Preparing Your Party
Chances are, by the time you're ready to challenge the new Tales of the Sword Coast areas, you'll already be pretty adept with the basic rules of Baldur's Gate. Even though most of the strategies that were effective in the original game are portable to Tales of the Sword Coast, there are several notable modifications to the game's rules that have a subtle, but significant impact on gameplay.

The Experience Point Cap
Characters are still subject to an experience point cap, but the limiting threshold has been raised from 89,000 to 161,000 experience points. Multiclassed characters will still split their experience points equally among their character classes, and will only be entitled to accumulate a total of 161,000 points in all of their classes. Similarly, dual-classed characters can only acquire a total of 161,000 experience. Prior to dual-classing a character, you should ensure that you have enough room under the experience point cap for that character to reach a higher level in the new class, or you'll fail to get the abilities of the old class back during the course of the game.

The following chart indicates the maximum levels characters of a single class can now achieve, as well as the new abilities that can be acquired as a result of the increase in the experience point cap:

Class	Max. Level	New Abilities
Bards	ten	fourth-level mage spells
Clerics	eight	none
Druids	ten	fifth-level cleric spells
Fighters	eight	none
Mages (and specialty mages)	nine	fifth-level mage spells
Paladins	eight	none
Rangers	eight	first-level cleric spells
Thieves	ten	none

Next: maximum levels with the multiclassed and dual-classed combinations
 

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