ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I was trying to force entry into lvl 9 of Dreadfall, and at the entrance was Dreadmaster who seems was continuously summoning Dreads (there was more than 20 Dreads around). As TW I can kill Dread, but the problem was Dreadmaster could be summoning them faster then I could kill them. Are there limit on the number of Dreads Dreadmaster can summon in its lifetime?

There is no limit but there is disminishing returns; the more a creature summons, the higher the summon talent cooldown becomes

Just how are you supposed to kill dreads if you don't have magical attacks? Their defense seems to be absurdly high.

At the end I killed them by ladder scamming, cap of battlecry(~ -15 defence), and the vampire spamming from Chocker of the Dead. Even that was barely enough - the key problem was to locate and kill Dreadmaster. I had attack 43 with all items, and Dreads had defense 44-45, down to 41 from battlecry, that mean I could kill Dread in about 5 strikes (Flare misfired often). I went down the ladder with shield, haste etc., used battlecry, killed Dread, spammed vampire from chocker and backed up. However it was all useless, because Dreadmaster summoned new. But with enough vampire spammed I was able to locate Dreadmaster and kill it, while Dreads were blocked by vampires. After that another ~15 trips and Dreads were cleared.
BTW I have two Chokers now - artifacts are not unique any more in b27.

DREADMASTER RAGEE!!!! !@#*!@)&$)!@(&%!(@$#!@% ....

Thats from my now deceased Anorithil....

I had the same problem, I attempted to locate the Dreadmaster and blow it to oblivion but once my intial spell combo had passed he was still standing and there were +5 more dreads around me. Harsh.