Nerf the gnolls!

[Jyggalad]

Sweet Jesus these things are infuriatingly difficult for such an early enemy, and need a nerf.

Especially near the cave. Who thought this was a good balanced?

There should not be 2 hyenas and a bunch of gnolls, the gnolls which all have:

-Enrage
-Multiattack WITH enrage that can be used every turn where the damage is equal to a normal attack for each attack
-Bonus action blocker
-Heal
-A tanky boss with paralyzing action

If you don't want to use you illithid powers, damn guess you're gonna have a fight that's just straight up unfair. Cc and group attacks and sneak attacks only do so much. Like I'm pulling out all the stops, it's still a ridiculously difficult battle. There are much better and more entertaining ways to set up a difficult fight. This is just stupid. Nerf the gnolls

Edit-
To avoid any "git gud" comments (Though I'm sure they'll still pop up) I've beaten them plenty of times, however it is hair rippingly aggravating and in no way a fun challenge.

[RhodosGuard]

Gnoll Hunters can Multiattack as long as they have Seething Fury. It's the feature enabling it.
Focus the ones that have seething fury active.

The fight is most difficult if you attempt it from inside the cave because it forces you into a bottleneck with 2 suicidal NPCs that will walk into melee range of a level 5 gnoll because they think they can shove him into the alchemists fire that they just missed every other gnoll with.

The gnolls are fine. For the the Fight AoE and Mobility are most important, as well as having Hold Person for Flind and auto-crits, either that or do the fight from outside the cave by setting yourself up on the high ground.
That way you can force the Gnolls into the Bottleneck where they have to climb up and just set up like Cloud of Daggers or whatever AoE you brought.
Heightened Cast Shatter, Twin Cast Iceknife, Scrolls, throw Alchemists fires, shoot special arrows, poison your melee fighters weapons. They have a powerfull feature, after all, if they hit, they can deal 3d8+9 in one turn, but they also only have 22 (or something like that) HP. Focus like 2 characters on the hunters, your main caster on hold person and the last one on scoring automatic crits against flind.

[Bishi]

It's one of the harder fights in act 1 for sure especially how early you might stumble across it, but it's one of the ones that rewards tactics and resourcefulness. You can have a low ac character with damage resistance like Karlach soak hits while you try to nuke the rest. You can cast Darkness with Wyll and negate the ranged attacks long enough to focus the boss.

Those are two things you can do ignoring anything your MC might be capable of or regardless of any consumables you might have.

[Jyggalad]

Originally posted by RhodosGuard:

Gnoll Hunters can Multiattack as long as they have Seething Fury. It's the feature enabling it.
Focus the ones that have seething fury active.

They activate this instantly and there 3-4 of them and 2 hyenas and a boss. When I focus one I get swarmed.

Originally posted by RhodosGuard:

The fight is most difficult if you attempt it from inside the cave because it forces you into a bottleneck with 2 suicidal NPCs that will walk into melee range of a level 5 gnoll because they think they can shove him into the alchemists fire that they just missed every other gnoll with.

True, however like I said it's just as difficult if not more so outside. At least inside the cave you got two gnoll distractions.

Originally posted by RhodosGuard:

The gnolls are fine. For the the Fight AoE and Mobility are most important, as well as having Hold Person for Flind and auto-crits

They are not. And as I said originally, I do use all AoE and mobility impairments I can. It still doesn't matter. The positioning helps a minor ammount but again, seems to get canceled out by the gnoll's multiattack and heals. That's also assuming you can manage to not only get Hold on Flind but also keep your caster from being targeted by the multiattack. Then targeting the hunters works well to an extent until a few die and then bam, they're cannibalizing each other and healing however many times as there are corpses.

I don't mean to be rude but I don't think you read the post. Unless I missed something you posted, I do all the things you've recommended, the only thing I left out is the positioning on a hill which while normally a good suggestion, gets canceled out by the absurd amount of abilities the gnolls and their boss have.

I still stand by my point, they're an unfun enemy to fight that needs tweaking for it to be a fun challange.

Originally posted by Radical_Inu:

You can cast Darkness.

That is actually something I had not tried yet actually, good point. I'll give that a shot next time.

[Gingermonkey]

Darkness, Fog Cloud. Both can be very helpful in that fight. Crowd control spells in general tend to get overlooked by a lot of players, but when properly utilized they can make even the most difficult fights trivial. Dont bother hoarding potions of speed either, you can always make more thanks to the gnolls dropping the ingredient for it

[RhodosGuard]

Originally posted by Jyggalad:

Originally posted by RhodosGuard:

Gnoll Hunters can Multiattack as long as they have Seething Fury. It's the feature enabling it.
Focus the ones that have seething fury active.

They activate this instantly and there 3-4 of them and 2 hyenas and a boss. When I focus one I get swarmed.

Originally posted by RhodosGuard:

The fight is most difficult if you attempt it from inside the cave because it forces you into a bottleneck with 2 suicidal NPCs that will walk into melee range of a level 5 gnoll because they think they can shove him into the alchemists fire that they just missed every other gnoll with.

True, however like I said it's just as difficult if not more so outside. At least inside the cave you got two gnoll distractions.

Originally posted by RhodosGuard:

The gnolls are fine. For the the Fight AoE and Mobility are most important, as well as having Hold Person for Flind and auto-crits

They are not. And as I said originally, I do use all AoE and mobility impairments I can. It still doesn't matter. The positioning helps a minor ammount but again, seems to get canceled out by the gnoll's multiattack and heals. That's also assuming you can manage to not only get Hold on Flind but also keep your caster from being targeted by the multiattack. Then targeting the hunters works well to an extent until a few die and then bam, they're cannibalizing each other and healing however many times as there are corpses.

I don't mean to be rude but I don't think you read the post. Unless I missed something you posted, I do all the things you've recommended, the only thing I left out is the positioning on a hill which while normally a good suggestion, gets canceled out by the absurd amount of abilities the gnolls and their boss have.

I still stand by my point, they're an unfun enemy to fight that needs tweaking for it to be a fun challange.

Originally posted by Radical_Inu:

You can cast Darkness.

That is actually something I had not tried yet actually, good point. I'll give that a shot next time.

Look Buddy boo. Take the advice or dont.
Gid gud or dont.

But all I can say is that the only reason I would fail that fight would be consistent bad rolls. And that's unavoidable. Other than that, the fight is completely fine.

Especially if you do not immediatly attack Flind, as if you start the fight without immediate violence or by not damaging Flind immediatly you will get Dialogue with the Gnoll, where you can potentially turn him to your side for this fight.

Dont project your inadequacies on others.

And no. they do not use their multiattack immediatly or all the time.

It is quite usual for them to use at least one turn dashing and or shooting acid arrows, both of which block them from multiattacking. If you really, absolutely, unquestionably cant beat the encounter, then start the encounter with bonus actions, use all the actions on all your characters for dash, wait until they dash after you through a bottleneck and then just spamm all aoe options you have at them.

And if that doesnt work, you kinda are just bad.

[✪ Wuhan Warrior 🍉🍉]

I don’t know man. I killed all of them in my first try. Also the gnoll chief can be persuaded using tadpole powers for a great ally. They don’t need a nerf, you just need a better strat to deal with them. Oh and try using shadow heart’s command spell. Works wonders as gnolls have low wis. I remembered vaguely how I disabled the chief until the very end. It’s the chief that poses the most threat, so play smart.

Edit: On Tactician.

[Midas]

They're just the first enemy that forces you to actually think about things like tactics and party composition. Until that point basically anything you can just roll through using any kind of party with any kind of gear and any kind of tactics. The gnolls will generally outshoot you in a straight up fight, so this is where you learn to stop giving enemies a straight up fight.

[Nats]

I died once fighting them but the second time I was almost dead so I called on some help ..... and some fights you have to just leave and come back to later

[VladK02]

Bro. you have level 1 spell called Command.

Command works not just on gnolls, but on bosses, all the way up to level 12. best spell in the game for crowd control.

USE. YOUR. CLERIC.

[Hobocop]

By the time you encounter them is also when you start getting access to some of the bigger ticket CC and area denial spells like Web and Cloud of Daggers.

[Nomad]

The gnolls can be rough early on. The key point to remember for anyone who comes here looking for advice is to kill the rangers first. They will mess you up so damn quick. The melee ones are whatever but the rangers need to die immediately.

[epicbod]

Ignore the caves and sneak up right behind them in front. Focus down the leader 1st. I tried it the other way around in early access but found this much easier. The other npcs survived without a sweat too.

[Willow Rivers]

You can stealth kill half the gnolls before battle commences with a rogue. I am playing rogue and snuck up and sneak attack with bow and instant kill one, then retreat back and hide and wait for the ones investigating to give then repeat.

I was able to knock off 3-4 of them before they caught me and the remainder was easy to deal with normally.

[Tomas Mac Mordain]

Barrelmancy! Or funnel them into aoes in the narrow passages.

I agree they are somewhat harder with the fiend and all. But you should be able to send some of them to sleep while focusing down the main. They tend to shove the sleepers awake though.

Still, you can force some positioning that way.

You can also get close to the cave entrance to trigger the zenths to become active. They like to throw molotovs to help out.

Get creative, you'll be fine.

[RhodosGuard]

Originally posted by Tomas Mac Mordain:

Barrelmancy! Or funnel them into aoes in the narrow passages.

I agree they are somewhat harder with the fiend and all. But you should be able to send some of them to sleep while focusing down the main. They tend to shove the sleepers awake though.

Still, you can force some positioning that way.

You can also get close to the cave entrance to trigger the zenths to become active. They like to throw molotovs to help out.

Get creative, you'll be fine.

The Zenths wont help you if you trigger the fight outside the cave. They throw like 1 alchemists fire then Olly goes "We should help the people fighting" and Rugan goes "Do you wanna die you idiot? Let them do it" and then they quickly exit the fight. I guess unless you actively pull the gnolls into the gave. Why you would Bottleneck yourself though is another question.