If I am fighting a dragon do I need to protect versus magical weapons or versus normal weapons? The same goes for mummys, vampires, anything else that is nasty and doesn't use weapons. It is easy to decide when the enemy is holding a glowy sword, but I have no idea what to protect from when they use bites, scratching, punching or whatever.

For dragons you want to protect against the damage type they do. not magical or normal weapons. At least that's my guess. Say for example Big Red, you want protection against fire. Stack as much of it as you can and let the bad boys fire breath heal you if you've got enough. As for protection from the physical attacks get your AC as low as you can. I've had mine as low as -12, but can't recall how quickly in the game I was able to do that.

However, it would help if we knew what kind of party/characters you had to work with. At what levels, or you could just check out SixofSpades website with lots of cool info.
Here's the link: SoS's BG Guide

Most of the nasty monsters have attacks that count as magical weapons. I'm however not sure if PfMW will help you against side-effects like level-drain or disease. To protect from level-drain use the cleric spell "Negative Plane Protection" or some of the nice level-drain protecting items. If you are fighting undead a lot you should go looking for appropriate weaponry. Little moster categories in SoA can be as easily disabled as undead - there's a lot of nice stuff out there :D
Against dragons you should go for
1.)a fast kill
2.)protection from their main damage type (fire, acid, cold,...)
3.)protection from fear
4.)"protection from having your whole party tossed around the room and then flayed alive in an instant" - oh wait I haven't got that one...NOOOOOOOOOOO!

Heheh, thanks for the advice peeps, but I have beaten the game a few times now and I don't need any tactics advice on how to beat monsters, but I am more of a stand back and nuke kind of player and haven't experimented much with the pfmw etc. I was jus wondering what dragons n that counted as.

It's a pretty safe bet that all enemies that are supposed to even remotely cool have attacks that strike as Magical weapons. For instance, I'd be very surprised if there were any Dragons whose claws were anything less than +2 Slashing weapons. (Although some Dragons are known to take Human forms, and when they do, their fists do Normal Blunt damage.) Basically, any physical attack worth protecting against is going to be Magical.

If you're curious about a monster, just send in a Summon that's immune to Normal weapons (Skeleton Warrior, Aerial Servant, Elemental, etc., etc.) and see if it takes any physical damage or not.

[ 09-24-2003, 02:28 PM: Message edited by: SixOfSpades ]

In the original rules set, second edition, the "weapons" of monster are decided by its hit dice, with exceptions. Cobold can use a +5 sword you know.
Everything that has more than 5 hit dice (if i remember correctly) is considered +1. 10 hit dice +2 etc (could be wrong in numbers, right in the principle).
it is the general rule however, there is place for exceptions. catches only for monsters, and not for humanoid npc or pc.