Any strategic advice for killing shadow dragon and firkaag WITHOUT having half my party die (i want the exp). Have the dragon sword, dragon halberd, and the celestial fury. use elementals, haste, chant, etc. any other advice????

Cast fear removal, chant, and drink or cast plenty of resistance to fire when battling firkaag. As for the shadow dragon I used plenty of summoned creatures to deal with him, and just kept hammering away, but with both dragons I made certain everyone drank potions of increased strength. That's a major help.

Also, never keep your party members grouped together in one spot, namely everyone directly in front of the dragon. If the dragon uses wing buffet or fire blast, everyone gets wasted, and that's not a good thing. Have two attack from the left, to from the right, two from the rear, and have your summoned creatures hit the dragon from the front. Let them take the brunt of the attack, and always keep a VERY CLOSE eye each NPCs, and PCs hitpoints.

For the shadow dragon I used haste and fire elementals with my fighters hacking him while my mages and druids cast magic missile, acid arrow, fire arrow, call lightning, chromatic orbs etc.

For Firkraag haste and any good summoned creature (like aerial servant) except for fire elementals. Haste and charge while your mages cast breach, dispel magic (he uses some protection spells) and later damage spells like above (except for fire arrow).

If you have a lvl 15 cleric or mage you can cast the lvl 4 spell animate dead for some skeleton warriors which are very good (I think they're better than the lvl 6 summoning spells)

Try harm. :D

There's an easy, but cheezy way to do it. Stand just out of sight of the dragon. Equip wand of cloudkill. Fire at general area of dragon. Lather, rinse, repeat. enjoy fruits of labor.

unless you have ToB installed or the improved dragon AI from baldurdash, then thy'll get mad and come after you for using the wand.

Step 1) Cast Lower Resistance
Step 2) Cast Feeblemind
Step 3) Hack away with everything as the dragon stands there like a moron, not making any move to defend itself.

Actually morgeruat, if they aren't in the visualrange then they wont budge. Firkraag will heal himself about 3 time's before you're through with him. Oh yeah if you're going to use the cloudkill technique. Use ONLY WANDS his magic resistance doesn't effect those; however, it does effect the actual spell that you cast from scrolls or memory.

for a more viable strategy- DO NOT CAST LOWER RESISTANCE, instead use magic resistance from jaheira's repetoire of spells (yes I mean the one that is supposed to give you magic resistance) istead of raising the resistance it actually sets the resistance to what ever the % is based on the level of the caster. You'll actually make his mag. resist lower than the lower resist spell. The yes feeblmind, ray of enfeeblement, doom, haste your self, use draw upon holy might if you have it and beat the crap out of him.

Have plenty of magic breeching spells memorized. Whenever a dragon casts stoneskin, cast Breech to dispel it. There's no point in having your party waste perfectly good hits on a stoneskin.

I found the 3rd level cleric spell, Holy Smite, to be very effective.

Don't bother with fire elementals against the red dragon. Aerial servants and earth elementals are much better.

Don't bother with summoning cave bears. Too darned slow after getting smacked across the room with a wing buffet.

Hit'em as hard and fast as possible. Don't let dragons hang around long. The fewer dragon breath attacks, the better.