The gnoll fight was roughly the same. Depends on whether you come at it from the hilltop outside the cave system, thus gaining advantage over all ranged attacks and thus kicking their butts, or whether you are coming from downhill and they get advantage and kick your butt.
This time, for the first time, I came in from the cave where the two Zhents are. That was fun, but a bit glitchy. The first time through, the AI freaked out. The gnolls stopped doing anything and so did the Zhents. The second time, the gnolls fired and blew up a barrel on the first turn, killed everyone. WHY WOULD THEY PUT AN EXPLODING BARREL CLOSE TO THEMSELVES SO THE GNOLLS COULD KILL THEM WITH ONE SHOT!?!!! Made no sense to me. Third playthrough, we won. They still used the exploding barrel trick on us and nearly killed the two Zhents, but my cleric used the group healing spell and healed them all up.
Speaking of that spell, it's too OP and shouldn't be able to be used in combat. It should be an outside combat spell. But, whatever. That's not the point of this discussion. This is just about the fight difficulties. The gnolls. Not too bad. I think it's a good fight, for the most part.
