Umber Hulks

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Anyone have a good way to battle these baddies? In going through the planar prison I had to resort to the wand of cloudkill (I know how some of you feel about this) to kill off many of the hulks before they confused and pounded my party. I would like to go toe to toe, but have not had much success with this. My party averages 12th level and is farily well balanced.

Any suggestions? I don't yet have the cloak of mirroring yet so that is out.

 

There is nothing wrong with Cloud Kill (the best way to fight Umber Hulks) unless you fire it into the fog of war.
If you want to fight them straight up, use Chaotic Commands on your fighters.

 

Any tactic is a good tactic, or to borrow a quote "What's more important: the battle or the war?"

 

Well, the best way to kill those beasties is to use cloudkill. Another, way is to equip the Lilarcor sword (Copper Coroneet subquest) and give it to your main fighter. While he steps in the room with the Umberhulks, all of them will pound him with their spells.

When they see that their spells are innefective they all attack that character. Now have the rest of your party throwing items at them and take another fighter near your first to help.

That will kill them almost easy.

 

12th level? Death Spell.

 

Disintingrate also works quite well. Not sure how many hit dice umber hulks have, so not sure if death spell works or not.

My favorite tactic is the one mentioned above with Lilacor. There are also a few other items that bestow immunity to confusion that work quite well.

 

Howabout Hold ... or polymorph other ... those spells are sweet.

Apart from that, my other experiences are to have resistences/immunity to charm/confusion and have loadsa fighter up to kick ass while the spell casters cast either hold/slow/polymorph other or insect plague

 

Hold person will not work, hold monster should though, they do have pretty crappy saving throws. I never liked polymorph other, because they still fight just as well after being polymorphed, at least in my experience.

 

Yuck, yuck - spell using cowards everywhere All you need to deal with Umberhulks is a good sword (like Lilarcor) or a helm of charm protection. Chaotic commands, bark-, iron- and stoneskins help too. Spells are too easy - the battle is over way too quick that way. My traditional non-magical approach is:
Two melee fighters in front, two or more ranged fighter guarding a little behind, hasted if possible. Then send in one of the charm protected melee fighters in to the umberhulks to get their attention and lure them to the other stop fighter in the missile trap. Voila.

[This message has been edited by Ragusa (edited July 20, 2002).]

 

I've found that Magic Missile can do a nice bit of damage to them, especially at the higher levels. I usually weaken them with Magic Missile, then have my fighters go in and finish them off.

 

Another idea: If you have a scroll of prismatic spray (you won't be able to cast it at 12th level), use that. It'll take down most of them at once. I love doing that during the final fight on the first level of the asylum dungeon.

 

Would web work against them? If so, then i could imagine a fireball here or there plus another for a genourous measure to deal with these gren pests ...

One thing that gets me is that in the manual it says that Umberhulks are slow ... you can be as sure as hell that they aren't!

 

Web should work against them, though as it is a low level spell, I offer no guarantees as to how long it will last. Perhaps entangle would work better.

 

Thanks for your help. Really a no brainer to use mind-shielding equipment against these confusion happy baddies. Now that my head is out of my a$$ I dice these boys up good!

 

i just use my fighters to fight them head on and it works to i find umber hulks easy as long as the dont touch my mage. FIGHTERS RULE YEAH

 

For Umber Hulks just Death spell 'em. It's fast effective and looks cool. They rarely make the save vs. death and if one or two do just hack them. I've always found them quite pathetic really.

 

i just send one member, a stealth archer (sometimes protected from confusion - items/spell/potion whichever i have at that time). just shoot them down one by one. or bait them to my fighters who are waiting for an ambush. i enjoy this tactics especially in nalia's keep.

 

Wait a minute. Entangle, the first level spell? Why would that be better than web?

 

In my experience, entangle holds them slightly longer. Besides, I was merely offering that as a suggestion, not as a tried and true tactic.

Death spell has no saving throw. It works on anything level 10 or lower, period.

[ August 07, 2002, 16:15: Message edited by: Rastor ]

 

Easiest approach. One or two characters with charm protection. Move in. be immune to charms. Once they go CQB, your other characters move in. You can save the spells for bigger fish to fry.