Basillus' likes to hang out with.. No. You know what, never mind, if you can't guess.
  • Noober, who acts like a total, well...
• The Minion Master: The beastmaster and Totemic Druid kits.
• Mirror Match: One of these occurs in the Pocket Plane. The first fight with Irenicus is also an example, though a particularly odd one, as he'll begin battle by casting 'Clone' a spell that creates clones of the player's party. Only, they won't have any equipment at all, so they don't tend to last very long.
• Money for Nothing: In both games, it's not too difficult to quickly amass more money than you'll ever need, as the player's income rate will increase dramatically with a little progress. Plus, as is standard for this kind of RPG, much of the best stuff is found rather than bought. It's a good thing gold is weightless and shared because if not by the end of the game your thief would be dragging around a sack the size of a small house.
• Monty Haul: In Baldur's Gate II, powerful magical items are fairly common, and there's enough full plate armor and elven chain mail to outfit your entire party with it.
• Most Gamers Are Male: This series largely avoids outright Fan Service, for example depicting female characters wearing armor that appears to have been designed with protective ability rather than sex appeal as the primary consideration, and including plenty of female sidekicks who aren't particularly attractive or romantically interested in the hero. Nevertheless, the fact that there were three potential romances included for male Player Characters in Shadows of Amn and only one for female Player Characters (and that with a partner who many players found less than endearing) indicates that the developers felt they knew which gender their players were more likely to be. The series actually does have a relatively large female fanbase, and several independently created mods, mostly made by women, have expanded the romance subplot options for female characters.
  • A minor example of less options for females is in the portrait selection. There are two sets of portraits per gender: ones that match NPCs used in the games, and generic ones that aren't used by any NPCs and are the choice of people who don't want to wonder why there's someone else in the world who looks exactly like them. There are six generic portraits for male characters, which is barely a satisfying selection as it is. Female characters only get two, which means players who aren't creating either a warrior human or mystic elf and want their portrait to match the character type will have to either select an NPC portrait or import a fanmade one.
    • If you pick a portrait that belongs to one of the recruitable NPC's, their portrait will switch to one of the two generic ones. So you won't actually look like one of your NPC buddies unless you then go to your character profile and change your portrait to the one your fellow NPC is using.
  • In Baldur's Gate I, human female fighter types look to be wearing a revealing bathing suit; most female mages wear low-cut robes with a slit up the side that goes to the hip, and female clerics and druids also have low cut necklines. Female fighter types in plate armor may look covered, but the party avatar shows that the chest and breasts are not covered. Female elves and half-elves wearing plate mail or splint mail also have low-cut necklines, back and front. And there isn't even a paper doll inventory model of a female gnome or dwarf, though they may not have made it in due to deadlines. In contrast, the men of all classes and races are mostly clothed, and all have paper-doll inventories. Maybe not as much Fan Service as other games, but it's there.
  • You can make it through Baldur's Gate I with no problems if you want to have an all-male party. But what if you want an all-female one? Then you won't be able to recruit Shar-Teel or finish the "Arkion, Nemphre and Ordulinian" quest, as Nemphre will only speak to a male party member.
  • A male Player Character will have NPC women that aren't in the party flirting with him in Baldur's Gate II. Female Player Character's don't get the same treatment. Well, except by Salvanas. Then again, in Baldur's Gate II, female Player Characters can hire male prostitutes, there's an NPC innkeeper who is rude and abrupt with male Player Characters but likes female ones, and other such details. There's still discrepancies, but hey, it's something.
  • How could Safana be left out of this? The comments she makes when you select her in Baldur's Gate I are all flirtatious statements directed towards the game player themselves, even if CHARNAME is a female of any species. Since Safana only verbally flirts with Coran and her biography states that she attempted to seduce the male captain of the ship, it's obvious she was written with a male game player in mind. In fact, some game guides note that this is the only reason to recruit Safana, since she's obtainable quite a bit later in the game, is one of many thieves you can recruit, and most of her stats are not that impressive—especially her constitution, which is the fourth-lowest in the game.
• Multiple Endings: For the Player Character, as some of the NPCs.
• The Munchausen: Jan Jansen. He will often come up with completely ludicrous stories that are only slightly relevant to the topic or danger at hand, not to mention surreal. The only thing to render him speechless is when your party descends to hell.
• Murder, Inc.: The Shadow Thieves seem to be bigger on assassination than actual theft.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Haer'Dalis will do try and do this to you if you romance Aerie with him in your party and your relationship with Aerie isn't yet solid when you get him. If you have solidified your romance with Aerie, he gracefully backs down.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Some enemy mages are subject to this, as they not only have multiple contingencies or spell triggers ready at once but their contingencies aren't subject to the same restrictions as the player's.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Umar Hills contains a group of peaceful ogres just who want to trade with the town, but keep getting chased away because of the peoples' belief that ogres are Exclusively Evil. Some of the townspeople also blame them for the village's problems, even though the ogres were also affected by the problem and were even trying to help.
• Mysterious Parent: Bhaal. The player's mother, as well.
• Mythology Gag: In the sequel, those with the collector's edition (or a certain mod) will encounter merchants that carry items that serve as Shout Outs to Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment.
• Necromantic: Bassilus.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: The protagonist.
• New Game+: Character importation.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Kangaxx congratulates you for yours after you release him. There's also the Bonus Boss battle against Demogorgon, in which defeating him results in sending him back to his home plane of existence rather than re-sealing him in his prison. Whoops. Hey, at least he's not terrorizing the Material Plane, which is what would've happened if you didn't stop him.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Definitely possible with some of the more Munchkinesque character builds, such as a samurai archmage Dual-Wielding war hammers and katanas, and a night-stalking, back-stabbing nature-controlling warrior-priest. The developers felt some of these possibilities were so implausible that they were Nerfed or removed outright in the Expansion Pack.
• Nintendo Hard: Baldur's Gate II is filled with extremely dangerous enemies and bosses, which means you must build your character properly and develop the right strategies to defeat said foes. Several traps in high-level areas have a chance to kill anyone who triggers them on the spot. And the 2nd Edition gameplay is something you need to get used to.
• No Fourth Wall: At times. Particularly Genre Savvy characters often make suggestions to the player right out of the basic RPG strategy book, and in-jokes and Shout Outs are sprinkled throughout the story.
• No Hero Discount: Averted. Having a high reputation gets you hefty discounts.
• Non-Entity General: When CHARNAME acknowledges his instructions, who exactly is he talking to? Probably the same person everyone else in your party is talking to, judging by the occasional reference to the player's mouse cursor and Jaheira calling you "Mr. Omnipresent Authority Figure" in the first game.
• No Points for Neutrality: Most quests can only be done in a good or an evil fashion. The most neutral way would be to not do them, which of course means no rewards.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: In the Athkatla catacombs, there's a senile Lich that goes by the name of Nevaziah, who has been hiding there for ages. He seems mostly harmless and in fact inspires quite a bit of pity. That is, until Jerkass Edwin manages to press his Berserk Button and it proceeds to barrage your party with high level spells.
• Not-So-Safe Harbor: Athkatla's docks are even more dangerous than its slums.
• Now Where Was I Going Again?: Check your journal and find out, duh.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Jan comes across most of the time as a turnip-obsessed, Chaotic Stupid Cloudcuckoolander with a penchant for telling meandering, pointless stories, but if the player undertakes the sidequest to save his former lover, he's revealed to be quite lucid and clever. The player character can also engage in this behavior at times.
• Old Save Bonus: A Tales of the Sword Coast player can import a higher-level hero than normal into Baldur's Gate II. Also, pantaloons. To clarify, the first game has an item called the Gold Pantaloons that are given to players by a confused noble that thinks the Player Character is the laundry service. You can't do anything with them, and they look like a total Joke Item. But it turns out that they're one of the few items that are saved when importing a character from the first game. The second game and its expansion each have a pair, the silver and bronze pantaloons respectively. If you collect all three, then the expansion to the second game has an NPC that will forge them into a very strong set of Power Armor, as well as a weapon to go with it. The original game also has seven items that will permanently raise a particular attribute by one point, and the expansion has one more, so a character imported into the sequel could start with some attributes higher than normally possible for his race without any cheats or exploits.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Kangaxx.
• One Size Fits All: The same armor piece can even look different when being used by different characters.
• One Steve Limit:
  • Averted: a minor Baldur's Gate II character shares the Arabic name of Khalid with a Baldur's Gate I party member. Fortunately, the writers did not capitalize on the obvious idea of making a really bad joke about it.
  • On the other hand, a Player Character named Drizzt is just asking for trouble.
  • Naming a female Player Character Lanfear can lead to an easter egg in Chapter 6 of Baldur's Gate II.
  • Averted again in the following examples:
    • Carbos and Shank were the inept assassins in Candlekeep in Baldur's Gate I. In Baldur's Gate II, you can find two men named Carbos and Shank fighting over a woman in Amn.
    • Sendai was the name of an arrogant noblewoman found south of Nashkel in Baldur's Gate I. Sendai is also the name of the Bhaalspawn drow in Throne of Bhaal.
    • Lothander is the god known as the Morning Lord in Baldur's Gate I: his temple is east of Beregost. There is a human thief—also named Lothander—under a geas in the city of Baldur's Gate in Baldur's Gate I that helps you out in return for getting his geas lifted. This is the result of the god's name being misspelled—it should be "Lathander"—by someone unfamiliar with the Forgotten Realms pantheon.
• Only Mostly Dead: Party members who die but aren't reduced to -10 hit points can be resurrected. Otherwise, they explode in a shower of Ludicrous Gibs.
• Optional Character Scene: In the second game, it's common for party members to interject in conversations.
• Optional Party Member: All of them, with the exception of the main character. It's possible to play the game with a player-created party, or even solo with the right character build, though you miss out on many of the best Sidequests if you do.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Obviously, they're a scaled down version of the Dungeons & Dragons version. Most of those you see are evil, but Adalon is a notable exception, as are the green dragons in Hell (Shadows of Amn) and Abazigal's Lair (Throne of Bhaal). They're instant spellcasters (with some of the best/most annoying spells in the game), very intelligent, universally arrogant (including the good ones), and garish sycophancy is a minimum requirement for not being obliterated on sight. On the plus side, most will not attack you on sight, and none can fit through their enormous lair doors so you can always flee. Even the "easiest" dragons also give tens of thousands of experience, so it's worth the effort. Other kinds are alluded to, but very rare: two half dragons, and the fairy dragon that Chaotic Good mages get as a familiar. It's also implied, as always in Dungeons & Dragons, that sorcerers are descended from Dragons by way of explanation for their instant spellcasting.
• Our Genies Are Different: Djinn have their own clans and political systems said to be incomprehensible to human minds, are not interested in anything to do with granting wishes unless they were magically summoned for that purpose, and are rarely bound to objects.
• Our Vampires Are Different: As in, really bloodthirsty, without a bit of fondness for the living or brooding sex appeal about them. Actually, that's how Bram Stoker originally envisioned vampires to be. It's modern day writers that have given vampires their sex appeal and fondness for the living.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: The Shapeshifter druid class is able to control his lycantropy.
• Overly Long Gag: "Are you gonna throw rocks at me?" "What about now?" "What about now?" "What about now?" Repeat about 20 times. Appropriately enough, the person saying this is named Noober... at least you get XP for putting up with him. Slightly shorter example with Neeber in the sequel.
• Padded Sumo Gameplay: Especially early in the game, it's common for opponents to stand around missing each other for round after round, the victor ultimately defeating their opponent after landing two or three hits.
• Palette Swap: The only noticeable difference between characters that don't have names. A few creatures are also differentiated by this.
• Pause Scumming: When fighting a mage or wizard near a doorway to another screen, pausing right as they start their spell and clicking the door causes your character to run out the door leaving the area just before getting hit by the spell. By repeatedly abusing this trick, you can make spellcasters run out of spells and thus force them to attack you hand to hand, which turning even the most powerful wizard into a pathetically easy fight.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: In the Throne of Bhaal expansion, the town surrounded by giants has a spot on the ramparts where unseen giants cannot harm you but can be auto-attacked by a character set with a ranged offensive action script. Equip all the infinite ranged ammo items you have, set those characters to auto-attack and go watch a movie. When you come back, you will have max experience on all characters.
• Pirates: They've even got their own island.
• Pixel Hunt: Baldur's Gate I plays this straight: some of the best equipment or a ton of money could be had early on if you knew what pixel to click on. Throne of Bhaal softens this: hold the "tab" key, and every item and hiding place on the screen will be highlighted. Then came the mod that allowed the first game to use the second game's engine...
• Plot-Triggering Death: Two. Both Bhaal and Gorion's.
• Point and Click Map
• Poke in the Third Eye
• Police Are Useless: When investigating a string of murders in the Bridge district, if you present evidence to the guards' investigator instead of acting on it yourself, he'll get himself killed.
• Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner: Loads of them.
• Promoted to Unlockable: Sarevok in Throne of Bhaal.
• Psycho for Hire: Quite a few Punch Clock Villains, as well as recruitable allies Korgan and Montaron.
• Puntuated For Emphasis: Quite common in the games' voiced dialogue, especially where Minsc is involved.

Minsc: "Evil, meet my sword! Sword! MEET! EVIL!!"

• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Save for the romances, dialogue and certain people hitting on you harmlessly.
  • Playing through the Drow city is quite different for player characters of differing genders, as would be in keeping with the Drow's Fantastic Sexism.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: Many of the heavier armor pieces suffer from this, the abundance of pink suggesting the developers couldn't figure out how to do shades of red.
• Random Encounters: Some random encounters provide you with very respectable quantities of gold and valuable Vendor Trash, and others occur randomly but tie directly into plotline events or subquests and as such aren't pointless.
• Rant-Inducing Slight: See quote on top of the page.
• Real Time with Pause: One of the first western role-playing games to cross over from classic turn-based combat into this. Although it may look like real-time, the combat is actually simultaneous turn-based.
• Rebellious Princess: A few different characters fit this description.
• Rescue Introduction: Branwen, Dynaheir, Viconia, Yeslick and Xan in the first game; Aerie, Cernd, Haer'Dalis, Viconia (again!), Mazzy and arguably Minsc and Jaheira in the sequel.
• Retcon: Quite a few, mostly between the first game and Shadows of Amn. Some of them worked better than others.
• The Reveal: Several.
• Revive Kills Zombie: The Empathic Manifestation in the temple of Amaunator. As an embodiment of suffering, it can only be killed by showing it love (i.e. healing it).
• Rodents of Unusual Size: Miniature Giant Space Hamster, anyone?
• Romance Sidequest: Tales of the Sword Coast featured a brief romance sidequest, but Baldur's Gate II was the first to implement it as a major feature and thus solidifying the trope that Bioware is now most known for. It even set the archetypes for the love interests in Bioware games; there's plenty of comparisons of Aerie to Tali or Viconia to Morrigan and Jack.
• Romancing the Widow: The essence of Jaheira's romance subplot. If you pursue the relationship, Khalid will show up in dreams and fantasy sequences to torment her about it.
• Rousing Speech: A bit of an inversion. Before the fight with Irenicus in Suldanesselar, the Player Character gives his party members the opportunity to walk away instead of fighting the (supposedly) most powerful enemy the party has ever gone against. The party members then respond with their own reasons why they'd rather fight him alongside CHARNAME.
• RPGs Equal Combat: No matter what kind of character you want to play, the majority of both games is spent fighting or looking for enemies to fight. Most problems can only be solved by crushing them to bits and dungeon crawling is one of the main aspects of the game.
• Save Scumming: Ohoho, you will be saving a lot of times in Baldur's Gate unless you have an intricate knowledge of every confrontation, how the game works along with the encounters coupled with planning in advance. Plus, you still need to hope you're blessed by the Random Number God to survive whatever gets thrown at you. Stepped on a petrification trap with your main character accidentally and turned to stone? You've no choice but to reload or quit. Your precious party members brutally exploded in a blossom of gore due to a dragon barfing on him/her? Unless you're playing easy mode, you have to reload to bring them back. This makes it difficult to play without reloading if your main character gets gibbed (or you become attached to the other characters) so you have to be Hard Core to consider this mode. A spoof reload sequence was included in Throne of Bhaal when an NPC party charges at the player only for a fake reload to occur when the protagonist party butchers all of them, by which then they leave peacefully. Comically it's as if the creators acknowledged this element of the game of continual reloading.
  • Back in the day of Planet Baldur's Gate (a Gamespy subsite), the forums had a running gag "cult" amongst the forum-goers, worshipping the Great God, Beginagain.
• The Scottish Trope: If you play as a bard, you can acquire the deed to the playhouse in the Five Flagons Inn and supervise the production of a play called "The Sorcerer's Bane". But there's a rumor saying that the sorcerer it's supposed to be about really existed and he cursed the play for mocking him, resulting in ill fortune befalling anybody who says the name of the play out loud. The actor who plays the sorcerer insists that it be referred to only as "The Turmish Play".
• Screw Destiny: If you're very, very polite to Portalbendarwinden when you first meet him (he's the naked guy north of Beregost), he will tell you that he can't see your future because "your coin is on edge." If you read The History of the Fateful Coin (a book required for a quest), it states that individuals whose coins landed on edge when they were born are free of the influences of both of the goddesses of luck and can forge their own fates.
  • You probably won't be very polite to him, he is the one to whom speaking the Trope Quote is an option.
• Sdrawkcab Name:
  • Koveras? Never heard of him.
  • You also encounter Nanoc the Barbarian in Throne of Bhaal. Who apparently really let himself go later in life.
  • Neb the child-killing dwarf.
  • At the final fight in Baldur's Gate I, there is a wizard named Semaj.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The infamous Kangaxx.
• Selective Condemnation:
  • Even if you play these games in the most pacifistic, Lawful Good manner possible, you will still end up killing, at minimum, hundreds of people. Despite that, you only succumb to The Dark Side if you behave evilly towards a few, arbitrarily important characters.
  • The first game features a huge example. Despite slaughtering your way across the Sword Coast, leaving large piles of butchered enemies behind you... and, if you so feel like it, being allowed to kill just about anyone else you meet with only a drop in reputation that can be fixed with a temple donation... you are charged with murder and labelled a horrible criminal only after the deaths of the Iron Throne leaders at Candlekeep. This, of course, even if you barged into their tower earlier in the game in broad daylight and massacred everyone in sight.
• Sequel Hook: Retroactively. The standard Baldur's Gate series storyline is a perfect example of how to wrap up a plot so completely that there is practically no way to continue it without feeling forced. But David Gaider's Ascension mod, in addition to its gameplay changes, restores epilogue text that was written but not implemented in game. The romance endings all indicate that CHARNAME's offspring with his chosen love interest (including Jaheira, who doesn't have children in the vanilla ending) grow up to become adventurers as prolific as their parents are. This was probably scrapped when Bioware realized how corny that would be as a basis for a sequel.
• Serial Killer: Rejiek Hidesman, complete with Creepy Basement. Also Neb the child-killing dwarf.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Edwin and, with a high enough INT score, potentially the Player Character.

CHARNAME: Maybe your grandiose vocabulary is a pathetic compensation for an insufficiency in the nether regions of your anatomy.

• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Charm, Confusion and a number of other effects that do basically the same thing.
• Shapeshifting Squick: The sheer range of creatures which show up claiming to be Bhaalspawn in Throne of Bhaal is... is... well, it raises some interesting questions about what the God of murder was doing while "walking the earth". Everything from humans to dragons to werechinchillas.
  • Considering that he foresaw his death while walking the earth and decided the best thing to do is sire as many kids as possible, to use their essence as a springboard back to life, it makes perfect sense.
    • Werechinchillas, dude. It makes sense: the Chinchilla has some very strong points. The one near Yaga-Shura's Base may not have a particularly powerful offense, but it has a positively insane movement speed and is also almost impossible to kill... but "perfect" sense is giving Bhaal too much credit.
  • Given what the Greek Gods got up to... Come on, Zeus impregnated a woman while a shower of gold. Not to mention what Minos' wife Pasiphae did to create the minotaur.
    • Zeus transformed himself into the shower to get in the tower where the woman was held, but he didn't impregnate her that way. However, Zeus did impregnated Leda while shapeshifted as a swan. Whether Bhaal's powers were based on Zeus' are debatable, but they are similar.
• Sheathe Your Sword: Needed in order to defeat The Beast under Athkathla.
• Short Cuts Make Long Delays: When investigating the Cult of the Unseeing Eye, you are told that the easiest way to kill the Unseeing Eye is to reassemble a specific artifact. This involves going to an underground city to get half of it, then through a town of undead, then through a lair of beholders, before you finally get the other half. Alternatively, a well prepared party can complete the quest much more quickly by simply entering the lair and hacking away. But where's the fun in that?
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Sidekicks: Lots to choose from, most of them very memorable.
• Sidequests: You can spend more time on these than the actual plot, easily.
• Simple Staff: The only melee weapon that can be used by anyone. Or you could get the Staff +1, which can do that too.
• Single Mom Stripper: One prostitute in the docks district says that she's never done it before but needs the money to support her family.
• The Six Stats
• Slap-On-The-Wrist Nuke: There are spells which do things like crash a comet into the battlefield and blast everything in sight with flaming dragon breath, damaging enemies heavily but not so much as flattening a blade of grass otherwise.
• Slice-and-Dice Swordsmanship: Spears and daggers are often used with a slashing animation.
• Smug Snake: Lots and lots of villains (and a few party members as well).
• Sociopathic Hero: Several of the evil party members qualify. As might the Player Character, depending on how one plays.
• So Long and Thanks For All the Gear: If a character leaves your party for reasons other than being kicked out, they'll take all that expensive gear you bought them on their way out. Even if you kicked them out, if you wait too long to get them to join again they may not have the gear you gave them. At some point after their departure, the game will reset their equipment to the NPC's default.
• Somebody Else's Problem: Ilmater almighty, but the civilians of this world are a bunch of lazy gits. One mod Lampshades this, by having Imoen muse that it must have been ages since anyone asked the Player Character how he was feeling, instead of, -->"O, mighty hero, do you have a minute? Of course you do."
• Songs in the Key of Lock
• The Soulless: Irenicus and Bodhi, and later the Player Character and Imoen.
• Spoony Bard:
  • Player-created bards can actually be quite powerful, if built correctly. Many players find the recruitable NPC bards, on the other hand, somewhat lacking—Garrick from Baldur's Gate in particular might be the spooniest bard since the original himself.
  • Garrick lampshades this in Baldur's Gate II (where he makes a cameo appearance), admitting that he isn't a very good bard.
• Squishy Wizard: Mostly played straight in the first game. Averted in the sequel where the available range of defensive spells makes the mage into a Glacier Waif, standing calmly in the middle of a furious swordfight as the enemies prove unable to disrupt his lethal incantations.
• Sssssnaketalk: Assorted demons and reptilian monsters.
• Standard Fantasy Setting: It's Forgotten Realms, after all.
• Stop Poking Me: Several characters say something along these lines if repeatedly selected. Xzar quite literally squeals... "STOP POKING MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH!"
• Stuck Items: Boo; Imoen's Belt at the beginning of Baldur's Gate II, and Edwin's necklace. The reasons for these are plot-related: Imoen's belt makes her unkillable (to avoid the plot going Off the Rails in Château Irenicus), and Edwin's necklace grants him two spells per level to represent his superior Red Wizard training. The game engine doesn't allow for such values to be added directly to characters, so it had to be done via items.
  • Not really. In the first game, perhaps, but in the second, the reason Edwin can't remove his necklace is to make him less powerful since he can't wear the Amulet of Power (best caster necklace in the game). The two extra spells per level is ridiculously easy to set-up without using an item. Same goes with Nalia's ring. Since she can't remove it, it doesn't count against the normal restriction about multiple armor bonus equipment, but also costs her a ring slot so she can't have the ring of acuity AND wizardry on at the same time (extra spells from levels 1-7).
• Suffer the Slings: It's the only missile weapon available for everybody (except for Kensai and Cavaliers). Most notably it's the only missile weapon usable by Clerics (unless you're a Dwarf, in which case you can also use the little known Dwarven Thrower), so be prepared to use it a lot with the more support-oriented Clerics such as Viconia or Aerie.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: Random bandits will gleefully attack you in the wilderness or sometimes even in the middle of a city. At the beginning of the first game, when you're a staff-wielding weakling in leather, this is understandable. By the second game, when you're carrying a sword that glows like the sun, wearing the skin of a dragon that you killed yourself, and are surrounded by five other, similarly outfitted people...
  • And there are four muggers attacking you.
  • Averted in Throne of Bhaal, when an entire vampire coven flees in terror at the sight of you.
• Super-Powered Evil Side: The "Slayer" form. Although it's a little lacking on the "superpowered" thing, especially if you're not a melee class. Until Throne of Bhaal, at least, where the Slayer form becomes much more powerful. Of course, by that point, you're essentially superpowered no matter what form you're in.
• Taken for Granite: There are a number of NPCs that have been changed to stone by basilisks in Baldur's Gate I. Unfortunately, not all of them can be freed. Although Vail is the only one you are required to free in order to finish a Sidequest, others can be freed to gain experience. The Unfinished Business mod adds in another NPC statue that is also optional to free, but gives experience if you do.
• Take That: In Throne of Bhaal, Cespenar makes an off-hand comment about running out of recipes and needing to find "Martha", who's somewhere around in Hell.
• Take Your Time:
  • Mostly played straight. Your sister may be getting mind-raped by the Cowled Wizards and then Irenicus while you're out doing random side quests for a few months, but rest assured no matter when you set out to save her she'll be in the same condition when you arrive. Gets even worse after Spellhold, when you ostensibly have no soul, are slowly dying, and Irenicus is in the midst of laying waste to an Elven city. You can still run around doing inane random quests for as long as you like.
  • However, some character-specific quests are required to be done within a certain time limit. Otherwise, the character will leave the party to complete the job themselves - taking all that expensive gear with them.
  • If you want to recruit Jaheira and Khalid in your party at the Friendly Arm Inn in Baldur's Gate I and don't go to Nashkel post-haste, every day (or two or three), you'll get one of them whining about not having made it to Nashkel yet. There may not be any time limit on the mines quest, but going to Nashkel just to shut the two of them up may become a priority depending on how annoyed you become with it.
  • Just don't try waiting too much with Xzar and Montaron, They will leave the party if you take too long.
  • Not saving Dynaheir as quickly as possible will upset Minsc and Boo. And when Minsc and Boo get upset, buttkicking ensues. You have ten game days to save her, but if you haven't made any progress after a few days, Minsc will remind you. After ten days is when the buttkicking happens.
  • Coran will state that he has wyverns to kill if you delay that quest for too long: he's supposed to leave the party, but a game bug may prevent that from happening.
  • Safana will remind you if you haven't gone to the treasure caves she told you about after a few game-days. She doesn't seem to leave though.
• Talking About Important Plot Points Is a Free Action: Sometimes Time Stands Still when dialogues happen. Sometimes it doesn't.
• Talking the Monster to Death: At one point, you can talk down an Aboleth.
• Talking Weapon: Lilarcor.
• Talk to Everyone: Will actually waste your time. Most people who have something in particular to say will either have names or look out of place. They also might approach the party and initiate conversation themselves without prompting, depending on how they're programmed. It's fairly rare, but a soldier in Nashkel and Malek in Baldur's Gate are two of a few that will do this.
• Teleport Interdiction: In Throne of Bhaal, the siege of Saradush is complemented by a magic field that blocks teleportation out of the city. Certain special means bypass this, including the Player Character's ability to shift to another plane. But even the player's party is limited by this, because they can only shift back to the Material Plane inside Saradush or at a considerable distance from it; the time it takes for them to approach it from the outside becomes a plot point.
• There Can Be Only One:
  • Sarevok's plan, and, essentially, the climactic scene of Throne of Bhaal.
  • In the second game, rolling up an elf named Drizzt is a bad idea; the real Drizzt Do'urden will likely attempt to skewer you.
• Thieves' Guild: There are two in Athkala.
• The Three Faces of Eve: Most major female characters can be categorized as one of the three: there are maidens (Aerie, Nalia, Imoen), temptresses (Viconia, Safana, Bodhi), and mothers (Jaheira, Ellesime, Melissan, though it's only an act in her case) galore. The three romance options in BG2 each represent one of The Three Faces of Eve.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Subverted and Lampshaded in Baldur's Gate II when a man, claiming to have broken out of prison, throws his "mighty scimitar at your head!". When this does minimal damage, he says "Oh, that normally works..." and leaves.
• Time Keeps On Slipping: Not that it matters much.
• Time Stands Still: The 'Time Stop' spell. Also happens during most dialogs.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: In the temple district in the second game, the player can encounter a gnome who is in love with a human female Paladin but is too self-conscious to declare himself to her and, in a shout-out to Cyrano De Bergerac, tries to help Garrick the Bard woo her instead. Subsequent visits to the district reveal that the Paladin has figured out who really penned Garrick's love declarations and that she and the gnome have gotten married.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: This is what Edwin thinks the Nether Scrolls are. Much to his chagrin, he's wrong. He is not exactly wrong, in that Nether Scrolls are, well, magical scrolls of gathered arcane lore. His mistake is in assuming that it will necessarily have arcane lore relevant to his interests, and in being a bit too trusting for a Red Wizard when trying to unlock the knowledge of the found Scroll.
• Took a Level in Badass: Several characters throughout the series.
• Torture First, Ask Questions Later: Silverstar, an elf added in a mod, does this.
• Tragic Monster: Your love interest, if you have one, will be turned into a vampire by Bodhi. Fortunately, they get better.
• True Companions: Canonically, the Player Character, Minsc, Jaheira and Imoen.
• Tyop on the Cover: The Baldur's Gate 4 in 1 Boxset published by Atari shows its cheapness in both its contents and cover production. The back calls the expansion to Baldur's Gate "Sword of the Coast" and the blurbs were very clearly written by someone who has never actually played the games. Even worse: I have a copy of that boxset - but Tales of the Sword Coast doesn't work—it breaks the game instead, forcing a re-installation. That's how low quality it is, the error message says my expansion disk is for the wrong region! There are two very easy fixes for that. 1: Download and install the latest UK patch for Tales of the Sword Coast, or 2: Reset your language setting to British English.
• Unexplained Recovery: Characters who return in the sequel are quick to brush off a question about why they're not dead. Probably justified: it's Dungeons & Dragons after all.
• Unfortunate Character Design: The golems' loinclothes look... disturbing if you don't know what they are.
• Universal Poison: As a Standard Status Effect.
• Unwinnable By Mistake: There are a few scripting errors that can cause this, though they are fixed by unofficial patches.
• Updated Rerelease:
  • The first game, originally released on five CD-ROMS plus the Tales of the Sword Coast disk, was later rereleased as a three-disk version.
  • Both games (including their respective expansion packs) will have 'Enhanced Edition' releases, starting with the the first game in Summer 2012. As of March 2012, exactly what will be updated remains to be seen, but it is known that they will have entirely new content, and that the engine used is still Infinity, just a modified version based on TOB's version.
• Useless Useful Spell: A good chunk of those kill-everything-instantly spells at higher levels usually aren't going to kill much of anything worth wasting the spell slot for by the time you get them. Though thrown into the right combination, even the relatively weak instant death spells can be useful. Doom + Greater Malison + Chromatic Orb = dead dragon. Given the annoyance of summoned creatures it's still worth having at least a back-up mage having spells like Death Spell as well.
• Useless Useful Stealth:
  • High-level backstabbing, especially the Assassin's x7 backstab. Dealing the damage cap (1048 damage) with a single hit? Awesome. Knowing that everything in the game at the point you get it is either immune to backstab or can be killed twice as fast by your mage or fighter without placing your rogue in the middle of a fight he probably can't handle? Makes it considerably less so.
  • The Assassin has a second issue in that the kit's main feature isn't gained until level 21, and even then its slow thieving skill progression means that the Assassin might not have gotten enough skill points to thoroughly fill the niche of the rogue until levels after that. This means Assassins can't be dual-classed at a reasonable level without impairing the aspects that make a thief worthwhile in the first place, and there's no real need for a thief that isn't dual- or multiclassed. The Assassin isn't completely irredeemable though, as it starts with poison abilities, which are extremely useful.
  • There's also the dilemma of enemies that cast True Sight. Since the game's main way of circumventing this, Non-Detection, has several associated bugs, there's no practical way to use stealth against them. Actually, the problems with non-detection are for magical stealth, not thief stealth. Thief stealth works fine under non-detection. Only enemies that are completely immune to all forms of invisibility (stuff that's also immune to backstab) can see through it. For magical stealth, only invisibility effects generated from items are protected by non-detection (Rings of Invis, Staff of the Magi, rings of air control, etc).
  • Fortunately, high-level rogues get their revenge with the traps. The blatantly imbalanced spike trap deals 20d10 damage and its damage cannot be dodged, saved against or blocked in any way. Six of them will kill the game's toughest Bonus Boss in one shot, and a high-level rogue can get another use per day for every level he or she gains. However, a timely dual-classed and equipped swashbuckler/fighter can distribute 300+ damage per round after his FIRST levelup in the expansion, or 200+ damage per round in the vanilla game, and far south of the XP cap. Ultimately, the best thief is still an ex-thief, unless it's the imbalanced Kensai/Thief dual-class, which has several of the Kensai's bonuses, can wear armor at high levels, can cast magic from scrolls, has a low enough THAC0 to hit pretty much anything consistently and has all the assorted thief abilities.
  • Pickpocketing also falls under this. While it isn't inherently broken, there are so few items in either game worth stealing this way that it's more efficient to buff up the skill with items when it's needed rather than investing in it with skill points that could be better spent on things that will be used more often.
• Vancian Magic: The spellcasting system used by every wizard class except the sorcerer.
• Vendor Trash: TONS of it. Though some things that seem to be vendor trash will actually be useful later. In addition to the obvious junk like jewelry, pretty much any item that was in the first game will be underpowered enough to be glorified vendor trash in the second.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon
• Villain with Good Publicity: Overcoming the villains' good publicity is part of the plot of the first game. The Player Character can also be this if he/she is evil-aligned and has a high enough reputation score.
• Vocal Evolution: Some characters don't sound quite the same in Throne of Bhaal.
• Volleying Insults: Korgan and Imoen.

Korgan: Hmph, Imoen, yer an o'er-lame excuse fer a member o' this party and I be tired of exertin' meself to protect ye! Next time I let ye perish, screaming like a ninny as ye does!
Imoen: The last time I saw you exert yourself over anything was the last slab of pork in an inn. If you could keep up with me with that beer gut of yours I'd be amazed.
Korgan: Beer gut?! Why, ye stinkin' wench, how dare ye! Keep up with my keen axe as it flies towards yer head, more like! Though it'd be like splittin' a hair, skinny as ye are!
Imoen: I'd be startled if a drunk dwarven oaf like yourself could hit the broad side of a barn with your axe. And while we're talking about stench, let's talk about the last time you passed out in your own vomit.
Korgan: An outrage! Yer a canker on me backside and the world would be best rid of ye! Loathsome mongrel she-dog!
Imoen: Brutish pig! You're nothing but a boil needing lancing!
Korgan: I've seen harlots with less open sores than ye, ye pimple-faced, whining gutter-snipe!
Imoen: You cantankerous, foul-mouthed excuse for a gully dwarf!
Korgan: Gully dwarf? Har har! Ye knows how to hit low, ye does! Har har! Yer a fine, fine lass, ye are, Imoen. That Gorion of yers would be proud.
Imoen: Aw, gee. Thanks, Korgan!

• Voluntary Shapeshifting: A special ability of druids. Interplay touted it a fair bit prior to the release of Baldur's Gate II, though in the final game, it's essentially useless.
• "Wake-Up Call" Boss: Tarnesh from the first game is known to trip new players up.
• Wallet of Holding: Gold is plentiful and weightless.
• The War Has Just Begun: You have just defeated the first game's Big Bad, and the final cutscene shows his essence descending into the underworld and into a statue of his likeness, which promptly crumbles to dust. Then the camera pans out to show that the statue was standing in an alcove inside an enormous room filled with hundreds of other statues of different people from gnomes to ogres (a few crumbled, but most are intact) showing that Sarevok was just one Bhaalspawn, there are still hundreds of them out there.
• The War Sequence
• We Cannot Go on Without You: One of the classic examples, and at first, it seems a bit odd: your allies can literally fall like leaves around you, and the game won't care (in fact, the reason Baldur's Gate I has so many recruitables who have somewhat thin characterization is that the developers assumed low-level Dungeons & Dragons play would go through characters rather quickly), but the instant the protagonist hits 0 HP, BAM, game over. Of course, this does get justified very well in the games: since the protag is a Bhaalspawn, when s/he dies, Bhaal's divine essence within them is returned to 'the pool'. Even IF the protag is resurrected, you just lost the abilities that let you beat the overarching plot.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Good or Neutral-aligned party members will call you out on it if you do something truly dastardly, and eventually leave the party if you become too evil.
• Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him: Inverted in the second game: when Irenicus captures you in Spellhold, he wants the party disposed of instantly, but Bodhi overrules him (without his knowledge and consent) and tries to have you executed in a way that will amuse her. Needless to say, it backfires and Irenicus is none too pleased. Also in Baldur's Gate II, when you fight Irenicus in Spellhold without adequate support, he simply casts Wish, and it is Total Party Kill time for you.
• With Friends Like These...: Xzar and Montaron: to you and each other.
• Wooden Stake: Vampires need to be staked in their coffins after being defeated.
• World of Ham: Minsc and Korgan mentioned earlier are just the very tip of the iceberg.
• Wrecked Weapon: In Baldur's Gate I, the Iron Crisis meant that most of your non-magical weapons would eventually break.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Candlekeep. Actually, you can, once. After that, you won't want to.

---

The Baldur's Gate novels provide examples of

• Cassandra Truth: Xzar tells the others All There Is to Know About "The Crying Game" pretty much at the start. No-one believes him because he's insane. Of course, he also doesn't care, because he's insane.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: No-one except for Gorion's ward makes it to the end of the trilogy alive.
  • Causing readers to wail, "No! Why did he not die?!"
• Faux Action Girl: Jaheira. A particularly egregious case in that she doesn't even try to fight anyone almost ever.
• Gorn
• Informed Ability: Jaheira is a tough warrior. And a druid. And Abdel Adrian is smart. * snrk*
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Adrian's thuggish fighting skills don't improve from the first novel to the second like they would in the games, so when he has to fight a giant monster, he just becomes super-powerful all of a sudden. Of course, he is carrying around the essence of a dead god inside him all the time, but still, way to make it a Deus Ex Idiot.
• Novelization: Well, obviously.
• Suddenly Sexuality: It turns out Imoen is into chicks. Imoen "realizes her sexuality" when an evil drow matriarch orders her to sleep with her. In order to keep up their drow disguises and continue with their mission, Imoen couldn't refuse, so it makes it seem like Imoen turned a lesbian due to rape and quid-pro-quo.
• Thud and Blunder: Even the mysterious very positive reviews at Amazon.com tend to recognise this genre shift.

1. ↑ If you're a human male, all three of your romance options come from races longer-lived than yours. Same problem in reverse if you're an elven female and decide you want to hook up with Anomen.