Yes the twisted rune is one of the coolest fights in the game. Took me two tries to beat and my characters were 3 levels from being maxed out. Here's how I did it. Power up all your characters with priest defense spells. Bless, Chant, defensive harmony, true sight, etc. Have your true sight character go in the room, and backstab the female mage. (She's the one with timestop, and can cast wail of the banshee.) Once she's down you can kill everyone else at your leisure. (Shangelar doesn't have timestop for some reason.) Oh yes the staff of the magi is cool. Who likes a lightning bolt fireball combo? And don't forget about spell trap!

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Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I just don't have to listen.
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My main character is pretty much SoA maxed- 9Kensai/17(?)mage... the rest of my party (Korgan, Minsc, Viconia, Jaheira) aside from Imoen are pretty well gassed up too...

I've got a couple level 9 scrolls I could burn (Spellstrike, Timestop) if the going get's too rough.

hmmm...when I fought him Shangalar DID have timestop and Wail of the Banshee, weird.

both he and the women sorcerer have it. It was a bitch but I made it through with my only casualty was jaheira getting petrified - easy to fix.

Thanks for the advice, sticking to the alcove room and letting the Pit Fiend do some of my work was pretty effective.