Recently I confronted the Iron Throne negotiators in their base (I forget all their names... they were hashing things out with Emissary Tar... who I think was actually a doppleganger).

After losing quite handily a few times due to the fear and rigid thinking spells they toss around, I came up with an idea...

I went upstairs, which triggered their dialogue with me. The dialogue ended and I immediately took my party back downstairs one level. Then as they came down to chase me, maybe one or two at a time, I easily dispatched them. It was simple because now I had them surrounded at the bottom of the stairs rather than having my party clumsily tripping all over itself to get around the stairs and in the thick of it where the negotiators are originally standing.

So what do you think... was that a bit of an exploit (takes advantage of the stupid AI) or fair game?

Probably by the strict 'rules' it's an exploit, but I see it as no worse than them winning because your party can't seem to find their way off the stairs (i.e. they win through an exploit as well). Personally, I consider it pretty much fair game. I know others would disagree.

By doing what you did, you have learned nothing except how to make cheese. In those situations, it's far better (if you don't like cheese) to rethink your strategies; learn from your defeats. What's the fun in what you did? You might as well have just left the building, come back in, let them expend all their spells, and then ultimately just mop them up. Not fun. Not fun at all.

Perhaps you'd like to make suggestions on how he could win that fight without resorting to cheese, then? I would myself, only I haven't fought it (my character would never do such a thing!) so can't give specifics.

On the other hand, personally I'm generally OK with using and exploiting a new 'trick' in the AI: provided I've discovered it for myself, and only use it at the time I discover it. After all, it is quite a clever trick to spot, and the fact that it's a metagame trick rather than, say, a clever choice of spells, doesn't really make it any less valid, in my opinion. I myself used a similar, but even more cheesy, tactic to beat a certain exceptionally hard optional boss in the BG2 expansion.

If you use it again, that's another matter, and I agree entirely with what Hickory said.

Oh, and for those of you who are reading this having played ToB and are thinking you know which boss it was, no, it wasn't the one at the bottom of Watcher's Keep.

No, I wouldn't. That's no better than the cheesy tactics. Learning yourself, by doing (experience), is infinitely superior, and infinitely more fun, than being told how to go about it from somebody else. There's no substitute for hand-on.

On the other hand, giving some tips can turn an exercise in frustration into something enjoyable. Drawing from my own experience in BG2, I would have loved to have been aware that there was a spell specifically to lower magic resistance. Sadly I didn't manage to get any copies as loot, and since I didn't know it existed I didn't know to search for it in shop lists until halfway through the BG2 expansion. By that time I'd grown to hate magic resistance with a passion, and been focussing on melee and having my casters cast the spell removing magical defences with the side effect of lowering MR a little, because I thought that was the only way to lower MR. The problem was that it wasn't so hard that I'd have realised I must be missing some trick, but it was hard enough to frustrate me and make me feel the game was badly designed (though still enjoyable for the story). In the OP's case, I'm willing to bet that I'd keep fighting the start of that battle, perhaps using the equally cheesy tactic of holding back some of my characters until the initial spells were cast, until everyone made their saves.

To the OP: it sounds like you're having trouble with the enemies casting crowd control spells on you. There are a number of buffs you can use before the battle in both potion and spell form which can improve your chances of resisting those effects, or even make you immune (though the latter may not be accessible to you currently). This is also one of the few occasions where it makes 'in character' sense to be buffing before the fight, as you know the fight is coming. There are also various other tactics you could use, which I'll let you figure out for yourself. Just remember, as one of the tips advises you, if it doesn't seem to be going so well try a different approach.

IMO, the fact of this is that if you don't know what's coming in this area, you're going to get waxed, no matter what you do. As soon as you've arrived there and gotten wiped out, you know what you're facing. And that knowledge cannot be unlearned. So no matter what, you're going to be using metaknowledge to prepare for the battle, whether that means having the proper spells memorized, buying the right gear/potions, pre-buffing or whatever. And this is the case in many of the BG series' battles. IMO, that can be considered in a similar light to the exploit used by the OP.

For what it's worth, I've done this fight a number of times without using exploits such as this and without pre-buffing. But I'm pretty certain that knowing what's coming has been a huge advantage in getting through it. So say what you want about making cheese, learning how to get through the battle, or exploits ruining the fun, but in the end it's metaknowledge that will get almost every player through this encounter and many others like it in the game.

Given that there are already enough holes in the friendly AI that can and will get you killed, you kind of need to play dirty to even the playing field. I'm with Coelocanth on this one; besides, if I were in a P&P game, retreating and trying to create a kill zone for anyone stupid enough to pursue would be on my list of tactics to consider, either to stall while we got healed, make a tactical retreat from the premises, or regroup and try to push through.

Fair game if you ask me. Forcing an enemy through a choke point isn't cheating, it's fighting tactically.

Right, except for the part where you do have a problem with the tactics used by OP ("you have only learned to make cheese", "[my tactics] are infinitely superior", etc.), and that OP wasn't asking for anything resembling a query on how to do something, but a question regarding whether something they had already done was fair.

Way to twist words, and add your own meaning -- I never said my tactics were/are superior in any way. How convenient that you left out the main point of my reply, which was:
"In those situations, it's far better (if you don't like cheese) to rethink your strategies; learn from your defeats."

Implying that this so-called "cheese" is somehow inferior. It's not an unreasonable inference to make, given your initial reaction to OP.

Your implication, not mine.

Fair enough, but given that you compared it to leaving and reentering until their spells were expended and insisted that doing so was "no fun at all" after asking "where is the fun in what you did?", I'd like to think it's not an unsupported one. Your entire first post emanates nothing but disapproval of the tactics used by OP, so saying that you don't have a problem with any tactics rings a little hollow.

As to OP's initial post, I reiterate that were OP playing a game where their AI didn't have holes in it that gives the enemy an advantage over them in combat, I might have cautioned against them doing it again in future if the tactic were one that wouldn't fly at a gaming table. As it stands, they are playing an Infinity Engine game, and those games are notorious for their pathfinding causing the party to run around like freshly decapitated chickens even on the best of days, so some counterbalancing is warranted, especially since the tactics they employed could have worked at the P&P game that BG supposedly emualtes.