[andrewas]

the weapon categories are different in BG2 (you have seperate choices for bastard swords, two hander swords and longswords, instead of just large swords, and so on), so you always have to re-choose them. its a similar deal with spells, although it would have been possible to copy those over, but they chose to allow you to re-choose them for some reason.

what does get copied is your stats (including bonuses from those luverly tomes), your level, certain items you had _might_ show up in the starting dungeon, and a few later encounters will be affected by you choices in BG1. your equipment is stolen by your captor and sold (although he dosent seem to have sold it localy - id have expected a few pieces to show up in the adv mart or something).