Herein lie a few spoilers.

Before leaving Candlekeep

Before leaving, you're going to want the following items (including what you have equipped):

- (3) slings, one for yourself, one spare, and one for a future party member
- (5) stacks of sling ammo (bullets)
- (3) short bows, one for Imoen, one spare, and one for a future party member
- (5) stacks of arrows
- (1) studded leather for Imoen

The slings and bullets along with the short bow are not that expensive and will stand you in good stead once you meet up with the mage (Xzar) & thief (Montaron) on the path near Candlekeep. That will let you equip all 4 members of the party at that point with ranged weapons before heading to Friendly Arm Inn (FAI).

The other two party members that you'll meet soon are found inside of FAI where you can buy equipment from the inn keeper. So there's no need to carry equipment for them all the way from Candlekeep.

Basic combat tips

Hopefully, you took my advice and went into the game options and set things up to auto-pause when enemies are sighted (along with a few other events). This pause will allow you to quickly issue orders for all of your party members, or to reposition into a skirmish line.

First off, don't charge the enemy, make them come to you. Keep your fighters (tanks) in front, with the weaker ranged party members in the back. Draw the enemy into a kill area that is safe where the fight won't spill over into uncleared areas.

You should go into each party member's profile page and choose "Customize Character" and then "Script". This is where you can change how the party responds if you happen to leave the AI turned on. Now, I tend to be a micromanager, but if you pick the proper scripts, you can probably do less micromanaging of the party members.

Your opening attack should always be ranged, either via weapons or spells (including dispels). Four or six party members all plinking away with ranged weapons can do a lot of damage to an incoming ogre before it gets close enough to engage with melee. Have your fighters switch to heavier hitting melee weapons once the target gets within range.

Use line of sight to draw ranged enemies closer. Send a sacrificial lamb forward to get their attention, then run back around a corner to draw them in.

The number keys (1-6) can be used to select your party members. In addition, keys 7-9, 0 and the minus can be used to select portions of the party. The select all is, by default, the equals sign. To make things easier, I recommend that the character's ranged weapon always be placed in the first weapon slot. That way you can select the character and then hit F3 to have them attack with their ranged weapon.

Save your spells for dire situations. Have your mage use a sling on low-level critters and save their spells for either large groups or the tougher enemies.

Enemy spell casters should be your primary target in most cases. Such as the assassin who jumps you when you try to enter the inn in FAI. It's important to hit them with ranged attacks before they can get spells off, hopefully interrupting their casts. (After failing the FAI fight a few times, I went back when 3 characters equipped with ranged weapons. The fight suddenly got a lot easier.)

Montaron and Xzar

This thief and mage pair are found soon after you join up with Imoen. Unfortunately, if you're going to form a "good" alignment party, they're going to eventually leave you. But for the initial journey to FAI and dealing with the assassin that lies in wait, they'll do for the moment. After that, I suggest not shedding any tears if they pass away by accident or on purpose (unless you're going for an evil party).

Xzar can use a sling and bullets, while Montaron can use a short bow and arrows as their ranged weapon. Montaron is not a very good fighter (very low hit points) and is more of a ranged / thief type. Xzar has a miniscule amount of hit points unless he uses his drain spell, so keep him well back from the action.

Use them, and then abandon them once you find better choices.

Party balance

The ideal party consists of the following roles:

- someone to take a beating, preferably two such people
- someone to heal, preferably two healers
- a thief to detect/disarm traps and open locks
- evil parties will want a pickpocket thief
- a high charisma person to be leader
- an archer or two for ranged support
- at least one mage for lore purposes and to use scrolls

Some characters can serve multiple roles, even if they don't multi-class or dual-class. For instance, at the start, Imoen has a high charisma, so she's a good person to send off to talk to the inn keeper to sell goods. Later on, Imoen makes a good dual-spec mage / thief.

If we look at the five characters that you'll run across within the first hour or two of play:

Imoen - thief & 16 CHA
Xzar - mage
Montaron - fighter/thief
Jaheira - fighter/druid & 15 CHA
Khalid - fighter

That means that your character can really be any of the main archetypes without encountering any issues at the very start. You could multi-class as a fighter/cleric or play a bard or play a pure class like mage or cleric. Since you'll also run into other characters once you move south from FAI, you can fill in any holes before you encounter any serious opposition.