My players absolutely hate it when a monster has an ability that they cannot replicate. If it is an ability out of the monster manual, they will usually grumble and tolerate it, but if it is a custom ability they absolutely read my the riot act. I assume this is just my players being crazy and not normal, right? Anyone else have experience with that?


But one of my players absolutely loathes legendary / lair actions*. He is normally one of my more reasonable players, but every time legendary actions come up in game or merely in discussion he immediately goes into a bad mood and starts grumbling and complaining or quietly sulking.


This came to a head yesterday when they were fighting a dragon. He complained loudly the entire fight about how BS legendary actions were, and at one point there was an unclear rule involving a monster's legendary action and I needed to make a ruling and we were discussing it and the player but in and said, "No point in discussing this. Talakeal always rules in the monster's favor when legendary actions are concerned. We might as well just write a house rule that states: Change description of all legendary actions to "The monster does whatever Talakeal wants it to do."

Then, when his character hit zero HP (not dead, just disabled and fully heal-able) the player got up, pulled out his phone, and went into the other room to surf the net rather than pay attention to the game.


So yeah, for some reason, this player really really hates legendary actions. I try to explain that they are necessary to keep the action moving and to counteract the advantages provided by action economy, but the player simply doesn't see it and just gets mad and turns the discussion into a fight any time I bring it up. At this point I am legitimately considered house ruling legendary actions out of the game and just giving boss monsters extra HP and damage to compensate because I am tired of fighting about it.

Anyone have any advice? Either how to socially disarm the situation or mechanically change the rules? Anyone have any similar opinions or experiences with legendary actions?



*: For anyone not familiar with this concept, it is basically a concept introduced in recent editions of D&D where certain "boss" monsters have a few special abilities that they can only use as bonus actions during the player's turn.