Funny. Seems like both of us had some bottled up opinions and simultaniously triggered them.
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Bard Songs are practically redundant. I don't know why they bothered with it. It would be better if they made a minor PERMANENT effect due to pure inspiration.
I must admit I like Blades at lot. Shame they got their spell progression slaughtered.
"I would HATE to get far into the game and then be sent all the way back to Character Creation because of one mistake or bad decision."
So you would think per intuition, but you'd be surprised at how often you make the right choice when the consequences are dire. Problem is that in BG this kind of roleplaying isn't rewarded (it would be in Pn'P) and mindless slaughter is.
Using autosaves would be a nice way to practise. If you die you can try again, perhaps with a lower difficulty, until you find the right order of affairs with the least risk.
After playing CRPGs for a while (Daggerfall AFAIR) we switched back to Pen n' Paper. After a really bad decision one of my players said the immortal words "Oh, I wish I could reload".