Heh. I had the same instinct when I first played Baldur's Gate. I eventually learned the most loot wasn't worth carrying around unless it was magical or you intended to use it. The hardest part is gauging how many spare ammunition stacks to keep around. Especially magic arrows tend to take up a significant portion of my inventory, since I'm always reluctant to use my expendables.



Yeah, there's a problem of power scaling in these games, since the people around you tend to have around the same level you do. So town guards in a small town like Saradush are ridiculously high level and decked out in low level magical gear while the guards of major cities like Baldur's Gate and Athkatla are not. There are few opportunities to really enjoy how high level you've become. Though there are some, and they're pretty cool.



Lucca is the best spellcaster until you get Magus, and also the only Fire user, so she's good to use against enemies that are vulnerable to magic, like anything in the Heckran's Cave, or the Jugglers in Magus' Castle, or the Red Scouters in the Ocean Palace (or Spekkio). With Marle or Frog, she also enables the Delta Force/Delta Storm triple tech fairly early in the game, which I like to use to wipe out the Giga Gaia's arms before it can do too much damage.

EDIT: Fun Fact: When I was grinding through New Game + after New Game + to finally get access to the final Spekkio confrontation, I managed to max out most characters on upgrade Tabs, and I noticed something curious. Chrono's, Lucca's and Magus' ultimate techs (Luminaire, Flare and Dark Matter, respectively) are balanced to do about as much damage when used in the course of a standard game. However, Magus starts out with much higher Magic Power than the other characters, followed by Lucca and Chrono last. That means that if you max out these characters' Magic Power stat through Magic Tabs, Chrono's Luminaire is actually the strongest of the three spells because he is the weakest default spell caster. In theory, this would make Robo's Shock the strongest single tech in the game, though I've never maxed out Robo's Magic Power to find out.