[SixOfSpades]

Originally posted by Jim (white) and IronDragon (tan): - Friends : with ring of human influence why bother? By the time you've got your Ring of Wizardry and Ring of Acuity on, you're not going to want to start taking them off to use the ring of Human Influence to save a few bucks because you'll de-memorise the bonus spells provided by the other rings! This spell serves a great purpose at the start of the game to accelerate your aquisition of the Robe of Veccna. Sure, you can slap on the RoHI at this stage, but you'll want a 20 CHA to maximise the discount, so unless you're prepared to blow several thousand on a Nymph Cloak or something, Friends will servere you well.

.....except that there are more than enough SCROLLS of the spell to go around, so you won't need to learn the spell yourself OR have to swap out Rings. There are only a precious few (expensive) items in the game that are actually worth buying, and even fewer if you happen to be a Solo Sorc.....and since all of those stores are indoors, you can pop off all the Friends scrolls you want.....I believe the CHA bonus is cumulative with itself in BG2, I know it was in BG1.

Prefer burning hands which seems to work esp well on undead. I've heard this on this board before but am little bemused as to why - unless the undead in question has a negative fire resistance but I'm struggling to think of any that have.

Mummies are especially vulnerable to fire--all those dry linen wrappings. Water-dwelling creatures like Sahuagin also take extra damage from fire.

Level 2: - Knock : well someone has to open all those chests – but dangerous without Minor spell deflection why is casting knock dangeous without MSD?

Because Sorcerers can't Disarm Traps.