Almost no one will do anything I want them to. I cannot get Mathilde and Filken to marry. I can't get Marek to convert because Terjon gives me no option to convert him. No one is doing anything I want them to because no text options come up which allows me to complete quests.
RE Mathilde and Filiken; Have you talked to the carpenter? Have you talked to Filiken's neighbor? RE Marek; Have you talked to the druid?
I've talked to them all. No one can heal Bing. Nothing is getting done. Filiken's neighbor? I am not sure. The town is full of people and it is very confusing.
When you talk to Calmert for the first time, who is the cleric on the first floor of the church, he recommends that you "Feel free the peruse the tracts and scrolls of out religion". There's a nice library right as you go up to the second floor of the church, and there may be something for Bing in there. Also there are many quests you can get done in one shot, without needing to chain together a lot of different circumstances. Here are a few off the top of my head.: 1) Talk to Ostler about long term lodging. 2) Talk to Calmert about his church, and people who pay their dues. 3) Talk to the serving lady in the church basement about grain. 4) Talk to Jinerth the Tailor about why he is sad. 5) Talk to the Miller's helper about religion. I'll repeat again that you need the character with a good score in Diplomacy, Intimidate, Sense Motive, Bluff and/or Gather Information to get thru most of these quests. It can require anywhere from a score of 2 - 8 depending on the quest to get it finished. Make sure THAT CHARACTER is initiating the talking and in the first slot on the bottom.
Charisma of 15 will give a nice +2 boost to most social skills, but... unless you have skill points spent on them in the first place, the charisma bonus won't mean much. Edit: If you don't have a rogue or a bard that can have all the social skills in one character, or if the rogue used all his skills in other areas, you'll need to spilt them up on different characters. What this means is that you will need to open the dialog with an NPC multiple times, each time with a different PC: The Paladin to use Diplomacy and Sense Motive, the Barbarian to use Intimidate, The Rogue to use Bluff, etc.
The Hommlet townsfolk quests are pretty involved and a bit tedious- lots of speak to A then B, who refers you to C, who sends you back to A again. They have the merit that they give risk-free XP and should get you to 2nd level, after which the life of an adventurer becomes a bit more survivable. There are also some useful 'quest rewards' to pick up. You probably aren't robbing yourself of a great cRPG immersion experience by finding a walkthrough (either gazra's on this site or elsewhere) and just doing what needs to be done to tick them off. To be honest if you want to get into the action your best bet is the Welkwood Bog New Content quest that was designed as an alternate way of leveling up from 1 to 2. Speak to the smith and persist when does his 'are you afraid of death' speach. He'll eventually send you off to see someone else (the militia captain I think), then on to a low-level adventure. NOTE: even here, you will have to marshall your strength carefully- if you've used most of your spells and healing, save the game and call up the world map and return to Hommlett to rest, heal and replace your spells (this is probably the key piece of advice- with luck and/or judicious use of save/ reload, you can start the moathouse at level 1, but you'll have to return to town after pretty much every fight. If you still have Furnok with you, he will be your most effective fighter. He hits more accurately and is more durable than the rest of the team. If he attacks whilst invisible (he has a ring) he'll do an extra 2d6 hp damage,; ditto if he 'flanks' an enemy (him and another PC on opposite sides of a non-undead foe). Use spells like Sleep to knock out numbers of low level enemies. Coup de grace them if you can, if not they'll likely wake up, but at least you can stagger the flow of enemy as they attack you. Disrupt undead is a useful 0-level spell which I think is available to both your Wizard and Cleric. Turn undead is a mixed blessing at this level- if you use it somewhere like Emridy meadows you can end up chasing a skeleton around and triggering more mobs to attack you. Another possible first level quest is to talk to the woodcutter and agree to rid the deklo grove of spiders. Take sleep spells with you (scribe a couple of scrolls). I don't think this encounter gives you enough xp to level up on its own. Sleeping in the deklo grove ( save first, and don't do it if already injured/ low on spells) is a reasonable way of 'farming xp' to enable you to level up.
