D&D 5E To Be or Not to Be: Legendary

[Reynard]

Perhaps you missed were I added all of those to the non-legendary dragon? My non-legendary has more forced movement and applied conditions than the WotC Legendary version (which only has Command). Now, you could add those things to the Legendary version, but they are not there by default. Of course my non-legendary version still gets a reaction (choosing from 3 options), which can be fairly impactful.

I don't mind if you think Legendary monsters are better, I personally don't plan to stop using them, but to me your statement doesn't make sense based on what I presented. Maybe you are think about hypotheticals?

My only point in this exploration is to see if we can have interesting solos without the legendary status (something WotC toyed with too). I plan to use both myself, based on what fits for the particular monster IMO.

Those things need to happen off the dragon's turn or they don't matter from a state of play perspective.

 

[evilbob]

I've seen unoptimized martials do 100+ damage a turn at level 16. My hot take is that a 500 hp non-LA dragon will only get one turn against 4 lvl 20s, and (I know this isn't your scenario) potentially zero turns against 5. I agree the base damage all needs turned up. I don't believe losing LAs is the answer, but perhaps they are just overcosted?

The "revive with 400 more HP" changes everything tho.

 

[dave2008]

Those things need to happen off the dragon's turn or they don't matter from a state of play perspective.

Wow, that is interesting. That is not my experience at all. Anytime you can mess with the PCs action economy has always worked for me. Not to mention the dragon does of off turn control options.

 

[dave2008]

I've seen unoptimized martials do 100+ damage a turn at level 16. My hot take is that a 500 hp non-LA dragon will only get one turn against 4 lvl 20s, and (I know this isn't your scenario) potentially zero turns against 5. I agree the base damage all needs turned up. I don't believe losing LAs is the answer, but perhaps they are just overcosted?

The "revive with 400 more HP" changes everything tho.

Every group is different. My level 17 group is mostly fighters and they get about 40-45 DPR typically, and twice that when they nova.

I will point out that the dragon is probably going first, hitting with enough damage to down a PC. Then after the first PC's turn (assuming the damage it) it can fly up to 90 ft. and reposition for its next attack. So, while it is possible to take it down in one round, not likely IMO. I will point out the Legendary Actions don't do anything to prevent the same scenario you listed.

All monsters need to be buffed if you have more than 3-4 PCs IMO. That also has nothing to do with whether or not is legendary though. That is the focus fire issue.

Finally, I completely agree that Mythic is the way to go. I am thinking about making a little dragon book and everyone would use the mythic template.

 

[dave2008]

To start I think we have to look at this question at high levels (as the OP kicks this off with a high level dragon conversation).

I do think high level monster design is still flawed even in 2024. The game ramped up the math but it still doesn't respect how fundamentally different high level dnd is.

To that end, I do think legendary struggles to do its job. As noted, damage values are not high enough to deliver proper threat to a high level party. The issue here is that high damage can lead to swings where players take extra damage and die.... but at high levels thats really not a concern (tons of ways to avoid death or just resurrect).

Another example, the game assumes that one high level damage attack is equivalent to 2 or 3 attacks if they all do the same DPR. This is absolutely not true at higher levels, if you are doing an alpha strike, it has to do a RIDICULOUS amount of damage to deliver credible death threat, as compared to a 3 attack combo that can blow through a players death saving throws and deliver damage. While LAs in theory let a monster deliver damage in response to a player, because these single buckets of damage or often relatively low they don't deliver the same threat as a focused hit with multiple attacks.

A rethink of high level monster design I do think is useful. For example the recent discussion about "hitboxes".... which invokes the classic Final Fantasy idea that boss monsters often go through "phases". You beat phase 1 and then the boss moves to phase 2, with all conditions removed and at full health (no matter how much nova the phase 1 monster takes). Such a design bypasses a lot of fundamental powers of high levels PCs and is a very effective design that is underutilized in 5e imo.

The issue I have with high level monster design is the constraints of the WotC CR system. I have been planning to do monsters by level for a while now, to alleviate this problem. I just haven't pull the trigger yet.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

Replacing Legendary Actions with increased damage on its turn works perfectly fine. Some people may prefer the unpredictability of spreading out its damage, others may prefer streamlining it all into one turn. In the end it's six of one, half dozen of the other.

My only concern would be without Legendary Resistance how does the Dragon even get a turn? I suppose you're covered here since the Draconic Resilience reaction is basically infinite LR disguised as another name, but any non-legendary creature without a similar ability is just a bag of hit points that won't ever get to go.

 

[Stalker0]

I will also say Legendary Resistance has always been a kludgy system. A team of spellcasters might barely notice, whereas the solo spellcaster in a group will never get through it. You also get into the factor tthat you start needing all of these effects with no saves because why bother with saves against the legendary.

This has been ameliorated a bit with martials getting a lot more saves now, though most of their effects aren't worthy of a LR use. I prefer the concepts where the LR uses are tied into some environmental effect or even minions (I have often shifted LR from a free use to a "kill a minion within X feet to use LR".) this ensures some progress with LR and gives the party tactic ideas to try and isolate the BBEG from the minions to remove the LR. Or again the Final fantasy concept of multiple forms that shirk off all conditions. Or the designs where once per roudn the creature can just negate a condition. Of course the issue often is not conditions, it could be someting like getting trapped behind a wall of force or plane shifted away, in which condition removal won't help.