Before I playtest: Legendary resistance alternative

[Crucius]

Hello!

I finished my first module last week, which of course features a big bad boss fight, which of course had legendary resistances.
While my character was not really affected by them, I noticed that the spellcasters in the party were not enjoying the fight at all.

So, this is something I want to prevent, therefore I thought about trying something in a game I'm DM'ing:

The next boss monster will not have legendary resistances. Gone. Bye.
Instead, they will have an additional use AND option for their legendary actions: If they are affected by one or more effects that allow a repeat saving throw at the start or end of their next turn, they can immediately attempt to make a repeat saving throw to end one of those effects (this costs 1 action). I would phrase it in such a way that stuff that prevents the monster from taking actions, does not prevent it from taking this particular action.

This way there is no straight up definitive failure, CC effects work in a limited fashion (as opposed to not at all) and take away from the boss' action economy, and with some luck the monster will be CC'd for a few turns (not rounds), giving the party some time to capitalize on that.

I hope the intent is clear. Now my question is: before I try this, do you think it would work? Do you think it would be fun to play around with if you were a spellcaster (or anything that forces saves regularly)? Am I missing anything?

Edit: I know Legendary Resistances are a hotly debated topic, and I'm still on the fence about them; I can see why they exist and appreciate that, but I can also see the defeat in the player's eyes and I cannot appreciate that.

[ff7hero]

I like it, but I'd probably push it a little further to allow a repeat save even against effects that don't normally have one. Otherwise this allows Hypnotic Pattern and Banishment to straight up dunk in your boss monsters.

[Crucius]

I like it, but I'd probably push it a little further to allow a repeat save even against effects that don't normally have one. Otherwise this allows Hypnotic Pattern and Banishment to straight up dunk in your boss monsters.

Good point! Treat it like a "Dispel Magic" but for any effect and against the save that caused it in the first place.

[Unoriginal]

I mean sure the casters' players will probably enjoy this free power boost quite a lot, if that's the goal.

Remember that Legendary Resistance isn't only about avoiding long-lasting effects.

What are you giving to the characters who don't rely on saving throws?


Also worth noting you're nerfing the Monk's Stunning Strike a ton, given you're a) removing the fact the Legendary monster can only use Legendary Resistance a set number of time a day b) letting the Legendary monster make *more* saves to avoid getting stunned.

[Crucius]

I mean sure the casters' players will probably enjoy this free power boost quite a lot, if that's the goal.

Remember that Legendary Resistance isn't only about avoiding long-lasting effects.

What are you giving to the characters who don't rely on saving throws?

Crowd control actually sticking (for a limited time), so they can crit the boss to oblivion.

It's about teamwork after all, and if most debuff spells are not usable, then the characters that can capitalize on the CC are also operating at suboptimal levels.

[Unoriginal]

Crowd control actually sticking (for a limited time), so they can crit the boss to oblivion.

It's about teamwork after all, and if most debuff spells are not usable, then the characters that can capitalize on the CC are also operating at suboptimal levels.

Yet as you said yourself, your character wasn't really affected by Legendary Resistances. And your team still beat the module's boss(es?). So it's not really about teamwork, it's about the casters' players not enjoying boss monsters who are harder to affect by their characters' abilities than regular monsters, and you wanting to compensate that by giving the casters a power boost.


Which I say "fair, if you want to give them a power boost, but what are you giving to the others?"


Also see my point about the Monk in my edit above.

[Amechra]

If your players are operating at optimal levels during a boss fight without serious prep, you've screwed up your boss fight.

Because the point behind boss fights isn't really to throw a slightly harder fight at your players, with a bigger bag of HP and some cool special effects - it's to challenge them to change up their tactics, to prevent those tactics from becoming stale. Heck, I feel like "operating at suboptimal levels" to one degree or another should be the norm, both because optimal play tends to be kinda dull and because it makes the fights where you can just win with minimal effort that much more satisfying.

Honestly, if your casters are so heavily focused on forcing saves that Legendary Resistance shuts them down entirely, that's on them for not preparing a backup plan.

[Unoriginal]

If your players are operating at optimal levels during a boss fight without serious prep, you've screwed up your boss fight.

Because the point behind boss fights isn't really to throw a slightly harder fight at your players, with a bigger bag of HP and some cool special effects - it's to challenge them to change up their tactics, to prevent those tactics from becoming stale. Heck, I feel like "operating at suboptimal levels" to one degree or another should be the norm, both because optimal play tends to be kinda dull and because it makes the fights where you can just win with minimal effort that much more satisfying.

Honestly, if your casters are so heavily focused on forcing saves that Legendary Resistance shuts them down entirely, that's on them for not preparing a backup plan.

Good points.

Also worth saying that if the group focuses on forcing saves, the boss would likely burn through their LR in a couple rounds (unless the dice really aren't in the PCs' favor).

Still, Crucius asked us for what we thought of the proposed houserules with their effects and consequences, and "I/my players don't like Legendary Resistance and I want it gone" is good enough a reason to not have LR at your table.

[DeTess]

Your solution isn't all that bad for parties with only a single focussed debuffer. In such a case, the debuffer tends to suffer because they can't burn through the bosses resistances before the fight is basically over.
In a party with multiple save-focussed characters (diviner wizard+monk, for example) this is actually worse than legendary resistance because it remains in play for the entire fight, rather than being over and done with by the end of turn 3 at the latest.
Personally, if I where to change legendary resistances, I'd either make using one something you have to declare before the save (making burning them off easier) or make using a legendary resistance inflict a decent amount of hp damage, therefore allowing the debuffer to still contribute.
I'd say it really is a perception issue though. If the dm really highlights how the mages are breaking through the monsters willpower, rather than just going 'nope, legendary resistance, next', it should show the players that burning off legendary resistances is actual progress towards defeating the boss as it brings the boss closer to becoming vulnerable to receiving that magical finishing blow.

[Amechra]

Good points.

Also worth saying that if the group focuses on forcing saves, the boss would likely burn through their LR in a couple rounds (unless the dice really aren't in the PCs' favor).

Still, Crucius asked us for what we thought of the proposed houserules with their effects and consequences, and "I/my players don't like Legendary Resistance and I want it gone" is good enough a reason to not have LR at your table.

True.

Quite frankly? "Bosses can spend a legendary action to reroll their saves" is fine... but it feels a bit off to me. Partly because it's going to involve way more rolling on your end, and partly because it makes bosses far more dangerous if the debuffers can't debuff (for whatever reason).

Take an Adult Red Dragon, for example. Normally, their legendary actions are going to look like:

• Detect/attack three times.
• Wing attack once and detect/attack once.

With your alternative, it's going to look like:

• Detect/attack/save four times.
• Wing attack once and detect/attack/save twice.
• Wing attack twice.

So if they don't fail their saves, the dragon has more options to hurt the party with. It makes the party debuffer even more important for the party's success.

[Valmark]

Something I've seen use is to instead of make legendary resistance an auto-save, it made so that the saving throw was done using the monster's best save instead of whatever it was supposed to roll. I liked that and the dragon we tried to Prone while 100 feet in the air with Tidal Wave still made his save. Twice.

[Crucius]

So if they don't fail their saves, the dragon has more options to hurt the party with. It makes the party debuffer even more important for the party's success.

I agree this warrants some consideration.

The thing is, currently, the party is punching way above their level, so the 'CR-increase' this feature gives is not necessarily a bad thing.

Furthermore, the party has their mind set on dealing damage and I want them to explore combat where CC is a more important strategy, because they all have it in their kits, they're just not opting to go for it. Having legendary resistances block that in what are supposed to be the most epic fights is counterproductive then.

[Unoriginal]

I agree this warrants some consideration.

The thing is, currently, the party is punching way above their level, so the 'CR-increase' this feature gives is not necessarily a bad thing.

Do you have an example?

Furthermore, the party has their mind set on dealing damage and I want them to explore combat where CC is a more important strategy, because they all have it in their kits, they're just not opting to go for it. Having legendary resistances block that in what are supposed to be the most epic fights is counterproductive then.

I don't understand. How can Legendary Resistances hinder their desires to do crowd control?

Crowd control is for crowds, and even if the boss battle does include mooks (which I recommend in most cases), the Legendary monster isn't the crowd.

Unless like, it's a Legendary Swarm or some kind of Thrallherd/the boss is many mooks situation, which is awesome, but it isn't common.

Do your players only target the boss?

[Crucius]

Do you have an example?

That I do: Party of 6 level 8 characters annihilating 2 CR 14 Wurms, which are almost TWICE the amount of XP for a deadly encounter at their level.
Or the same party fighting a bunch of Drow elite warriors with the party only taking damage once.

I don't understand. How can Legendary Resistances hinder their desires to do crowd control?

Crowd control is for crowds, and even if the boss battle does include mooks (which I recommend in most cases), the Legendary monster isn't the crowd.

Unless like, it's a Legendary Swarm or some kind of Thrallherd/the boss is many mooks situation, which is awesome, but it isn't common.

Do your players only target the boss?

Crowd control is a bit of a misnomer here, my bad. Debuff would have been the better term I guess. Stuff like Hold Monster (just so we're clear on what type of spell we are talking about).

I think that any fight would be more interesting if it had some back and forth, where there are openings when the boss is CC'd (or maybe Boss Controlled is more appropriate here) and exploiting that window of opportunity, instead of just dealing damage with blasty spells.

[Unoriginal]

That I do: Party of 6 level 8 characters annihilating 2 CR 14 Wurms, which are almost TWICE the amount of XP for a deadly encounter at their level.

How did they do that?

Or the same party fighting a bunch of Drow elite warriors with the party only taking damage once.

Due to bad rolls, or due to the PCs' ACs being super-high?

Crowd control is a bit of a misnomer here, my bad. Debuff would have been the better term I guess. Stuff like Hold Monster (just so we're clear on what type of spell we are talking about).

I think that any fight would be more interesting if it had some back and forth, where there are openings when the boss is CC'd (or maybe Boss Controlled is more appropriate here) and exploiting that window of opportunity, instead of just dealing damage with blasty spells.

Fair, but with how 5e spells work it'd be less back-and-forth and more the boss getting their butt kicked in more diverse way.

[Amechra]

That I do: Party of 6 level 8 characters annihilating 2 CR 14 Wurms, which are almost TWICE the amount of XP for a deadly encounter at their level.
Or the same party fighting a bunch of Drow elite warriors with the party only taking damage once.

What the heck is your party composition?

Are these fights just slugfests, or are you playing the monsters tactically?

Crowd control is a bit of a misnomer here, my bad. Debuff would have been the better term I guess. Stuff like Hold Monster (just so we're clear on what type of spell we are talking about).

I think that any fight would be more interesting if it had some back and forth, where there are openings when the boss is CC'd (or maybe Boss Controlled is more appropriate here) and exploiting that window of opportunity, instead of just dealing damage with blasty spells.

So. I'm guessing that the reason that your party isn't using debuffs or crowd control is because they don't need to. If blasty spells are doing the job, then why use stuff that doesn't directly contribute to monster murder?

Plus, I hate to tell you this... but that's not how debuffs like Hold Monster work. The nickname for those effects is "save or die" because they shut down the enemy. Bosses have Legendary Resistances for the same reason that the bosses in a JRPG are immune to status effects that would make them skip their turn - the action economy is already very much stacked against them.

[Icewind]

The main drawback I can see to this Legendary Resistance alternative is that hitting a boss with a debilitating effect on a weak save becomes super brutal, especially the higher level you go, where the effects get more potent and the Save DC gets higher.

Legendary Resistance lets a boss with a -2 Wisdom mod still be able to deny something like Hold Monster, whereas this variant makes it much harder to shake off that effect, because it needs to beat the DC using its weak stat, instead of just auto-succeeding. That kind of hard-cc effect can potentially just end a fight outright if the boss gets unlucky with its save rolls.

I’d consider maybe tying Legendary Resist, in its auto-succeed form, to Legendary Actions though. Spending 1-3 Legendary Actions to shrug off a CC effect still means that CC effect can deny a good bit of action economy, without just outright ending the fight.

[sithlordnergal]

So, I would advise against this due to the Save or Suck spells in 5e. Sure you'll be able to repeat the save on things like Hold Person/Monster, Banishment, and Tasha's Hideous Laughter, but spells like Hypnotic Pattern, Fear, Disintegrate, the Monk's Stunning Strike, Phantasmal Force, the Open Palm's Quivering Palm, ect. don't give you a second saving throw, or only allow you to make a save in very specific circumstances. As a result you end up nerfing spells like Tasha's, since the boss can always try to make extra saves to escape it, while providing a massive buff to things like Hypnotic Pattern or the Monk's Stunning Strike, which doesn't let you make a save.

[MeeposFire]

Perhaps if you want a change you could have the legendary resistance work if the creature fails the save the use of legendary resistance allows it to ignore the effect for that round but it still counts as failing the save so potentially the effect could be ongoing and thus may potentially cost more legendary resist later.

So for example a hold monster cast on the target and he fails his save. The monster uses his legendary resist to ignore the effect but since the save was a fail the hold spell is still active and the next round the monster will need to make their save again as normal and if they fail again the may need to use another legendary resist to ignore the effect for another round.

[Crucius]

What the heck is your party composition?

Are these fights just slugfests, or are you playing the monsters tactically?

How did they do that?

Damage. Lots and lots of damage. The wurms were below the ground half the time (as they should) but when one popped up they just started shredding.

This is exactly why I want to move away from damage being king, and making debuffs/crowd control more relevant.


I don't think it's relevant but the party is: Wildfire druid, artillerist, blastlock, conquest paladin that mostly smites, psion wizard that mostly magic missiles, and a monk/rogue MC. As you can see they all have debuff/CC potential in their kits, and most can swap to it with ease.

[Unoriginal]

Damage. Lots and lots of damage. The wurms were below the ground half the time (as they should) but when one popped up they just started shredding.

This is exactly why I want to move away from damage being king, and making debuffs/crowd control more relevant.


I don't think it's relevant but the party is: Wildfire druid, artillerist, blastlock, conquest paladin that mostly smites, psion wizard that mostly magic missiles, and a monk/rogue MC. As you can see they all have debuff/CC potential in their kits, and most can swap to it with ease.

Do you mean Purple Worms?

[Crucius]

Do you mean Purple Worms?

Ravnica Wurms.

[Unoriginal]

Ravnica Wurms.

Gotcha.

Ravnica's Wurms are AC 18, 200 HPs, one-attack monsters with a poor DEX save. I don't think it's surprising that a 6 players party can do a lot of damage to two of them.

Did you have them burrow right under the PCs and have them use their Tunneler ability by digging straight up, leaving the PCs to fall in a 10ft diameter hole (resulting in separating PCs ands having them take fall damage)?

[Amechra]

Have you shown off how good CC can be? I.e., have you actually run enemies that try to CC the players?

At much lower levels, one of the things I like to put in front of new players is some Adepts that cast Bless on their allies, and then mostly act as support (Guidance right before a grapple check, Healing Word on people who get hurt, etc). This lets people see how effective buffing can be, and shows them that picking your targets carefully is a thing.

It doesn't even have to be hard CC - just do something like dropping Darkness on them with monsters that can see in magical darkness. Or Blindness/Deafness, which your party should have no issues with removing after the fact, and which shows off that inflicting status effects can really hurt.

[Grod_The_Giant]

How did they do that?

In my experience, parties can often handle double deadly (or worse) encounters, especially if they still have plenty of resources. Characters will go down, but they don't really stay down.

[Unoriginal]

In my experience, parties can often handle double deadly (or worse) encounters, especially if they still have plenty of resources. Characters will go down, but they don't really stay down.

Not saying the contrary, but given Crucius described the PCs are annihilating the Wurms, it seemed far more one-sided than that.

[DeTess]

Not saying the contrary, but given Crucius described the PCs are annihilating the Wurms, it seemed far more one-sided than that.

It doesn't surprise me that much though. Six characters is a lot of action economy, and if they could afford to nova, they'd hit incredibly hard. Like, I was in a 4-man party that killed their first ancient dragon at level 11, and for most of that fight we where short a rogue as he got hit hard by the frightening presence. It was a close fight and we did need to break out some fancy tricks, but overall it wasn't impossible, and if it had been the only fight of the day (we had two previous ones that drained some resources) we could quite well have won it without dirty tricks.

[MaxWilson]

Hello!

I finished my first module last week, which of course features a big bad boss fight, which of course had legendary resistances.
While my character was not really affected by them, I noticed that the spellcasters in the party were not enjoying the fight at all.

So, this is something I want to prevent, therefore I thought about trying something in a game I'm DM'ing:

The next boss monster will not have legendary resistances. Gone. Bye.
Instead, they will have an additional use AND option for their legendary actions: If they are affected by one or more effects that allow a repeat saving throw at the start or end of their next turn, they can immediately attempt to make a repeat saving throw to end one of those effects (this costs 1 action). I would phrase it in such a way that stuff that prevents the monster from taking actions, does not prevent it from taking this particular action.

This way there is no straight up definitive failure, CC effects work in a limited fashion (as opposed to not at all) and take away from the boss' action economy, and with some luck the monster will be CC'd for a few turns (not rounds), giving the party some time to capitalize on that.

I hope the intent is clear. Now my question is: before I try this, do you think it would work? Do you think it would be fun to play around with if you were a spellcaster (or anything that forces saves regularly)? Am I missing anything?

Edit: I know Legendary Resistances are a hotly debated topic, and I'm still on the fence about them; I can see why they exist and appreciate that, but I can also see the defeat in the player's eyes and I cannot appreciate that.

I like it better than vanilla Legendary Resistance. I'm not sure I love it more than other alternatives I've seen, but it definitely would be less frustrating than a straight-up no sell is.

It's a nice improvement.