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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Croesus" data-source="post: 7303602" data-attributes="member: 35019">First off, welcome to EnWorld!As for the encounter, the NPC clerics are basically the Priest entry at the back of the MM, so those are CR 2. However, if you make them blind, that severely restricts what they can do. As has been mentioned, most of their spells will be useless in such a situation. I'd suggest giving them 10' blindsight (some sort of divine sight?), as that will at least allow them to target each other and the medusa.The medusa is CR 6, but a lot of that is the gaze attack. Since that only goes out to 30', a smart party will just stay at range and trade shots with the medusa. It will only get two longbow shots for an average of 6 points of damage per shot vs. multiple attacks from the party. In other words, with this setup, the medusa is toast with minimal risk to the party. Now the blind priests helping the medusa is a cool idea. In practice, however, they'll be limited to casting cure wounds on the medusa, which will just drag out the fight.  Bottom line, a 6th level party with area effect spells and decent ranged attacks will have little trouble with this encounter. It will use up some resources, so call it 2,500 - 3,000 XP total. What you need are additional environmental effects. Here are some possibilities:Make sure the characters have to enter the room to attack the medusa/priests. Have the floor in the room covered with ornate symbols and diagrams. Anyone standing on the diagrams must verbally chant something from the priests' religion or be hit with 1d8 necrotic damage. Meanwhile, hidden on the floor are a handful (not too many) of glyphs of warding with hold person, blindness, or guiding bolt). These should be placed such that a quick rush of the medusa is a bit risky, but possible. With something like this, the characters can battle at range, but it becomes a race to take down the medusa before the necrotic damage takes them down. If they rush the medusa, as soon as one character triggers a glyph, they'll be worried about more (which is why you don't need too many - the idea is to worry the party, not wipe them out). And once close to the medusa, the gaze comes into play, as does spiritual guardians. All of this should force a quick, tense fight, rather than a somewhat tedious ranged, attritional fight.With additional environmental effects, I'd bump the encounter difficulty into the 4,000 - 6,000 XP range, depending on just how tough the effects.</blockquote>

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