Beholders give me the willies...

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Having shamefully neglected Baldur's for so long, I'd forgotten just how scary these spheres of prickly terror are.
I normally don't go near them till I've got the reflective cloak, then it's just beholder cannon fodder. This time, however, Keldorn was just moaning away so I thought, let's complete unseeing eye, how hard can it be?
Many, many saves later, my level ten party finally overcame the gauths and beholders. At the expense of three party members. Good job Anomen was still (barely) drawing breath.
What nasty creatures lurking in the dungeon depths give you a case of the screaming willies?

 

Mind Flayers definitely. They not only look creepy but they also have that nasty little habit of eating your brain. Lol. Definitely Mind Flayers. ALWAYS my rangers favored enemy!

 

Oh yeah, mindflayers, proper nightmare fuel! Didn't used to have too much trouble with them in the vanilla game. Just used chaotic commands and sent in a load of skeleton warriors. It was a whole different story when I played the tactics mod. They were truly terrifying. They had all these extra abilities that just wiped my party out so efficiently...
Is there a tactics mod for the EE version?

 

They don't terrify me but mind flayers and beholders are pretty tough. Something I did with the beholders was sent a scout forwards to find out where they were-ranger or thief in shadows. Then when they were found I'd often pull the scout back and have a mage send a couple of web spells followed by fireball once the web spell had gotten ahold of them.

Something with free movement or the spell helps this if you want to send a buffed fighter at them after they are stuck and burning.

 

Everything in the Underdark is crazy: Beholders, aboleths, mind flayers, umberhulks, annihilators, intellect devourers, drow, driders, neogi, and just about every kind of giant cave insect and arachnid you can think of. And don't get me started on some of the advanced stages of the monsters, like elder brains, hive mothers, and kuo toa leviathans.

Much of the aberrant world is, of course, Lovecraftian in nature, which I do enjoy a great deal. An Underdark adventure is a nice stepping stone to running a full-blown Cthulhu-esque campaign.

 

Never really thought about it in terms of HP. Always associated that with the Resident Evil franchise, but you're right, many elements are drawn from the master of chaos and change. If anything, you've just made Baldur's even more intense!
Suddenly have the urge to track down a copy of From Beyond...

 

I recall the big 4 were liches, dragons, beholders, and mind flayers. Of the bunch I find mind flayers to be the nastiest. Yes like all of them you can reduce their danger with things like chaotic commands and summoning things like mordakanins swords but even so they are still usually trickier than the rest. Beholders are also really nasty if you do not have, or refuse to use, the cloak of mirroring or the shield of balduran but since I do have them they are not hard on the whole. Dragons and liches generally are easy to ambush and prepare for so they do not usually bother me. Illithids are nasty because they come in groups and if they catch you unprepared they can disable you qickly and kill you with a couple lucky hits with their int drain. Brutal.

 

Speaking from Neverwinter Nights: the Intellect Devourer from the first game. You kill it's host and it just jumps out and runs to the next. Theoretically they could eat YOUR mind and take over. From NWN: Hordes of the Underdark the scariest fight was the dracoliche. Watching half your party including the frigging ANGEL running away in terror and hiding in the corners while it ate the rest of your party alive - thanks to it's enhanced dragon fear. And if you did somehow manage to squeeze out a win, it jumped spirits into another body, and then a third.

And Toker: Gygax was a big fan of HP, these monsters came out long before any of the modern horror CRPGs.