Chapter 2: A few technical terms to know


You don't have to read this now—this chapter is a glossary of all the terms and acronyms you're going to come across all over this Guide. If you try to read this chapter all at once, your eyeballs will probably start drooping out of their sockets. Just make sure to refer back to this page when you find a term you're not familiar with.

You really should read these first 3 little paragraphs, though.

Tanks: I mentioned the word "Tank" in the table of contents, and you may have thought it odd. "Tank" is the common term for a hulking, armor-plated brute whose job is to get in the enemies' collective face and chop them to tiny bits. I'll babble on about Tanks a lot more in Chapter 9, but for now it's sufficient to have a general idea.

Dice: The Baldur's Gate series is based on the rules for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Second Edition), and as such is very complicated when you get down to the nitty-gritty. (This is what makes the game so addictive to the intelligent gamer, because the game operates on so many levels, and one can't be satisified unless one understands them ALL.) Just like the pencil & paper version of the game, everything is determined by the roll of the dice. Throughout the game, you'll see abbreviations such as
1D10, 4D6, 2D4+5, etc. These stand for, respectively, "The result of 1 10-sided die," "The sum of 4 6-sided dice," and "The sum of 2 4-sided dice, with 5 added to the total." Dice range from the D2 (coin) to the D100 (big, round sucker).

One very confusing aspect of the AD&D Second Edition rules is that, quite frequently, low numbers are good. Many beginning Baldur's Gate players think that Leather Armor is better than Plate Armor, because it grants a higher Armor Class. What they've yet to understand is that a high Armor Class is bad—you're much less likely to get hit by your enemies if you try to get your AC as low as possible (ideally, well into the negative range). Your Armor Class isn't the only factor like this: You also want to get your THAC0 and your Saving Throws as low as you can, too. So, because a decrease in your THAC0 is good for you, a -1 THAC0 bonus and a +1 THAC0 bonus both mean exactly the same thing: You are 5% more likely to score a successful hit each time you attack. If you cast a spell at an enemy, and the spell description states that the enemy must Save vs. Spells with a -2 penalty, that is exactly the same as forcing them to Save vs. Spells with a +2 penalty: The enemy is 10% more likely to suffer the full harmful effect of your spell. Don't worry, because when I talk about adjustments to AC, THAC0 or Saving Throws, I will always state whether the adjustment is good or bad.


General Glossary

AC: Armor Class. Counterintuitively, a low AC is good. Each character has a base AC of 10. When they put armor on, that armor becomes their new base AC, and then further AC modifiers are made to that base. Let's say a character is wearing Plate Armor (AC 3), a Medium Shield (-1 to AC), and a Ring of Protection+1 (-1 to AC). They also have a Dexterity of 16, which means they're pretty agile at dodging attacks, and grants them a further -2 AC bonus. Add these all up, and the result is an AC of -1, which is much better than their starting AC of 10, or the 8 they would have if they were naked (the Dexterity bonus still applies). Now let's make up an enemy who has a THAC0 of 12. The formula is: [THAC0 - AC = What they must roll to hit]. So, attacking the fully armored character with the AC of -1, the enemy must roll 12 - (-1) = 13 or higher on a D20. Versus the same character with no armor, the enemy must roll 12 - 8 = 4 or higher on a D20. Naked boy's gonna get toasted.

Armor Class Modifier: AC isn't everything—you also have to take into account the modifiers on the particular type of armor you're wearing. For instance, Full Plate gives bonuses to your AC against slashing and piercing weapons (because the steel plates lock together so darn well), and Chain Mail actually imposes AC penalties against crushing weapons (chain mail works great at dulling the effects of swords & daggers, but clubbing weapons are already dull, so blunting them is useless).

Aura Cleansed: Every once in a great while, you'll see this message pop up in the text window during BG1. Neither I nor anyone else has a clue what it is or what it does—probably nothing. There is a BG2 spell called Daer'Ragh's Aura Cleansing (which makes it so you can cast a spell, then cast another spell without having to wait for the start of the next round), but it was never actually implemented in the game. On the 2 or 3 situations that I've had my Aura Cleansed, it's always been in a dialogue situation, not in combat.

Backstab: A vicious, highly effective attack that only Thieves (and Stalkers) can do: While in Stealth, you must sneak up behind an enemy, and attack with any melee weapon that a true-class Thief can use. Note that just because you can use a weapon does not mean you can Backstab with it. For instance, Fighter/Thieves can use Maces and 2-Handed Swords, but because straight Thieves cannot use those weapons, any Backstab you attempt will fail (the damage will not be multiplied). There is also a Staff in BG2 that only Mages may use. Even though Thieves can use Staves, a Mage/Thief cannot use this particular Staff to Backstab (or Backwhack, as it's called) with. Then there are Stalkers--they can use any weapon, and without ToB installed, Stalkers can also Backstab with any melee weapon. With ToB installed, this bug is corrected, and Stalkers may only Backstab with the same tools Thieves are limited to.) Your character's level is used to determine the Backstab modifier, resulting in an attack that does as much as 5 times the amount of damage a normal combat hit would cause. Note: Some of the more powerful enemies in BG2 are immune to Backstab, and in ToB, it seems that everybody worth Backstabbing is immune. Better try something else.

Bard Song: A skill possessed only by Bards: They have the option to stop fighting, and instead sing and play music to lift the spirits of their comrades and dishearten their enemies. Bards may walk around while singing, but cannot do anything else. While under the effects of Bard Song, party members recieve +1 to hit and damage, which may not sound like much, but when everybody starts rolling twice as many Critical Hits, it makes a difference. Also known as Battlesong, it may be used an infinite number of times per day, for as long as the Bard wishes.

Casting Time: Each spell takes a certain amount of time to cast; naturally, lower is better. The Casting Time equals the number of tenths of a round that the spellcaster needs to get the spell off (during which time he is vulnerable to getting his spell disrupted by an attack).

Critical Hit / Critical Miss: Regardless of THAC0 and AC, a die roll of 20 always hits, and a die roll of 1 always misses. Even Level 1 Mages sometimes get a lucky shot, and when they do, the Critical Hit means that the damage dealt by their attack is doubled, unless the target is wearing a helmet or is (somehow) naturally immune to Critical Hits. Helmets confer no AC bonus (unless it's some enchanted helm that does), they simply ensure that any Critical Hit you suffer will not cause you double damage. Critical Misses also affect combat: If you're unlucky enough to roll a 1, the game imposes a slight delay before you can attack again, with the rationale being that you lost your balance and had to get back up, or something like that. Also, if you're a Thief trying to Backstab and you roll a Critical Miss, you automatically become visible.

Detect Illusions: Although the least important of the Thief skills, it's still pretty useful: When the Thief is paying close attention to his surroundings (the Find Traps ability is turned on), each round the game rolls a D100, and compares the result with his Detect Illusions score, allowing the Thief to potentially see through all harmful (cast by an enemy) Illusionary magics in the area, which can be quite nice.

Experience Points: Gotta love 'em. Every creature you see is worth a certain amount of experience points, and killing it nets you that EXP, to be divided equally among the members of the party. (Note: If you manage to kill something while it is not hostile to you, the party only earns 10% of the creature's full EXP value.) If the points are not equally divisible by the number of people in your party (Say you have a party of 6, and you kill a monster worth 100 EXP), the remainder goes to the people at the head of the party (100 divided by 6 = 16, leaving a remainder of 4. So the 4 party members whose portraits are the highest on the right-hand side of the screen all earn 17 experience points, while the other 2 get 16). So the characters who are higher in the "marching order" get a little bit more EXP than the others. EXP earned by completing quests is shared in the same way, in BG1. In BG2, there is "quest experience" that is not divided: Let's say there is a quest worth 12,000 EXP. Each member of your party, whether you have 6 people or 1, will earn 12,000 EXP. What all this experience does for you should be pretty intuitive: Earning EXP enables your characters to Level Up, and at each level, you gain skills, spells, hitpoints, proficiency stars, a better THAC0, Saving Throws, all that good stuff.

Faerun: BG1 takes place in the region known as the Sword Coast, situated on the western edge of the continent of Faerun, which is the predominant landmass on the globe commonly known as Toril. You'll see the word 'Faerun' tossed about here and there, and I just thought I should mention it. Other areas of note include Kara-Tur, whose people and culture roughly correspond to 14th-Century China/Japan, and Maztica, a region somewhat equivalent to pre-Columbian Central America.

Familiar: BG2 brings us the Level 1 Wizard spell of Find Familiar: What it does is summon a permanent companion—literally, a familiar. Only the PC can cast this spell, and then only if he/she can cast Wizard spells. Your Familiar is under your control, and can move around independently of the party, or you can keep it safe in your backback for as long as you want. The benefits of this spell: The PC's maximum HP will increase by half of the Familiar's total HP. Each Familiar has its own abilities, including spellcasting and/or Thieving skills. The risks: If your familiar ever dies, you will lose the max HP bonus that you gained, you will take damage equal to 1/2 of your Familiar's HP, and you will permanently lose 1 point of Constitution.
Which Familiar you will get is determined by your alignment, so you might want to go here —>
and see which alignment gets which familiar, so you can plan ahead.

Find Traps: Also called Detect/Disarm Traps, this is arguably the most vital skill a Thief can learn. To use the ability, you must turn on the Thief's Find Traps button, letting him know you want him to keep a sharp lookout. (Entering combat or going Stealth will divert his attention.) If he spots a trap, it will immediately be highlighted in red, so you have a chance to yank your party members back before they step on it. Once the trap is located, your Thief can use his Thieving button to Disarm it. Both the finding and the disarming of the Trap depend on the Thief's Find Traps score (not the Pick Locks score, as the game leads you to believe): If a Thief is Detecting Traps, the computer rolls a D100 for each Trap in the area, and if the result is equal to or lower than the Thief's score, the trap is noticed. (This also reveals hidden doors.) Then the Traps score is used in determining the Thief's odds of a successful Disarm—each Trap has its own 'baseline' value, allowing some Traps to be more difficult than others. 75% Traps is usually enough to keep the party safe, but to guarantee it, you really should go all the way to 100%. Not all traps can be Disarmed, although those that cannot are, thankfully, extremely rare.

Hide in Shadows: See Stealth.

HLAs: The acronym for High-Level Abilities, which come into play for any character who has more than 3 million EXP under their belt. After you pass the Experience Cap for SoA, every time you Level Up you will be allowed to choose a new HLA, which will eventually make your character giddy with power. Each class has roughly their own pool of HLAs from which to choose (The Ranger and Paladin sets vary slightly from the Fighter's): Priests' and Wizards' HLAs can mostly only be chosen once, as they're new—and devastating—spells (Once they're in your spellbook, they're in, and there's no need to choose that HLA again), and Warriors and Rogues learn new combat skills, that can be chosen over and over, enabling them to use that skill more often per day. True-class characters are easy to describe: Once they hit 3,000,000 EXP, they get to choose a new HLA with each Level Up. Multiclass characters get a new HLA each time either of their classes Levels Up—not only that, but they are not restricted to the HLA pool of the class that just gained a level: If you're playing a Fighter/Cleric and your Fighter half Levels Up, you may choose one of the new Cleric spells if you want to. Dual-class characters start gaining HLAs when their active class reaches 3 million EXP, and then they are limited to the HLA pool of the active class. If you took a Fighter to Level 20 (exactly 3,000,000) and then Dualed to Thief, you would get to choose only one Fighter HLA, and then you'd have to earn another 3 million as a Thief to start getting Thief HLAs—and you'd never see the Fighter HLA pool again. Note that I'm not saying which HLAs are open to each class, or what the HLAs do. That's because that data is semi-spoilerish, and you
might prefer waiting until you reach that point in the game: When your character hits 3 million EXP, you'll feel like
Santa Claus came early this year. But, if you're the instant-gratification type, you might as well just go here. —>

HP: Hitpoints! Quite literally, everything in the game lives & dies by its hitpoints. Hit 0 hp, you be dead. The more hp you have, the more difficult you are to kill—understandably, Warriors have the highest maximum hp. When in real-life combat, some attacks are so brutal that they decapitate or dismember the opponent. In BG, any killing stroke that takes the enemy down to -10 (or lower) hp does the same thing, and you are rewarded(?) with the sight of the enemy turning into a spray of meat and blood. This is called "chunking," and beware, because it can happen to you, as well (EVERY creature in the game, enemies included, follows the same rulebook): If any of your party members gets chunked, you will not be able to resurrect them because their bodies are too badly damaged for the Priest spells to have any effect. Bummer.

Lay On Hands: A Special Ability that, in BG1, is unique to Paladins and one of the Candlekeep NPCs. It's a healing spell that may be used once per day, and heals 2 hit points for every level of the caster. Paladins and the Candlekeep NPC may use this ability to heal any creature they want; in BG2, Monks and a certain NPC also have this ability, but can heal only themselves with it.

Level Drain: Also called Energy Drain, this can be a pain in the butt. Several types of high-level Undead (most commonly Vampires, Wraiths, and Vampiric Mists) have melee attacks that naturally Level Drain you. Let's say you have a Level 14 Fighter: A Vampire scores a hit on you, and you lose some hp and you also see the message "Two Levels Drained." Hit Pause, and go to your character's Record screen. Surprise! You're only Level 12, with the THAC0, hp, and skills of a Level 12 Fighter. (If you were a spellcaster, you would also lose the spell slots that you gained with Levels 13 and 14.) Also, where it should show how many EXP points you have, you see the words 'LEVEL DRAINED.' This means that you're still earning EXP, but it doesn't get awarded to your character—yet. (Let's say your rightful EXP gets put into a bag for now.) But you're still fighting that Vampire, who has more chances to Level Drain you; and if you hit Level 0, you're dead. (Multiclass characters have to be Level 0 in both or all of their classes: I once played a Fighter/Mage/Thief and survived a Vampire attack by the skin of my teeth—My Fighter and Mage parts were at Level 0, with a single Thief level keeping me just this side of the Abyss.) Anyway, once you kill the Vampire, you're still Level Drained. It will NOT wear off on its own (except when it's caused by a Breath Weapon—remember that), the only way to get rid of it is with a Restoration spell, which you can buy at any Temple, purchase Scrolls (usable by any character) of at Temples and some shops, or cast by a Cleric (and a special type of Druid). Once you're Restored, you get your stolen levels back (You're a Level 14 Fighter again), along with your THAC0, hp, and skills (spellcasters get all their spell slots back, although the spells in those slots will have to be re-memorized). Also, the EXP you earned while you were Level Drained (remember that bag?) comes back to you, so don't be surprised if you Level Up right after being Restored. And that's Level Drain. Ain't it a bitch? The Cleric spell Negative Plane Protection will render you immune to Level Drain—for an annoyingly short period of time. There are some items that confer Negative Plane Protection for as long as they're equipped, but these are very few, and not all classes can use them. In ToSC, there is one enemy that can Energy Drain you. This is not the same as true Level Drain—all that will happen is that 1 or more of your stats are lowered, and this effect wears off after a couple of turns.

Lore: Every character has their own Lore score, which is based on their class, with modifiers from their Intelligence and Wisdom on top of that. Bards have the highest Lore, with 10 points per level. Mages and Thieves get 3 per level, and everyone else (including Sorcerers) gets 1 per level. Multiclassed characters use whichever of their classes has the higher Lore. What Lore does: Each magical (or otherwise Unidentified) item has its own Lore value. Pass this item to whichever member of the party has the highest Lore, and have them examine it. If their Lore is high enough, they'll recognize it from their studies of their line of work, saving you the cost of an Identify spell, or the 100gp you'd spend for a store or temple to Identify it for you.

Morale: Every creature in the game has its own Morale, which can fail: If an enemy sees that it's being attacked by a superior force with better equipment, and sees its friends and companions being hacked to pieces like so much confetti, chances are it's gonna freak out and run for its life. This happens to your party members, too. Morale Failure can take one of three forms: Berserk (the creature goes nuts and starts attacking anything in its way, whether friend or foe), Running (runs away from all creatures as fast as it can), and Panic (a combination of the two). Of course, the quickest way to induce a Morale Failure is to simply cast Horror.

Move Silently: See Stealth.

Pick Locks: Good for both doors and chests, Pick Locks is the best way around those pesky obstacles. Each lock has its own 'baseline' value, which is compared with your Open Locks score and used as the basis for a die roll. 100% is enough to open just about every lock, although you will encounter the message "This lock does not have a conventional mechanism, and may be warded against simple spells." If you see this message in BG1, it means you should give up—the designers forgot to assign a baseline value to the lock, so no amount of picking will help, nor will it yield to a Knock spell. But if you get that message in ToSC or later, it usually means you need to find a specific key to open that lock, or do something that will open it for you. (If you see that text anywhere except in Durlag's Tower, it's almost certainly a result of the bug.)

Pick Pockets: Just what it says. Any person or creature that is not hostile to you can be pickpocketed. 100% is usually enough to avoid getting caught at it—but be warned that rolling a 1 will still get you nicked. Soldiers are usually more watchful than the common citizen, so filching from the police is more risky. The odds of successful shoplifting also depend on your Pick Pockets score, but you're going to need a lot more than 100% Pockets if you don't want to turn the Shopkeeper hostile for the rest of the game. Know that the items for sale by a store exist in some kind of limbo, not on the Shopkeeper's person, so killing the Shopkeeper does not mean you can loot their corpse. Also, note that somehow, shopkeepers can tell if the item you're trying to sell them has been stolen (either from their store, or some other), and very few of them will be willing to purchase 'fenced' goods. Items that you've pickpocketed (as opposed to shoplifted) are not marked as fenced. There are a few items in BG2, and perhaps even some in BG1, that are still marked as fenced, even though you know damn well you earned them as lawful spoils of war. Well, who knows, maybe the person you looted those items from was the guy who stole 'em. Oh well, you can always sell the stuff to a Fence.... You may also encounter the odd situation of going to a big store that deals in lots of magical gear, and when you try to sell this great weapon you found, the guy doesn't even want it. (Personally, I think this is a defense mechanism, to keep you from forgetting what you did with some of the best items in the game.)

Resistances: These can be crucial to your survival. There are three main types: Magic Resistance, Elemental (Fire, Cold, Acid, Electric, Poison) Resistance and Physical (Blunt, Piercing, Slashing, Missile) Resistance. I'll talk about Magic Resistance first. Let's say you have 25% Magic Resistance, and somebody chucks a spell at you. No matter how nasty that spell might be, you've got a 1 in 4 chance that it will have no effect on you at all. (Certain high-level spells do ignore MR, though.) In BG1, your MR can block all forms of magic, which can be a real pain when your Priest is trying to Heal you. (But Healing Potions will always work.) In BG2, only harmful spells are stopped by your MR. Your enemies will have MR, too, of course. (Level 5 Wizard spell: Lower Magic Resistance.) Elemental Resistances are a bit different: Let's say you have 25% Fire Resistance, and somebody casts Aganazzar's Scorcher on you. It'll still hit you 100% of the time, but you'll only take 3/4 of the damage. And yes, if you manage to crank your FR over 100%, fire will actually heal you. (Get hit with a Fire Arrow: Lose some life to the Arrow, get some back from the Fire.) Physical Resistances act just like the Elemental Resistances. There's also the rather confusing Resistance to Magic Damage: It has no effect on your odds of being hit by a spell, what it does is reduce the amount of damage done by that spell. Suppose a barrage of 5 Magic Missiles is fired at a character with 20% Magic Resistance and 50% Magic Damage Resist. Out of those 5 Magic Missiles, 4 will most likely strike their target, but the Magic Damage Resist means the guy will only lose half of the hitpoints he ordinarily would have. (For another example, let's say it was a Fireball instead of a Magic Missile. The person's Magic Resistance would still apply, but their Magic Damage would not—this type of spell looks at the victim's Fire Resistance instead.)

Round: See Time.

Saving Throws: These indicate your odds of avoiding the harmful effects of spells and the like. Again, low Saving Throws are good. There are five Saves: Save vs. Death (Spells that cause instant death, all poison effects, and most things that immobilize you), Save vs. Breath Weapon (certain airborne spells such as Stinking Cloud, and some monsters have natural breath attacks), Save vs. Petrification/Polymorph (for those of us who hate being turned into stone or transformed into a squirrel), Save vs. Wands (spells that were cast from wands instead of the caster's memory—some weapons also cast harmful effects on each hit, some of which may be countered with a Save vs. Wands), and Save vs. Spells (spells cast from memory, and the 'last resort' Saving Throw, when none of the other 4 seems to apply).
Now, each time you get hit with some spell or spell-like effect, the computer rolls a D20. If the result is equal to or higher than your Saving Throw for that particular case, you make your Save, which means you either take only half of the damage (spells like Fireball), or negate the spell entirely (spells like Charm Person). Your starting Saving Throws are determined by your race and class, and then get better as you gain levels. A high-level Paladin wearing some good equipment can easily get all his Saving Throws into the negative range, allowing him to shrug off harmful magic energies that would demolish a lesser being. Note, however, that your enemies have Saving Throws too, and high-level bad guys will be resistant to most of your spells. In those cases, you might consider using spells that don't allow Saves, or first use spells like Greater Malison, which weakens Saving Throws.

Set Traps: Potentially a Thief's most deadly skill. A single-class Thief starts BG2 able to lay 2 or 3 Traps per day (They get to set more per day as they gain levels). They're also called Snares, even though they look just like a bear trap. These traps are magical, not mechanical, in nature; this means that enemies do not have to actually step on the trap (Traps will also hit flying enemies, like Mephits and Wyverns), it simply has to come within the Trap's trigger radius, which is huge (something like 20-25 feet), and if you've got a quick eye you can see that the Trap actually fires an arrow at the victim, and does its damage, which is quite decent. Each time your Thief sets a Snare, he makes a D100 roll against his Set Traps score. If he fails, the Snare is wasted, and the Thief may even get hurt by it and bleed for a few rounds. The Traps that you set can only be set off by creatures hostile to the party. Traps are the cheesiest things in the game, if you abuse them (See the end of Chapter 10).

Special Ability: Some characters have skills or spell-like abilities; these skills may be accessed by pressing the Special Abilities button, which looks like a 4-pointed star at the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. Rangers can Charm Animal, Paladins can Detect Evil, etc. Certain NPCs also have their own unique Special Abilities, to make their characters more interesting; for example, Minsc can go Berserk, even though he's not a Berserker. And if you play a Cleric/Thief, your Thieving button (for picking locks, picking pockets, and disarming Traps) is now a Special Ability, simply because the game ran out of room for all your special buttons at the bottom of the screen: There's your weapon button, your 3 Quick Item buttons, your Stealth button, your Turn Undead button, your Cast Spell button....so the designers had to stick your Thieving skills in with your Special Abilities. Also, you start the game in BG2 with 6 Special Abilities, from the dreams in BG1. Note that which Abilities you get is determined by your Alignment, not which Abilities you had at the end of BG1. Good characters will receive the Abilities from the "Good" dreams, and Evil ones will gain the spells from the "Evil" dreams.

Speed Factor: Each type of weapon has a Speed Factor, which determines at what point in the round the attack will actually be made. A Speed Factor of 4 means that at the start of each round of combat, the character will wait for 4/10ths of the round to pass, and then attack. (This does NOT mean that you have time to attack again after 8/10ths of the round—that is determined by your Attacks Per Round.) Cumbersome weapons such as Flails and Crossbows have the worst Speed Factors, and small weapons like Daggers have the lowest.

Stealth: A skill that enables the user to walk around, unseen and unheard. Only Thieves, Rangers, and Monks can Stealth, and their success depends on their Stealth rating (Thieves & Monks choose how many points per level to put into the skill, Rangers' Stealth is based solely on their level and Dexterity), their surroundings (Stealthed characters are more likely to be seen if they don't keep to good cover, or if they try to hide from large groups of enemies at once), and the amount of light in the area (darker is better). Any action other than walking around will cause the character to leave the shadows, and become visible at the end of the round. Some actions (such as picking an object up off the ground, or Backstabbing an enemy) will reveal your presence instantly. In BG2, the Thief's Stealth is broken into Hide in Shadows, which determines your odds of successfully going Stealth when you want to, and Move Silently, which determines the odds of enemies noticing that someone is about. (If they hear footsteps, enemy magic-users tend to cast True Sight, which removes all forms of illusions, including Stealth.) You can NEVER go into Stealth when you are within the sight range of any enemy. Also, some enemies (usually only very high-level ones) can see you perfectly well, Stealthed or not. For instance, Dragons can both smell out your exact location and sense the heat from your body, making sneaking by one of them impossible. Be aware that 100% Stealth is not enough: Factors such as bright illumination act as negative modifiers to your Stealth score, causing you to fail your roll (which is made once per round). Crank your score above 100% to counteract this, if you wish to Stealth reliably. In BG2, 100% in both Hide in Shadows and Move Silently is enough to ensure your safety. When a Thief, Ranger, or Monk is in Stealth, they get a -4 THAC0 bonus to their next attack.

Tiefling: Tieflings are a race of intelligent, humanoid beings that frequently travel between the planes of existence, although they are not common here on the Prime. Tieflings have a mix of human and demonic blood in their veins, which usually shows up in their features; some have tails, horns, different colors of skin or hair, etc. Because their demonic ancestry is so easily recognized, Tieflings have grown used to being unwelcome when they travel. In BG2, one of the NPCs that can be recruited into your party is a Tiefling.

Time: The basic unit of time is the round. Spellcasters may cast 1 spell per round, and all characters have a specified number of attacks per round. (Only Warriors get more than 1 attack per round, unless some magical spell or item is in effect to raise this.) The round is 6 seconds long, in real time. A turn is ten rounds, and six turns equals one hour of game time (which lasts 6 minutes in real life). 24 hours is one day, of course (BG1 takes place in the summertime in the Northern Hemisphere, so don't be surprised if there's more than 12 hours of daylight). When you Rest, it must be 8 uninterrupted hours, or it won't count: Your magic-users will not memorize their spells, and items that can be used a certain number of times per day (there are a lot of these in BG2) will not be recharged. Time in the Sword Coast is usually measured in 'tendays,' rather than 'weeks,' as is the custom in some other regions.
"How much time do I have to complete this quest?" Most quests, including the Main Plot, have no time limit at all, but that's only a general rule. If the person telling you about the errand gives you a specific deadline ("Meet me at my chambers in one hour"), they tend to mean it. If they're rather vague about it ("The city is in danger! You must hurry!"), you can usually dink around for months and it won't make any difference. Try to prioritize your quests in order of urgency (Help put out the burning building before you go on that archaeological expedition to find curios for a museum), and you should be able to complete them all without anyone getting mad at you because you took too long.

THAC0: The acronym stands for "To Hit Armor Class Zero," and is a measurement of how likely you are to score a hit in combat. Yet again, a low THAC0 is good. (Getting all this?) That's because it represents the number you have to roll (on a D20) to hit an opponent with an Armor Class of 0. So a character with a THAC0 of 16 has to roll a 16 or higher to land a successful blow, while a character with a THAC0 of 9 only has to roll a 9 or higher. Each character's THAC0 starts out at 20, and then diminishes as you gain levels. There are also personal characteristics that affect THAC0: A very (physically) strong character has a much better chance than a very weak character to land a hit with a melee weapon, and a very nimble character has much better aim than a very clumsy character, when using a ranged weapon. THAC0 is also affected by the amount of proficiency you have with the weapon you're using: If you have 2 or more proficiency stars in your current choice of armament, you get bonuses, but if you haven't trained with the weapon at all, you'll actually recieve penalties for using it. (More on this in Chapter 7.)

Turn: See Time.

Turn Undead: Clerics and Paladins possess the skill of Turn Undead, which is to stop fighting & casting spells, and instead chant holy rites that are abhorrent to all forms of Undead. All undead creatures in the immediate area (approximately 15 foot radius) will either run away, switch sides to fight on the character's behalf, explode on the spot, or be totally unaffected, depending on the character's level and alignment. (Turning a Skeleton or Zombie is easy, but just try a Lich or Vampire.) Clerics can Turn Undead at a level equivalent to their own experience level, while Paladins (even Undead Hunters) Turn Undead at their own level, -2. Only Evil Clerics can control Undead creatures to make them fight for the party, and only Good or Neutral characters can cause them to die on the spot. Characters may walk around while Turning Undead, but can perform no other actions. There is no limit to the number of times per day this ability can be used, or to its duration.

Vorpal: "He took his vorpal sword in hand / Long time the manxome foe he sought / Then rested he by the Tumtum tree, / And stood awhile in thought." The AD&D folks apparently liked The Jabberwocky so much that they decided to create the Vorpal weapon. What makes a vorpal weapon unique is that with each hit, there is a chance that it will cause instant death, no matter how many hitpoints the victim has left. Some vorpal weapons are only vorpal on a certain percentage of their hits, and some allow their victims a Save vs. Death to avoid the effects.
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