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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stalker0" data-source="post: 9555628" data-attributes="member: 5889">Yes there is a huge amount of control aspect to that banish and its a nice simple way to let the gold control the battlefield in all sorts of interesting ways with a very very simple mechanic. So bravo on that one. I will say a DM does have to be careful, you never want to banish a character after that characters turn....otherwise they will pop back in before they go and will never lose their turn. Its a time when the DM has to "cheese" knowledge of the initiative order to get the full bang for their buck out of the ability.Overall, the gold looks like it overall got a pretty solid upgrade in damage and stats. I still hate the over-reliance on legendary resistances...its an effective mechanic but its also just exceedingly boring....but I recognize that it wasn't going to go away.In terms of the rend damage, I don't personally care that much myself, as I normally just roll all my attacks and tell the players the final number anyway, so at the end of the day all they hear is the big honking number. I can say that mechanically, having 3 attacks at lower damage is deadlier than 2 attacks at higher damage in 5e's system..... just because of the way death saves work at high levels. Its far deadilier to knock a player to 0 on attack 1, and then "boom boom" two crits with your other attacks and the PC is dead..... than it is with just two attacks. Now if a single attack did so much damage it could actually trigger the instant death rule than sure....but monsters just very rarely dish out that kind of single target damage.My biggest peeve with the rend damage is the 2d8 fire damage. That is such an add-on at this level....and as a DM who is running this fight with a complex monster and probably several other monsters and a lair etc etc.... why add on this piddly little damage that I have to roll separately and call out to my players and then they go "wait was that second number 6 or 7? ..... ok thank you....oh crap can you remind me what the first number was again?"Tracking two seperate damage numbers on an attack is a surprising amount of overhead when your doing it round after round after round. Now I don't mind that for liek a wraith's life drain when the necro damage REALLY matters (since it can't be healed). But for something like this....just up the physical damage and remove the fire. Keep it clean and simple. You already have PLENTY of reason to get fire resistance/immunity to stop the big breath.I will say that Int save is awefully low for such an epic monster.The clause on the weakening breath that it automatically ends after 1 minute is a nice little rounded touch, so the wizard in the party doesn't just stay permanently weakened for all time (such 20s aren't an auto pass for saves, it is possible for some players to never pass that save).I will note that because of this weakening breath (which is very easy to use as you can just replace a rend with it), this dragon is A LOT tankier than the old one. -5 damage on every attack is going to add up pretty fast, and unlike the old one you have tons of incentive to use it (the old one took your entire opening action, what the hell dragon is going to do that against high level pcs....but with this version its coming out right at the beginning).</blockquote>

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