Shandalar Baldur's Gate

Shandalar is a Baldur's Gate enemy in BioWare's cRPG of 1998-99, Baldur's Gate. Shandalar is a 30th level archmage notable for his god-like AC and resistances.

Shandalar Location

Shandalar is found standing around in Ulgoth's Beard. From there, he can send us to Ice Island.

Shandalar's Stats

In melee, Shandalar has a THAC0 of 8 and inflicts an average of 8.5 crushing damage at a rate of 1 ApR, wielding a quarterstaff as Grandmaster.

Defensively, the unhelmed Shandalar has a monstrous Armor Class of -24, a whopping 96 HPs and saving throws of -1 across the board. He wears the Robe of the Neutral Archmagi.

Shandalar has a morale of 19, a morale break of 0 and morale recovery of 60.

Shandalar Resistances

In addition, Shandalar has 100% resistance to fire, magic fire, cold, magic cold, electricity and acid; an epic 80% damage resistance vs slashing, crushing, piercing and missile; and 5% magic resistance (from his robe).

Notable is his lack of MR, magic damage resistance and poison resistance.

In arcane spellcasting, Shandalar has an extensive repertoire of spells at his disposal:

That is actually the order in which he casts his spells, though he does have multiple castings of Lightning Bolt. If not slain before he casts Dimension Door, he is gone forever. Therefore, we only have a few rounds to slay him.

How to Beat Shandalar

There are many ways to beat Shandalar, but the absolute easiest way is to just have six Mage BG1 cast Magic Missile at him before he can raise a bristling eyebrow (35x 2d3).

"Eat that, you cheating AC lord!"

The reward? 26,000 XP, Robe of the Neutral Archmagi, a bunch of arcane scrolls and two potions (the potions and scrolls can be pick-pocketed).

What happens if we don't cheese-barrage, though? Well, Shandalar opens proceedings by protecting himself with Globe of Invulerability. He then unleashes Chaos followed up with Fireball, Lightning Bolt, and Flesh to Stone. A spread-out party buffed with Mirror Image is advised.

Shandalar then spams lightning and teleports away after several rounds, so we need to take him out quickly. His two spell protections can be dispelled with Dispel Magic. After that, he is vulnerable to the Magic Missile barrage, as above.

A cheesy tactic is to surround Shandalar with hobgoblin archer summons from Monster Summoning 2. As an AC lord, Shandalar can only be hit on a crit but such an arrow hail - even unaided by the party - overwhelms him. In addition, he is susceptible to stacked Web and Cloudkill.

Greater Malison is not required.

Shandalar can't be taken out with quadruple backstab: even if we rolled a critical hit (5% chance) his physical resistance would reduce the damage by 80%.

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