Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Rather than just saying "the monster uses legendary resistance", or just rolling behind a screen, smiling, and saying the monster saved, have people tried making resistances visible? For example, I was thinking of a monster with a necklace of visible glowing gems, and every time it uses legendary resistance, one of those gems shatters. You can also use environmental objects (though then PCs may attempt to destroy them directly. Which is not necessarily bad, it adds another option to an encounter, but is something to at least think about ahead of time).
I am also tempted to add additional uses for legendary resistances, such as 'avoid death' (if the creature would be killed or reduced to zero HP, spend a use to instead set HP to 20 or something) or 'status cleanse' (spend a use to simply remove a condition or other ongoing effect).
This kind of gets at the second part. Mike Mearls had this in his patreon (in the free section) about legendary resistances and ways to make them more dynamic.
https://www.patreon.com/mikemearls/posts/boss-monsters-142259394?collection=1871937
Well, that's more about replacements for legendary resistances. Which isn't necessarily wrong, but is somewhat sideways to what I was thinking about.
Yeah, certainly not the visible part, I just thought the ideas were really interesting.
I usually narrate LR as something like, it seemed like your spell was about to take hold, but the monster drew on some well of power/willpower, etc. and shrugged it off.
Part I find most interesting is that Mike Mearls recognizes the problem, because as one of the designers of 5e he has pretty direct responsibility -- it's a problem that they actively made worse when designing 5e (it's not like prior editions had no issues with status effects, but 5e is the only edition where a high level/CR enemy can have worse saves than a commoner).
Yeah, he does admit some of those issues.
He actually has some things in the system he’s designing I’ve considered as house rules, like at level 10, just giving all characters proficiency in all saves, so you don’t have those level 15 characters with a -1 to int saves or what have you.
I find his stuff pretty interesting in kind of recognizing the issues with 5e, but it’s always the “we” who messed things up. But he does own the mistakes as he’s part of the “we.”
It’s also, as most people know, 5e’s success took everyone by surprise. They had to mash together a new edition quickly, and the cracks have been showing. I’m pretty interested to see the final version of the system he’s been working on.
Sorry, didn’t mean to hijack your thread. I think those other uses for LR you suggested would work. But I’d be hesitant to use most of them. Like, what condition would I need to cleanse that I wouldn’t have used an LR to avoid in the first place? But the make 0 hp means I get 30 hp or something could definitely work, like the barbarian ability that goes something similar. But really, that probably only going to mean 1-2 more hits, which might just prolong things without adding much. I’d rather go with those epic monsters that are a 2 phase fight.
One that's applied by an attack and has no save.