So, am I the only one confused as to why the Kraken doesn't have any legendary resistances? Every time I go to look at it, I always forget it doesn't have legendary resistances.
I recently played a session with one of my groups where they were assaulted by Sahuagin, two Ancient Sea Serpents and a Kraken, and the sorcerer cast suggestion using heightened spell to tell the Kraken to basically go away. It failed the saving throw so it went away, which really surprised the entire group (they were expecting it to have legendary resistances) and it just felt like such an easy way to get away from such a universally terrifying monster - not to knock our sorcerer; it was good play, but it just left me wondering again, why does it not have legendary resistances? (I know suggestion is a spell that's very open to interpretation based on wording and it will come back later and such, but it still just felt too easy).
So I'm curious, have you given/would you give the Kraken LR in your campaign? Why/why not?
That is odd that it does not have Legendary Resistances. If you look at other monsters in the Kraken's league, most have either Legendary Resistance and/or Magic Resistance like the Pit Fiend, and the Kraken has neither! I would add it to the Kraken.
The kraken does have proficiency with all saves and high base attributes, so the designers may not have felt it was necessary, but it is a bit of an anomaly.
It does seem a bit weird, but I think it's good to mix things up a little. If every big creature has 1 legendary resistance per party member every time they encounter it then things become repetitive.
Remember, you should change monsters to fit the party they're up against, especially if the party is not just 4 PCs. It's an error to run a standard stat block regardless of the other details of your campaign. For example, legendary action monsters should have 1 action, plus 1 legendary action for each PC in the party after the first. A party of 7 therefore should face creatures that have 6 legendary actions. If there's only one spellcaster in the party? Take counterspell off enemy spell lists, or they're going to have a really tiresome time (especially before level 9 or so, since almost all their spells are level 3 or less and auto-countered).
Considering that even WoTC on Storm King's Thunder decided that their BBEG Kraken needed to have Legendary Resistances (Slarkrethel), it really depends on how you want to run a Kraken.
If he is the sole threat on the field, you're probably gonna need some Legendary Resistances to avoid the 1st round Banishment.
So I'm curious, have you given/would you give the Kraken LR in your campaign? Why/why not?
The simple answer to your final question: Yes, but...
An ominous darkness presages a kraken’s attack, and a cloud of inky poison colors the water around it. Galleons and warships vanish when its tentacles uncoil from the deep, the kraken breaking their masts like kindling before drawing down ships and crew.
Of course, this is just flavor text from the statblock, however, it does provide an indication of this creature's M.O. With a reach of 30 ft., the ability to call down lightning from 120 ft, and to start the encounter obscured from view and still able to see through it's own ink cloud might indicate that the creature would operate from the 120 ft. range for the first phase of the combat, then try to maneuver under it's target and strike from concealment to scuttle the vessle and poison the inhabitants in it's ink cloud. Additionally, being able to see more than 10-20 ft into the water might be near impossible given the suggestions for underwater visibility.
In this manner, having an LR wouldn't seem neccessary as the range, or sight requirement of many spells is countered. I would give the creature 1-2 LR as insurance for that one bungled dice roll, but I'm not overly confident that it would need to use them. I am confident that the Kraken would master the use of it's favored terrain to it's advantage. Being a siege monster, I suggest that it would target the ship first, and could potentially sink a Galley or Warship on third round of it's assault.
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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
The thing about Suggestion and even Banishment is that you are not getting rid of the threat, you're only making it someone else's problem for a while. A kraken should be something the PCs want to kill, not just an obstacle in the way of their goal. Once Suggestion wears off it will continue to wreak havoc and devastation everywhere it goes. Everyone that dies after that spell is on them, as they are likely the only ones who can stop it. Let the PCs feel the weight of that.
And if the party is all CN jerks who don't care about anyone else, leak some stories about the wondrous treasures the kraken has eaten or something. They don't even have to be true. :)
The unicorn doesn't have Legendary Resistance, either.
Its not unusual for legendary creatures of cr 5 or lower to not have legendary resistance. This is because these monsters often become minions at later levels and players don't have many resources to spend on these shut downs. To some degree its expected that if a player has kept a second level slot in this level range then they've deliberately held onto it through multiple encounters and there isn't anything too crazy they can do with it.
As for my recommendations for the number of legendary resistances, you should take into account the monsters difficulty, the number of saves they can force per round and the number of monsters. I have 4 rules which give a rough guide for a boss encounter. I plan boss encounters to take a minimum of 2-3 rounds and or require out of combat planning like surprise or bringing specific items.
Resistances are for bosses only, if a creature isn't good enough to have a name it probably isn't good enough to have legendary resistances
If there are multiple legendary creatures/ bosses in an encounter divide the saves among them. There should be no fundamental difference balance wise between 1 creature and two creatures of half the strength, balance is balance you should aim for the two to be similar.
Give the encounter a number of resistances based on cr, 1 for cr 1-4, 2 for cr 5-9, 3 for cr 10 to 14 and so on. This represents the increasing access to tools as players get more powerful, surprise becomes easier, spells become more common and items become available to force saves. The number of resistances needs to rise with that.
Give the encounter additional saves equal to one less than the number of players that can force important saves. Players with important saves are spell casters with slots of level 2 or higher or monks of level 5 or higher. This is to force team work by guaranteeing all players who can contribute to burning legendary resistances, have to if they are going to eliminate a creature quickly.
So if we take a vampire with a party with a bard, a wizard a rogue and a paladin.
They are cr 13 so 3 resistances + 2 for each of those casters. So that's 5, to reliably be able to incapacitate a vampire before they get to act, they need to at minimum get the rogue or a paladin a way to get a save and get surprise. Which is doable, they can definitely get at least one magic item and in an adventure like COS they definitely have at least one item that fits the bill but it will be hard and is still subject to rolls.
Personally, I prefer to not use legendary resistances at all; instead, I like mechanics along the lines
Legendary Recovery: at the start of its turn, instead of recovering legendary actions, it may choose to remove any number of status effects.
So you got something out of your control effect (typically legendary actions are 1/3 to 1/2 of a legendary creature's firepower), but didn't end the encounter.
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So, am I the only one confused as to why the Kraken doesn't have any legendary resistances? Every time I go to look at it, I always forget it doesn't have legendary resistances.
I recently played a session with one of my groups where they were assaulted by Sahuagin, two Ancient Sea Serpents and a Kraken, and the sorcerer cast suggestion using heightened spell to tell the Kraken to basically go away. It failed the saving throw so it went away, which really surprised the entire group (they were expecting it to have legendary resistances) and it just felt like such an easy way to get away from such a universally terrifying monster - not to knock our sorcerer; it was good play, but it just left me wondering again, why does it not have legendary resistances? (I know suggestion is a spell that's very open to interpretation based on wording and it will come back later and such, but it still just felt too easy).
So I'm curious, have you given/would you give the Kraken LR in your campaign? Why/why not?
That is odd that it does not have Legendary Resistances. If you look at other monsters in the Kraken's league, most have either Legendary Resistance and/or Magic Resistance like the Pit Fiend, and the Kraken has neither! I would add it to the Kraken.
The kraken does have proficiency with all saves and high base attributes, so the designers may not have felt it was necessary, but it is a bit of an anomaly.
It does seem a bit weird, but I think it's good to mix things up a little. If every big creature has 1 legendary resistance per party member every time they encounter it then things become repetitive.
Remember, you should change monsters to fit the party they're up against, especially if the party is not just 4 PCs. It's an error to run a standard stat block regardless of the other details of your campaign. For example, legendary action monsters should have 1 action, plus 1 legendary action for each PC in the party after the first. A party of 7 therefore should face creatures that have 6 legendary actions. If there's only one spellcaster in the party? Take counterspell off enemy spell lists, or they're going to have a really tiresome time (especially before level 9 or so, since almost all their spells are level 3 or less and auto-countered).
Considering that even WoTC on Storm King's Thunder decided that their BBEG Kraken needed to have Legendary Resistances (Slarkrethel), it really depends on how you want to run a Kraken.
If he is the sole threat on the field, you're probably gonna need some Legendary Resistances to avoid the 1st round Banishment.
The simple answer to your final question: Yes, but...
Of course, this is just flavor text from the statblock, however, it does provide an indication of this creature's M.O. With a reach of 30 ft., the ability to call down lightning from 120 ft, and to start the encounter obscured from view and still able to see through it's own ink cloud might indicate that the creature would operate from the 120 ft. range for the first phase of the combat, then try to maneuver under it's target and strike from concealment to scuttle the vessle and poison the inhabitants in it's ink cloud. Additionally, being able to see more than 10-20 ft into the water might be near impossible given the suggestions for underwater visibility.
In this manner, having an LR wouldn't seem neccessary as the range, or sight requirement of many spells is countered. I would give the creature 1-2 LR as insurance for that one bungled dice roll, but I'm not overly confident that it would need to use them. I am confident that the Kraken would master the use of it's favored terrain to it's advantage. Being a siege monster, I suggest that it would target the ship first, and could potentially sink a Galley or Warship on third round of it's assault.
“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
The unicorn doesn't have Legendary Resistance, either.
Nor does the Death Tyrant.
The thing about Suggestion and even Banishment is that you are not getting rid of the threat, you're only making it someone else's problem for a while. A kraken should be something the PCs want to kill, not just an obstacle in the way of their goal. Once Suggestion wears off it will continue to wreak havoc and devastation everywhere it goes. Everyone that dies after that spell is on them, as they are likely the only ones who can stop it. Let the PCs feel the weight of that.
And if the party is all CN jerks who don't care about anyone else, leak some stories about the wondrous treasures the kraken has eaten or something. They don't even have to be true. :)
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
The RAW Kraken doesn’t have Legendary Resistance. The home brewed one that I’m running does when I need him to though.
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Its not unusual for legendary creatures of cr 5 or lower to not have legendary resistance. This is because these monsters often become minions at later levels and players don't have many resources to spend on these shut downs. To some degree its expected that if a player has kept a second level slot in this level range then they've deliberately held onto it through multiple encounters and there isn't anything too crazy they can do with it.
As for my recommendations for the number of legendary resistances, you should take into account the monsters difficulty, the number of saves they can force per round and the number of monsters. I have 4 rules which give a rough guide for a boss encounter. I plan boss encounters to take a minimum of 2-3 rounds and or require out of combat planning like surprise or bringing specific items.
So if we take a vampire with a party with a bard, a wizard a rogue and a paladin.
They are cr 13 so 3 resistances + 2 for each of those casters. So that's 5, to reliably be able to incapacitate a vampire before they get to act, they need to at minimum get the rogue or a paladin a way to get a save and get surprise. Which is doable, they can definitely get at least one magic item and in an adventure like COS they definitely have at least one item that fits the bill but it will be hard and is still subject to rolls.
Personally, I prefer to not use legendary resistances at all; instead, I like mechanics along the lines
Legendary Recovery: at the start of its turn, instead of recovering legendary actions, it may choose to remove any number of status effects.
So you got something out of your control effect (typically legendary actions are 1/3 to 1/2 of a legendary creature's firepower), but didn't end the encounter.