After a two year layoff I decided to reinstall BG1 and play through with a party of different combinations. Last time I had Imoen and she was a great thief. This time I dualed her to a mage and presently I am without a thief until I can get her to a level 7 mage. So it looks like I'll have to bash anything that is locked which is something I never had to do last time. How does one do this? Is only by using one's fist icon? When I try with my weapons nothing happens. Thanks for the advice ahead of time.

Bashing locks is a product of your character's strength. You need to force attack whatever you're trying to unlock (bash) be it a door, chest, wardrobe, etc. If your strength is not sufficient then you wont break the lock. In other words use the character with the highest strength. For me it happened to be my paladin who had a perfectly legit strength of 19. (I love the tomes)

So I force bash something but how does one "force bash" something when it remains "blue." Its like my guys stand around. I try to use Minsc with his 18/93 strength with a weapon but things remain locked. So, again, does this mean I need to remove a weapon from a weapon slot so that I have a fist icon show and use the fist icon as my "choice" to force something open? Thanks for answering my original post.

Forcing lonks open isn't anywhere near as effective as picking the locks--Even with 19 STR, you only have a 50% chance to force doors and chests open, roughly the equivalent of 50% Pick Locks. Save yourself some grief and pick up one of the other Thieves floating around, just long enough to open some stuff. (I know Coran has a good Locks score.)

SixofSpades, you're absolutely correct about forcing being much less desirable than lock picking. I was finishing up the Bandit Camp last night and there were several chests I couldn't budge. You can bet I'm going back when Imoen gets her thieving back.

Kivan hasn't been able to break a lock yet for me with 18+ strength and a +2 hammer.

Snark to the best of my knowledge the weapon you use to bash a lock has no effext whatsoever on the outcome.