(Psi)SeveredHead
Adventurer
It seems that certain powerful creatures (dragons, vampires) get something called "Legendary Actions". Basically, they are 3 actions that they get to take each turn after an opponent finishes their turn. The dragons can Detect, tail slap, or wing buffet (costs 2 LA's), the vampire can move without drawing AoO, punch, or bite (costs 2 LA's). All Legendary Action points recharge at the start of the monster's turn.
So, an example as I understand it:
Monster gets his full turn.
Player 1 goes.
Monster gets Legendary Action.
Player 2 goes.
Monster gets Legendary Action.
Player 3 goes.
Monster gets Legendary Action (unless he used the "costs 2 LA's" option already).
Any other players go.
Monster gets full turn, and repeat.
Since he can only use 1 LA per enemy's turn, if he's only facing 1 opponent, he can only use 1 Legendary Action before it comes back to his turn again.
All the monsters in HotDQ get 3 LA's, but I could see varying that if it makes a battle too tough for the PCs... maybe only give the monster 1 or 2 LA's instead of 3 per turn.
What do people think of Legendary Actions? This is the 1st I'd heard of them, and they make boss monsters very scary IMO.
I'm a huge fan. They exist to create "solo" monsters. The first monster we saw with Legendary Actions was a black dragon. I tested a monster like that in 4e, and concluded the monster should have a triggered action (at the start of a player's turn) instead. In either case, the monster has a Schrodinger's Actions trait, where the number of actions it gets is at least partly determined by the number of opponents it is facing. (There's a really weird 4e monster, the Colossus of Laarn, where this is explicitly part of the stat block. It rolls initiative once per opponent and gets a full turn per initiative roll.)