Trying to understand how to defend against no-miss, no save, 4-5 hit instakill

[wyndzen]

This might come across like a complaint, but I am really trying to see what I can do to deal with mobs that dispel [death ward] and then do attacks that seem to never miss, allow no save, and bestow multiple negative levels. Essentially, you get defeated in seconds, with no defense.

Normally, 99% of the time, you fight fights where things make sense. The enemy does some sort of attack, and you use your AC and saves to try to defend against it. Some form of healing helps as you get damaged. Some fights are harder, some are easier, but they at least make some sort of gaming sense. Even when I run into an unkillable dragon or demon that are utterly level inappropriate (such as with that lvl 13 kobold quest, or in the final Fens quest), I understand that they have a high to-hit and too many hps for me to kill. And those mobs are optional.

But then there are bosses that do this dispel followed by a no-miss, no save multiple negative level attack, such as a beholder boss or this quell boss I ran into in Temple of Vol. I was lvl 15, doing a lvl 14 adventure, and the quell boss defeated me with no hope of me fighting back or defending myself. There is no other attack type in the game that does anything like this.

With every other boss, you... fight them. They do their attacks, you try to defend and hurt them, and it might be close, or you might blow them out, or they might defeat you, but they don't simply annihilate you with an attack against which there is no save, that doesn't miss, that kills you in a few hits, and that is spammed quickly by the enemy.

I understand that there is one item in the game, the silver flame talisman, that you can get to defend yourself, at least against the first 10 levels, if you go through a series of, according to reviews and a bit of experience, highly un-fun quests. But, it seems a bit odd if there are these bosses that just kill you, with no chance of you defending yourself, unless you happen to have one particular item.

I hope that I am just missing something. Or, have the designers just made obscenely silly bosses for a few of the packs?

And please don't tell me that it makes it nice and challenging. If that is true, why not have most Bosses just kill you with a no-miss, no-save attack in a few hits? That isn't challenging, it is silly. A challenge includes a possible way to overcome the challenge. And that is what I am asking about in this post. Is this type of boss merely a "challenge" that I haven't realized how to overcome yet, or are they just utterly unbeatable unless you have a zillion party members beating on them? I tend to like to play solo.

Also, I can solo other quests that supposed require a "balanced party" with little problem, such as the Wizard's tomb in the desert sands, and countless others. It is just this one type of mob that seems to stop me in my tracks, and I can't even imagine a reasonable way to defend myself. (I'm playing a halfling monk.)

Edit: I just had a thought, after I wrote this, that at least a hireling cleric who could cast restoration might be quite helpful. It still seems over-the-top silly to have bosses that have this sort of no-miss, no-save, death in a few hits, attack.