D&D 5E Legendary monsters are not solo monsters

[Riley37]

it's a very stupid Legendary who willingly remains in combat with an adventuring party on their terms, without any backup.

Purple Worms might well be very stupid. They also lack magic resistance. Same for Dragon Turtles and Kraken?

Meanwhile, yes, if you run a dragon etc. as a videogame boss monster, that's very different from running it as an NPC who might have an interest in survival and act accordingly.

And on a third hand, then the legendary NPC might also have goals for which they're willing to risk a fight to the death. If they've spend the last century on their Master Plan for World Domination, and the "meddling kid" PCs show up at the critical moment, then the Legendary villain might stay in combat, hoping to keep the PCs from destroying his megadracolich that's within 1 hour of activation, rather than abandon that century's worth of effort. (If the spell to create the megadracolich requires 8 hours of Concentration, and he's already spent 7 hours on it, and breaking concentration means spell failure AND component loss... then the Big Bad might even try to fight the PCs while maintaining Concentration.)

 

[Riley37]

D&D is also a game with rules, and those rules have certain assumptions behind them. One of the main ones is that there will be a party of adventurers of varying classes, not a solitary fighter taking on the world.

Exactly. So, if you play under that assumption, are there ANY solo monsters? is the question of "solo PC vs legendary monster" already a corner case?

 

[Nebulous]

Lots of solo monsters might also be haughty enough or so overconfident they can't imagine a party defeating them and will fight past the turning back point. Being stupid might not be a factor at all.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Lots of solo monsters might also be haughty enough or so overconfident they can't imagine a party defeating them and will fight past the turning back point. Being stupid might not be a factor at all.

One long-standing problem with D&D is that you can never tell how tough someone is by looking at him (or her). A troll is usually just a troll, and a dragon is usually just a dragon, but any random dude could be either a peasant or Goku.

 

[Ratskinner]

This makes me want the condition track from SWSE.

I was hoping we'd have some kind of similar gig where all spells dealt damage in combat....for big critters, you could have damage points like "can't fly" or something. So if your spell can't actually take out the dragon whole, at least you push him past damage point 1 and the DM chooses "Can't Fly" or "Breath Weapon Blocked" or whatever. Also helps ease LFQW, because it bakes the effect into the monster/encounter pacing mechanics (aka HP), thus making it available for the warrior as well: "I deal 16 points of damage...Okay, you're blow damages that wing, he won't be flying soon.

Its not necessarily a tack you can take for every critter, but it also works for hordes and the like if you write them up as singular entities.

Of course, this makes HP pretty explicitly an "in-fight" pacing mechanic, and not some quasi-mystical form of meat, which irritates some.

 

[DaveDash]

I was hoping we'd have some kind of similar gig where all spells dealt damage in combat....for big critters, you could have damage points like "can't fly" or something. So if your spell can't actually take out the dragon whole, at least you push him past damage point 1 and the DM chooses "Can't Fly" or "Breath Weapon Blocked" or whatever. Also helps ease LFQW, because it bakes the effect into the monster/encounter pacing mechanics (aka HP), thus making it available for the warrior as well: "I deal 16 points of damage...Okay, you're blow damages that wing, he won't be flying soon.

Its not necessarily a tack you can take for every critter, but it also works for hordes and the like if you write them up as singular entities.

Of course, this makes HP pretty explicitly an "in-fight" pacing mechanic, and not some quasi-mystical form of meat, which irritates some.

Hitpoints should be though of as stamina really anyway - especially at higher levels. So a Dragon that's been worn down to the point it cannot fly is getting low on stamina.

 

[Ratskinner]

Hitpoints should be though of as stamina really anyway - especially at higher levels. So a Dragon that's been worn down to the point it cannot fly is getting low on stamina.

There are many who would vehemently deny what you wrote, because they "hit"....it says so right there. Also, why does regeneration work the way it does? Why does it take AD&D high-level fighters without magical help weeks to recover their wind after a fight? That seems contrary to what we'd expect. What about poisonous attacks? Why would I make a save if I'm just losing stamina? Or is that what the save determines? How many HP cause a Troll to lose its arm? Why don't orcs have the same sort of thing?

Unfortunately, HP don't really correspond very well to anything that directly happens in the game world, because they are simply "not-dead-yet-ed-ness"....which isn't something that the real world or fantasy fiction generally have (at least not in any way that functions like combat, HP, and healing do in D&D. That's why even Gygax's original attempt at describing them is largely incoherent. Its grammatically impossible to discern whether his "mix" of Divine Favor, Luck, Skill, etc. with "meat" is meant to apply to the total of all HP, or to each HP individually (i.e. the "only the last blow actually hits" vs. "Die Hard" schools of damage narration.) HP don't function (at least not very well) as a simulation mechanic, but do function as a fiction-pacing mechanic.

Unfortunately, that abstract narrative mechanic runs right up against the non-abstract spell descriptions. From this we run into one prominent aspect of the LFQW problem, condition imposition i.e. "You're Blind!". I'm suggesting that the two mechanics could be linked better. That is, for example, a target isn't fully narratively "paralyzed" unless the spell/effect does enough paralysis damage to drop it to 0 HP. Otherwise, the paralysis wasn't strong enough, and the HP loss reflects the target's loss of capacity to defend itself.

 

[Joe Liker]

I've ran a ton of combats against higher level monsters using a variety of different spell casting classes. It's highly unlikely that a spell caster doesn't have any spells that can effect the battlefield by the time they reach those levels. They may not be functioning at their full capacity, but neither is the poor melee fighter trying to hit the flying Dragon...

The post you were replying to mentioned only spells with attack rolls, not spells that affect the battlefield or deal damage on a save. I'm pretty sure you didn't actually look through the spell descriptions like I suggested.

Also spells like Faery Fire are great spells to spam at a creature with LR. It's pretty devastating to them if they don't save, and low enough you can spam it and burn through their LR. Likewise a Battlemaster who multi attacks can burn through a monsters LR in one turn.

Once again ... and WOW, how many times do I have to repeat this? ... I'm well aware of all the various tricks you can use to bypass LR. That's not what this thread is about. I'm not complaining about LR or asking for advice on how to deal with it.

I probably should have named the thread "Repository for everyone's canned responses on the topic of Legendary Resistance."

 

[DaveDash]

The post you were replying to mentioned only spells with attack rolls, not spells that affect the battlefield or deal damage on a save. I'm pretty sure you didn't actually look through the spell descriptions like I suggested.


Once again ... and WOW, how many times do I have to repeat this? ... I'm well aware of all the various tricks you can use to bypass LR. That's not what this thread is about. I'm not complaining about LR or asking for advice on how to deal with it.

I probably should have named the thread "Repository for everyone's canned responses on the topic of Legendary Resistance."

I wasn't even originally replying to you, but rather the chorus of posts in this thread claiming that LR renders spell casters ineffective.

You quoted me originally. If you didn't want to have this discussion, you probably shouldn't have quoted me in the first place.

Have another look through the spell listings. There actually aren't that many, beyond cantrips.

It's not hard to imagine a spellcaster never taking those spells, especially if the player has never looked through the MM and is unaware of LR.

 

[Joe Liker]

Spell casters have plenty of spells that use attack rolls, many quite effective. Legendary Resistance doesn't apply to those spells.

Yes, I quoted you, and this was the line I quoted.