D&D 5E Multiple reactions replacing Legendary Actions?!

[Rabulias]

Quick thought that may need more pondering: Maybe things that prevent Reactions in the current rules will now reduce the target's number of Reactions by one instead?

 

[billd91]

Quick thought that may need more pondering: Maybe things that prevent Reactions in the current rules will now reduce the target's number of Reactions by one instead?

Kind of an annoying additional thing to have to track, I think.

 

[Rabulias]

Kind of an annoying additional thing to have to track, I think.

Just to clarify my thought: things like ray of frost would decrease the target's Reactions for one round, so not a long term adjustment to track. If you have creatures or characters with multiple Reactions they can use over a round, you will already be tracking it. If the creature is affected by a "Reaction draining" effect, you would mark it down as a usage for that round.

 

[jgsugden]

My point was already covered by others... that I had not seen.

 

[Stalker0]

I keep coming back to....why the change? What is this trying to "fix"?

Legendary Actions are no more complex than reactions, frankly they are simpler because they all have the same trigger (another creatures ends their turn). With reactions you lose granularity, aka the "2 action" abilities go away, unless they literally will have abilities that consume 2 reactions.

It also means that most boss monsters will never take OAs....I mean why consume your reaction on a simple attack when you get all the coolness of these super reactions. Conditions generally remove actions and reactions as well, so no real change there.

I'm just not sure how this is improving anything with boss monsters?

 

[overgeeked]

I keep coming back to....why the change? What is this trying to "fix"?

Legendary Actions are no more complex than reactions, frankly they are simpler because they all have the same trigger (another creatures ends their turn). With reactions you lose granularity, aka the "2 action" abilities go away, unless they literally will have abilities that consume 2 reactions.

It also means that most boss monsters will never take OAs....I mean why consume your reaction on a simple attack when you get all the coolness of these super reactions. Conditions generally remove actions and reactions as well, so no real change there.

I'm just not sure how this is improving anything with boss monsters?

I think those two are reasons why they’re making the change.

Giving monsters reactions with different triggers explicitly opens up design space for them to make the monsters more interesting to run as a referee and fight as a player. It makes the feature more versatile and useful.

OAs ensure that combat remains static once people are “locked in” to melee…which makes for incredibly boring fights where everyone stands in the same place for fear of OAs and just boringly hack away at each other until someone dies.

 

[Stalker0]

Giving monsters reactions with different triggers explicitly opens up design space for them to make the monsters more interesting to run as a referee and fight as a player. It makes the feature more versatile and useful.

But they have this right now, its not like legendary monster didn't have reactions before. they had reactions for things it made sense to react to, and LAs for mainstay actions. Combining the systems jsut removes the granularity and now the DMs has to juggle a lot more reaction conditions.

If before my LA forgot its reaction because I'm a human dm and forget things, ok not so bad. I would never forget the LAs because those were simple (when monster finishes this turn, check if I want to do an LA, rinse and repeat). But now if I forget the reactions, well then I'm missing out on a huge swath of the monsters power.

 

[billd91]

Giving monsters reactions with different triggers explicitly opens up design space for them to make the monsters more interesting to run as a referee and fight as a player. It makes the feature more versatile and useful.

Doesn't removing legendary actions, which aren't restricted to reactions to specific stimuli, also close down design space? Legendary actions can be pretty much anything.

 

[overgeeked]

But they have this right now, its not like legendary monster didn't have reactions before. they had reactions for things it made sense to react to, and LAs for mainstay actions. Combining the systems jsut removes the granularity and now the DMs has to juggle a lot more reaction conditions.

If before my LA forgot its reaction because I'm a human dm and forget things, ok not so bad. I would never forget the LAs because those were simple (when monster finishes this turn, check if I want to do an LA, rinse and repeat). But now if I forget the reactions, well then I'm missing out on a huge swath of the monsters power.

So give your solo monsters a number of attacks equal to the number of PCs they’re facing. And count those “reactions” as just any other action by removing the trigger. It’s really not that hard.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

It also means that most boss monsters will never take OAs....I mean why consume your reaction on a simple attack when you get all the coolness of these super reactions. Conditions generally remove actions and reactions as well, so no real change there.

I am interested in the new design. However, I did notice that there is no Opportunity Attack reaction in the Time Dragon statblock. While I assume that OA reactions will be covered at the beginning of the Monster Manual, I'm curious how they will word which "Actions" can be used for an Opportunity Attack. Are we to assume that it is the "Rend" action in the case of the Time Dragon?