So idk how many would agree with me but hear me out!
The more I think about it, the more I don't think I like Legendary Resistances, both as a player AND a DM.
What I have noticed is that by the time monsters start getting legendary resistances, their saves are also quite high. without certain magic items, Player spell/feature DC's are limited to how high they can be at a given level, often being pretty low thus easy for the monster to pass.
This opinion may be biased because I have never played in a group with less than 6 people, but I have NEVER seen an enemy use ALL their legendary resistances. They usually pass saves and the very few times they fail, they burn a LR to succeed. By the time they're down to 1 and you've almost broken through, the monster has been beaten to death to the point where just smacking it a few times is better than to try a cool control spell.
What I've noticed (at least in my parties) is that casters end up just focusing on damage rather than control because 90% of the time, their control spells end up being "nothing happened" and they have to wait through 5 other players and lord-knows how many monsters' turns to get back to them.
I thought my current game would be different because we are currently at level 15 with a monk in our party who has some crazy op magic items (DM's wife) that can regen ki points so my thoughts were "yeah! all those stunning attacks are SURE to break those LR's!" but since it's a CON save which most Tier 3-4 monsters have by the ton, it RARELY works and on the RARE situation it does, they FINALLY burn a LR but by that time, we've had three rounds of combat and its almost dead.
I'm considering for the next game I DM to completely remove the idea of a LR and replace it with something else. Either just an increased health pool, spell resistance, or just something.
I'm just looking for SOMETHING that will get rid of the "LR? Well I guess my turn is wasted. Shoulda fireballed, at least it'd do half... back to my phone..."
Remove legendary resistances completely? Have fun never being able to use demonic bosses or such anymore because the casters would just sit there spamming banishment until one of them succeeds. And that's just one of the reasons why bosses really need them this edition. There are too many ways to screw over the whole encounter with just one bad roll of the DM.
Well that seems like a weird situation? How often in your games does every caster pick banishment?
Even then, of the fiend monsters with legendary resistances, very few of them have a CHA save of less than +13 so sure, spam banishment, the meantime its gonna be hitting every caster for everything it's got.
plus, and this may be specific to my party, but if you're playing dnd, most parties WANT to, you know, play the game? I don't think even IF you have a party full of casters that all know banishment, that they would have fun saying "I cast banish" fight done
Legendary resistances exist to make solo monsters remotely viable. Hold monster, stunning strike, banishment, hypnotic pattern, crown of madness, these are just a few spells and abilities that, when at the players fingertips, can trivialise an encounter that revolves more around a single monster.
Banishment is an incredibly effective spell for example, and would certainly rank up there with fireball for 'obvious picks'. Worst case, you get to lock out a monster for a minute. Best case they're gone forever.
maybe it really just is my group though, because in my games (DMing and playing) Once we get to Tier 3 (which is often for us) monsters almost ALWAYS make their saves( their modifiers are usually in the 12+ range). To the point where: 1. Our monk does not use stunning strike on big boss monsters because they'll have to spend like 10ki of them before it goes through. So usually its just better to save it for little adds
2. Our spell casters have stopped using any form of "save or suck" spells because they're tired of wasting turns where they could be contributing. For examples: our sorcerer traded in slow because its stopped working. And we haven't used banish since like level 10 (16 now) because it hasn't gone off since then.
3. In my group we have a few players who take REALLY long on their turn, and the DM loooooves using a large variety of monsters in the same combat (lots of different abilities and initiative positions) so that WHEN your turn is wasted by casting a Save-or-suck, its like 30~ minutes until your turn again
Because we have such a large party (6 players) Combat usually doesn't last more than 3-4 rounds. So in tier 3 where monsters have like a 75% chance of succeeding on a save, and IF that 25% chance of failing goes through, using a LR. what ends up happening is that the legendary creatures become effectively immune to all save-or-suck spells. When a caster has to choose between "give up 25-33% of my playtime to have a SLIGHT chance of helping" or "Blast and at least give half damage" the Player is gonna choose Blast.
Remove legendary resistances completely? Have fun never being able to use demonic bosses or such anymore because the casters would just sit there spamming banishment until one of them succeeds. And that's just one of the reasons why bosses really need them this edition. There are too many ways to screw over the whole encounter with just one bad roll of the DM.
Well that seems like a weird situation? How often in your games does every caster pick banishment?
Even then, of the fiend monsters with legendary resistances, very few of them have a CHA save of less than +13 so sure, spam banishment, the meantime its gonna be hitting every caster for everything it's got.
Well, let's take my Wizard. I've maxed out my Int to +5 and when they reach, say, L10, they'll have a proficiency of +5, that's a spell save of 18. Your demon with +13 Cha saves would need to roll a 5 or better to beat my Wizard's Banishment, so 75% per casting. If I get a good initiative and survive your demon's first attack, I'll have almost 50:50 chance of beating it by myself, no help from others.
If you have three such casters in your party, the demon will have 42% of surviving a single round. It has an 18% chance of surviving a second round (I'm assuming no one gets knocked out before casting their second spell or uses anything other than 1 action to cast banishment).
If you think that's a problem, that three L10s have an 82% chance of defeating your legendary monster in 12 seconds, then that's why LRs exist. If you want to make the fights last longer so that LRs can be punched through, I'd increase their HP or AC instead. At the very least, I'd find a reason that banishment and similar spells don't work with some kind of magic-babble.
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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.
I don't think even IF you have a party full of casters that all know banishment, that they would have fun saying "I cast banish" fight done
Isn't this the exact reason not to do away with legendary resistance? This is, after all, the exact thing that can happen even with a single casting of Banishment.
My experience is just as anecdotal as yours, but I whenever I see people claim fights are usually over in about three rounds I think that I've never seen a fight end in less than six rounds unless it ended because of spell like Banishment or some other single-target "it's over now" effect (well, that's not exactly true: there've been a few where we used special equipment or got to set up a particularly devastating ambush. No 'regular' combat encounters though).
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maybe it really just is my group though, because in my games (DMing and playing) Once we get to Tier 3 (which is often for us) monsters almost ALWAYS make their saves( their modifiers are usually in the 12+ range). To the point where: 1. Our monk does not use stunning strike on big boss monsters because they'll have to spend like 10ki of them before it goes through. So usually its just better to save it for little adds
2. Our spell casters have stopped using any form of "save or suck" spells because they're tired of wasting turns where they could be contributing. For examples: our sorcerer traded in slow because its stopped working. And we haven't used banish since like level 10 (16 now) because it hasn't gone off since then.
3. In my group we have a few players who take REALLY long on their turn, and the DM loooooves using a large variety of monsters in the same combat (lots of different abilities and initiative positions) so that WHEN your turn is wasted by casting a Save-or-suck, its like 30~ minutes until your turn again
Because we have such a large party (6 players) Combat usually doesn't last more than 3-4 rounds. So in tier 3 where monsters have like a 75% chance of succeeding on a save, and IF that 25% chance of failing goes through, using a LR. what ends up happening is that the legendary creatures become effectively immune to all save-or-suck spells. When a caster has to choose between "give up 25-33% of my playtime to have a SLIGHT chance of helping" or "Blast and at least give half damage" the Player is gonna choose Blast.
This is LR working exactly as intended. These are the behaviors that it was designed to encourage.
One thing I try to avoid as a DM is letting the party fall into a rut where they find the one optimal thing to do and just do it every fight. Forcing players to go to their Plan B spurs them to think and strategize and roleplay to figure out what they should do instead of just pushing the win button. That's supposed to make it fun. It works for me.
Is blasting not fun anymore? Is it more fun to just pummel a helpless stunned body into the ground when said body was supposed to be a formidable foe? Hell, my BBEGs are straight up immune to stunned/paralyzed/etc. No LR required. I have more respect for my baddies than that, and now my party does too.
Now if everything you're facing has LR, that's a problem. But otherwise the party can go hog-wild stunning and banishing lesser creatures and then change up tactics for the big boss. Every fight shouldn't be the same. Boss fights should be epic, cinematic, and dramatic, and they should be unwinnable unless everyone in the party is contributing and working together. They should not be over in one turn with one spell slot.
So idk how many would agree with me but hear me out!
The more I think about it, the more I don't think I like Legendary Resistances, both as a player AND a DM.
What I have noticed is that by the time monsters start getting legendary resistances, their saves are also quite high.
without certain magic items, Player spell/feature DC's are limited to how high they can be at a given level, often being pretty low thus easy for the monster to pass.
This opinion may be biased because I have never played in a group with less than 6 people, but I have NEVER seen an enemy use ALL their legendary resistances. They usually pass saves and the very few times they fail, they burn a LR to succeed. By the time they're down to 1 and you've almost broken through, the monster has been beaten to death to the point where just smacking it a few times is better than to try a cool control spell.
What I've noticed (at least in my parties) is that casters end up just focusing on damage rather than control because 90% of the time, their control spells end up being "nothing happened" and they have to wait through 5 other players and lord-knows how many monsters' turns to get back to them.
I thought my current game would be different because we are currently at level 15 with a monk in our party who has some crazy op magic items (DM's wife) that can regen ki points so my thoughts were "yeah! all those stunning attacks are SURE to break those LR's!" but since it's a CON save which most Tier 3-4 monsters have by the ton, it RARELY works and on the RARE situation it does, they FINALLY burn a LR but by that time, we've had three rounds of combat and its almost dead.
I'm considering for the next game I DM to completely remove the idea of a LR and replace it with something else. Either just an increased health pool, spell resistance, or just something.
I'm just looking for SOMETHING that will get rid of the "LR? Well I guess my turn is wasted. Shoulda fireballed, at least it'd do half... back to my phone..."
Well that seems like a weird situation? How often in your games does every caster pick banishment?
Even then, of the fiend monsters with legendary resistances, very few of them have a CHA save of less than +13 so sure, spam banishment, the meantime its gonna be hitting every caster for everything it's got.
plus, and this may be specific to my party, but if you're playing dnd, most parties WANT to, you know, play the game? I don't think even IF you have a party full of casters that all know banishment, that they would have fun saying "I cast banish" fight done
Legendary resistances exist to make solo monsters remotely viable. Hold monster, stunning strike, banishment, hypnotic pattern, crown of madness, these are just a few spells and abilities that, when at the players fingertips, can trivialise an encounter that revolves more around a single monster.
Banishment is an incredibly effective spell for example, and would certainly rank up there with fireball for 'obvious picks'. Worst case, you get to lock out a monster for a minute. Best case they're gone forever.
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maybe it really just is my group though, because in my games (DMing and playing) Once we get to Tier 3 (which is often for us) monsters almost ALWAYS make their saves( their modifiers are usually in the 12+ range). To the point where:
1. Our monk does not use stunning strike on big boss monsters because they'll have to spend like 10ki of them before it goes through. So usually its just better to save it for little adds
2. Our spell casters have stopped using any form of "save or suck" spells because they're tired of wasting turns where they could be contributing. For examples: our sorcerer traded in slow because its stopped working. And we haven't used banish since like level 10 (16 now) because it hasn't gone off since then.
3. In my group we have a few players who take REALLY long on their turn, and the DM loooooves using a large variety of monsters in the same combat (lots of different abilities and initiative positions) so that WHEN your turn is wasted by casting a Save-or-suck, its like 30~ minutes until your turn again
Because we have such a large party (6 players) Combat usually doesn't last more than 3-4 rounds. So in tier 3 where monsters have like a 75% chance of succeeding on a save, and IF that 25% chance of failing goes through, using a LR. what ends up happening is that the legendary creatures become effectively immune to all save-or-suck spells. When a caster has to choose between "give up 25-33% of my playtime to have a SLIGHT chance of helping" or "Blast and at least give half damage" the Player is gonna choose Blast.
Well, let's take my Wizard. I've maxed out my Int to +5 and when they reach, say, L10, they'll have a proficiency of +5, that's a spell save of 18. Your demon with +13 Cha saves would need to roll a 5 or better to beat my Wizard's Banishment, so 75% per casting. If I get a good initiative and survive your demon's first attack, I'll have almost 50:50 chance of beating it by myself, no help from others.
If you have three such casters in your party, the demon will have 42% of surviving a single round. It has an 18% chance of surviving a second round (I'm assuming no one gets knocked out before casting their second spell or uses anything other than 1 action to cast banishment).
If you think that's a problem, that three L10s have an 82% chance of defeating your legendary monster in 12 seconds, then that's why LRs exist. If you want to make the fights last longer so that LRs can be punched through, I'd increase their HP or AC instead. At the very least, I'd find a reason that banishment and similar spells don't work with some kind of magic-babble.
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.
Isn't this the exact reason not to do away with legendary resistance? This is, after all, the exact thing that can happen even with a single casting of Banishment.
My experience is just as anecdotal as yours, but I whenever I see people claim fights are usually over in about three rounds I think that I've never seen a fight end in less than six rounds unless it ended because of spell like Banishment or some other single-target "it's over now" effect (well, that's not exactly true: there've been a few where we used special equipment or got to set up a particularly devastating ambush. No 'regular' combat encounters though).
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
This is LR working exactly as intended. These are the behaviors that it was designed to encourage.
One thing I try to avoid as a DM is letting the party fall into a rut where they find the one optimal thing to do and just do it every fight. Forcing players to go to their Plan B spurs them to think and strategize and roleplay to figure out what they should do instead of just pushing the win button. That's supposed to make it fun. It works for me.
Is blasting not fun anymore? Is it more fun to just pummel a helpless stunned body into the ground when said body was supposed to be a formidable foe? Hell, my BBEGs are straight up immune to stunned/paralyzed/etc. No LR required. I have more respect for my baddies than that, and now my party does too.
Now if everything you're facing has LR, that's a problem. But otherwise the party can go hog-wild stunning and banishing lesser creatures and then change up tactics for the big boss. Every fight shouldn't be the same. Boss fights should be epic, cinematic, and dramatic, and they should be unwinnable unless everyone in the party is contributing and working together. They should not be over in one turn with one spell slot.
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