Two Sets of Rules, the Good and Bad?

[OldTrees1]

Honestly I didn't see you list any downsides (Though I may have missed some posts earlier in the thread). I also don't agree that requiring work to homebrew abilities as a downside. I can't speak for anyone else, but that's actually an upside for me since I like working on that kind of stuff. So having a game that expects and encourages homebrewing is way more fun/interesting to me. Though I suppose it does is exacerbate the problem of some players not meshing with their DM and not having much choice in who the DM is.

So what are the downsides of having NPCs have features that the PCs don't have access to?

... I did not include any downsides in my reply (quoted below in the spoiler for convenience) to you because I was highlighting the upsides to that aspect of asymmetry. Despite preferring less asymmetry, I agree with the upside your were elaborating on.

I also like homebrewing, but we both can recognize that it is work and that higher barrier to entry can discourage players from asking for it. However in general the specific aspect of asymmetry you are focusing on is the main Positive for asymmetry and its only downside is not one of main criticism with asymmetry.

Spoiler: Quoted for convenience

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This is the main positive to asymmetry. Being able to create NPCs faster due to simplified rules. Done well it even makes it easier to innovate new homebrew enemy abilities.

The PC lament over seeing a cool NPC ability can be addressed by creating more PC content. We could make a homebrew feat with a Shield Bash ability and some other neat things they saw.

So I can appreciate the merits of asymmetry, even as I criticize its downsides or when it goes further than optimal.

The main downsides for asymmetry happen in other areas. In another post I did mention Legendary Actions. This is not really NPCs having a new ability. This is the structure of enemies vs PCs being made asymmetrical for metagame concerns. Lots of structural asymmetry has stronger criticisms.

Another main criticism of asymmetry is being unable to play certain characters. Imagine you wanted to play a Hill Giant PC and found out PC Hill Giants are medium size instead of their normal size. You might feel like the game banned Hill Giant PCs and lied about it. 5E did not do this with Giants, but I still can't play a Giant. Conversions that break the characterization or characters not being possible is a downside of asymmetry.

Again, you might notice neither of those criticisms is related to the positive of asymmetry that you and I were agreeing about and elaborating about.

[monkey3]

You can-just because there's no RAW way of doing it doesn't mean that your DM can't work with you...

I knew someone would reply with this (imo a cop-out of an answer). Rule Zero is no excuse for the writers to get lazy. They pretty much say such and such a thing is not possible for a pc (zombie must be humanoid only) then go ahead and make non-humanoid zombies. The is lazy or inconsistent as best. If I have a contractor build me a house, "I left the windows for you to install" is not acceptable.

Why do you folks let WoTC off so easily? As much as we pay for their stuff, it is not unreasonable that after many years, they should go ahead and fill in some of these rule holes.

[anthon]

You seems to be touching a lot of different points:

(1) Gameplay asymmetry. I am personally very fan of asymmetry. I have to admit that symmetry is a very potent way to reach fairness (since everybody plays with the same rules), but that's not the only one, and symmetry also comes with a lot a restrictions to the rules, making harder to reach the intended balance point and player experience.
Note: On of the major gameplay asymmetry of 5e is the fact that NPCs then to have higher HP but lower AC than PCs. This is because missing attacks is much more frustrating for a player (which see his entire turn reduced to nothing) than for a GM (which is piloting multiple other creatures), and on the other hand PC needing to heal mean that having a mountain of HP would be impractical on the long run, while monsters don't have this issue.

(2) Permanent injuries on PCs vs NPCs. That's unavoidable in lethal systems like D&D. But in a setting where killing your enemies is a big NO-NO (you have to bring them alive, and if possible unharmed, to the justice), you can bring balance to this: since both PCs and NPCs will be recurrent in the game, a permanent injuries inflicted to a NPC is permanently reducing their power for the remaining of the campaign.

(3) Healing & permanent injuries. One of the goal of 5e design is to ensure that the gameplay is not significantly different whatever class is chosen by the players. In particular, a team with absolutely zero healers should not suffer from permanent injuries more than a team with one. This let 3 options:
(a) Nobody every have permanent injuries, which is the simplest choice, hence the choice of 5e.
(b) Nobody ever heal permanent injuries, including magical healers. This choice would go against power-fantasy.
(c) Access to healing permanent injuries is common enough in the universe (through NPCs) that not having a healer in the team is not that much a problem. This choice would constraint settings to be high-magic.
=> As a positive consequence of choice (a), the potential healer of the group is not forced onto the role of heal-bot. If you ever design a RPG in which healer classes are expected to have a significant healing role, please take inspiration on 5e paladin (healing is separated from other resources like spells) rather than on 5e cleric (healing compete with other spells as they use the same spell slots).

i greatly appreciate this breakdown of my thoughts (i work before sunrise so i was half asleep when i started writing it)

The healing vs. Permanent injuries really vexed me while i was looking over the 5e conditions and so forth, comparing durations, etc. Like, in ancient editions your cleric could be set up like a doctor (if you ever got a medical bill you know what i mean) during downtime. But in 5e some lifelong tragic conditions worth paying to fix, are super limited, and then i wonder whether a guy who had his eyes torn out, will cure blindness work on him? Maybe not. Maybe there's "two systems" at work, the "video game play style" spells, and then the NPC only/Artifact plot device spells which are off the table and assymetrical - like Zombie Minotaurs or whatever.

And the idea of permanent injury as a "higher level spell" that a high spell slot is spent for,

has a disproprotionately weak payout for players, while for villains/NPCs, like a curse of deafness or the plague etc., that sort of malady follows the player everywhere. So its weird to think we can justify stuff like liar actions and NPC only undead spells,

but not by the same measure, rebalance level/spell acquisition for PC vs. NPC abilities. After all, when you fight some random orc, your blindness spell is only useful for about 1 minute or less. So you should be spending 1 minute or less spell slots...

but what if the enemy is attacking you with the same blindness spell, and it defaults to permanent? Then making it level 1-2 or whatever is grossly potent for the monsters, but useless to you.

A scaling mechanism perhaps should be more frequent than it is. Not just damage dice, but more duration modifiers. 5e is heavy on concentration for 1 hour = permanent,

but not enough up-level duration modifiers. I could handle blindness being upcast to 5th-7th for permanence, maybe 8th-9th for some cruel version like "your eyeballs are burned out, requires a wish or high level regenerate spell to fix".

apologies if it seems im fixated on this example of Assymetry.


...

Playing Tarrasques would not be dissimilar from playing Hulk on Hulk mode, as long as you skip the bruce banner phase. Personality wise perhaps a lycanthrope on rampage.

Playing Ancient Red Dragons was possible in older editions like Council of Wyrms, and i think 3.5 had Encounter level modifiers for half dragons, but Council of Wyrms literally had lairs, levels, age categories, XP, treasure hoards, and cultures with offspring. Grim Harvest let you play a Lich or Vampire.

Makes me agree more readily with people who dislike Legendary Actions.

[Unoriginal]

Why do creatures have Legendary Actions?

Because they are legendary.

[Avonar]

I knew someone would reply with this (imo a cop-out of an answer). Rule Zero is no excuse for the writers to get lazy. They pretty much say such and such a thing is not possible for a pc (zombie must be humanoid only) then go ahead and make non-humanoid zombies. The is lazy or inconsistent as best. If I have a contractor build me a house, "I left the windows for you to install" is not acceptable.

Why do you folks let WoTC off so easily? As much as we pay for their stuff, it is not unreasonable that after many years, they should go ahead and fill in some of these rule holes.

This is a game where players can choose to do almost anything. If you wanted to make rules to cover home bases including every type of building and every conceivable thing that could be in it, you'd have an entire book just for that. And if you shrink it down, the new complaint becomes "well why isn't X included in the rules?"

Expecting every possible action and situation to have official rules is a little silly.

That being said, in some cases where a base of sorts is part of a campaign, they have put in rules for it. See Trollskull Manor from Dragon Heist.

[OldTrees1]

Because they are legendary.

I assume this was a joke answer because you missed the question by removing the context.

Why do creatures have Legendary Actions? Are they quicker? Or did the authors just need to rebalance the action economy?

The metagame bodge breaks verisimilitude for me. I would rather have legendary creatures rather than an ugly bodge.

[Sorinth]

I assume this was a joke answer because you missed the question by removing the context.

Why do creatures have Legendary Actions? Are they quicker? Or did the authors just need to rebalance the action economy?

The metagame bodge breaks verisimilitude for me. I would rather have legendary creatures rather than an ugly bodge.

Is the Dex 8 Fighter with Action Surge and 4 attacks per round quicker then the Dex 20 Ranger with his measly 2 attacks per round?

[Sorinth]

... I did not include any downsides in my reply (quoted below in the spoiler for convenience) to you because I was highlighting the upsides to that aspect of asymmetry. Despite preferring less asymmetry, I agree with the upside your were elaborating on.

I also like homebrewing, but we both can recognize that it is work and that higher barrier to entry can discourage players from asking for it. However in general the specific aspect of asymmetry you are focusing on is the main Positive for asymmetry and its only downside is not one of main criticism with asymmetry.

Spoiler: Quoted for convenience

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The main downsides for asymmetry happen in other areas. In another post I did mention Legendary Actions. This is not really NPCs having a new ability. This is the structure of enemies vs PCs being made asymmetrical for metagame concerns. Lots of structural asymmetry has stronger criticisms.

Another main criticism of asymmetry is being unable to play certain characters. Imagine you wanted to play a Hill Giant PC and found out PC Hill Giants are medium size instead of their normal size. You might feel like the game banned Hill Giant PCs and lied about it. 5E did not do this with Giants, but I still can't play a Giant. Conversions that break the characterization or characters not being possible is a downside of asymmetry.

Again, you might notice neither of those criticisms is related to the positive of asymmetry that you and I were agreeing about and elaborating about.

Yes there's a higher barrier to entry when talking homebrewing, but I think 5e very intentionally decided that they wanted to be a toolbox with the expectation that players/dms would create their own tools when they wanted too.

But regardless I'm not seeing how this relates to asymmetry, if in 5e they built NPC using player classes and suggested DMs use class levels in the NPC section of the DMG then Shield Bash wouldn't exist as a possible feature and so as a player I still couldn't use it. And if I wanted to play a Hill Giant PC, well I'm still stuck asking the DM for homebrew options.

[OldTrees1]

Yes there's a higher barrier to entry when talking homebrewing, but I think 5e very intentionally decided that they wanted to be a toolbox with the expectation that players/dms would create their own tools when they wanted too.

But regardless I'm not seeing how this relates to asymmetry, if in 5e they built NPC using player classes and suggested DMs use class levels in the NPC section of the DMG then Shield Bash wouldn't exist as a possible feature and so as a player I still couldn't use it. And if I wanted to play a Hill Giant PC, well I'm still stuck asking the DM for homebrew options.

...

You do realize that my first reply to you was agreeing with you, right? Asymmetry has the benefit of making it faster to create NPCs and easier to innovate new NPC features. If a Player laments not having access to an NPC feature, that can be addressed with homebrewing a feat/ability. That is technically a higher barrier to entry than if the feat/ability had already been available, but that is a tiny downside for the overall upside of faster NPC creation and ability innovation. We agree about this. How can I be clearer?

But rather than hear my agreement you asked for what my unrelated criticisms were. So I mentioned 2 of them and prefaced it by saying:
"The main downsides for asymmetry happen in other areas."

Now if there was less asymmetry, then a large Hill Giant would be a possible PC species in 5E. Unfortunately due to some of the 5E structural asymmetry, a 5E PC Hill Giant would be medium sized instead of large sized (see 5E Minotaurs). That would feel like a bait and switch to the player.

You felt this criticism was unrelated to what you were talking about. Which is exactly why I said that in my preface.

Is the Dex 8 Fighter with Action Surge and 4 attacks per round quicker then the Dex 20 Ranger with his measly 2 attacks per round?

Fighters have a reason to be faster. Chokers have a reason to be faster. When there is a reason, it can make sense.

Legendary Actions scale with the number of opponents as a obvious metagame bodge with no reason related to the creature that has them. That breaks verisimilitude for me. That is why I don't like Legendary Actions.

Most structural asymmetry is unnecessary artificial restrictions, or metagame bodges. So it behooves me to call out and draw attention to the positive forms of asymmetry.

[Sorinth]

...

You do realize that my first reply to you was agreeing with you, right? Asymmetry has the benefit of making it faster to create NPCs and easier to innovate new NPC features. If a Player laments not having access to an NPC feature, that can be addressed with homebrewing a feat/ability. That is technically a higher barrier to entry than if the feat/ability had already been available, but that is a tiny downside for the overall upside of faster NPC creation and ability innovation. We agree about this. How can I be clearer?

But rather than hear my agreement you asked for what my unrelated criticisms were. So I mentioned 2 of them and prefaced it by saying:
"The main downsides for asymmetry happen in other areas."

Now if there was less asymmetry, then a large Hill Giant would be a possible PC species in 5E. Unfortunately due to some of the 5E structural asymmetry, a 5E PC Hill Giant would be medium sized instead of large sized (see 5E Minotaurs). That would feel like a bait and switch to the player.

You felt this criticism was unrelated to what you were talking about. Which is exactly why I said that in my preface.

Yes I'm aware you agreed with the upside, which is why I didn't bring up the upside again and instead asked you to elaborate on your criticisms of asymmetry. You seem to be taking offence to that for some reason. I asked to elaborate since I'm not sure how your critisims are actually related to asymmetry at all. Even now, you mention structural asymmetry in 5e that prevents you from having a Hill Giant PC but I have no idea what structural asymmetry you are talking about. If I had to guess I assume it relates to grapple rules but I'm not sure because I don't see how it relates to asymmetry

Fighters have a reason to be faster. Chokers have a reason to be faster. When there is a reason, it can make sense.

Legendary Actions scale with the number of opponents as a obvious metagame bodge with no reason related to the creature that has them. That breaks verisimilitude for me. That is why I don't like Legendary Actions.

Most structural asymmetry is unnecessary artificial restrictions, or metagame bodges. So it behooves me to call out and draw attention to the positive forms of asymmetry.

Doesn't it also break verisimilitude when the slow fighter has more attacks then a Hasted dex based Ranger?

EDIT: And if PCs were given Legendary Actions at some point then things would no longer be asymmetrical, yet the verisimilitude would still be broken.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Legendary Actions are a great solution to an important problem. As is most asymmetry.

If you don't have legendary actions, then your only other option is to boost the power of actions the solo monsters have. Which makes taking them out before they go even more important, because the only balance point is "one action can wipe out one or more party members entirely". Which makes it even more rocket tag. Go first or die. Which is horrible design on both sides of the table--the monster never gets to do its signature moves or the players spend the entire combat out of things due to one bad roll at the beginning. That sucks. Legendary actions (and lair actions) let solo fights play out more cinematic. Remember, 5e is not a simulator. It's not trying to use monster (or PC) parameters as dials into the physical reality. It's a game UI trying to allow the creation of certain types of scenarios, often drawn from movie-analogues (heavily translated into the very different setup). The brave heroes fight against something that overmatches them and "breaks all the rules".

The bigger issue is that the narrative roles of monsters and players are not symmetric. Because the game isn't about playing monsters--that's not a design goal. Monsters (and NPCs generally) have completely different mechanical needs than PCs do. Especially when it comes to resources. Monsters are pretty much always at full design resources--if they weren't, they'd be designed with fewer resources. And rarely have to really deal with resource constraints. They're (in the main) designed to last 3-5 rounds under pressure from the PCs and then die/flee. PCs are designed to have a full day of adventuring, going through multiple encounters. If you give monsters the full resource set of a PC, the vast majority of those resources will go unused because they simply don't have enough "on-screen" actions to use them up. But to balance that, the actions they do take have to be more important and impressive. But if you give those to a PC, the PC is now horribly out of balance for both the rest of the party and the game as a whole.

LA (3e-style) didn't work. CF all the threads about it. And a hill giant? That's a level 10 PC (using my very rough rule-of-thumb 2:1 CR-level mapping). Except not, because really he's only got the HP and raw damage output of that kind of PC, not any of the other pieces. And shouldn't have those other pieces, because they'd just be bloat. So he doesn't fit into either a level 10 party or a level 5 party. Or anywhere in between. And can't, meaningfully, because the design must be different if he's to do his main job (being a monster) well.

The statblocks are not the character any more. They're merely a quick-reference guide for making combat work well. They're a starting point for further modifications for important NPCs, or can be used straight for the run-of-the-mill fodder. Requiring a full PC build for every single character out there, including the 15 commoners in the bar would be an enormous time-sink.

Heck, with 5e's system I can make up monsters and NPCs on the fly, with only a basic stat block to reference and doing the transformation in my head. And get it right 99.999% of the time. And even 5e stat blocks are too detailed (especially around spell-casting[1] for my tastes).

[1] That caster's going to last a grand total of 3 rounds. Why give them all the full spell slots and spells-prepared? Give me the top three action items, 4e-style. And then a brief list of "other things you could do instead" to cover the bases.

[OldTrees1]

Yes I'm aware you agreed with the upside, which is why I didn't bring up the upside again and instead asked you to elaborate on your criticisms of asymmetry. You seem to be taking offence to that for some reason.

Your replies to a post agreeing with you were to hyperfocus on an unrelated disagreement. It gave the impression of a frustrating communication barrier. It took until this post here for me to know you even recognized the initial agreement. I still don't know if you recognize the scope of the agreement because why hyperfocus on an insignificant part of a post instead of the vast majority of the post?

Oh and the thing you are nitpicking about? You are telling me there is another communication barrier and placing the burden on me to overcome it despite you forcing the change of topic.

And I have demonstrated being interested in talking about the agreement and disinterested in talking about the part irrelevant to the initial reply in the reply chain from that initial reply. But you are badgering me on it.

Does that explain my irritation?

Even now, you mention structural asymmetry in 5e that prevents you from having a Hill Giant PC but I have no idea what structural asymmetry you are talking about. If I had to guess I assume it relates to grapple rules but I'm not sure because I don't see how it relates to asymmetry

As for PC size, look up 5E Minotaurs. For some reason PC Minotaurs shrink when they become PCs. WotC has decided PCs must be Small/Medium size. That unnecessary restriction creates unnecessary asymmetry. A type of asymmetry you were not talking about and thus don't see how it relates.

Doesn't it also break verisimilitude when the slow fighter has more attacks then a Hasted dex based Ranger?

No. It does not break verisimilitude for me for a warrior trained in many attacks despite their low dex would have more attacks than a warrior trained in fewer more accurate attacks despite their high dex. Does that strain the verisimilitude for you? Different people have difference preferences and tolerances. I could understand if you wanted dex to have a stronger role in the attack speed.

EDIT: And if PCs were given Legendary Actions at some point then things would no longer be asymmetrical, yet the verisimilitude would still be broken.

WotC decided to create Legendary Actions for monsters (an asymmetry) as a metagame balance bodge. Rather than a good solution that sustained verisimilitude while addressing the metagame balance too, it is a sore thumb. Some asymmetry is ugly like this. A type of asymmetry you were not talking about and thus don't see how it relates.

Legendary Actions are a great solution to an important problem. As is most asymmetry.

If you don't have legendary actions, then your only other option is to boost the power of actions the solo monsters have.

There are other options as well, however some really only work if the power curve is smooth instead of 5E's Tiered curve.

Boosting the power of actions is a useful answer.
Minions can work (although works better with a smooth and steeper power curve)
Passive effects are useful.

Legendary Actions are a solution to an important problem. As is most asymmetry (see ease and speed of generating NPCs). However not all solutions are good ones. I find Legendary Actions break verisimilitude for me. In contrast I appreciate the ease and speed of generating NPCs.

PS: The part of Hill Giant was not about ECL or symmetric stat blocks. It was about when the conversion from NPC to PC does a bait and switch on something important to the characterization.

[PhoenixPhyre]

As for PC size, look up 5E Minotaurs. For some reason PC Minotaurs shrink when they become PCs. WotC has decided PCs must be Small/Medium size. That unnecessary restriction creates unnecessary asymmetry. A type of asymmetry you were not talking about and thus don't see how it relates.

Or maybe the setting in which minotaurs are playable either
a) has only one, smaller variety of minotaurs
b) has two varieties, of which only one is PC-available

WotC decided to create Legendary Actions for monsters (an asymmetry) as a metagame balance bodge. Rather than a good solution that sustained verisimilitude while addressing the metagame balance too, it is a sore thumb. Some asymmetry is ugly like this. A type of asymmetry you were not talking about and thus don't see how it relates.

I disagree about its ugliness. It solves the designated problem with elegance and in a reusable, systematic fashion. Combat is an abstraction, including number of attacks and the whole turn order thing. You can't get more metagame than that. In fact, a solution that tried to pierce that abstraction would be worse IMO.

There are other options as well, however some really only work if the power curve is smooth instead of 5E's Tiered curve.

Boosting the power of actions is a useful answer.
Minions can work (although works better with a smooth and steeper power curve)
Passive effects are useful.

Legendary Actions are a solution to an important problem. As is most asymmetry (see ease and speed of generating NPCs). However not all solutions are good ones. I find Legendary Actions break verisimilitude for me. In contrast I appreciate the ease and speed of generating NPCs.

PS: The part of Hill Giant was not about ECL or symmetric stat blocks. It was about when the conversion from NPC to PC does a bait and switch on something important to the characterization.

Of these options, only minions work...but they solve a different problem. Legendary actions are for solo encounters. Bosses that, by the fictional parameters, should generally be faced alone. Where minions don't make as much sense. You can always add minions and remove legendary actions--that works just fine. But you can't have a solo monster without some accounting for the action economy. No passive bonus can make up for being down 4+ to 1 on actions. And boosting action strength just makes for rocket tag, which everyone (I hope) realizes is a bad idea for fun. Being the only character to get to go...or dying without being able to do anything, entirely decided by who wins the d20 roll off at the beginning? That's horrible horrible horrible design. And wastes everyone's turn. And that's the only point at which you can balance the action strengths, when you can take characters out entirely (usually 2+) in a single action.

And there are no playable hill giants. Nor should there be--the whole idea is ludicrous. It doesn't work with the vast majority of adventure designs--that whole "can't fit in buildings" thing kinda wrecks everything but "we're outside and never go into a house or even a cave" campaigns. Even being large-sized puts a serious crimp on things...which is one reason (among many) why playable minotaurs weren't large. When your bane is the standard 5' hallway (squeezing penalties are severe)...

Plus, remember that 5e put no emphasis on being a general character simulator. It doesn't intend to let you play monster races. That's not in the design specs. So your complaint really boils down to "I don't like the design goals and wish they'd made a different game entirely." Which is fine, but is entirely subjective.

[Eldariel]

I kinda like Legendary Actions in that they give e.g. Dragon wing attacks and such a place to occur at. I like how they mesh with combat. I just don't like how they're exclusive to solo monsters. There's no real reason to that. Everyone should get to play around with stuff out-of-turn; it wouldn't have to be strong (or strength could be scaled to desired effect) but the fact that they only occur in a cinematic fashion as a balance patch sucks. A lot of wasted potential there. Then again, I don't think turn-based initiative systems are really functional to start with: simultaneous initiative makes 5e much, much smoother and fixes a lot of the silliness of turn-based movement and lack of ability to get away and such. Ultimately, this is just one of those many things where the design never even attempted to create something optimised to do the given task as well as possible but went with the "I guess this is good enough" and splattered it on the wall. Turn structure should be altered as a whole, and that would then open up what now amounts to Legendary Actions to get more interactivity and options inside the turn for everyone.

Then again, given how terribly 5e monsters are written far as bonus actions and reactions go, I guess that's only to be expected. If you want for engaging fights that are more than "I hit the giant until it dies", you basically just have to rewrite the monster manual entirely. I don't think there's more than like 10 interesting, interactive entries in the whole book, and the auxiliary monster books are sadly the same. Overall, monster/NPC writing and their related rules are easily one of the weakest parts of 5e; 4e did it better as did PF2e and even PF1e. Legendary Actions are just the peak of the iceberg here, though definitely the ugliest part.

I disagree about its ugliness. It solves the designated problem with elegance and in a reusable, systematic fashion. Combat is an abstraction, including number of attacks and the whole turn order thing. You can't get more metagame than that. In fact, a solution that tried to pierce that abstraction would be worse IMO.

What, so your argument is that "combat is an abstraction and therefore it doesn't matter what they do, it's fine"? Doesn't sound very convincing to me...

[Morty]

I can't speak for its execution in 5E specifically, but in general I don't place much value on PC/NPC asymmetry. Rules are abstractions and I don't see why everyone in the world should use the same abilities in the same way. Especially in D&D, where character creation is laser-focused on a very specific type of character. Using PC classes and levels for non-adventurers gets silly pretty quickly.

Legendary actions seem like one of 4E elements that made it to 5E but were cut up and diminished to make them acceptable. Still, they're a necessity for running proper boss fights, one way or the other.

[Eldariel]

I can't speak for its execution in 5E specifically, but in general I don't place much value on PC/NPC asymmetry. Rules are abstractions and I don't see why everyone in the world should use the same abilities in the same way. Especially in D&D, where character creation is laser-focused on a very specific type of character. Using PC classes and levels for non-adventurers gets silly pretty quickly.

Legendary actions seem like one of 4E elements that made it to 5E but were cut up and diminished to make them acceptable. Still, they're a necessity for running proper boss fights, one way or the other.

In 3e, they were mostly an emergent property of spellcasting: with contingencies and immediate action spells it was fully possible to run a boss fight with just the level of action interaction and difficulty desired. The cool part was that everyone could do it and that it didn't magically scale up to size. Of course, that made it hard to run mundane boss type enemies, but then again neither system really gives you much to work with far as martial bosses go.

[heavyfuel]

I generally agree with the sentiment OP has. Low AC monsters with a mountain of HP is a big issue I have with 5e. If I stab something with a sword as a high level character, I want this thing to die, not shrug off the blow because it has enough HP to take 10 other blows. Although I can definitely see why they chose to go this route, it makes combat far less swingy, and thus easier for DMs/Module writers to come up with encounters that don't end up with a TPK because nobody in the party could muster a roll higher than a 12.

(3) Healing & permanent injuries. One of the goal of 5e design is to ensure that the gameplay is not significantly different whatever class is chosen by the players. In particular, a team with absolutely zero healers should not suffer from permanent injuries more than a team with one. This let 3 options:
(a) Nobody every have permanent injuries, which is the simplest choice, hence the choice of 5e.
(b) Nobody ever heal permanent injuries, including magical healers. This choice would go against power-fantasy.
(c) Access to healing permanent injuries is common enough in the universe (through NPCs) that not having a healer in the team is not that much a problem. This choice would constraint settings to be high-magic.

You forgot option (d): Let mundane characters have nice things and be able to heal permanent injuries and death with something like a high DC Medicine check (of course, that would also mean letting characters that actually invested in the skill be able to reach such high DCs somewhat consistently)

[GooeyChewie]

WotC decided to create Legendary Actions for monsters (an asymmetry) as a metagame balance bodge. Rather than a good solution that sustained verisimilitude while addressing the metagame balance too, it is a sore thumb. Some asymmetry is ugly like this. A type of asymmetry you were not talking about and thus don't see how it relates.

I acknowledge that Legendary Actions were created for metagame balance purposes. I do not agree that this asymmetry is ugly. I find it useful and necessary for the game.

From the monster's perspective, the players also have a metagame balance bodge. They can bring more players! That final boss the DM was planning might have been fine for four players. But when Joe brings his co-worker and Suzy brings a friend and suddenly you have a party of six set to take on that solo enemy, that same encounter will be a cakewalk instead of an epic battle. So the DM needs a way to make up for the party's asymmetrical ability to add more actions via adding more party members.

What, so your argument is that "combat is an abstraction and therefore it doesn't matter what they do, it's fine"? Doesn't sound very convincing to me...

I think the argument is more that all of combat is an abstraction, so criticizing one specific element of it for being an abstraction doesn't make sense. Any particular mechanic in combat should be evaluated on the basis of how well that mechanic accomplishes its goals. Legendary Actions may be abstract, but they accomplish the goal of helping balance single-enemy encounters against party size due to the party-size dependent action-economy advantage the party will have in such encounters.

Giving Legendary Actions to players might sound fun. As a one-time thing it might even be fun, as a way for the players to take down something that would clearly outmatch them otherwise. If it were a standard mechanic, it would just add to the party's action economy, which in turn means the DM would need to account for that action economy by using more enemies or more Legendary Actions for single-enemy encounters. Ultimately adding Legendary Actions to players would only serve to add more actions into each round on both sides rather than to make combat better or more balanced.

[Eldariel]

Giving Legendary Actions to players might sound fun. As a one-time thing it might even be fun, as a way for the players to take down something that would clearly outmatch them otherwise. If it were a standard mechanic, it would just add to the party's action economy, which in turn means the DM would need to account for that action economy by using more enemies or more Legendary Actions for single-enemy encounters. Ultimately adding Legendary Actions to players would only serve to add more actions into each round on both sides rather than to make combat better or more balanced.

There's more to actions than number. Quality matters more: if PC legendaries don't contribute to e.g. decreasing enemy to 0 or making them unable to fight, it wouldn't really contribute to the problem. Stuff like active Perception checks and some item interactions could work great in the legendary framework for instance. Overall, it seems like a more functional out-of-turn action framework than the current Reaction framework.

[DwarfFighter]

In what way do Lair Actions and Legendary Actions break verisimilitude? I don't get it.

You kind of need to subscribe to the Ninja power theory to also accept Legendary actions:

1. All ninjas are equally bad-ass.
2. A swarm of ninjas are push-overs and katana-fodder.
3. The last surviving ninja is an unkillable death-machine.

If you think that is weird and unrealistic, Legendary actions are not for you.

-DF

[PhoenixPhyre]

You kind of need to subscribe to the Ninja power theory to also accept Legendary actions:

1. All ninjas are equally bad-ass.
2. A swarm of ninjas are push-overs and katana-fodder.
3. The last surviving ninja is an unkillable death-machine.

If you think that is weird and unrealistic, Legendary actions are not for you.

-DF

Wait...what? None of those apply. Legendary monsters aren't all equal, you don't fight them in swarms, and they don't change as they die (if they were fought in swarms).

Legendary monsters are
a) high CR. The MM has one below CR 10 (the unicorn). Most are in the 11-20 range.
b) designed to operate solo. The Pit Fiend, despite being a classic boss monster, isn't legendary. Why? Because he's normally faced with goons.
c) designed to be rare. Like "final boss of a T2 campaign" or "fought 2-3 times total over an entire 1-20 campaign". This is not 3e or 4e where CR ~ Level is a good guess. The median CR of creatures you'll fight (going by the DMG's standard) caps out at about CR 10.

Legendary monsters are designed to provide a cinematic feeling to a fight, feeling like a fight against something bigger and meaner. Something that inherently breaks the rules. Remember, 5e is not a simulation. The abstractions are tuned to provide particular aesthetics of fights, not to simulate what would actually happen in any kind of a blow-by-blow thing.

I'd say that if you're worried about legendary actions, you'd also have to dislike all the rest of the turn-based, resolved-on-the-spot combat abstraction, including HP, AC, saves, attack rolls, etc. Because they're really no different than giving the creature extra Reactions that they can spend on specific things (to provide the DM with extra guidelines to simplify their lives).

[Morty]

In 3e, they were mostly an emergent property of spellcasting: with contingencies and immediate action spells it was fully possible to run a boss fight with just the level of action interaction and difficulty desired. The cool part was that everyone could do it and that it didn't magically scale up to size. Of course, that made it hard to run mundane boss type enemies, but then again neither system really gives you much to work with far as martial bosses go.

Yeah, so it was enabled by the utterly dysfunctional and broken state of magic in 3E. Not really something worth preserving or replicating. 5E certainly leans even harder on "if you want to do anything cool you must cast spells", for PCs and monsters alike, but 3E's way of doing that isn't a particularly compelling alternative.

You kind of need to subscribe to the Ninja power theory to also accept Legendary actions:

1. All ninjas are equally bad-ass.
2. A swarm of ninjas are push-overs and katana-fodder.
3. The last surviving ninja is an unkillable death-machine.

If you think that is weird and unrealistic, Legendary actions are not for you.

-DF

This analogy would work if an enemy with legendary actions suddenly lost them before the PCs' eyes when another one came along.

[MaxWilson]

In what way do Lair Actions and Legendary Actions break verisimilitude? I don't get it.

It's absolutely bizarre that an Empyrean fighting a dragon attacks less often than an Empyrean fighting a dragon and two zombies, purely because of Legendary Actions. That degrades verisimilitude.

It's available to PCs through True Polymorph though, isn't it? As long as you really ARE that creature, and not just shapechanged into it, you have access. I also don't see how being dependent on party size is that much of an issue; to begin with, it's not THAT dependent, unless you either have a very small party, with no minions with their own initiative to boot, or a creature with A LOT of legendary actions. Secondly, even when that's the case, my verisimilitude is definitely not stretched by a creature of legend being more and more dangerous the more foes it faces.

True Polymorph does not grant legendary actions or lair actions, only legendary resistances.

As for magic in particular, it's not that permanent spells are GONE, they've just been made harder (you have to cast the same spell on the same area/object for a year, you have to spend a 9th level slot, etc.). To my mind, this makes it feel MORE magical, because it takes a lot of effort or superlative skill (as in only a few people in the world can do it) to pull off. It's rare and wondrous.

And the non-permanent durations don't feel any more arbitrary and video-gamey than previous editions have. If anything, I feel like concentration again makes committing to a spell more of a... commitment, as opposed to just loading up on (de)buffs like they're food at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

IMO the duration thing isn't really a magic problem, it's a systemic problem. It's bothersome that almost everything bad that can happen to a character ends in seconds, whether it's poisoning or blinding (with a knife) or hamstringing (by a monster). There are exceptions (poisoning that lasts for days from Contagion, petrification by Medusasa, or third-party effects like Dread levels from Cthulhu) but they are exceptional, which makes them feel arbitrary unless the DM uses them a lot.

Legendary monsters are
a) high CR. The MM has one below CR 10 (the unicorn). Most are in the 11-20 range.
b) designed to operate solo. The Pit Fiend, despite being a classic boss monster, isn't legendary. Why? Because he's normally faced with goons.

And yet Hutijin the Pit Fiend (CR 21) has legendary actions. You might say "that's because he's designed to operate solo" but that would be assuming your own conclusion. All we really know is that normal Pit Fiends have more HP and no legendary actions, and Hutijin has fewer HP, more abilities, and Legendary Actions. Canonically both of them have lots and lots of minions.

[Eldariel]

Yeah, so it was enabled by the utterly dysfunctional and broken state of magic in 3E. Not really something worth preserving or replicating. 5E certainly leans even harder on "if you want to do anything cool you must cast spells", for PCs and monsters alike, but 3E's way of doing that isn't a particularly compelling alternative.

No, I agree. I personally think the reaction system needs extrapolation if we're gonna try and **** around with a turn-based cluster****. Simply because the amount of stuff that happens gets pretty big so things need ways to drop in more than 1/round. Honestly, the whole action system could use a rehash in that regard. Though luckily enough 5e system converts fairly simply to simultaneous turns, which actually addresses things to a degree (at least in the sense that "active defense" is a thing you can kinda write into the system without ****ing the active defender totally over).

[MoiMagnus]

It's absolutely bizarre that an Empyrean fighting a dragon attacks less often than an Empyrean fighting a dragon and two zombies, purely because of Legendary Actions. That degrades verisimilitude.

Yes, this part of the rule is stupid. But it's kind of a corner case. In 99% of the fights played, there is always at least 3 enemies, so a legendary creature gets its 3 actions per turn, and is forced to spread them through the round, which is the intended effect.

In the 1% chance in which the legendary creature is against less than 3 enemies, the designer probably though:
(1) It might be a monster VS monster fight. We expect the GM to just use GM fiat to determine the result, not actually roll the attacks, so we're not gonna add a special exception for that.
(2) It might also be a monster VS very few PCs. The players probably have a rough time already. Moreover, we only added legendary actions to deal with the balance problem of "lot of heroes VS one monster", if there is not "lot of heroes", there is no need for the legendary actions any more. Let's not bother with adding an exception either.
(3) In both cases, if this bother the GM, that's why there have rule 0: to deal with corner cases and weird 1% situations which we willingly chose to not cover properly.

[cookieface]

If you want verisimilitude when fighting a dragon, then I suggest you walk outside and try to find a dragon to fight.

Literally this entire game is fiction, and this entire fiction is a game. That means there are two sets of rules it needs to conform to:
1) Rules that maintain some sense of fictional realism, as in, a more experienced wizard is stronger than a novice wizard, or a barbarian hits harder than a sorcerer when they punch.
2) Rules that maintain a fun game environment, as in, game balance so that a single random occurrence (such as a dice roll) does not have outsized affects on outcome.

It is impossible to satisfy both rulesets at all times. Combat already breaks the first set of rules in order to satisfy the second (forcing characters to act in a uniform order each and every round, forcing things like movement to be broken up in-game based on turns -- ie a character "stops" at the end of their turn despite combat supposedly being a continuous time period). Picking out some problems while ignoring others is obtuse.

Legendary Actions are necessary to balance these fights. Especially when claiming things like allowing multiple reactions is OK, because Legendary Actions are essentially extra reactions with no specific trigger. Lair Actions especially seems silly to criticize -- your DM can choose to add Lair Actions to ANYTHING and they aren't necessarily based on creatures involved. (For example, just being creative with environmental effects like a strong wind blowing through once per round to knock players prone can be done even if you are fighting Kobolds.) Sure, there are creatures that have specific rules associated with their lairs, but that doesn't mean Lair Actions must be limited to those creatures, or NPC creatures in general.

That said, if you are fighting at your own home base often, seems like adventuring maybe isn't what you're cut out for. Adventuring tends to require leaving home.

[GooeyChewie]

There's more to actions than number. Quality matters more: if PC legendaries don't contribute to e.g. decreasing enemy to 0 or making them unable to fight, it wouldn't really contribute to the problem. Stuff like active Perception checks and some item interactions could work great in the legendary framework for instance. Overall, it seems like a more functional out-of-turn action framework than the current Reaction framework.

Sure, quality matters. So does quantity. And sometimes sheer quantity begets quality.

Take the active Perception check, for example. If the DM builds an encounter where making an active Perception check does something important, then the Legendary Action allows the player to attempt that check while also doing whatever they want with their regular action. In this case, the quality of the Legendary Action isn't simply an active Perception check, but rather the quality of the other action the player took because they didn't have to use their regular action on the check. The Legendary Action takes away opportunity costs, which in turn means the players don't have to make as many meaningful choices.

On the other hand, if making an active Perception check doesn't do anything important, then the Legendary Action simply wastes time on a pointless roll. Either way, I don't see how Legendary Actions for players makes the experience better.

Wait...what? None of those apply. Legendary monsters aren't all equal, you don't fight them in swarms, and they don't change as they die (if they were fought in swarms).

I think the point is, if the DM were to build an encounter where you faced a swarm of faceless ninjas, none of them would have Legendary Actions. If the DM built an encounter where you faced one epic boss ninja (the last surviving ninja), that ninja would have Legendary Actions, even if they were ostensibly equally bad-ass as the rest of the ninjas.

[MaxWilson]

Yes, this part of the rule is stupid. But it's kind of a corner case. In 99% of the fights played, there is always at least 3 enemies, so a legendary creature gets its 3 actions per turn, and is forced to spread them through the round, which is the intended effect.

In the 1% chance in which the legendary creature is against less than 3 enemies, the designer probably though:
(1) It might be a monster VS monster fight. We expect the GM to just use GM fiat to determine the result, not actually roll the attacks, so we're not gonna add a special exception for that.
(2) It might also be a monster VS very few PCs. The players probably have a rough time already. Moreover, we only added legendary actions to deal with the balance problem of "lot of heroes VS one monster", if there is not "lot of heroes", there is no need for the legendary actions any more. Let's not bother with adding an exception either.
(3) In both cases, if this bother the GM, that's why there have rule 0: to deal with corner cases and weird 1% situations which we willingly chose to not cover properly.

Legendary Actions are an awkward solution to a problem created by 5E's initiative system. They're not a balance fix at all, since legendary actions are factored into CR exactly the same as Multiattack actions.

Fortunately, as you say, a DM can simply rewrite the legendary action rules completely (100% of the time, not just 1%). I just have monsters take legendary actions at 5, 10, and 15 points slower on initiative than their regular action. This eliminates Schrodinger effects and removes the verisimilitude issue.

[Sorinth]

It's absolutely bizarre that an Empyrean fighting a dragon attacks less often than an Empyrean fighting a dragon and two zombies, purely because of Legendary Actions. That degrades verisimilitude.

Doesn't the same apply to opportunity attacks? Why does a character get more attacks when fighting against a target that is constantly moving in/out of it's threat range?

Or how about GWM. If killing a creature is supposed to provide some sort of "morale" boost that allows for an extra attack, why wouldn't the Empyrean being outnumbered not also give them a "morale" extra attack(s).

[Eldariel]

Sure, quality matters. So does quantity. And sometimes sheer quantity begets quality.

Take the active Perception check, for example. If the DM builds an encounter where making an active Perception check does something important, then the Legendary Action allows the player to attempt that check while also doing whatever they want with their regular action. In this case, the quality of the Legendary Action isn't simply an active Perception check, but rather the quality of the other action the player took because they didn't have to use their regular action on the check. The Legendary Action takes away opportunity costs, which in turn means the players don't have to make as many meaningful choices.

On the other hand, if making an active Perception check doesn't do anything important, then the Legendary Action simply wastes time on a pointless roll. Either way, I don't see how Legendary Actions for players makes the experience better.

Sure, that's one way to look at it: but it can easily get you scaling improved information - and it could cost you a lot. This would allow modulating the effect: as it stands you won't be using your active Perception ever unless you literally have no productive actions left, which is at least as bad.

This system would allow moving stuff that isn't generally worth an action outside the turn as a reactive system (an active Perception check could easily be your entire "off-turn activity" at the cost of other options that could easily be written into it; stuff like blocking movement through adjacent squares or such). One reaction is just too little for interaction: legendary framework with different amounts of actions costing different amounts of action points and having a pool to draw from for each turn would make for much more fluid and varied interaction design.