Raise Dead spells are divine, so you don't need to purchase them, you just need to have the level. Druids don't get it, but Jaheira has the equivalent Harper's Call spell. Of course, you only get that kind of experience in Baldur's Gate II, so for the entirety of the first game, you pretty much need not to die. Carrying a dead character's equipment is ridiculously annoying too. Thankfully Baldur's Gate allows you to save at any time outside of encounters.



Damn, randomised loot is probably the dumbest thing. If you contrast Baldur's Gate to Neverwinter Nights, at least in the former you knew you were going to get good loot when you killed humanoid characters, since they were likely to be wielding magical weapons and armour. And Mages always had wands and scrolls. In Neverwinter Nights they'd just drop standard loot.

As for Final Fantasy, I've only played I, IV, V, VI and VII. And Tactics. And Mystic Quest (which is terrible). Actually, that's a fair number of games now that I look at it. VI is definitely the best. I love how the game actually gives you a huge cast of characters, and incentive to use many of them (rather than say, picking three and going with them any time you can, say Chrono-Frog-Lucca/Magus ).