Useful Tips for Defeating Gnolls
The easiest time I had with this fight was getting into the cave near the leader and funneling them into the mouth of the cave and tossing out Spike Growth, Cloud of daggers, and a Fog spell.
If that’s not an option, try to have them gather on the small paths and AoE them down with things like Alchemist’s Fire or grease and fire bolts.
Enter the cave from an alternate route, use tadpole to force leader to fight the other gnolls. Perfectly doable at level 1.
Even if you don’t want to enter the cave, there are other routes that have you outside the cave but at a height advantage on the Gnolls. Explore the map a little.
Heck I haven’t tried this tactic, but I’m pretty sure it would work to solo the fight by casting sanctuary on yourself, initiate combat, and do absolutely nothing while the leader slaughters its friends since I’m pretty sure the flail it carries forces it to attack allies if it can’t hit an enemy.
Some thoughts
Use Sanctuary ,
Put it on a player have them run into the fight alone , mobs will cluster around the target that can’t be attacked. Drop a powder barrel in the center … BOOM .
Change the fight locale.
I play solo sometimes, the fight is impossible for one player if you face tank it .
Start the fight .. then run backward all the way to the paladin fight…. at the house with th e Tyr paladins…. takes 4 turns or so to run there … get on the roof …. the gnolls will run after you … kill them from above … shoot out the ladders they cant climb …
Cover the area in Grease …. the set of rock stairs they climb up to get you …
cover it in grease … it may give you time to kill em …
Gnoll fight is one of the hardest in the game, considering the level you might be at when you reach it. They also, annoyingly, give the gnolls height advantage.
I just got a total party wipe from the first set of gnolls on balanced, but managed to (barely) beat them upon reload. However, I was underleveled (only level 3) and I knew it was going to be really hard before I tried it.
I think it is fine for a game like this to have a few fights much harder than the others in the same area, because you can always just avoid the fight, level up more, then come back to it.
The Gnoll fight is one of those difficulty gates that, assuming you have not powerbuilt your party, nudges you in the direction of “stop trying to face-tank every combat”.
Basically there several routes into that cave that make the fight more advantageous to the party, or just let you skip it altogether. You can also just straight force the leader to fight the other Gnolls.
The fight is balanced towards thinking before engaging.