Hello everyone! I have a question that I would like answered. I love the BG series and have played through it several times. I am on my first "tour of duty" in ToB. I want to know how folks on this board know what defenses certain creatures have. For instance, I just battled Draconis. I died - many times. I cast all of my high level spells to remove protections (RRoR, Pierce Shield, Breach, Warding Whip). I am not sure if these worked though. I finally beat him but am not sure how. Does anyone know what Draconis has as defense? And can someone tell me how they find this info out? Most times I feel ignorant when doing battle, I just keep slugging and casting until one of us is dead. The scroll messages don't seem to help me. Can someone in here?!?!? Thanks.

Can you tell me your party and levels first, then I'll try and help [img]smile.gif[/img]
He has a pretty low AC, like all dragons-plus stoneskin and wing buffet-are you sure you're not getting a message saying he's invisible?

Ah! Draconis that annoying young cowardly dragon that likes to disapear on you. You are doing it correctly it is just that he likes to disappear so your spells can end up falling when he does this, as there is no longer a target. What is worse is when invisible he will either attack a weak mage or run to some far corner of the map to recast his protections and his little army of invisible minions. I think he has to be the hardest dragon in the game.

true sight and spell protection abjuration are your friends in this fight, have your thief detect traps if at all possible (if you have points in detect illusions you can see right through any and all or Draconis' tricks). you can also load him up in shadowkeeper and look at his stats

My party is:

Me monk lvl 31
sarevok lvl 21
Korgan lvl 28
Viconia lvl 30
Imoen level 28
Edwin lvl 24

I should be kicking butt and taking names!! Sarevok has a +5 sword. Korgan has the Axe of Unyielding. Like I said above, I finally beat him but my strategy was the same. Wail on him with spells designed to lower his protections and try to stay alive long enough to bring him down. I was unable to tell from the scroll message if my spells were doing anything, or if his protections were innate. Thanks

Dragon Abazigal: AC-10
STR-25
Dex:14
Con:16
Wis:15
Int:15
Cha:13
THAC0:-4
Base HP: 190
Acidr:100
firer:50
crushing:25
piercing:25
slashing:25
missile:25
magic:55
magicfire:50

Hope it helps.

Draconis's strategy is based on three major elements: Acid, Invisibility and, being a dragon, Wing Buffet. In short, protecting yourself from acid, having True Sight active at all times an hasting your warriors should do the trick.

Don't be worried be his spell protections (Spell Turning and the like) - liberal use of Area-of-Effect spells (which bypass spell protections) on your side is all you need. However, you'll need to constantly remove his combat protections (Stoneskin, Pro-Magic-Weapons, etcetera) - so have Breach and/or the Wands of Spellstriking at hand. [img]smile.gif[/img]

TIP: Planetars and Devas can see right through invisibility.

I actually have a brilliant tactic for defeating him.

Yay me!

SPOILER

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lol. Anyway, I was soloing against Az, and as you know, he is pretty tough to defeat.

So what I did was put a few buff spells on my character and lead him back to the entrance to his cave, as you know, it's not possible to leave.

Then proceed to whack him until he changes into a dragon.

If you do this in the right spot, he gets STUCK in the entrance to his cave, meaning he can't follow you to beat you to death. This allows you to wear him down as and when you choose with summons/cheesy area affect spells/buffed fighters etc etc

Hope that helps. I know you arent soloing, but you could always try and get something similar to work...

Thats exactly what I did the first time I fought him(actually the second one, the first time I didnt even know he was there, didnt even know he was a dragon, just advanced my party till some mage came forth, cast timestop, started to poke on everyone with a sword or something till everybody had less than 10 hp left, then I killed him when the timestop ran out and he changed into a dragon, dragon breath, and all were dead...reload...)I lured him to the entrance. he was trapped, and I hacked him into pieces with a little help of good ol' abi dhalzims