I am planning a little far ahead at the moment. I have one simple question... Should I give a Purple Worm Legendary Resistances?
The game I run is centered around exploring ancient and uninhabited locations. This will eventually lead my players to go to a large Desert. And as any reasonable dungeon master would, I want to throw them up against a purple worm. But my party has many spellcasters (Artificer, Bard, Sorcerer, Cleric). I fear that if I let them fight such a creature it will be either polymorphed, banished, hypnotic-patterned... ect. Which could very quickly take the wind out of the sails of an otherwise possibly very fun encounter.
I don't think I would need to give it any legendary actions (apart from maybe allowing it to move) as I think its damage output is great enough to challenge my party. But I am debating wether or not I should give it (most likely 3) legendary resistances to keep it from being instantly dealt with in a single turn/round of combat.
Would it be wise to give it Legendary Resistances? And if you have any experience, at what level would my players be able to reasonably handle a purple worm?
Sure! Absolutely! The purple worm is a classic monster. It's been considered a potential TPK-er since the early 1970s. In fact, I'm surprised that the purple worm stat block doesn't already give it more resistances. Not only would I grant it three Legendary Resistances, I might even go so far as to grant it a bunch of damage resistances as well. Resistance to thunder, lightning, acid, and non-magical weapon attacks sounds reasonable to me.
A monster as big and as classic as the purple worm deserves to be a memorable moment for the players. They should always remember the time they just barely survived their encounter with such a dangerous and iconic beast. Make it as tough as possible.
I am planning a little far ahead at the moment. I have one simple question... Should I give a Purple Worm Legendary Resistances?
The game I run is centered around exploring ancient and uninhabited locations. This will eventually lead my players to go to a large Desert. And as any reasonable dungeon master would, I want to throw them up against a purple worm. But my party has many spellcasters (Artificer, Bard, Sorcerer, Cleric). I fear that if I let them fight such a creature it will be either polymorphed, banished, hypnotic-patterned... ect. Which could very quickly take the wind out of the sails of an otherwise possibly very fun encounter.
Solo monsters and hard CC has always been a problem, though a lot of the options you mention don't defeat the worm, they just let you bypass the monster, and there's no shortage of run away spells by the time you're at level where a purple worm is a reasonable encounter.
Go for it! There is also nothing that says it has to be three legendary resistances, if you players are getting absolutely thrashed you can adjust it to only have one and if you're rolling horribly then go with three. As for level I'm still trying to figure that out myself but I think its more determined by the number of players. My group consists of five level 6 PCs - Warlock, Fighter, Bard, Wizard, and Rogue. I find that they are able to consistently take on solo monsters that are ~ 3-4 CR above the group level, so I've started beefing up the creatures if they're going in solo or adding in multiple creatures.
Last encounter I used a Fire Giant - CR 9, that I upped the HP by a good amount, gave it a 2d6 fire damage aura, and 1/rest Dash Attack that was essentially a reskinned 3rd level Thunder Step. I managed to down the Bard immediately, killed an NPC guard, almost got the fighter down, and eventually the rogue on his' killing blow with the aura damage. However, they also clumped up right at the beginning which allowed me to Thunder step the giant into melee and hit a bunch of them immediately. I also had to give it a little more health on the fly to keep the tension going and have a good narrative combat. So seemed like a good encounter but also I think if they had made one or two different choices and if the dice had come up differently it could've been much easier. Hope this is helpful!
Personally I'd give gargantuan and huge monsters a damage threshold like ships do. This just stops flying up into the air and pelting it with arrows until it dies. Not to mention it's a giant monster. I don't think a regular arrow gonna effect it.
Personally I'd give gargantuan and huge monsters a damage threshold like ships do.
It becomes a bit of a problem for classes that depend on multiple attacks; I'd be inclined to change the way damage threshold works so it's damage in one turn rather than damage in one attack.
I'd rather handle arrows by spitting rocks back or something.
If you want a big solo to be memorable, they need tools to survive. They need to be able to handle ranged attackers and they need to be able to handle hard control. Many things are given the immutable property as a hard counter to polymorph, for example. Plenty of things are just straight-up immune to stunned, paralyzed, and incapacitated. Legendary Resistance is nice because it's flexible and doesn't last forever so I think it would be a good choice here.
Alternatively you could add some kind of ability to get rid of status effects at a cost - either hp or action-wise. I like the idea of the worm splitting its outer skin to literally shed the effects of a spell, maybe at the cost of a couple hit die. This lets you keep the fight going while not totally negating those spells - they just ended up doing damage instead of control.
I preferred the way solos handled status effects in late 4e -- rather than auto-saves vs status effects, they just removed them very fast. The equivalent in 5e would be to add the ability to spend legendary actions to remove conditions. Your CC didn't do nothing, but it was as relatively effective as applying CC to one monster in a multi-monster encounter.
Absolutely! I agree that without them it'll just get dealt with in one turn, and it will be a fairly boring encounter.
Personally, I think legendary resistances should not be part of the stat block, just a rule that goes something like the following:
When using a monster in an encounter alone or only aided by significantly weaker monsters, add the following feature. Legendary resistance (3/day). When the monster fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead.
So yeah, always, and I mean always, give solo monsters at least 1 legendary resistance.
There's some argument for making legendary resistance (or something similar) apply to an encounter rather than a creature -- the DM gets three uses (or, say, 1/easy, 2/medium, 3/hard, 4/deadly) per encounter, whether there's one monster or ten. Or even make it a per-day resource, encourage players to go through multiple encounters so the DM burns off all his Legendary resources.
Dear Dungeon Masters,
I am planning a little far ahead at the moment. I have one simple question... Should I give a Purple Worm Legendary Resistances?
The game I run is centered around exploring ancient and uninhabited locations. This will eventually lead my players to go to a large Desert.
And as any reasonable dungeon master would, I want to throw them up against a purple worm. But my party has many spellcasters (Artificer, Bard, Sorcerer, Cleric). I fear that if I let them fight such a creature it will be either polymorphed, banished, hypnotic-patterned... ect. Which could very quickly take the wind out of the sails of an otherwise possibly very fun encounter.
I don't think I would need to give it any legendary actions (apart from maybe allowing it to move) as I think its damage output is great enough to challenge my party. But I am debating wether or not I should give it (most likely 3) legendary resistances to keep it from being instantly dealt with in a single turn/round of combat.
Would it be wise to give it Legendary Resistances?
And if you have any experience, at what level would my players be able to reasonably handle a purple worm?
I'm excited to hear from you guys!
Sure! Absolutely! The purple worm is a classic monster. It's been considered a potential TPK-er since the early 1970s. In fact, I'm surprised that the purple worm stat block doesn't already give it more resistances. Not only would I grant it three Legendary Resistances, I might even go so far as to grant it a bunch of damage resistances as well. Resistance to thunder, lightning, acid, and non-magical weapon attacks sounds reasonable to me.
A monster as big and as classic as the purple worm deserves to be a memorable moment for the players. They should always remember the time they just barely survived their encounter with such a dangerous and iconic beast. Make it as tough as possible.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
Solo monsters and hard CC has always been a problem, though a lot of the options you mention don't defeat the worm, they just let you bypass the monster, and there's no shortage of run away spells by the time you're at level where a purple worm is a reasonable encounter.
Go for it! There is also nothing that says it has to be three legendary resistances, if you players are getting absolutely thrashed you can adjust it to only have one and if you're rolling horribly then go with three. As for level I'm still trying to figure that out myself but I think its more determined by the number of players. My group consists of five level 6 PCs - Warlock, Fighter, Bard, Wizard, and Rogue. I find that they are able to consistently take on solo monsters that are ~ 3-4 CR above the group level, so I've started beefing up the creatures if they're going in solo or adding in multiple creatures.
Last encounter I used a Fire Giant - CR 9, that I upped the HP by a good amount, gave it a 2d6 fire damage aura, and 1/rest Dash Attack that was essentially a reskinned 3rd level Thunder Step. I managed to down the Bard immediately, killed an NPC guard, almost got the fighter down, and eventually the rogue on his' killing blow with the aura damage. However, they also clumped up right at the beginning which allowed me to Thunder step the giant into melee and hit a bunch of them immediately. I also had to give it a little more health on the fly to keep the tension going and have a good narrative combat. So seemed like a good encounter but also I think if they had made one or two different choices and if the dice had come up differently it could've been much easier. Hope this is helpful!
Personally I'd give gargantuan and huge monsters a damage threshold like ships do. This just stops flying up into the air and pelting it with arrows until it dies. Not to mention it's a giant monster. I don't think a regular arrow gonna effect it.
It becomes a bit of a problem for classes that depend on multiple attacks; I'd be inclined to change the way damage threshold works so it's damage in one turn rather than damage in one attack.
I'd rather handle arrows by spitting rocks back or something.
If you want a big solo to be memorable, they need tools to survive. They need to be able to handle ranged attackers and they need to be able to handle hard control. Many things are given the immutable property as a hard counter to polymorph, for example. Plenty of things are just straight-up immune to stunned, paralyzed, and incapacitated. Legendary Resistance is nice because it's flexible and doesn't last forever so I think it would be a good choice here.
Alternatively you could add some kind of ability to get rid of status effects at a cost - either hp or action-wise. I like the idea of the worm splitting its outer skin to literally shed the effects of a spell, maybe at the cost of a couple hit die. This lets you keep the fight going while not totally negating those spells - they just ended up doing damage instead of control.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I preferred the way solos handled status effects in late 4e -- rather than auto-saves vs status effects, they just removed them very fast. The equivalent in 5e would be to add the ability to spend legendary actions to remove conditions. Your CC didn't do nothing, but it was as relatively effective as applying CC to one monster in a multi-monster encounter.
I think it really depends on whether the encounter is just supposed to be a single-monster encounter or a boss fight.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Absolutely! I agree that without them it'll just get dealt with in one turn, and it will be a fairly boring encounter.
Personally, I think legendary resistances should not be part of the stat block, just a rule that goes something like the following:
When using a monster in an encounter alone or only aided by significantly weaker monsters, add the following feature. Legendary resistance (3/day). When the monster fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead.
So yeah, always, and I mean always, give solo monsters at least 1 legendary resistance.
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>Extended Signature<
There's some argument for making legendary resistance (or something similar) apply to an encounter rather than a creature -- the DM gets three uses (or, say, 1/easy, 2/medium, 3/hard, 4/deadly) per encounter, whether there's one monster or ten. Or even make it a per-day resource, encourage players to go through multiple encounters so the DM burns off all his Legendary resources.