I'm not sure if anybody noticed this, but none of the monsters in Bigby's seem to have legendary actions. A few have legendary resistances, however, and so they are registered as legendary on Beyond. None have lair actions either. I wonder if this is a design choice for 1D&D?
They are looking to simplify action economy...not having the book (and therefore unable to see the stat-blocks) and therefore the caveats that come with that...that concept does concern me a little. I can see why it would simplify things, but as Ace says, it's needed to balance out action economy in 1vParty events. They could just make sledgehammer blows, but that sucks for who gets hit...and sucks when it misses.
Also, the mid-round attacks makes it feel more cinematic than just getting a couple of hammer blows on its turn or even just getting more attacks on its turn.
Again, I haven't seen the book so maybe it's just a quirk of the book - it just happens to be that none of the creatures rise to the level of having Legendary Actions, for example - but I really hope that it's not indicative of 1D&D.
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There's CR 20+ stuff in the book, so it's not just a matter of not hitting the right tier. Give me a few minutes, I'll try and find something from Fizban's I can use to compare attack stats. I swear, though, it's getting ridiculous the way they're hacking content off of monster stat blocks.
Again, I haven't seen the book so maybe it's just a quirk of the book - it just happens to be that none of the creatures rise to the level of having Legendary Actions, for example - but I really hope that it's not indicative of 1D&D.
Yeah, the book has a few CR 25+ monsters. Beyond even lists them as legendary because of the legendary resistance feature. But not a one legendary action.
Okay, I've got the Chromatic Greatwyrm block and the Scion of Stromnaus block; both are CR 27.
HP: CGW 533; SoS 656
AC: CGW 22; SoS 20
SoS has Magic Resistance
Multiattack:
-CGW: 1 Bite +18 to hit, 34 damage; 2 Claw +18 to hit, 19 damage, chance to grapple and restrain; net +18 to hit, 72 damage
-SoS: 1 Hailstone or Lightning Sword; Lightning Sword (melee) +18 to hit, 58 damage; Hailstone (ranged) +18 to hit, 50 damage and chance to knock prone; 2 Slam +18 to hit 36 damage; net 130 damage
Legendary Action CGW/Bonus Action SoS:
-CGW: 3 Claw or Tail, 1 Claw or Tail and 1 Wing, or Arcane Spears; 3 Claw or Tail net 57; Wing, each creature in 30 ft DC 26 DEX for 17 damage; Arcane Spears, 4 instances of 12 damage
-SoS: 1st round is a setup move with Recharge 6, for 1 minute after Acid Rain, Freezing Storm, or Lightning Bolts, all use radius AoE set at first round that can be moved 30 ft before using an effect, cannot use same two turns in a row; Acid Rain, DC 25 CON or 1 minute of 26 damage at start of turn, action to end; Freezing Storm, DC 25 DEX or 28 damage and speed 0, action to restore speed; Lightning Bolts, DC 25 DEX or 18 damage and stunned
Other Actions:
-CGW: Breath Weapon; Recharge 5-6, DC 25 DEX 78 damage, half on save
-SoS- None
Okay, SoS definitely hits harder with its standard attacks by a wide margin; its bonus action is tricky to call. High DC, but does nothing on a save; the cloud moving as a part of the bonus action does mean it can try to maximize targets, but given the creature is 80 ft tall, it's almost certainly going to be an outdoors encounter, so ranged PC's should be able to scatter wide enough to limit number of targets it can corral at once. Has a high flying speed and flyby, so most likely will always get all melee characters while staying out of its own AoE.
We'll see what this means for future stat blocks; they definitely tuned up the direct damage output on this and the Magic Resistance helps counter ranged stuff, but ultimately I'm not sure how many creatures it can reliably hit at once, and a CGW can definitely focus better with its LA's and is better able to respond to the party's actions.
Hopefully not; action economy is already ridiculously in a party's favor in a 1 v party fight, even with a big beefy creature.
Well, balance-wise it doesn't terribly matter whether a critter does 150 damage with its action, or 75 damage with its action plus 75 damage with legendary actions. The LA can be worse, because melee LAs are relatively deniable by moving outside of the critter's immediate reach, at which point it either needs to use a movement LA (if it has one) or not do anything.
The big problem with not giving boss monsters LAs is that it makes the initiative roll incredibly important, and it's kinda boring to spend an entire round beating on a target with nothing changing in the interval. Fortunately it's quite easy to turn any monster with a multiattack into a legendary -- just strip some attacks from its multiattack, turn them into LAs, and give it enough LAs to take the same number of attacks as before. For example, on the SoS, just remove its multiattack, and it gets 2 LAs per round, choosing between slam (1 LA), hailstone (2 LA), lightning sword (2 LA) (in practice, not much point to lightning sword; hailstone is in there so it has a ranged option).
Hopefully not; action economy is already ridiculously in a party's favor in a 1 v party fight, even with a big beefy creature.
Well, balance-wise it doesn't terribly matter whether a critter does 150 damage with its action, or 75 damage with its action plus 75 damage with legendary actions. The LA can be worse, because melee LAs are relatively deniable by moving outside of the critter's immediate reach, at which point it either needs to use a movement LA (if it has one) or not do anything.
The big problem with not giving boss monsters LAs is that it makes the initiative roll incredibly important, and it's kinda boring to spend an entire round beating on a target with nothing changing in the interval. Fortunately it's quite easy to turn any monster with a multiattack into a legendary -- just strip some attacks from its multiattack, turn them into LAs, and give it enough LAs to take the same number of attacks as before. For example, on the SoS, just remove its multiattack, and it gets 2 LAs per round, choosing between slam (1 LA), hailstone (2 LA), lightning sword (2 LA) (in practice, not much point to lightning sword; hailstone is in there so it has a ranged option).
I guess. Possibly they just figured giants would be a better instance of having monsters just directly smash players. Hopefully they're not continuing the trend of dumbing down monster stats.
I guess. Possibly they just figured giants would be a better instance of having monsters just directly smash players. Hopefully they're not continuing the trend of dumbing down monster stats.
Frankly, tactically interesting combat is not a strength of this design team (in fact, mechanics in general are not a strength of this design team). However, lots of players are perfectly fine with low resolution play. If you want interesting monsters, you might be better off stealing from other editions -- it's not too hard to convert 4e monsters to 5e, for example, or go with third party sources.
They've got more Bonus Action stuff too. We'll see how it shakes out in play, but it still hurts their action economy, especially if they don't get many ways to disrupt players or disengage from them.
Looking at the 10 legendary monsters in Glory of the Giants, I think the reason they don't have legendary actions is because they're all pairs of monsters intended to be used together as a 'phased' encounter. This changes the dynamic of how you use the monster, and so they likely have to be designed to account for that.
Looking at the 10 legendary monsters in Glory of the Giants, I think the reason they don't have legendary actions is because they're all pairs of monsters intended to be used together as a 'phased' encounter. This changes the dynamic of how you use the monster, and so they likely have to be designed to account for that.
Greatwyrms are phased too, with the Mythic Awakenings, so while it's possible it's clearly not the only way they can do those, and functionally phased encounters are just two encounters back-to-back; the Mythic ones specifically note that you get XP from beating the first phase as well as the second.
Mythic actions aren't really the same as two-statblock phases. Different designs so different design philosophies. We've only had such a design once before (I believe) and that did have legendary actions so maybe they learned something from that design.
Looking at the 10 legendary monsters in Glory of the Giants, I think the reason they don't have legendary actions is because they're all pairs of monsters intended to be used together as a 'phased' encounter. This changes the dynamic of how you use the monster, and so they likely have to be designed to account for that.
It really doesn't change anything relevant to why legendary actions exist. Legendary actions are there because "there's a single monster and it just stands there for an entire round and then suddenly whallops everyone" is poor gameplay that heavily encourages surround-and-pound.
I personally disagree, based on the fact that statblock changing phased creatures are a very different beast from your standard legendary monster. Legendary actions exist to increase the offensive CR but distribute the damage over more of the turn to prevent it being focused on a single PC and thus reduce the chances of a PC death. These multi-stat block creatures operate significantly differently to your standard solo monster encounter and so I'd hazard a guess that removing legendary actions is intended to offset what is essentially one creature with two health pools and the ability to 'reset' everything halfway through a fight.
I personally disagree, based on the fact that statblock changing phased creatures are a very different beast from your standard legendary monster.
A statblock changing phased creature is a slightly more extreme version of a mythic awakening -- it means that in a long fight, rather than the monster doing the same thing every turn, its behavior changes midfight. This is important but it's not particularly related to the purpose of legendary actions.
Legendary actions exist to increase the offensive CR but distribute the damage over more of the turn to prevent it being focused on a single PC and thus reduce the chances of a PC death.
Legendary actions don't actually increase offensive CR, legendary monsters generally have lower base damage.
I personally disagree, based on the fact that statblock changing phased creatures are a very different beast from your standard legendary monster. Legendary actions exist to increase the offensive CR but distribute the damage over more of the turn to prevent it being focused on a single PC and thus reduce the chances of a PC death. These multi-stat block creatures operate significantly differently to your standard solo monster encounter and so I'd hazard a guess that removing legendary actions is intended to offset what is essentially one creature with two health pools and the ability to 'reset' everything halfway through a fight.
The two health pools aspect is something shared by the Mythic creatures that refresh HP, LR’s, and ability cooldowns the first time they hit 0, and those all use LA’s so it can’t just be that. Look at the top tier blocks in Fizban’s, for example. As I demonstrated, the damage profile here is somewhere between about the same and slightly higher from Fizban’s to Bigby’s at equivalent CR, so they’re hardly offsetting the second phase. First phase looks to have about equivalent damage output from both Multiattack and the recharge action, although a bit less from secondary sources.
It's true that mythic creatures have two health pools, but I didn't just mention that feature. It's also the fact they fully reset (which mythic monsters do not) when their first pool is depleted. The ability to shake off all persistent effects, conditions, etc and regain all legendary resistances isn't a trivial thing.
It's true that mythic creatures have two health pools, but I didn't just mention that feature. It's also the fact they fully reset (which mythic monsters do not) when their first pool is depleted. The ability to shake off all persistent effects, conditions, etc and regain all legendary resistances isn't a trivial thing.
I did say "more extreme version" (most mythics do reset legendary resistances; they don't shake off status effects but this is rarely relevant). In any case, the main point is that two-stage monsters have the same purpose as mythic monsters and that purpose mostly doesn't interact with the reason for legendary actions.
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I'm not sure if anybody noticed this, but none of the monsters in Bigby's seem to have legendary actions. A few have legendary resistances, however, and so they are registered as legendary on Beyond. None have lair actions either. I wonder if this is a design choice for 1D&D?
Hopefully not; action economy is already ridiculously in a party's favor in a 1 v party fight, even with a big beefy creature.
They are looking to simplify action economy...not having the book (and therefore unable to see the stat-blocks) and therefore the caveats that come with that...that concept does concern me a little. I can see why it would simplify things, but as Ace says, it's needed to balance out action economy in 1vParty events. They could just make sledgehammer blows, but that sucks for who gets hit...and sucks when it misses.
Also, the mid-round attacks makes it feel more cinematic than just getting a couple of hammer blows on its turn or even just getting more attacks on its turn.
Again, I haven't seen the book so maybe it's just a quirk of the book - it just happens to be that none of the creatures rise to the level of having Legendary Actions, for example - but I really hope that it's not indicative of 1D&D.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
There's CR 20+ stuff in the book, so it's not just a matter of not hitting the right tier. Give me a few minutes, I'll try and find something from Fizban's I can use to compare attack stats. I swear, though, it's getting ridiculous the way they're hacking content off of monster stat blocks.
Yeah, the book has a few CR 25+ monsters. Beyond even lists them as legendary because of the legendary resistance feature. But not a one legendary action.
Okay, I've got the Chromatic Greatwyrm block and the Scion of Stromnaus block; both are CR 27.
HP: CGW 533; SoS 656
AC: CGW 22; SoS 20
SoS has Magic Resistance
Multiattack:
-CGW: 1 Bite +18 to hit, 34 damage; 2 Claw +18 to hit, 19 damage, chance to grapple and restrain; net +18 to hit, 72 damage
-SoS: 1 Hailstone or Lightning Sword; Lightning Sword (melee) +18 to hit, 58 damage; Hailstone (ranged) +18 to hit, 50 damage and chance to knock prone; 2 Slam +18 to hit 36 damage; net 130 damage
Legendary Action CGW/Bonus Action SoS:
-CGW: 3 Claw or Tail, 1 Claw or Tail and 1 Wing, or Arcane Spears; 3 Claw or Tail net 57; Wing, each creature in 30 ft DC 26 DEX for 17 damage; Arcane Spears, 4 instances of 12 damage
-SoS: 1st round is a setup move with Recharge 6, for 1 minute after Acid Rain, Freezing Storm, or Lightning Bolts, all use radius AoE set at first round that can be moved 30 ft before using an effect, cannot use same two turns in a row; Acid Rain, DC 25 CON or 1 minute of 26 damage at start of turn, action to end; Freezing Storm, DC 25 DEX or 28 damage and speed 0, action to restore speed; Lightning Bolts, DC 25 DEX or 18 damage and stunned
Other Actions:
-CGW: Breath Weapon; Recharge 5-6, DC 25 DEX 78 damage, half on save
-SoS- None
Okay, SoS definitely hits harder with its standard attacks by a wide margin; its bonus action is tricky to call. High DC, but does nothing on a save; the cloud moving as a part of the bonus action does mean it can try to maximize targets, but given the creature is 80 ft tall, it's almost certainly going to be an outdoors encounter, so ranged PC's should be able to scatter wide enough to limit number of targets it can corral at once. Has a high flying speed and flyby, so most likely will always get all melee characters while staying out of its own AoE.
We'll see what this means for future stat blocks; they definitely tuned up the direct damage output on this and the Magic Resistance helps counter ranged stuff, but ultimately I'm not sure how many creatures it can reliably hit at once, and a CGW can definitely focus better with its LA's and is better able to respond to the party's actions.
Well, balance-wise it doesn't terribly matter whether a critter does 150 damage with its action, or 75 damage with its action plus 75 damage with legendary actions. The LA can be worse, because melee LAs are relatively deniable by moving outside of the critter's immediate reach, at which point it either needs to use a movement LA (if it has one) or not do anything.
The big problem with not giving boss monsters LAs is that it makes the initiative roll incredibly important, and it's kinda boring to spend an entire round beating on a target with nothing changing in the interval. Fortunately it's quite easy to turn any monster with a multiattack into a legendary -- just strip some attacks from its multiattack, turn them into LAs, and give it enough LAs to take the same number of attacks as before. For example, on the SoS, just remove its multiattack, and it gets 2 LAs per round, choosing between slam (1 LA), hailstone (2 LA), lightning sword (2 LA) (in practice, not much point to lightning sword; hailstone is in there so it has a ranged option).
I guess. Possibly they just figured giants would be a better instance of having monsters just directly smash players. Hopefully they're not continuing the trend of dumbing down monster stats.
Frankly, tactically interesting combat is not a strength of this design team (in fact, mechanics in general are not a strength of this design team). However, lots of players are perfectly fine with low resolution play. If you want interesting monsters, you might be better off stealing from other editions -- it's not too hard to convert 4e monsters to 5e, for example, or go with third party sources.
I did notice that while there were no monsters with Legendary Actions, quite a few did have abilities that go off as Reactions.
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"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.
They've got more Bonus Action stuff too. We'll see how it shakes out in play, but it still hurts their action economy, especially if they don't get many ways to disrupt players or disengage from them.
Looking at the 10 legendary monsters in Glory of the Giants, I think the reason they don't have legendary actions is because they're all pairs of monsters intended to be used together as a 'phased' encounter. This changes the dynamic of how you use the monster, and so they likely have to be designed to account for that.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Greatwyrms are phased too, with the Mythic Awakenings, so while it's possible it's clearly not the only way they can do those, and functionally phased encounters are just two encounters back-to-back; the Mythic ones specifically note that you get XP from beating the first phase as well as the second.
Mythic actions aren't really the same as two-statblock phases. Different designs so different design philosophies. We've only had such a design once before (I believe) and that did have legendary actions so maybe they learned something from that design.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
It really doesn't change anything relevant to why legendary actions exist. Legendary actions are there because "there's a single monster and it just stands there for an entire round and then suddenly whallops everyone" is poor gameplay that heavily encourages surround-and-pound.
I personally disagree, based on the fact that statblock changing phased creatures are a very different beast from your standard legendary monster. Legendary actions exist to increase the offensive CR but distribute the damage over more of the turn to prevent it being focused on a single PC and thus reduce the chances of a PC death. These multi-stat block creatures operate significantly differently to your standard solo monster encounter and so I'd hazard a guess that removing legendary actions is intended to offset what is essentially one creature with two health pools and the ability to 'reset' everything halfway through a fight.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
A statblock changing phased creature is a slightly more extreme version of a mythic awakening -- it means that in a long fight, rather than the monster doing the same thing every turn, its behavior changes midfight. This is important but it's not particularly related to the purpose of legendary actions.
Legendary actions don't actually increase offensive CR, legendary monsters generally have lower base damage.
The two health pools aspect is something shared by the Mythic creatures that refresh HP, LR’s, and ability cooldowns the first time they hit 0, and those all use LA’s so it can’t just be that. Look at the top tier blocks in Fizban’s, for example. As I demonstrated, the damage profile here is somewhere between about the same and slightly higher from Fizban’s to Bigby’s at equivalent CR, so they’re hardly offsetting the second phase. First phase looks to have about equivalent damage output from both Multiattack and the recharge action, although a bit less from secondary sources.
It's true that mythic creatures have two health pools, but I didn't just mention that feature. It's also the fact they fully reset (which mythic monsters do not) when their first pool is depleted. The ability to shake off all persistent effects, conditions, etc and regain all legendary resistances isn't a trivial thing.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I did say "more extreme version" (most mythics do reset legendary resistances; they don't shake off status effects but this is rarely relevant). In any case, the main point is that two-stage monsters have the same purpose as mythic monsters and that purpose mostly doesn't interact with the reason for legendary actions.