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Can Someone Assess this Encounter Difficulty
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<blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 7303670" data-attributes="member: 20323"><p>As a baseline, one CR 6 Medusa + four CR 2 priests = Adjusted XP: 8,200 (Deadly*) for a party of five PCs.</p><p></p><p>*acc. to DMG "Deadly" means there's the possibility of <em><strong>a</strong></em> PC dying.</p><p></p><p>However, CR calculations are a very <em>very</em> rough starting point. You need to consider your party's size, level, composition, and "freshness." If it's likely to be the only fight of the day, you'll want to look at the Adventuring Day XP guidelines.</p><p></p><p>What you've created is a situation begging for a <em>fireball</em> (unless there's story reasons for PCs *not* targeting priests). Since the priests need to be close to the medusa for <em>cure wounds</em> (a touch spell), <em>warding bond</em> (w/in 60-feet), or including her within <em>spirit guardians</em> (15-feet), most area effect spells are going to be devastating on the clustered monsters. So, in addition to looking at the usual – encounter difficulty calculations, adventuring day XP, how fresh the party is, etc. – you'll want to consider the party's composition. Do they have a blaster spellcaster with area effect spells? That'll be a <em>huge</em> advantage.</p><p></p><p>The thing with the medusa is that you're having her fight at range primarily...which really isn't optimal for a medusa. There's very little incentive for PCs to engage in melee, given your scenario as it stands. "The medusa shoots her bow at me twice, from a range where I don't have to worry about getting petrified? I'll stay right here and grab some cover, thank you very much!"</p><p></p><p>So unless you have a very hack-n-slash oriented party, you need reasons <em>why</em> the PCs feel pressured to close into melee, or else the PCs are likely to arm up with their own ranged attacks and decimate the 127 hit point medusa. [MENTION=35019]Croesus[/MENTION] offers great advice in this regard! </p><p></p><p>I also agree with [MENTION=5889]Stalker0[/MENTION] that the scenario runs the risk of being a bit boring as the PCs try to deal enough damage to surpass the medusa's HP boosted-by-healing. It has the potential of drawing out the combat...and whenever that happens you want interesting developments you can introduce in the fight to keep things fresh.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Quickleaf, post: 7303670, member: 20323"] As a baseline, one CR 6 Medusa + four CR 2 priests = Adjusted XP: 8,200 (Deadly*) for a party of five PCs. *acc. to DMG "Deadly" means there's the possibility of [I][B]a[/B][/I] PC dying. However, CR calculations are a very [I]very[/I] rough starting point. You need to consider your party's size, level, composition, and "freshness." If it's likely to be the only fight of the day, you'll want to look at the Adventuring Day XP guidelines. What you've created is a situation begging for a [I]fireball[/I] (unless there's story reasons for PCs *not* targeting priests). Since the priests need to be close to the medusa for [I]cure wounds[/I] (a touch spell), [I]warding bond[/I] (w/in 60-feet), or including her within [I]spirit guardians[/I] (15-feet), most area effect spells are going to be devastating on the clustered monsters. So, in addition to looking at the usual – encounter difficulty calculations, adventuring day XP, how fresh the party is, etc. – you'll want to consider the party's composition. Do they have a blaster spellcaster with area effect spells? That'll be a [I]huge[/I] advantage. The thing with the medusa is that you're having her fight at range primarily...which really isn't optimal for a medusa. There's very little incentive for PCs to engage in melee, given your scenario as it stands. "The medusa shoots her bow at me twice, from a range where I don't have to worry about getting petrified? I'll stay right here and grab some cover, thank you very much!" So unless you have a very hack-n-slash oriented party, you need reasons [I]why[/I] the PCs feel pressured to close into melee, or else the PCs are likely to arm up with their own ranged attacks and decimate the 127 hit point medusa. [MENTION=35019]Croesus[/MENTION] offers great advice in this regard! I also agree with [MENTION=5889]Stalker0[/MENTION] that the scenario runs the risk of being a bit boring as the PCs try to deal enough damage to surpass the medusa's HP boosted-by-healing. It has the potential of drawing out the combat...and whenever that happens you want interesting developments you can introduce in the fight to keep things fresh. [/QUOTE]
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