The Drunken Lizard Pub

What's the best way of fighting these turkeys? They keep running onto the lava field out of hammer range.

Take the damage and go after them. Eventually they can't retreat from you and like some other enemies they don't take fire damage and die taking the experience with them.

But be sure to remove foot and leg armor so you don't accidentally have them destroyed while in hot pursuit.

Guess I'll have to get my alchemy up first so I can brew up some element protection. I think I'd die before they would even at level 19. Just crossing lava runs in the Brimstone area greatly damaged me.

Do you have any sort of area-of-effect spells at all?

Not really; intelligence is too low at 15.