The Black Pits - Start fresh, or import?

Hey all.

So I was curious about starting the Black Pits. I opened up the screen, and got really excited that you get to create your own custom party (squee!).

Thing is, I also recently beat Baldur's Gate, and I've got my Charname sitting in the import files waiting for BG2:EE. So, I thought, why not import him into the Black Pits to give him something to do?

Then I realized that he keeps his levels if he's imported. Which was fine, until I tried to make another custom character from scratch, and she started at level 1.

So I've come to the conclusion that if I want to import my character, I'll have to import the rest of my Charnames after I go through their playthroughs of Baldur's Gate (which won't be hard... I have a lot of Charnames to go around... It'll just take a while.)

OR...

I could just remake my characters and start fresh. I heard that the Black Pits experience cap was around level 10 for most classes, and it's scaled so the low-level parties go up really fast.

I really like the idea of taking all of my Baldur's Gate heroes and putting them together in the Black Pits, but since I haven't tried it yet, I'd like to get an opinion from the other players who have gone through it. Would I get more out of the experience if I just started fresh with new characters?

Please and thank you!