poquelin/belhifet

How do you go about attacking belhifet. When he gets through with his spiel and turns to attack I have about 3 to 4 seconds to react. I can get my fighters to attack him but they get wasted right away. And there isn't enough time for my cleric to launch protection from fire. Any ideas about how to get some breathing room to get off a spell or 2 and have the thief deactivate the traps without my whole party getting wasted in the 1st 3-4 seconds?
Thanx

[Wrath]

Well firs off, the traps in his room aren't disarmable, so don't even bother. I like to pick a corner of the room, usually lower right, and make my stand there. Have all your Fighters and Thieves drink Storm Giant potions and pick off the Iron Golems first, while your Cleric casts Protection from Evil 10 ft, and Protection from Fire. Be sure to cast Protection from Fire on your Fighters first, since they'll take the brunt of Bel's fire attacks. Cast Defensive Harmony when you can, the extra AC will keep your Fighters alive longer, and Emotion: Courage and Emotion: Hope from your mage will be super helpful as well. Just make sure when Bel Dimension Doors away from your party to DON'T have your party follow, they'll run over the traps and be damned Ignore any summonables he casts, they won't be much of a threat. Keep your Cleric busy as well, he/she should always be casting something, like Heal and Cure Critical Wounds. Hope that helps some

-Wrath

Poquelin/Belhifet: Heh, this guy was the easiest boss I fought. Granted he should have been tough...He just couldn't test.
I didn't even have spells ready and did not know what to expect. But what I did was...RUN! After stepping on virtually every trap I picked a corner on the top right portion of the screen. The iron golems followed and as a result were chopped down by my fighter, as though they were big iron trees.
That big @$$ demon started walking over...So, I cast haste, straight up. Then my priestess cast spells such as Protection from evil, bless, Defensive harmony (gotta love that spell), That one that protects her really well...Level 7 something shield. I had my fighter use the Storm Giant potion, and allowed him to tear into the demon. My Thief/Mage summoned shadow monsters and other cool things as well as cast magic missle. My Priestess also cast heal on my fighter when he was injured, and other than that he just layed into Belhifet. Done deal. OH! I also cast chaotic commands on my fighter and fire resistance. That was my 3 character party way to beat him.

I've only played through the whole game once so far, this is how my first party blundered through the endgame: (first try I might add! ;-}) I went in spelled and juiced to the hilt, most of those mentioned above. First thing that happened was the dastard cast dispell magic on me, so there I was, stripped to the bare bones. Good thing I had a hearty party. I launched a salvo of +2 or better ranged weapons on his demon butt from almost everybody, and set my ranger/cleric with her awesome iron golum hammer on the golums... trouble was the iron goons seemed particularly facinated with my god-like dual-class fighter/conjuror. So he cast mirror image and ran around peppering his persecutors with the odd acid arrow (the spell, not the weapon), while eveyone else layed into demon boy with a ranged/melee combo platter. The ranger/cleric continued to try and interest the golums, but I'm not sure if she even got a shot in. Before you could say Bob's yer Uncle as well as your Grandfather, demon boy was banished back to hell and his iron goons crumbled to rust. Of course, with most of my party of six on the "fighter, agressive" script, I prolly set off every trap in the joint (didn't have any kind of trap detection on throughout). But nobody sustained any serious damage and good has triumphed over evil once again, and the citizens of Icewind Dale are free to go on with their petty, mindless AI lives. Maybe I just got lucky.

Incidentally, can anyone tell me what effect those endgame traps have? I seem to recall a buddy saying something about (horrors!) exp. level or attribute reduction -- or am I confusing that with a spell? Cheers.