Does intelligence drain wear off?

[Yₒₛₕ]

Doing the Illithid Lair in underdark atm and am just wondering if I should keep trucking my guys through or keep quick loading when I get hit by the drain. Thanks

[ÄmJii]

It wears off eventually

[Yₒₛₕ]

Wonderful thanks :D

[Prof.McTickleNipple]

What doesn't wear off is a vampire's level drain. You'll need a Restoration spell for that, either from a priest in your party, or you'll have to pony up the gold for one at a temple. I'm pretty sure every other thing in the game is only temporary, except for those vampire bites.

[kaffekoppen]

A quick tip: skeleton warriors can't be level or intelligence drained. I just use them to tank for me and mind flayers suddenly aren't an issue. They work against vampires as well, but for them I just tank with Dorn and Hexxat (they can't be level drained).

[Yₒₛₕ]

Thanks yeah I have Anomen with 2 resto spells. And I tried to use skeles and other summons to soak up mind flayers but since the halls are so slim the summons would get stunned at the mouth of the hallway and my party would have no where to move. :/

I just rushed em and Holy Avenger made quick work of them :)

[kaffekoppen]

That's why my fighters always have ranged weapons as a backup. But yeah, I can imagine those mind flayers don't appreciate the Holy Avenger either :)

[ÄmJii]

Originally posted by kaffekoppen:

A quick tip: skeleton warriors can't be level or intelligence drained. I just use them to tank for me and mind flayers suddenly aren't an issue. They work against vampires as well, but for them I just tank with Dorn and Hexxat (they can't be level drained).

Well that's weird, in my copy Skeleton Warriors go down to Int drain like everything else. They can't be stunned, but Int drain still affects them. Mordy's swords are the only thing that can't be Int drained IIRC.

Oh, and I haven't installed any mods on BG2EE.

[Prof.McTickleNipple]

Yeah, it's not regular skeletons, but skeleton warriors you want. I can't remember what level your priest or mage has to be before they get upgraded. Skeleton warriors have high magic resistance, and I think they're immune to the psionic mind blast that illithids use to paralyze people, but Mordenkainen's Sword is immune to their bite, because their bite counts as a magical weapon, but not one high enough to harm the sword. But the swords can still be paralyzed, where the skeleton warrior cannot. A good trick I like to use on them is to stealth a thief into the room to reveal them, then use a wand (or spell) for cloud kill. As soon as it's cast, I send the thief back to the party. You can block the doorway with skeleton warriors and they'll usually resist the cloud with their magic resistance.

[kaffekoppen]

Originally posted by ÄmJii:

Well that's weird, in my copy Skeleton Warriors go down to Int drain like everything else. They can't be stunned, but Int drain still affects them. Mordy's swords are the only thing that can't be Int drained IIRC.

I haven't seen any of mine get killed by int drain yet. Perhaps they simply had trouble hitting my skeletons since they can't be stunned.

When I first met mind flayers in my last plathrough, I didn't have Mordy's Sword. I tried using Cloudkill but the flayers just resist it so they barely take any damage. I killed some of them with my thief traps instead and tanked the rest with my skeletons. Worked brilliantly.

It's quite possible that Protection from Magic Weapons also works against mind flayers.

[SupidSeep]

Protection from Magical Weapon do work against Mindflayers because their "Devour Brain" is considered a magical weapon attack. Then again, a well-built Fighter/Mage will have pretty low AC (use your Ghost/Spirit Armor spells), plus with his high Int allowing him to take quite a few hits from Mindflayers provided you let him recover the lost int inbetween skirmishes.

In the original BG2, Skeleton Warriors make poor tanks against Mineflayers because they're vulnerable to stun and mind drain (yeah it doesn't make sense). I used Invisible Stalker (in BG2 they are immune to the psi-stun effect but can still be mind-drained, but if you can keep them alive they are long lasting summons at 8 hrs) and Mordy's Swords (they were perfect as tanks except their duration is comparitively poor) as fodders to swarm Mindflayers.

[kaffekoppen]

The thing about tanking them yourself is that once you're stunned, they hit you all the time. I got completely butchered that way even with great AC. That's why I prefer to have some summoned fodder to keep them busy, even if it's just for a little while. Mind flayers don't have a lot of HP.

[Yₒₛₕ]

Ah, my 3 mains guys are immune to stun or any CC by the gear they wear and the other 3 I just buff with chaotic commands and all that wonderful stuff.

[Prof.McTickleNipple]

When you are stunned or paralyzed, your Dexterity bonus to armor (dodge) is gone. I also believe you get at least a -4 penalty to your AC while stunned/paralyzed.