[andrewas]

You can find a .pdf of the manual in your BG2 main folder. Or at least I can, I may have moved it from the CD. But in any case, its there.

And to answer what I think the first question is - starting with a level 16 character will break the early game balance. The game scales to a limited extent, but to get a good balance over a large level range would require a human DM.