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AD&D Basics

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is built on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition rules set in the Forgotten Realms campaign world. You don't have to know the rules to play — the computer handles them — but understanding the foundations makes character building and tactics far more rewarding.

Enhanced Edition note

For the Enhanced Edition, many rules originally introduced in Baldur's Gate II have been back-ported into the first game and are described in the Mastering Melee & Magic manual.

How Baldur's Gate uses the AD&D rules

Baldur's Gate uses the same weighting system for spells and weapons as the tabletop AD&D game, with one key adaptation: the initiative round is per-character rather than per-party.

Instead of a group-based turn (one side acts, then the other), every character, NPC, and monster acts in real time on its own personal initiative round.

The personal initiative round is six seconds long — a ten-to-one reduction from the 60-second round in tabletop AD&D, consistent with the reduction in global game time.

Pausing the action

You can pause (or unpause) the action at any time:

  • Press the space bar (PC and Mac).
  • Or click the clock icon in the bottom-left corner of the screen.

While paused you can assign actions to any character and then resume by unpausing. This lets fans of turn-based combat effectively play that way and gives everyone a moment to think during heated battles.

Auto-pause

The Gameplay Options menu can instruct the game to pause automatically when certain events occur (enemy spotted, spell cast, character injured, etc.) so you don't miss them.

Source: bgee/original_manuals/baldurs_gate_1_ee_mastering_melee_and_magic.pdf — "AD&D® Rules—An Introduction", "About Advanced Dungeons & Dragons", "How Baldur's Gate Uses the AD&D Rules".