D&D 5E How to defeat creatures with legendary actions?

[Neonchameleon]

Especially early on WotC was pretty open about expressing a dim view of homebrew* whenever they spoke about AL or other stuff that might intersect with AL. The AL community itself took that message baton & ran with it.

And AL is not the sum total of D&D - indeed AL with its essentially troupe based play where characters travel between games is precisely where I wouldn't want to see house rules that made my characters work differently from session to session.

This doesn't mean that it's appropriate nowhere. Just that it's not right for AL because of the shared DMing/shared characters aspect.

WotC has never made any real efforts to reverse than damage & the so far total absence of anything that could be interpreted in even admitting the validity of other playstyles within 5e

Other than, I don't know, most of the DMG plus quite a bit from e.g. Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.

WotC marks homebrew and optional rules as good things in its material for home games - and not for Adventurer's League. Next you'll be complaining that the manufacturers of footballs, when they sponsor a league, insist on the same rules happening in every game so the teams can play with each other consistently.

 

[Flamestrike]

So, you have been at it since 79 and you really dont feel like 5e is easy mode?

No mate, you're just likely not following the rules for Adventuring day budgets, encounters per day and rest frequency.

That's where my money is if your players are having an easy time of it.

 

[Neonchameleon]

No mate, you're just likely not following the rules for Adventuring day budgets, encounters per day and rest frequency.

That's where my money is if your players are having an easy time of it.

The problem with this advice is that six encounters per long rest (IIRC) tends to lead to massive amounts of blood, gore, and ecosystem depopulation.

This is why I recommend the "gritty" rules where a short rest is overnight and a long one is a weekend break. Multiple lethal fights in a day gets silly and is a worldbuilding problem.

 

[Flamestrike]

For example, 5 x 10th level PCs have an Adventuring day budget of 45,000 XP.

Here is a standard Adventuring day for them (encounters between Long rests):

Forest on way to Dragon lair:
E1 -4 Phase Spiders (5,600 XP) Easy
E2 - 2 Wyverns (6,900 XP) Medium
[Short rest]

Kobold village who worship Dragon outside lair:
E3 - 2 Kobold champions (Gladiators) 5,400 XP) Easy
E4 - Kobold tribe - Half Green Dragon Veteran, Mage, 12 Kobolds (not muliplied due to low CR) (7,050 XP) Medium
[short rest]

Dragon Lair:
E5 - Behir and 2 Green Dragon Wyrmlings (8,100 XP) Medium
E6 - Adult Green Dragon (13,000 XP) - Hard

That hits the median of around 45,000 XP, 6 encounters, and 2 short rests.

 

[Neonchameleon]

For example, 5 x 10th level PCs have an Adventuring day budget of 45,000 XP.

Here is a standard Adventuring day for them (encounters between Long rests):

Forest on way to Dragon lair:
E1 -4 Phase Spiders (5,600 XP) Easy
E2 - 2 Wyverns (6,900 XP) Medium
[Short rest]

Kobold village who worship Dragon outside lair:
E3 - 2 Kobold champions (Gladiators) 5,400 XP) Easy
E4 - Kobold tribe - Half Green Dragon Veteran, Mage, 12 Kobolds (not muliplied due to low CR) (7,050 XP) Medium
[short rest]

Dragon Lair:
E5 - Behir and 2 Green Dragon Wyrmlings (8,100 XP) Medium
E6 - Adult Green Dragon (13,000 XP) - Hard

That hits the median of around 45,000 XP, 6 encounters, and 2 short rests.

And depopulating an entire ecosystem here we come! An entire quest to defeat an adult dragon took only a single day. It's a distinctly violent campaign that that approach fits.

 

[Nefermandias]

No mate, you're just likely not following the rules for Adventuring day budgets, encounters per day and rest frequency.

That's where my money is if your players are having an easy time of it.

I'm not even talking about my table specifically. For your information, my players are very likely to go through 8 or more encounters a day, since we love dungeons.
It has absolutely nothing to do with my desire for "old school" official variant rules.

 

[Flamestrike]

I'm not even talking about my table specifically. For your information, my players are very likely to go through 8 or more encounters a day, since we love dungeons.
It has absolutely nothing to do with my desire for "old school" official variant rules.

Just play OD and D.

 

[tetrasodium]

Just play OD and D.

That reaction is part of the problem created by wotc's lack of even the smallest attempt at supporting a more lethal playstyle or one where attrition is an issue to give much thought to. The result is an implied "badrwongfun is not welcome in 5e" from wotc that has serious implications on any conversation involving actual taking wotc up on the hollow stripped for simplicity to make changing things easier silliness.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Since D&D isn't a board game or video game, the difficulty is purely a matter of adventure design. I've played very easy B/X sessions and very difficult 4e sessions. The biggest change impacting difficulty over the years has been the philosophy of adventure design, not the rules themselves. When converting AD&D modules to 5e, the biggest challenge was weaning my players off the expectation that they can murder everything in every room across the course of a day, not hitting the ballpark difficulty.

 

[Nefermandias]

Just play OD and D.

No, thank you.