It's the tutorial room where Obe summons monsters you can use to practice group fighting techniques.

I thought it would be ok to check the characters inventory since the illusionary monsters couldn't do damage. "aaaiiiiie - your character is dead".

WTF?

It's not a big problem - just trying to figure out how the game works.

I thought the game automatically paused when you access your inbvntory unless you are in multiplayer.

BG2 automatically pauses the game while you're looking at your inventory.

BG1 automatically UNPAUSES the game when you're looking at your inventory. It's really, really annoying. Which is why they changed it, I suppose.

As for your original question, I have no idea... perhaps one of them does damage after all. At that point you're level one and one good hit will kill you.