[Nerull]

I've been thinking about this game, specifically the things I have NOT done in the game, and I have realized some things in the way I play the game. I have always played "warrior heavy" parties. My mages pretty much just summon stuff and breach down defenses (with a few area effect spells to help out) supporting the warriors; my mages will have like 3% kills while my tanks will have like 85%+ among them. In fact, other than party buffs, I have not really used any of the mage buffs beyond MI or Stoneskin. I've never used PfMW, Tenser's Transformation, or Mislead, for example. Also, I tend to "hoard" my spells, using the bare minimum necessary to help the tanks (I've regularly rested with 60%+ of my spells uncast). In addition, my thief is little more than a substandard archer with the ability to open locks and disarm traps (I play a lot of good only parties, so usually Imoen is my only thief). Unless my priest can hold his/her own up front (Anomen, Jaheira), then they are relegated to slinger duty unless they need to buff the party.

I realize that there is nothing wrong with playing the game this way, especially if that is the way I do things usually. However, I feel like I've missed out on a lot of the things the "non-warrior" classes can do by playing this way. Thus, I am thinking about doing something very drastic about it.

I am thinking of doing my first solo, a mage/thief multiclass. No mods (except maybe rebalanced rogue; thank you Six for mentioning that one, it is a good one), and Core difficulty. I'm not doing it for the challenge of the encounters; I'm doing for the challenge of playing something that will require me to use skills and abilities that I am not used to using. The reason for soloing: I know me. I'll cheat. As soon as a warrior type enters the party, I'll revert back to my old way of doing things. It's also why I do not want to make my guy a F/M/T; I'll be tempted to hang in combat longer than I should. No, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and do a solo mage/thief.

However, the debate comes in when I think of how to do this. Should I start in BG1 and play the entire saga? If so, should I play using the standard BG1 engine, or BGTutu mod (which I currently have installed, but would otherwise remove for this run) to use the new engine? Or should I start in SoA?

Also, any tips on playing this solo? I've seen plenty of advice along the way about soloing, but considering I'm venturing into new territory I wouldn't mind hearing it fresh.