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The Gnoll fight is a true test of your RPG abilities, pitting you against an encounter that will steamroll any brute-forcers trying to ignore game mechanics.
The best way to handle those Gnolls - other than siccing the Flind onto them with the right dialogue checks - is to have someone in your party who can hit them with either Command, Hideous Laughter, or a blast effect like Thunderwave or Repelling Blast. They only have a +1 to WIS saves and -1 to other mental saves so Command/Hideous Laughter should hit 60% of the time. If that's not enough of a chance, stick Bane onto them then hit them with crowd control.
Taking even just two of them out with these effects will more than help your action economy.
As for the "always hitting" bit? Not entirely true. They have at most a +5 to hit, so if your AC is 16 or higher they have a 50/50 shot at missing you per hit. AC 16 is easy to hit on pretty much any character, and some can hit AC 18+ with modest investment. Examples of this are:
Shadowheart with Scalemail & a shield: AC16. +1 Scalemail takes it to 17, getting her DEX to 14 is AC 19.
Lae'Zel starts innately with AC 16 thanks to half-plate and DEX 13. She can reach AC 19 with the same setup (14 DEX, shield).
Gale with Mage Armor, a shield (which he's proficient with innately), and 14 DEX is AC 17.
A Paladin in Chainmail & a shield is AC 18.
A Monk can hit AC 18 with 16 DEX, 16 WIS, and Bracers of defense. Nix the bracers for the Sparkle hands and you're still at AC 16.
And the bit about them draining your whole HP pool per turn? Aid + Warding Bond on your frontliner. That'll help soak up a ton of that damage. Warding Bond isn't even needed if you have Karlach as your frontliner who has phys resist from being a Barbarian. If you're really worried? Make Gale an Abjurer, his ward will soak up a lot of that damage for you.
TL;DR: It's challenging but not impossible, and you don't need to savescum. It just requires a little bit of strategy & skill to clear comfortably.
For the other gnolls sieging the cave there are multiple ways you can abuse terrain to your advantage.
It's hard encounters if you try to brute force them.
If you carefully choose how to take the engagements it's not that hard, and if you made preparations it's even very easy (cloud of daggers for example, with a good engagement, can turn these battles into slaughters.)
For the specific case of the gnoll archer. They are incredibly dangerous if left alone, but they have bad defenses so it's quite easy to focus them/control them. Also their accuracy isn't great, so if they have any debuff to it (like having someone engaged with them or if you are heigher than them) they will very often miss.
like most enrage in the game your best friend is Calm emotion (cleric/bard)
just be careful at low level that it also prevent karlach (or any barb) from enraging.
you may want to follow with sanctuary to be sure not to lose concentration.
fun fact...also work on harpie lure event though it doesn't specify.
That gnoll pack is strong, maybe don't engage as low level
The best answer is to right-click on the enemy, and choose Examine.
That'll almost always tell you what ability the enemy is using, and how it works.
There's a much easier way to deal with them (hint: it's wriggling behind your eye ).
Well, THAT'S new!
I never though to use Calm Emotions offensively like that! I just use it for the Harpy fight because of their damn song.
Good to know!
Group stealth, then approach to just beyond/just outside mob LOS
Initiate a fight with your highest initiative character.
Once the initiative breakdown list happens, wait until it's that characters turn to fight, generally, if it's your highest initiative character, it's that toon.
Don't do anything with that toon. Also, that toon is the only character that breaks stealth.
Then gradually move your other characters around while your high initiative character locks all the enemy mobs in place due to the initiative order.
Stealth your melee's right up against the outer mobs and initiate them into the fight, they will get one attack and get added to the initiative order.
As you gradually kill the outer mobs, you should be able to essentially leapfrog past now dead mobs locked in the initiative order to attack mobs further from the original character as your characters stealth past now dead mobs to attack other mobs out of initiative.
Because the mobs are locked in place you can free move out of LOS right next to a mob even in heavy armor.
It's cheese, pure and simple. But the game allows you to do it so, ok, whatever.
For the Protect The Shipment quest with Rugan I have found the best methodology is to take your MC solo up the Indiana Jones cloaca and initiate the conversation solo, take the option to wait and prepare for combat. (you have to be unstealthed for this, for some reason if you try to initiate while stealthed the mobs initiate combat and the Boss is an absolute beast with high initiative. Then stealth the rest of the group around and up to the front of the cave entrance and begin the stealth leapfrog from there. Then when the boss inevitably starts whacking on Olly, open up with your MC.
The capability to just open up with full Laezel/Karlach fury right into the necks before the fight even really starts is game and immersion breaking, but, hey, whatever.
And I know there will be some people that say, well, that's perfectly normal, that's the way stealth is meant to be played. Sure, yes, I get it. I totally do. What you shouldn't be able to do is AFTER stealthing up behind someone in full heavy armor and whackstabbing them to death, is have a SECOND character then stealth past the first whackstabber and whackstab a second mob right next to the first whackstabbing victim. And you definately shouldn't be able to then take a third character, stealth past the first two whackstabbers and whackstab a third character that you would have had NO chance whatsoever whackstabbing if the first two whackstabber victims were still alive. Also, Because if you whackstab someone prone, out of initiative order, they won't be able to break your hide, so you can just stealth right past a not dead, prone mob to whackstab it's buddy. For all intentional purposes it means at least 3/4 of your group has infinite movement on the first turn of combat. I haven't yet tried to pickpocket someone in combat yet. Should try that next. Stealth up to a person locked in initiative, and steal everything they own. What are they going to do, they already locked in combat. Cheesy cheesy goodness.
Overall ask gnol’s leader to solo kill them (you have to help him in honour mode).
Use create water spell with any ice spell to create ice surface, so gnolls won’t even make an attack.
Darkness spell + spike growth a is broken combo for the beginning, you can replace it later with hunger of Hadar + wall of fire to make the best mass CC combo for the whole game (don’t use it vs Raphael)