I think One DnD is a good opportunity to think about reworking the Legendary Resistance system used for Legendary and Mythical creatures, which feels mostly like a one-sided block of casters focused on things other than damage spells and turns most legendary encounters into a pure turn economy driven damage race. I understand that these resistances are meant to prevent the accidental one turn stomp of a legendary creature that failed a save against a spell like hold monster, banishment or polymorph or so. But in its current form it is simply unfair and promotes damage race encounter structure and tactics over creative tactics. While a group with just damage dealing players won't even notice them most of the time, a group with a single caster gets the feeling their caste if not just focusing on damage or buff spells contributes nothing to the fight for at least 3 rounds if the creature fails all saves. And even in a group with more or just casters or subclasses with strong saving throw related ability, the resistances burn up so fast that whoever rolled the highest initiative and has their ability resisted first feels bad for rolling good. The current system also only ever sees 3 as it's min and max which doesn't take in account party size, making small groups struggle real hard and large groups completely ignore them most of the time. Nothing about these encounters feels Legendary in the slightest. To fix this I came up with a house rule that so far worked great in the past 5 years I used it and while not perfect got the job done nicely with my group of players.
Here is my house rule and how I use Legendary Resistances for years now to great success:
Flavor Text: Creatures which have gained powers beyond most mortal comprehension are called Legendary or even Mythical among common folks. Because these legends and myths, are commonly believed and sometimes even feared across all races, these creatures have gained additional powers similar to how divine beings gain more power from the common folks believing in them.
Ability: Legendary Resistance (X/Day). The Creature is visibly surrounded by a mysterious Aura during combat. If the Creature fails a saving throw or gets hit by an attack, the Creature can choose to succeed the save or to negate all damage from the attack. Using a charge of this Ability, visibly weakens the Aura of this trait.
Flexible Value X based on CR and Party size: The Value X calculates like this: (X = Creature CR/5 + Number of PCs in the party - 4) With the "-4" representing the optimal party size suggested by the DMG towards which all monsters and the monster CR are supposed to be balanced for, which is 3 to 5 players. IT also explains why sometimes an entire army of creatures loses to such a creature lore wise, but a small group of adventures wins.
Explanation: With this change, while Legendary Creatures can potentially have more Legendary Resistances at higher CRs, means they usually use them faster and less focused against certain types of effects. This allows for every party member to more equally contribute to weakening a legendary Creature's Resistances. With this change, even a save and suck spell that gets resisted has a meaning for the entire group, as it means that resistance can't be used to block damage and vice versa. While a resisted strong hit or crit may feel equally shitty as a resisted save or suck spell, it removed a resistance that could have been used to prevent a magical spell. It turns the encounter away from a mindless HP race where all other things a character can do besides damage are meaningless, and instead becomes a collaborate effort to first dwindle the mysterious powers of this Legendary creature before you can actually affect it properly. Makes these creatures feel far more legendary. It also helps balance these resistances and make them matter against any combination of party, be it many or no casters at all. I know it has some improvements to the wording that could be done, but it worked great so far and my players love especially the visual style of the diminishing aura representing the strange divine/primal protection, which I always try to tailor towards the type of creature.
If anyone has a cool idea how to improve this otherwise lack luster feature to involve the entire party and make it feel more legendary, please leave a comment, I would love to get fresh ideas and perspectives.
The real problem is that spells are just way too powerful in general and legendary resistances is just a band aid to that. A spell like hold monster for example, if you paralyzed a legendary creature, it doesn't matter it's legendary anymore, it ain't doing anything for a while and is going to take significant amounts of damage before then.
Instead I think it's better if spells like this had some alternative effect when the target is legendary, like hold monster might impose a reduction in legendary actions by 1, disadvantage on attack rolls and recharge features can not be used for the duration.
The real problem is that spells are just way too powerful in general and legendary resistances is just a band aid to that. A spell like hold monster for example, if you paralyzed a legendary creature, it doesn't matter it's legendary anymore, it ain't doing anything for a while and is going to take significant amounts of damage before then.
Instead I think it's better if spells like this had some alternative effect when the target is legendary, like hold monster might impose a reduction in legendary actions by 1, disadvantage on attack rolls and recharge features can not be used for the duration.
Agreed. Legendary resistances really spoil the fun and distort the combat, but simply removing them will make legendary creatures not so legendary. I like your idea of a reduced version of effect on legendaries, but it kinda feels wrong that a legendary creature can't be paralyzed or stunned at all on these terms. Maybe they could just get advantage or stacking bonus on repeated saves, so that it's not difficult to inflict a condition, but hard to maintain it?
The real problem is that spells are just way too powerful in general and legendary resistances is just a band aid to that. A spell like hold monster for example, if you paralyzed a legendary creature, it doesn't matter it's legendary anymore, it ain't doing anything for a while and is going to take significant amounts of damage before then.
Instead I think it's better if spells like this had some alternative effect when the target is legendary, like hold monster might impose a reduction in legendary actions by 1, disadvantage on attack rolls and recharge features can not be used for the duration.
Agreed. Legendary resistances really spoil the fun and distort the combat, but simply removing them will make legendary creatures not so legendary. I like your idea of a reduced version of effect on legendaries, but it kinda feels wrong that a legendary creature can't be paralyzed or stunned at all on these terms. Maybe they could just get advantage or stacking bonus on repeated saves, so that it's not difficult to inflict a condition, but hard to maintain it?
I think it'd be better the other way around, where legendary creatures become more vulnerable as rounds go on. But then you could switch it up to say that the secondary effect I proposed is what happens when the legendary creature uses it's legendary resistance to block the full effect, so legendary resistance is still a "fail" but a different degree of failure.
The real problem is that spells are just way too powerful in general and legendary resistances is just a band aid to that. A spell like hold monster for example, if you paralyzed a legendary creature, it doesn't matter it's legendary anymore, it ain't doing anything for a while and is going to take significant amounts of damage before then.
Instead I think it's better if spells like this had some alternative effect when the target is legendary, like hold monster might impose a reduction in legendary actions by 1, disadvantage on attack rolls and recharge features can not be used for the duration.
Agreed. Legendary resistances really spoil the fun and distort the combat, but simply removing them will make legendary creatures not so legendary. I like your idea of a reduced version of effect on legendaries, but it kinda feels wrong that a legendary creature can't be paralyzed or stunned at all on these terms. Maybe they could just get advantage or stacking bonus on repeated saves, so that it's not difficult to inflict a condition, but hard to maintain it?
paralyzed and stunned and are conditions that can really change the flow of combat as can some specific spells.
Lets see what I can think of.... legendary : if this creature fails a save against a spell or effect that would inflict the paralyzed or stunned conditions but does not fail the save by more then 5 points the creature is slowed instead. If this creature fails on a save to remove the paralyzed or stunned conditions at the end of it's turns it becomes slowed instead.
My main issue with them is that they're simply either a complete shut-down or ineffective. I.E. Let's say we have a caster vs. a boss with 3 legendary resistances. That, more or less, means the first three spells will outright fail (I know it's more complicated than that, but I want to keep it simple here) but AFTER that the caster has free reign. So for the first three rounds of combat your caster is effectively sitting on their thumbs assuming they have a 100% success rate against the boss before they can not get resisted. But for any combat that lasts longer than 1 turn a caster will suddenly spike in power after that third charge goes away. This will vary even more based on if you have other PC's who can hit a save with a worthy effect or the boss naturally making their own saves or not.
I sort of feel like there should just be a 'legendary resistance' tag and then any spell, like Polymorph, that would be 'too powerful' instead gets a little blurb like 'Against an unwilling creature with Legendary Resistance Polymorph breaks automatically at the start of their next turn.' That way the BBEG isn't neutered because you polyed them into a koala, mopped up the rest of the minions and such, and then proceeded to dogpile them once the coast was clear.
Maybe they could just get advantage or stacking bonus on repeated saves, so that it's not difficult to inflict a condition, but hard to maintain it?
I think it'd be better the other way around, where legendary creatures become more vulnerable as rounds go on. But then you could switch it up to say that the secondary effect I proposed is what happens when the legendary creature uses it's legendary resistance to block the full effect, so legendary resistance is still a "fail" but a different degree of failure.
So, a reworked Legendary Resistance might either have several charges of advantage on saving throws (rather than auto-success), or a static bonus of about +5 that gets reduced by 1 each time the boss resists a condition.
Maybe they could just get advantage or stacking bonus on repeated saves, so that it's not difficult to inflict a condition, but hard to maintain it?
I think it'd be better the other way around, where legendary creatures become more vulnerable as rounds go on. But then you could switch it up to say that the secondary effect I proposed is what happens when the legendary creature uses it's legendary resistance to block the full effect, so legendary resistance is still a "fail" but a different degree of failure.
So, a reworked Legendary Resistance might either have several charges of advantage on saving throws (rather than auto-success), or a static bonus of about +5 that gets reduced by 1 each time the boss resists a condition.
something like that, something where you overwhelm the boss towards the end of combat and it becomes less capable of warding off the incoming effects as effectively, making it more sort of attrition based.
I think the problem stems from the designers did not know what players would come up with in DPR terms. Hold Monster oh so powerful it paralyzes the enemy, meanwhile the big DPR builds can just mr plow it in two rounds and the vast majority of enemies the DPR guy faces he just flat out kills in a round.
When people were not making builds with burst damage coming in around 200 a few legendary resistances made some sense, as there was a solid chance you may burn through resistances well before their HP were gone. Later game whether through better understanding of the mechanics or more options that just does not happen anymore, the big boss can be killed through martial damage from one character in just a couple rounds, assuming they stay to fight after he took half their health in the first round. And don't get me started on the more magicky boss monsters who a vastly under leveled DPR build can wipe out in a single round.
All of those builds filter down to the players and while they may not one for one copy them and reach the absurd heights of 200 burst they may easily get to 100DPR, a couple martials like that on a team and the spellcaster is twiddling thumbs.
If they are to rework legendary resistances I'd make it a more universal ability, like make it a legendary action they have to take and pulls from their legendary action pool for the round but when used they remove all negative effects and heal 1/2 their hit points. So it accounts for both damage dealers and save or sucks, and at least it pulls a legendary action off of their actions for the round, heck even allow them to use it after "death" so a boss doesn't get soloed round one.
I think the problem stems from the designers did not know what players would come up with in DPR terms. Hold Monster oh so powerful it paralyzes the enemy, meanwhile the big DPR builds can just mr plow it in two rounds and the vast majority of enemies the DPR guy faces he just flat out kills in a round.
Honestly, I don't think tier 4 was designed properly at all, I mean have you seen Quivering Palm? Open Hand Monk can basically one shot anything, if Legendary Resistances are exhausted, a Tarrasque can potentially be instantly killed by it, basically.
I think the problem stems from the designers did not know what players would come up with in DPR terms. Hold Monster oh so powerful it paralyzes the enemy, meanwhile the big DPR builds can just mr plow it in two rounds and the vast majority of enemies the DPR guy faces he just flat out kills in a round.
Honestly, I don't think tier 4 was designed properly at all, I mean have you seen Quivering Palm? Open Hand Monk can basically one shot anything, if Legendary Resistances are exhausted, a Tarrasque can potentially be instantly killed by it, basically.
Even tier 3 is pretty out of whack. But you even can see the gains in damage builds by tier 2, when a player is routinely knocking out 50+ damage a round at level 5 even bosses go down quick and all those save or else spells stop looking so special. On the other hand at a table where the martials don't optimize spell casters look amazing at almost all tiers of play without having to optimize much beyond picking decent spells and being tactical with them.
I think the problem stems from the designers did not know what players would come up with in DPR terms. Hold Monster oh so powerful it paralyzes the enemy, meanwhile the big DPR builds can just mr plow it in two rounds and the vast majority of enemies the DPR guy faces he just flat out kills in a round.
Honestly, I don't think tier 4 was designed properly at all, I mean have you seen Quivering Palm? Open Hand Monk can basically one shot anything, if Legendary Resistances are exhausted, a Tarrasque can potentially be instantly killed by it, basically.
Even tier 3 is pretty out of whack. But you even can see the gains in damage builds by tier 2, when a player is routinely knocking out 50+ damage a round at level 5 even bosses go down quick and all those save or else spells stop looking so special. On the other hand at a table where the martials don't optimize spell casters look amazing at almost all tiers of play without having to optimize much beyond picking decent spells and being tactical with them.
Mmmm in the first campaign I played, I was playing Paladin and there was a Fighter and Druid. At level 6 the druid being a moon druid got the Giant Constrictor Snake wild shape which gets a pretty easy grapple+restrained on most targets. I cast Bless on myself the Fighter and Druid....The Fighter was a battlemaster with crossbow expert and sharpshooter using a hand cross bow, that thing became a menace at this point, if a creature got grappled and the fighter had bless, it was more like 75+ damage in a round, since action surge was coming.
At level 7 we encountered our first dragon, apparently it was meant to fly away at half health; the fighter did I think it was 97 total damage in 1 round, our first dragon was dead.
I think it'd be better the other way around, where legendary creatures become more vulnerable as rounds go on. But then you could switch it up to say that the secondary effect I proposed is what happens when the legendary creature uses it's legendary resistance to block the full effect, so legendary resistance is still a "fail" but a different degree of failure.
To be fair, legendary resistances do kind of model this to a degree; you're unlikely to stun lock a legendary creature in the first round because any save it fails can always burn a legendary resistance, but it will run out of them quickly so becomes more vulnerable depending upon how many saves are thrown at it. It's just not terribly consistent, as a Monk with stunning strike can burn all of a creature's legendary resistances in a single round if it doesn't have a great CON save (or a penalty due to bane etc.), or if the party has the broken silvery barbs they can force legendary resistances to be wasted.
I really like the idea of more save-based effects being reworked to have explicit diminished effects, as save or sucks are not a fun element of the game in general when one roll can ruin your entire turn. If most could instead have a guaranteed diminished effect (weaker than what you were hoping for, but not a total waste) it would make whiffed spells a lot less painful. It could also be used to rework legendary resistance as: 1st-round (failed save is diminished effect, success is no effect), 2nd-round (use diminished effect for both), 3rd-round (normal).
Something like that? It could encourage some more strategy on control, holding back your nastiest spells for later, while relying on lower level control spells whose diminished effects are still useful, or focusing on support initially while setting up your finisher.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Yea, that was more along the lines of what I was thinking, so earlier on you're still gunna struggle but your contributions are not just entirely nullified from start because legendary resistance. As the fight goes on, the attrition sets in and the full effects become more viable.
My preference is to completely remove legendary resistance and instead add mechanics that remove debuffs (at a cost in actions or legendary actions).
Generally speaking, if you have five PCs and one PC spends their action on action denial effects, you've come out ahead if you remove more than 20% of the enemy's actions. For a typical legendary monster about half their threat is tied up in legendary actions, so you'd want to remove a bit over 1. Given that they might successfully save, you probably actually want to remove 2 to come out even, or maybe 3 to make it feel like you actually did something cool. Some things I've considered:
Legendary Recovery (1): at the start of a legendary monster's turn, it may remove any number of spells and status effects from itself. If it does so, it does not recover legendary actions.
Legendary Recovery (2): at the start of a legendary monster's turn, it may remove any number of spells and status effects from itself. If it does so, it does not get an action.
Legendary Resilience: a legendary creature may spend a legendary action to reroll a save, either immediately on failing a save, or at a later time (ending the effect).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I think One DnD is a good opportunity to think about reworking the Legendary Resistance system used for Legendary and Mythical creatures, which feels mostly like a one-sided block of casters focused on things other than damage spells and turns most legendary encounters into a pure turn economy driven damage race. I understand that these resistances are meant to prevent the accidental one turn stomp of a legendary creature that failed a save against a spell like hold monster, banishment or polymorph or so. But in its current form it is simply unfair and promotes damage race encounter structure and tactics over creative tactics. While a group with just damage dealing players won't even notice them most of the time, a group with a single caster gets the feeling their caste if not just focusing on damage or buff spells contributes nothing to the fight for at least 3 rounds if the creature fails all saves. And even in a group with more or just casters or subclasses with strong saving throw related ability, the resistances burn up so fast that whoever rolled the highest initiative and has their ability resisted first feels bad for rolling good. The current system also only ever sees 3 as it's min and max which doesn't take in account party size, making small groups struggle real hard and large groups completely ignore them most of the time. Nothing about these encounters feels Legendary in the slightest. To fix this I came up with a house rule that so far worked great in the past 5 years I used it and while not perfect got the job done nicely with my group of players.
Here is my house rule and how I use Legendary Resistances for years now to great success:
Flavor Text: Creatures which have gained powers beyond most mortal comprehension are called Legendary or even Mythical among common folks. Because these legends and myths, are commonly believed and sometimes even feared across all races, these creatures have gained additional powers similar to how divine beings gain more power from the common folks believing in them.
Ability: Legendary Resistance (X/Day). The Creature is visibly surrounded by a mysterious Aura during combat. If the Creature fails a saving throw or gets hit by an attack, the Creature can choose to succeed the save or to negate all damage from the attack. Using a charge of this Ability, visibly weakens the Aura of this trait.
Flexible Value X based on CR and Party size: The Value X calculates like this: (X = Creature CR/5 + Number of PCs in the party - 4) With the "-4" representing the optimal party size suggested by the DMG towards which all monsters and the monster CR are supposed to be balanced for, which is 3 to 5 players. IT also explains why sometimes an entire army of creatures loses to such a creature lore wise, but a small group of adventures wins.
Explanation: With this change, while Legendary Creatures can potentially have more Legendary Resistances at higher CRs, means they usually use them faster and less focused against certain types of effects. This allows for every party member to more equally contribute to weakening a legendary Creature's Resistances. With this change, even a save and suck spell that gets resisted has a meaning for the entire group, as it means that resistance can't be used to block damage and vice versa. While a resisted strong hit or crit may feel equally shitty as a resisted save or suck spell, it removed a resistance that could have been used to prevent a magical spell. It turns the encounter away from a mindless HP race where all other things a character can do besides damage are meaningless, and instead becomes a collaborate effort to first dwindle the mysterious powers of this Legendary creature before you can actually affect it properly. Makes these creatures feel far more legendary. It also helps balance these resistances and make them matter against any combination of party, be it many or no casters at all. I know it has some improvements to the wording that could be done, but it worked great so far and my players love especially the visual style of the diminishing aura representing the strange divine/primal protection, which I always try to tailor towards the type of creature.
If anyone has a cool idea how to improve this otherwise lack luster feature to involve the entire party and make it feel more legendary, please leave a comment, I would love to get fresh ideas and perspectives.
The real problem is that spells are just way too powerful in general and legendary resistances is just a band aid to that. A spell like hold monster for example, if you paralyzed a legendary creature, it doesn't matter it's legendary anymore, it ain't doing anything for a while and is going to take significant amounts of damage before then.
Instead I think it's better if spells like this had some alternative effect when the target is legendary, like hold monster might impose a reduction in legendary actions by 1, disadvantage on attack rolls and recharge features can not be used for the duration.
Agreed. Legendary resistances really spoil the fun and distort the combat, but simply removing them will make legendary creatures not so legendary. I like your idea of a reduced version of effect on legendaries, but it kinda feels wrong that a legendary creature can't be paralyzed or stunned at all on these terms. Maybe they could just get advantage or stacking bonus on repeated saves, so that it's not difficult to inflict a condition, but hard to maintain it?
I think it'd be better the other way around, where legendary creatures become more vulnerable as rounds go on. But then you could switch it up to say that the secondary effect I proposed is what happens when the legendary creature uses it's legendary resistance to block the full effect, so legendary resistance is still a "fail" but a different degree of failure.
paralyzed and stunned and are conditions that can really change the flow of combat as can some specific spells.
Lets see what I can think of....
legendary : if this creature fails a save against a spell or effect that would inflict the paralyzed or stunned conditions but does not fail the save by more then 5 points the creature is slowed instead.
If this creature fails on a save to remove the paralyzed or stunned conditions at the end of it's turns it becomes slowed instead.
My main issue with them is that they're simply either a complete shut-down or ineffective. I.E. Let's say we have a caster vs. a boss with 3 legendary resistances. That, more or less, means the first three spells will outright fail (I know it's more complicated than that, but I want to keep it simple here) but AFTER that the caster has free reign. So for the first three rounds of combat your caster is effectively sitting on their thumbs assuming they have a 100% success rate against the boss before they can not get resisted. But for any combat that lasts longer than 1 turn a caster will suddenly spike in power after that third charge goes away. This will vary even more based on if you have other PC's who can hit a save with a worthy effect or the boss naturally making their own saves or not.
I sort of feel like there should just be a 'legendary resistance' tag and then any spell, like Polymorph, that would be 'too powerful' instead gets a little blurb like 'Against an unwilling creature with Legendary Resistance Polymorph breaks automatically at the start of their next turn.' That way the BBEG isn't neutered because you polyed them into a koala, mopped up the rest of the minions and such, and then proceeded to dogpile them once the coast was clear.
So, a reworked Legendary Resistance might either have several charges of advantage on saving throws (rather than auto-success), or a static bonus of about +5 that gets reduced by 1 each time the boss resists a condition.
something like that, something where you overwhelm the boss towards the end of combat and it becomes less capable of warding off the incoming effects as effectively, making it more sort of attrition based.
I think the problem stems from the designers did not know what players would come up with in DPR terms. Hold Monster oh so powerful it paralyzes the enemy, meanwhile the big DPR builds can just mr plow it in two rounds and the vast majority of enemies the DPR guy faces he just flat out kills in a round.
When people were not making builds with burst damage coming in around 200 a few legendary resistances made some sense, as there was a solid chance you may burn through resistances well before their HP were gone. Later game whether through better understanding of the mechanics or more options that just does not happen anymore, the big boss can be killed through martial damage from one character in just a couple rounds, assuming they stay to fight after he took half their health in the first round. And don't get me started on the more magicky boss monsters who a vastly under leveled DPR build can wipe out in a single round.
All of those builds filter down to the players and while they may not one for one copy them and reach the absurd heights of 200 burst they may easily get to 100DPR, a couple martials like that on a team and the spellcaster is twiddling thumbs.
If they are to rework legendary resistances I'd make it a more universal ability, like make it a legendary action they have to take and pulls from their legendary action pool for the round but when used they remove all negative effects and heal 1/2 their hit points. So it accounts for both damage dealers and save or sucks, and at least it pulls a legendary action off of their actions for the round, heck even allow them to use it after "death" so a boss doesn't get soloed round one.
Honestly, I don't think tier 4 was designed properly at all, I mean have you seen Quivering Palm? Open Hand Monk can basically one shot anything, if Legendary Resistances are exhausted, a Tarrasque can potentially be instantly killed by it, basically.
Even tier 3 is pretty out of whack. But you even can see the gains in damage builds by tier 2, when a player is routinely knocking out 50+ damage a round at level 5 even bosses go down quick and all those save or else spells stop looking so special. On the other hand at a table where the martials don't optimize spell casters look amazing at almost all tiers of play without having to optimize much beyond picking decent spells and being tactical with them.
Mmmm in the first campaign I played, I was playing Paladin and there was a Fighter and Druid. At level 6 the druid being a moon druid got the Giant Constrictor Snake wild shape which gets a pretty easy grapple+restrained on most targets. I cast Bless on myself the Fighter and Druid....The Fighter was a battlemaster with crossbow expert and sharpshooter using a hand cross bow, that thing became a menace at this point, if a creature got grappled and the fighter had bless, it was more like 75+ damage in a round, since action surge was coming.
At level 7 we encountered our first dragon, apparently it was meant to fly away at half health; the fighter did I think it was 97 total damage in 1 round, our first dragon was dead.
To be fair, legendary resistances do kind of model this to a degree; you're unlikely to stun lock a legendary creature in the first round because any save it fails can always burn a legendary resistance, but it will run out of them quickly so becomes more vulnerable depending upon how many saves are thrown at it. It's just not terribly consistent, as a Monk with stunning strike can burn all of a creature's legendary resistances in a single round if it doesn't have a great CON save (or a penalty due to bane etc.), or if the party has the broken silvery barbs they can force legendary resistances to be wasted.
I really like the idea of more save-based effects being reworked to have explicit diminished effects, as save or sucks are not a fun element of the game in general when one roll can ruin your entire turn. If most could instead have a guaranteed diminished effect (weaker than what you were hoping for, but not a total waste) it would make whiffed spells a lot less painful. It could also be used to rework legendary resistance as: 1st-round (failed save is diminished effect, success is no effect), 2nd-round (use diminished effect for both), 3rd-round (normal).
Something like that? It could encourage some more strategy on control, holding back your nastiest spells for later, while relying on lower level control spells whose diminished effects are still useful, or focusing on support initially while setting up your finisher.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Yea, that was more along the lines of what I was thinking, so earlier on you're still gunna struggle but your contributions are not just entirely nullified from start because legendary resistance. As the fight goes on, the attrition sets in and the full effects become more viable.
My preference is to completely remove legendary resistance and instead add mechanics that remove debuffs (at a cost in actions or legendary actions).
Generally speaking, if you have five PCs and one PC spends their action on action denial effects, you've come out ahead if you remove more than 20% of the enemy's actions. For a typical legendary monster about half their threat is tied up in legendary actions, so you'd want to remove a bit over 1. Given that they might successfully save, you probably actually want to remove 2 to come out even, or maybe 3 to make it feel like you actually did something cool. Some things I've considered: