I have to say, I think Mind Flayers are the toughest creatures in the game. Every single fight I have ever had with them where one of my party members closed to melee, that character has died. The mind eating thing where it lowers INT always kills me. Before I reach level 15 and am able to summon Skeletal Warriors, though, I don't see what else I can do. And even then, if I want to send a fighter to melee, I still have to worry about them dying by the Int drain.

Is there any way to prevent the Mind Flayers from draining your characters' INT?

Not that I know of, but there are other things you can do:
1) Get a good AC. Use any AC improving means at your disposal (spells, potions, alternate equipment). Illithids don't have much of a THACO so you should be able quite easily to lower their odds of hitting you to 5% ("natural 20 roll").
2) Use potions of genius and mind-focussing to raise your intelligence so you can withstand a few more hits.

Just kill them really fast. :shake:

There are also Brine potions (Ilithid lair in the Underdark), a Greenstone amulet (I think it is found in beholder lair in the Underdark), and the Psion's blade (the place where you find the hearts to kill Yaga Shura). There are propably more items that will protect you from mind flayers.

Kenneth, I used the Brine Potions, and, while they protected me from the charms and things like that, the Illithids were still able to drain my characters' Int, and kill them quickly. I haven't used the Greenstone Amulet I found, so I don't know if it just protects from the same things as the potions or also the int drain. And as for the Psion's Blade, well, that's in the TOB areas, and I'm playing through the regular SOA game with TOB installed.

By the time I go to fight the Illithid, my front line fighters that I send in tend to have -10 or better AC. Maybe I've just been unlucky and they've managed to get quite a few criticals, but I still tend to die quickly.

I had allot of troubles with mind flayers to so I created a spell that protects me from their stupid effect like Int drain, charm,... ;)

The only tactic that succeeded with me was to grab as many ranged weapons as I could and attack with everything I've got. :flaming: :flaming:

Aerilon, mind flayers don't detect invisible enemies, so if you make one character invisible you can block the doorway, that way they can't get near your fighters. All you have to do now is give someone with a ranged weapon chaotic commands and voila target practise.

Ohw, and when using the melee tactics be sure to lure them to a doorway, so you only have one of them jabbing at you. If they surround you, you're dead meat no matter the AC.

[ August 08, 2002, 11:05: Message edited by: StressedE ]

Well fri me i use the "i gonna kick your nuts" way
so i put my cavalier and minsc in the front line with valygar too and they meele but before they go in meele i do some kill cloud on them and by closing doors so they are bllocked and weakened
and after my meele start! and minzzy in in the back with is arrow!

Hmmm... difficult one.

Those protection from Psionic things don't protect you from mind drain.

I've always found summoning alot and hiding round the corner works, especially at low levels like in the Temple District Sewers.

At higher levels Dragon's Breath (that fave spell of mine again) works well... does that spell not account for magic resistence?

At medium levels (say if you went to the underdark before going to Watcher's Keep) the Summoned Swords do well. The level 7 Cleric spell Bolt of Glory hit the mark too.

My recipe is this:

1. Scout with your thief (or Valygar)
2. When you spot them bring up a mage to fire cloudkill, if there are Umber Hulks.
3. When the Cloudkill dissipates, use your thief (or Valygar) to backstab one.
4. Lead the rest into a ranged weapons ambush. Web or Entangle are very helpful as well.

If you must melee them, use potions of Genius when your fighters get intelligence drained.

One backstab will usually make a mindflayer panic. If you have boots of speed on your thief, you can usually run out of the room and hide in shadows again. Just keep the rest of the party pretty far back. By the time the rest of the group of mindflayers can reach your group (and their ranged weapons) most of them are dead or in a panic.

[ August 08, 2002, 15:48: Message edited by: Jack Funk ]

You can get Valygar to backstab? I can't seem to get him to do so. My thief does it just fine, so it isn't my technique and I've even stripped him down so he's wearing no equipment that should prevent him from doing so.

Also, what do you guys use to get your fighter's AC to -10 and lower? I've never been able to do so.

If your equipment is good enough then so is your AC. My fighter/mage has -20 AC with only one custom item.

Good gosh. What equipment are you wearing (and what is the custom item?)

heh ring of -20 ac?

About AC, well, let's see...

base AC: -2 (there are a coupla such armors in ToB iirc) and that's not accounting for armor type bonuses vs certain wpn types
Dex bonus: -4
Ring of Gaxx: -2
Ring of Earth control: -1
Helm: -1
Amulet: there's a great one for thieves, but nothing there for fighters on top of my mind
Cloak of the sewers: -1
shield: -5
weapon: -1
belt: you could get a -3/-4 bonus there vs one wpn type
boots: you could get a further -5 vs missiles there but you'll be wearing boots of speed most probably
Weapon style: you could get a further bonus vs missiles there

Now let's see:
-2 -4 -2 -1 -1 -1 -5 -1 = -17

So you can get a base -17 AC, with further bonuses vs certain weapon types.

Then on top of that, you can use a variety of AC enhancing spells / potions (a potion of mind focusing will get your dex bonus to -5 for instance).

:)

Ahhh, I see. I have both my main fighters dual weilding (with two slots in the dual wield style).

I also have my earth control and ring of Gaxx spread out between the two.

I didn't think that some of those items would work with your magical main armor (or is there non-magical AC -2 armor?)

The custom item I have is my armor. It has -3 AC and does not count as magical that is why I have my AC on -20.

Ahhh, that would certainly help explain it. :)

*Priest spell Chaotic Commands
*Use Mage spell Teleport Field and have everybody use ranged weapons (does not work against Ulitalis)

THE EASIEST WAY:
Summon five Mordekien's(sp?) Swords and send them into whatever room you need to. You can do that whole illithid city in the underdark with five swords and some area-effect spells

If you're going to play like that, why not just import the killsword? Of course, quite a few of you are suggesting cheesy tactics.

Basically, the only real tactic I can give you: Haste your fighters, concentrate on one flayer at a time, summon creatures into the melee as needed to provide distaction.

By the time you get to ToB, flayers should be like kobolds with the Psionic Blade.

There's a download somewhere on this site where you can get a better Lilarcor... one that protects from intelligence drain. Of course, I'd probably just get a bunch of them via Shadow Keeper and cheese it. :p

I agree with, Mordekainens Sword works very well on Illithids, as well as any other creatures.
Summon them, send them into the fight, and watch them slice the Flayers in to tiny, small pieces at a distance. :)

I don't understand how something that makes sense if you were really in the world of the game (as opposed to playing the game) and doesn't employ actual cheating can be cheese.

I can accept that setting traps around a dragon who is neutral is cheese. They would see you and avoid them.

Sneaking a thief ahead to scout, placing traps and luring the enemy to the trap is exactly what I'd do if it were my actual life on the line. Similarly scouting forward and getting a thief to throw a spell further than the MOB can see you from and then closing the door on them seems like a pretty freak'n good idea to me.

I don't see how useing the magical swords would consitute cheese because I can't think of how they shouldn't really work the way the game makes them work, or how they take advantage of some quirk in the game that wouldn't be there if the game were real life.

Doesn't it then seem cheesy to take advantage of the space bar to pause? I can't pause a fight in real life and organize my attack.

I'm honestly currios here, I'm not trying to attack anyone or cut them down. Am I missing something about some of these techniques that make them cheesy?

Or is cheese just a purely subjective thing in which case labling a tactic as "cheese" is probably not particularly constructive.

True. I don't see how using Mordekains swords is any different then using summoned creatures anyplace else. I don't think it's cheesy. I just don't do it that way.

Sandor - back in my Street Fighter 2 days "cheesy" refered to any tactic that constitued a bonafide easy win so I'd imagine the same applies for BG. Although with regard to this particular scenario how the hell else do you fight Mindflayers?? Stand there and let them eat your brains? So the tactics that you propounded are not cheesy or "cheap" which is the other coined gaiming term for repeated cheesiness. A truly cheap tactic is something like Fake-talk or killing a Dragon using six cloudkills and lower-resistence. Other things like Beserking a hasted Korgan and rushing the demi-lich or summoning the swords to face the Illithid are a matter of neccessity. If anyone disagrees YOU tell me how else to beat a demi-lich, cast Protection from *specialist school* anyone?

The reason I'm labelling it as cheese is because it sounds like you want to send them into the fog of war. Your character has no way of knowing what is in the fog. I'm not here to tell you how to enjoy your game though, and you're more than welcome to play in the way that gives you the most pleasure.

I already told you how I beat them. I never have much of a problem with their int drain or other abilities. I even play with Weimer's Improved Mind Flayers.

Well I would know what's in the fog by sending a stealthed theif up ahead to scout. He tells me that there is a group of Bad Guys up ahead and tells me where to aim my area-affect spell. The only thing not realistic about this is the fact that monsters eye sight is probably no so bad that they couldn't see me standing 60 feet away - but then I can't see them either, so it's kinda fair.

I always fire my area affect spells right to the edge of the fog of war simply because I never know the range of them and just assume that it's the same as my eyesight - I hate it when a mage goes to launch a fireball and accidentally steps into eyesight of all the bad guys.

Sandor, you just stated the reason I hate the Skull Trap spell. It's an area effect spell, so it'll damage your own guys if they are in the area of effect, but it's range is short enough so that your mage has to get within eyesight of the enemies, so either you let them pound your mage, or you pound your own fighters as well as the enemies when you use the spell. The only use I can see for the spell is creating an actual trap, but I don't like the idea of setting a bunch of them up and dragging a creature back to them.

You can use protection from magical energy to protect your fighters.

Luring someone into a skull trap has got to be hard. Unlike thief traps you can't walk over them yourself so they'll probably blow up in your face or miss the enemy

They are not that hard, here's my strategy:

_ Cast Chaotic Command on your best fighter
_ Improve haste on him
_ Slaughter everything on sight!!

My character is a F/M/T with AC -9, destroy the whole Illithid lair with 4 Improve haste and 1 Chaotic Command, without much effort