jayoungr
Legend
In my Descent Into Avernus game, the group are about to have a showdown with one of the minibosses (Haruman), who uses the stats of a narzugon riding a nightmare. In preparation for his arrival, they cast magic circle around themselves, set to exclude fiends. This means that the boss basically can't do anything against them, as far as I can tell: his terrifying command automatically fails because they can't be frightened by him. His nightmare can't enter the circle to make a melee attack, and he has no ranged attacks.
For reasons I won't bore you with, having the boss fly away and wait for the magic circle to expire doesn't make sense in the current situation. He could stand outside the circle and try to poke them (with disadvantage) with his 10' reach lance, but that seems really suboptimal and anticlimactic, especially since the group has some good terrain control as well: the cleric has already set up a guardian of faith that blocks off about a quarter of the circle, while the bard and wizard are both pretty much guaranteed to cast cloud of daggers at first opportunity.
Basically, I don't want to penalize the group for good preparation, but I also don't want the fight to be a one-sided boring slog. I'm tempted to just give the boss a ranged option, but I thought I'd see if folks have other suggestions.
For reasons I won't bore you with, having the boss fly away and wait for the magic circle to expire doesn't make sense in the current situation. He could stand outside the circle and try to poke them (with disadvantage) with his 10' reach lance, but that seems really suboptimal and anticlimactic, especially since the group has some good terrain control as well: the cleric has already set up a guardian of faith that blocks off about a quarter of the circle, while the bard and wizard are both pretty much guaranteed to cast cloud of daggers at first opportunity.
Basically, I don't want to penalize the group for good preparation, but I also don't want the fight to be a one-sided boring slog. I'm tempted to just give the boss a ranged option, but I thought I'd see if folks have other suggestions.
