you make a good point. The puzzle of "hmm, okay, i literally cannot fight against this right now" is making me rethink my strategy with fights. The vampiric wolf i fought couldn't be hurt by non-magical weapons. Turns out i had a wand of magic missile and a +1 long sword however, so i had to basically use one character as bait (good ol' khalid) and have him get chewed on while imoen blasted the wolf with magic missiles and my Kensai tried to get lucky with the longsword.

I do still think that some extremes are a bit too much, there's no real purpose for the fear to last as long as it does. If you're prepared, you're prepared, if not, you're almost certainly going to just get your entire party killed. fights in BG just don't last that long (i dont remember when i first played it years ago, so i might be wrong in later fights).