Please correct me if I'm wrong: if you make the barbarians hostile in HoW, you can't do anything but reload, right?

More or less. You just got to be careful in who you hit. Avoid AoE attacks. You should have a convenient autosave.

Well...maybe that charm cloak from BG will help here?

I was able to take my team and kill the whole camp -- HoF -- just to see if I could do it with only basic buffs, bard singing, and my two fighters chopping away. My fighters decimated them...okay; some Call Lightning from my F/D helped out a bit too.

I actually started doing this to check for my random item or you can just avoid the long fight and have one guy go in invisible [while the remainder of your team is getting clobbered - doesn't matter - only checking the barrel here]:

-Beam in.
-Save.
-Make hostile -- they open the gate.
-Run and check for item.
-Reload.
-Do again if my 50/50 chance (I want the cloak) is the wrong 50.

p.s. Those Barbarians really need to train some archers of they expect to win back the North!

why the cloak? if it would work, a spell should wok too.

random item spoiler:
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Cloak of Invisibility (50/50 chance in the Barbaian Camp):

Allows for either one more spell slot on mage/bard and/or a non-mage type to cast this spell on themselves (I use it on my Dwarf F/C when walking into a fresh battle zone: bad guys to the side will head for fighter in front instead of her -- she can then cast those nice combat spells uninterrupted after my fighter pulls the hostile away from the support group...sneaky I am.)

Fun note: if you had that charm cloak from BG: the whole camp could be on your side in short time. That cloak was the most powerful item in B. Gate.

I was referring to the charm cloak from BG.

I believe the question is not how to win the fight but how to progress in the game after making them hostile (you need to talk to Hjolder to go to next map). I thought you meant you could charm him and then talk to him and hence you need the cloak.

Can charmed createrues be talked to? I know you can in BG1 but can't in BG2.

You can't talk to charmed creatures normally in IWD. Else people would be spinning tales on how to massarce Easthaven and Kuldahar by now.

Right. Well, I made a rookie mistake; you'd think I'd know better, having gone through the game so many times. One brain fart... :(

I've been playing my HoF game off and on for months (mostly off), and I dimly remember following a different dialogue string than normal before going to Burial Isle - it ended up that I made the "gatekeeper" barbarian hostile. I'm pretty sure I intended to reload from an autosave then, but it turns out I never did. Of course, he remains hostile now that I've returned (after completing Burial Isle and Gloomfrost). The only option I have is to wipe out the whole camp before getting in to see Wylfdene/Ich(whatever). Of course, Hjollder and Wylfdene probably won't talk to me if all the other barbarians are hostile.

Blah. I don't have a convenient autosave, so I'll have to restart HoW entirely. Luckily, I decided to knock off Belhifet before starting a HoW-only expansion game this time, so I have the exported characters.