I have it on the easiest difficulty and i cannot beat these guys, they have a mage with them who has some kind of spell shield on him, and he casts some kind of fear which sends half my party agroing the whole sewers, no matter what i try i CANNOT kill the mage, ive tried silencing, dispel magic, remove magic, sleep, horror....everything, nothing touches him, and with the shield up i cant even hit him

this seems to be a problem all the time though, none of my spells work and my party is constantly feared, how do i combat these and why dont spells like sleep/dispell magic ever work?

yes im a major noob at these games, never played d&d and only just started BG a few month ago

First thing I would recommend is the cleric spell "remove fear" its a first level spell too so you can memorize more than one if you need too. Cast it before battle, it will work on your whole party at once a will prevent them from being affected by the fear spell. Having a full party under your control the whole time should even the odds for you enough to beat them or at least kill everyone besides the wizard and his protections will wear out eventually.

Also animate dead another cleric spell creates skeletons that are immune to fear.

This is a pretty hard fight. Unfortunately in this game enemies usually make their saving throws (which is why sleep and similar spells never work). Dispel magic is a complicated spell, but it will succeed more often as your mage/cleric levels up. You will soon meet a character with an uber powerful dispel magic ability in the sewers though :) For now go for spells like Spell Thrust or Secret Word. Also, spells like sleep will have a better chance of working if you caste Greater Malison before. Honestly I usually use cheesy strategies for this fight. Cast Cloudkill/Web/Stinking Cloud (again Greater Malison helps) on the enemy party before you do anything else. The really cheesy part is that you can cast these spells from offscreen before the battle really even starts and disable a few of the enemies. Again, it's lame, but sometimes it's better than being frustrated.

Cast Remove Fear (low level cleric spell) on your party before the battle. It will protect against fear. It is easily dispelled (by both you and enemies!) so be careful. But still it will buy you time at least.

And always have plenty of summons in these hard fights as fodder!

Good luck, don't give up :)

There's no reason to fight them now, just explore something else and return when you're more experienced.

1: Get the Remove Fear Spell

2: Have A Well Built Party

3: Have plenty of scrolls of Animate Dead and Resurrection.

4: Good Luck

Sleep only works on level 4 and under creatures. These guys are way above that.

If you have a thief, sneak in and get a look at them. You may be able to pull one or two with archers while keeping the others still.

Also, you can put a few tanks in front of a spellcaster and cast a web spell. While the guys get away from the web, they hit your tanks. Meanwhile, use your spellcaster to attack with area of effect high damage spells like cloudkill or fireball.

Edit: I should also note that you can have other party members use area of attack spells with those exploding potions you find here and there. Keeping a cleric far away to remove fear is also helpful if that mage gets a fear spell off.

I hope that helps.

Hm. Sounds about like the first major fight of the game

I've heard from many people that it's the hardest fight in the entire game for them b/c of the low level you can be at when you encounter them. You can, as someone else said, go back way later, though.

My favorite fight is a dragon you meet in the early parts of the game. I can't kill him normally, but a single Disintigrate spell kills him in a flash. Of course, it took me a good 4 days of working on the battle to get it (which you can also skip). Good times.

Aye. If this is BGII I don't got it. :P

Kill them!

beat it first try after reading this thread, i feel i learned alot, cheers guys

edit: damn lol then you go further in and theres mind flayers that 1 hit your party members

Heh, Mind flayers. If I remember their attacks are two fold an area effect ranged stun (or hold person or some immobilizing effect) and then the one hit kill on the stunned victims.

If you have a spell that can prevent stun then cast it on your tank otherwise you may need to summon monsters or skeletons (undead are immune to mind effecting spells so they are a better bet) to create a wall between your PCs and the flayers and use ranges attacks to kill them as quickly as possible.

On the other hand there is no reason to go into the mind flayers area at any point in the game as it is not plot critical at any point. There is a piece of one of the weapons you can have the blacksmith build if I remember correctly.

I'm actually surprised you went to the mind flayers area already. Definitely leave them for later. Once you get upgraded Animate Dead at caster lvl 15 they are pretty easy in unmodded BGII. Also Mordekainen's Swords are great to summon against them, but I don't think you can get that spell at the point you're at.

Mind Flayers have bad thac0, so if you have good AC they'll only hit at 1 of 20 attempts unless you're helpless.

You shouldn't be doing the mind flayers yet, it's meant for more experienced characters.

Actually you shouldn't be able to get into that area at ll unless you've already done the Firkraag dungeon, since that's where you get the key from IIRC.
If you had done Firkraag, you wouldn't have had trouble with Draug Fea's party.
You haven't done something weird like using BG Tweaks to open all locks have you?

Btw, those guys are definitely not the hardest fight in the game, it just seems so because you don't understand the game mechanics yet, and don't know how to deal with casters.

They're actually pretty easy, especially if you don't mind exploiting the flaws in the AI. When starting a new game, it's almost always one of the first fights I do, because they give pretty good fighter gear for the very early game.