Tactics advice

[budswell]

I only play Frog, but I imagine tactics are similar accross variants.
Using this thread to ask questions about situations where I feel stuck.

Question:
As a spell caster (or other med/low range damage class) How to handle summoning uniques who resists confusion? e.g. Orthod Lord of the orcs
As a melee char I find/make a dead and and force them close so summons do not get between us.
For a non-summoner I play phase door and shoot.
My current char is a CL29 mage (chaos+craft). All I can think of is longer corridor, hope I get snagas or cave orcs next to me, and then lob fist of force at him. Not sure the damage output will be enough though...

Also: Am I right in assuming sleep/slow never work on uniques? Never have for me.

[CyclopsSlayer]

The classic is an anti-summoning corridor, a zig-zag corridor that doesn't allow a summoner to surround you. Frog has largely disabled these as summoners no longer need full line-of-sight. But the core concept is the same, never fight a summoner in the open, make them come to you where in the worst case you only have two summons to deal with.

[Sideways]

You can confuse (and slow) most of Othrod's summons, so fighting him in an open area isn't quite as bad as fighting most other summoners in an open area. Just have some way - any way - to hurt him; ideally even if other monsters are between you (e.g. ball spells, ball devices, beam devices) but failing that, with him next to you; though on a really squishy combo you do want to kill him from range because of how hard he hits. If you can't kill him, go someplace else and return to Orc Cave later.

Vampirism is nice to have if you're fighting Othrod in close quarters, so it may help to do Old Watchtower first.

Uniques cannot be slowed or slept in Frog. (Recent versions of V do allow slowing of uniques, although slowing works in a different way there.)

[Nick]

Stunning is good in V, I don't know about frog.

[Thraalbee]

Stunning is very useful in Frog! A few monsters are immune but most aren't. I'm currently using an Armageddon Whip with Stun-branding and took down several summoning uniques including Cantoras today. Much easier than without stunning but of course it is dependent on getting an early hit. Running through an open room to reach a summoner is a no-no unless you want a posse to kill. I typically come digging from a direction that makes me reach them with minimal exposure before the first hit.

[budswell]

Thanks for the tips.

The zigzag approach works for melee chars, but this one had to go from range.
I did eventually get him with the human shield approach. Backed into a Dead end corridor, cave orc was adjacent (my regen almost kept pace with it), and lobbing Fist of Force at him.

Took over an hour, 2 CLs, 150+ dead summonned orcs (think I have got almost all the unique orcs now) until it all worked. Didn't have enough mana, but one of the dead orcs eventually dropped clarity potions for me and so then was able to set it up.

What are the actual effects of stunning? One of the dead orcs did drop a rod of sound strike. But I didn't use it as did not want to damage my human shield.

[Sideways]

Originally Posted by budswell

What are the actual effects of stunning? One of the dead orcs did drop a rod of sound strike. But I didn't use it as did not want to damage my human shield.

Stunning reduces monsters' spellcasting rates, increases their spell fail rates and decreases their effectiveness in melee.