Having a tough time with Faldorn - having Jaheira fight her.

Starts out OK, get Faldorn to Severely Injured, while Jaheira is still 75 - 80% health. But then Faldorn turns into a black panther, and is completely Unijured now! I have jaheira turn into black bear, but she doesn't get healed like Faldorn, and of course can not cast spells while transformed

wtf???

any ideas?

Straight off - cast the best Insect spell you have on Faldorn (Summon, Plague, Swarm)

Then some summons to help take her out, then damage or buff spells, then either stand back and let your summons eat her or dive in and help out.

Mods will change this of course, depending on what you have.

I'm wondering why when she transforms, she is healed 100% but jaheira isn't?? kinda sucks

Simplest answer? The ai cheats.

Then again, it has to. Without scripted uninterruptible spells most npc casters are meat (in the base game)

Can get mods to change this though (sword coast stratagemns are the first ones to come to mind).

I managed to defeat Faldorn really easily. I cast the block magic spell on her and then hit her with a bunch of lightning... I think.

IIRC, Faldorn casts Regeneration sometime during the battle, and it heals her pretty fast.

Have Minsc, Mazzy Guard her. (shield button) With ranged weapon, Minsc shoots through walls, or the challenge circle without any problems.

Insect swarm to disable spell casting, and have your PC use rod of resurrection. Instantly heals anywhere on the map.

I used a fire elemental and insect swarm, then the lvl 1 armor spell and chant. Then just attack and she dies before she can turn into a panther.

toss her a staff of thunder and lightning and anything that summons pets is good too

+ you are playing with mods so yes the Ai cheats

If you don't have reliable high level spells, just start the fight with Hold Person. If it works, you win. If it doesn't, reload.

As for her panther transformation, it's a special "spell" only accessible to her that actually replaces the original creature with a different creature using an effect opcode called "replace self" - in this case it replaces the original Faldorn with an actual panther who has full health (33hp) and 4 attacks per round. Standard self-polymorph abilities simply change the creature's animation, not replace the creature ("replacing" a creature means effectively removing that creature from the game).