When I run encounters with legendary resistance I don't make it obvious when its uses. I do describe it as the target does something to negate most or all of the spell. So far they have not cought on.
How do other GMs handle letting they're group know about legendary resistance?
Legendary resistance looks like "the target successfully saved". You can make it more visible to give the player a sense they accomplished something, but it has no particular in game manifestation.
I think you owe it to your players to declare "He failed the saving throw, so he's going to use a Legendary Resistance." For one thing, the game is better when all dice rolls are open, so the players need to know that there's a difference between "This is a written mechanic whereby he has a limited number of special Legendary Resistances" and "I just don't want that to succeed so I overruled the dice." If you don't declare it, there's no way for the players to know which is happening.
If you play a game where you don't allow the players to know the outcomes of rolls or you sometimes fudge them, then you can do away with LR's altogether and just have the BBEG save whenever you want it to.
My vote goes to letting the party know that the creature has Legendary Resistances. It gives them a key to unlock one of the ways to defeat the monster.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
My vote goes to letting the party know that the creature has Legendary Resistances. It gives them a key to unlock one of the ways to defeat the monster.
But it also opens up the players to metagaming(?) whereby they throw spells/abilities which are quite serious and might use up an LR, and keep their "big" spell back until they know that the monster has definitely used up all 3 available LR.
My vote goes to letting the party know that the creature has Legendary Resistances. It gives them a key to unlock one of the ways to defeat the monster.
But it also opens up the players to metagaming(?) whereby they throw spells/abilities which are quite serious and might use up an LR, and keep their "big" spell back until they know that the monster has definitely used up all 3 available LR.
If that's what the players want to do strategically, then why wouldn't that be ok?
The monster doesn't have to expend a LR. It can choose as and when to use them. Wearing a monster's defences down can be viewed as the monster tiring or its magical reserves being depleted, so saving your big guns back would be a great tactic. I include some monsters that only have 1 or 2 LR's so there's no guarantee of 3.
The alternative is that the players cannot strategise, and have no idea whether the monster just automatically succeeds on every saving throw or whether their are LR's to burn through.
One thing I note is that even when I tell my players "Ok, he failed. He's going to use a Legendary Resistance to succeed instead" they actually feel buoyed up and encouraged because they are succeeding at getting through the monster's resources, so a turn spent trying to use Banishment that gets resisted still feels like something good has happened.
I would make it seem like an in-game effect, which the players may read between the lines of and say "that was a legendary resistance".
"The creature seems for a moment to be falling asleep, but then it seems to shake itself, and you see the rage bubbling up behind it's eyes as it throws off your spell"
I would make it seem like an in-game effect, which the players may read between the lines of and say "that was a legendary resistance".
"The creature seems for a moment to be falling asleep, but then it seems to shake itself, and you see the rage bubbling up behind it's eyes as it throws off your spell"
for example.
Same. I'd never outright say "they use a Legendary Resistance", but instead just hint strongly that's what's going on. "The spell looks like it's going to catch them square in the chest, but then at the last second it changes direction slightly, deflected by some unseen force, and they avoid the worst of it."
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I would make it seem like an in-game effect, which the players may read between the lines of and say "that was a legendary resistance".
"The creature seems for a moment to be falling asleep, but then it seems to shake itself, and you see the rage bubbling up behind it's eyes as it throws off your spell"
for example.
Same. I'd never outright say "they use a Legendary Resistance", but instead just hint strongly that's what's going on. "The spell looks like it's going to catch them square in the chest, but then at the last second it changes direction slightly, deflected by some unseen force, and they avoid the worst of it."
It's interesting seeing other DM's ways of doing this. There's not right or wrong answer, just personal preference and what suits your players.
When I use a creature ability or something like a legendary resistance, I always declare it and then often read out the exact wording of the ability. I do this so that my players know that I'm not just inventing it on the fly. There's a kind of rule whereby "if it's not written down, the monster can't do it" in terms of special abilities. We had an encounter recently where the party used Banishment on a key villain and trivialised the fight. I looked at his homebrew stat block and said "Well dang, I really thought I'd given him some legendary resistances... but nope. It works. He's out for ten turns." For my group, that kind of unspoken 'contract' with my players makes them feel that their actions have meaning and that their choices are dictating a world that kind of lives beyond just what the DM says, even if the DM designs everything in it. Design happens before the game, but once game time starts, the consequences follow logical progressions. That's the aim anyway, and that's what works for us. I tell them the recharge rolls of things I'm rolling on and it never seems to cause an issue.
I totally understand why that wouldn't be what some groups wanted, and why others might feel that bringing up mechanics would interrupt their gameplay.
I have mixed feelings on Legendary Resistances as both a DM and a player. They're sort of a necessary evil to counteract save-or-suck spells, especially higher level ones, and are crucial to making a solo boss battle remotely challenging in higher tiers of play. As a player though, it can feel pretty sucky to have a LR eat up a spell. I've seen people suggest that taking up a LR should be viewed as a good thing by the players regardless (whittling down the enemy's resources), but I don't really like the meta aspect of that. My solution has been to tie LRs to some other aspect of the fight. For example, in one of the recent boss fights for my party against a homebrew enemy, I made the AC something fairly high, like 21. Every time the boss used a LR, their AC reduced by 2, and the characters could see this spectral, magic armor deteriorating off the enemy when that happened. It wasn't just the players who knew something was happening outside of game. I think it made things a bit more rewarding and less frustrating for the players, and made me feel less bad for using LRs.
I have mixed feelings on Legendary Resistances as both a DM and a player. They're sort of a necessary evil to counteract save-or-suck spells.
Well, legendary resistances or something similar. A concept I've been playing around with is legendary recovery, where a legendary can pay some limited action cost to remove conditions (e.g. "If this monster takes no action on its turn, it heals by X and removes any number of effects". So you get a turn of suck, but it still gets its legendary actions and it's not out of the fight).
I think you owe it to your players to declare "He failed the saving throw, so he's going to use a Legendary Resistance." For one thing, the game is better when all dice rolls are open, so the players need to know that there's a difference between "This is a written mechanic whereby he has a limited number of special Legendary Resistances" and "I just don't want that to succeed so I overruled the dice." If you don't declare it, there's no way for the players to know which is happening.
If you play a game where you don't allow the players to know the outcomes of rolls or you sometimes fudge them, then you can do away with LR's altogether and just have the BBEG save whenever you want it to.
I disagree. I don’t think a DM owes them anything or the sort, nor do I agree that the game is best when all rolls are open.
As a DM, I owe the players a good game. That may include stuff like declaring Legendary Resistances, but it doesn’t have to, and I don’t “owe it” to them.
And I also disagree that the game is better when all rolls are done in the open. As a DM I also owe them a good story. If I can give them a better story by maintaining a little mystery, then that’s what I should do.
There are multiple ways to D&D, and to say “[I] owe it to the[m],” is as unfair and in appropriate as if I were to say “you owe it to them to hide your rolls.” If you think it’s better one way than the other, then voice your opinion. But it is your opinion. Telling people that we should be doing things your way because it’s “better” as if it were some objective truth is a bit unfair to the rest of us.
When I run encounters with legendary resistance I don't make it obvious when its uses. I do describe it as the target does something to negate most or all of the spell. So far they have not cought on.
How do other GMs handle letting they're group know about legendary resistance?
Legendary resistance looks like "the target successfully saved". You can make it more visible to give the player a sense they accomplished something, but it has no particular in game manifestation.
I roll openly, so it's pretty obvious when a big bad misses a saving throw, but saves anyway.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I think you owe it to your players to declare "He failed the saving throw, so he's going to use a Legendary Resistance." For one thing, the game is better when all dice rolls are open, so the players need to know that there's a difference between "This is a written mechanic whereby he has a limited number of special Legendary Resistances" and "I just don't want that to succeed so I overruled the dice." If you don't declare it, there's no way for the players to know which is happening.
If you play a game where you don't allow the players to know the outcomes of rolls or you sometimes fudge them, then you can do away with LR's altogether and just have the BBEG save whenever you want it to.
My vote goes to letting the party know that the creature has Legendary Resistances. It gives them a key to unlock one of the ways to defeat the monster.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
But it also opens up the players to metagaming(?) whereby they throw spells/abilities which are quite serious and might use up an LR, and keep their "big" spell back until they know that the monster has definitely used up all 3 available LR.
If that's what the players want to do strategically, then why wouldn't that be ok?
The monster doesn't have to expend a LR. It can choose as and when to use them. Wearing a monster's defences down can be viewed as the monster tiring or its magical reserves being depleted, so saving your big guns back would be a great tactic. I include some monsters that only have 1 or 2 LR's so there's no guarantee of 3.
The alternative is that the players cannot strategise, and have no idea whether the monster just automatically succeeds on every saving throw or whether their are LR's to burn through.
One thing I note is that even when I tell my players "Ok, he failed. He's going to use a Legendary Resistance to succeed instead" they actually feel buoyed up and encouraged because they are succeeding at getting through the monster's resources, so a turn spent trying to use Banishment that gets resisted still feels like something good has happened.
I'll usually say when it's using a legendary resistance, just so the players don't get disheartened and think I'm being unfair.
I would make it seem like an in-game effect, which the players may read between the lines of and say "that was a legendary resistance".
"The creature seems for a moment to be falling asleep, but then it seems to shake itself, and you see the rage bubbling up behind it's eyes as it throws off your spell"
for example.
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Same. I'd never outright say "they use a Legendary Resistance", but instead just hint strongly that's what's going on. "The spell looks like it's going to catch them square in the chest, but then at the last second it changes direction slightly, deflected by some unseen force, and they avoid the worst of it."
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
It's interesting seeing other DM's ways of doing this. There's not right or wrong answer, just personal preference and what suits your players.
When I use a creature ability or something like a legendary resistance, I always declare it and then often read out the exact wording of the ability. I do this so that my players know that I'm not just inventing it on the fly. There's a kind of rule whereby "if it's not written down, the monster can't do it" in terms of special abilities. We had an encounter recently where the party used Banishment on a key villain and trivialised the fight. I looked at his homebrew stat block and said "Well dang, I really thought I'd given him some legendary resistances... but nope. It works. He's out for ten turns." For my group, that kind of unspoken 'contract' with my players makes them feel that their actions have meaning and that their choices are dictating a world that kind of lives beyond just what the DM says, even if the DM designs everything in it. Design happens before the game, but once game time starts, the consequences follow logical progressions. That's the aim anyway, and that's what works for us. I tell them the recharge rolls of things I'm rolling on and it never seems to cause an issue.
I totally understand why that wouldn't be what some groups wanted, and why others might feel that bringing up mechanics would interrupt their gameplay.
I have mixed feelings on Legendary Resistances as both a DM and a player. They're sort of a necessary evil to counteract save-or-suck spells, especially higher level ones, and are crucial to making a solo boss battle remotely challenging in higher tiers of play. As a player though, it can feel pretty sucky to have a LR eat up a spell. I've seen people suggest that taking up a LR should be viewed as a good thing by the players regardless (whittling down the enemy's resources), but I don't really like the meta aspect of that. My solution has been to tie LRs to some other aspect of the fight. For example, in one of the recent boss fights for my party against a homebrew enemy, I made the AC something fairly high, like 21. Every time the boss used a LR, their AC reduced by 2, and the characters could see this spectral, magic armor deteriorating off the enemy when that happened. It wasn't just the players who knew something was happening outside of game. I think it made things a bit more rewarding and less frustrating for the players, and made me feel less bad for using LRs.
Well, legendary resistances or something similar. A concept I've been playing around with is legendary recovery, where a legendary can pay some limited action cost to remove conditions (e.g. "If this monster takes no action on its turn, it heals by X and removes any number of effects". So you get a turn of suck, but it still gets its legendary actions and it's not out of the fight).
I disagree. I don’t think a DM owes them anything or the sort, nor do I agree that the game is best when all rolls are open.
As a DM, I owe the players a good game. That may include stuff like declaring Legendary Resistances, but it doesn’t have to, and I don’t “owe it” to them.
And I also disagree that the game is better when all rolls are done in the open. As a DM I also owe them a good story. If I can give them a better story by maintaining a little mystery, then that’s what I should do.
There are multiple ways to D&D, and to say “[I] owe it to the[m],” is as unfair and in appropriate as if I were to say “you owe it to them to hide your rolls.” If you think it’s better one way than the other, then voice your opinion. But it is your opinion. Telling people that we should be doing things your way because it’s “better” as if it were some objective truth is a bit unfair to the rest of us.
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