D&D 5E Legendary Resistance shouldn't be optional

[Vaalingrade]

I'd just remove the 'optional' from the title.

It just shouldn't be.

 

[Quickleaf]

I get what you're saying. Legendary Resistances tries to keep solos fighting longer but it has a couple flaws

My thought process is IF you're going to change Legendary Resistances at all, might as well rethink and get rid of it (in its current form). I do want to go one step further though...

The only reason the dissociated mechanic of Legendary Resistances exists as a "one size fits all" paintbrush is due to a fault of rules (how certain conditions are designed), so why not either fix those rules or just totally changing Legendary Resistances into something and consistent application like you're describing.

Just my two coppers.

 

[tetrasodium]

LR aren't hit points, though. they aren't there to mitigate damage. they are there to eliminate win-button spells. The whole point is that the fight is supposed to be cooler, and probably longer, than your typical fight.

No that is not the function of legendary resistance as implemented. We once had a subsystem in d&d that was there to eliminate "win-button" spells (and sometimes abilities), that subsystem was called Spell Resistance & worked so well that casters tended to fork their build very early on to either specialize in other spells that were weaker or more group friendly (ie force multiplier stuff for the party & minor debuffs for monsters that fell well short of "win button") vrs being specialized for damage & the ability to be more successful in overcoming SR.

Legendary resistance impacts literally any ability with a save resulting in what often feels arbitrary & capricious or singling out a particular player who just opts out of contributing in any meaningful fashion beyond phoning it in

By have LR triggered, all you are doing to asking players to avoid using those spells or abilities, which is neither cool nor fun. At least with the system as it stands, the GM has to pick when to use them. this means that the players can try and maneuver the GM into wasting them (as @Ruin Explorer mentions).

Having trigger conditions would accomplish that, the current implementation does nothing of the sort.

The boss fight is supposed to be hard and likely to kill some PCs. That's the point.

Legendary resistance does so little to accomplish that it would be a stretch to even make the claim that it does so even a smidge.

 

[Smarmot]

I really don't see the issue. Any DM other than perhaps a very new one will use LRs when appropriate. They are not there to get burned up by acid splash cantrips before you land your crippling Save or Suck spell.

As far as narrating the Legendary Resistance, it's similar to narrating a passed saving throw. Like describe the effect starting to take hold and then failing through the creature's shear force of will. Momentarily turning into a swarm of bats is cool too of course but there's no need for new mechanics.

Legendary Resistance is a simple, elegant way of making the fight dangerous and not just a one man magic show.

 

[tetrasodium]

I really don't see the issue. Any DM other than perhaps a very new one will use LRs when appropriate. They are not there to get burned up by acid splash cantrips before you land your crippling Save or Suck spell.

As far as narrating the Legendary Resistance, it's similar to narrating a passed saving throw. Like describe the effect starting to take hold and then failing through the creature's shear force of will. Momentarily turning into a swarm of bats is cool too of course but there's no need for new mechanics.

Legendary Resistance is a simple, elegant way of making the fight dangerous and not just a one man magic show.

Not all save or suck spells are created equal. Compare slow & web for an easy example... That difference is the reason why one was once SR:no & the other was SR:yes in the past. That is a critically important distinction because yesterdays boss fight is just one of the many mooks in today's boss fight.

 

[Reynard]

Having trigger conditions would accomplish that, the current implementation does nothing of the sort.

Maybe re-read the bit you quoted.

Legendary resistance does so little to accomplish that it would be a stretch to even make the claim that it does so even a smidge.

But that's the intent.

 

[Pedantic]

LR aren't hit points, though. they aren't there to mitigate damage. they are there to eliminate win-button spells. The whole point is that the fight is supposed to be cooler, and probably longer, than your typical fight.

That's exactly hit points. There's no difference between an "I win spell" and "the 4th round of attacks that kills the monster." It's still invest actions until monster is dead, the problem as has been articulated elsewhere, is that team martial and team magic are attacking separate health pools.

By have LR triggered, all you are doing to asking players to avoid using those spells or abilities, which is neither cool nor fun. At least with the system as it stands, the GM has to pick when to use them. this means that the players can try and maneuver the GM into wasting them (as @Ruin Explorer mentions).

The boss fight is supposed to be hard and likely to kill some PCs. That's the point.

That's exactly backwards. If it's a fixed reaction, you have Y hits before you land your effects, exactly like hit points. If it's at the DM's discretion, you may never get to use your big effects, as the DM allows smaller effects through to save the resistance for when it actually matters. Either the DM burns the points badly and you get to use your most effective spells, or they use them effectively, and it was incorrect to bring powerful condition or save vs. die spells at all.

I'm saying that play loop should be built into the monster (slow it twice so the stun will stick) instead of mediated by the DM/player relationship at the table. It makes it much more directly playing vs. the monster, instead of playing a mind game vs. your DM.

 

[Pedantic]

I don’t mind that it’s a choice, but I think legendary resistance is just boring. It serves an important role because taking out an ostensibly legendary monster with a single save-or-suck effect is very anticlimactic. But, there’s no flavor to legendary resistance. The DM just gets to say “nope” to a failed save 3 times. Heck, if the DM doesn’t directly tell the players the monster failed but it’s using a legendary resistance, it might even be completely invisible. But if they do that, it makes the player feel like the action was wasted. I much prefer something visible, flavorful, and ideally, specific to the monster.

For example, in my custom Strahd stat block, I replaced legendary resistance with the ability to turn into a swarm of bats as a reaction to getting hit with an attack or failing a save. A swarm of bats is immune to most negative conditions, and generally difficult to pin down. So, he can still mitigate the impact of a save-or-suck spell. But, doing so eats up his reaction for the round, and his action on his turn, since turning back into his human form takes a full action to do. You don’t get to restrain or charm him, but you do get to waste his action economy, so there’s still a lot of value in targeting him with such effects.

Another example might be giving a monster the ability to sacrifice some hit points to end a condition affecting it. Then instead of legendary resistances as an alternate health pool, you put everyone on the same track - effects that inflict conditions end up doing a significant chuck of damage, so the blaster-casters, the control mages, and the martials are all contributing to killing the monster in the same way.

For sure replacing LRs with more monster specific abilities (and/or swapping in action economy penalties or some connection to HP damage) in general is a better design idea, but in the system we have and for the purpose LRs currently serve, they would do a better job if they were triggered instead of optional.

 

[Charlaquin]

For sure replacing LRs with more monster specific abilities (and/or swapping in action economy penalties or some connection to HP damage) in general is a better design idea, but in the system we have and for the purpose LRs currently serve, they would do a better job if they were triggered instead of optional.

I don’t think making legendary resistance triggered instead of optional would solve any of the problems with them. The problem isn’t that DMs don’t know when they should use LR, it’s that LR is hard to perceive when it isn’t directly announced, feels unfair when it is directly announced, and results in either all of the actions spent burning through LR being wasted when the monster dies from HP loss, or all the actions spent dealing damage to it being wasted when the monster runs out of LR uses and fails a save-or-die effect. My perspective is if you’re going to bother changing them, might as well redesign them entirely. Keeping them as-is and just making them mandatory triggers is just ineffectual tinkering for no noticeable benefit, in my opinion.

 

[Chaltab]

The problem with making them triggered is that the more specific a trigger condition is the more likely the DM is to forget, especially in a big combat that has mooks or lair actions. It's a lot of moving parts.