D&D 5E Legendary monsters are not solo monsters

[Tormyr]

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.

I don't know if you mean this from how the post is written, but a Legendary creature can always choose to not use its Legendary Resistance on a failed save. Just failing a save does not automatically cause it to kick in. The Legendary creature can save it for the "bad" spells.

 

[DaveDash]

I don't know if you mean this from how the post is written, but a Legendary creature can always choose to not use its Legendary Resistance on a failed save. Just failing a save does not automatically cause it to kick in. The Legendary creature can save it for the "bad" spells.

My point is that Faerie Fire is a pretty potent first level spell. Yes they can chose to not use LR, but in a lot of cases, they probably wouldn't want to.

 

[DaveDash]

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

I just did a count, and there's about 16-18 spells in the game that use attack rolls, and some of them do the best single target damage in the game (Scorching Ray). There's only a small number that are pretty useless.

Given this edition is all about using higher level slots and having flexible casting slots, there are plenty of options of casters to use direct damage spells against creatures with legendary resistance.

 

[Neonchameleon]

There have been a lot of complaints and discussion about Legendary monsters, particularly the Legendary Resistance trait. The existence of Legendary Resistance should not be seen as a slap to the face of spellcasters everywhere. Instead, it should be taken as a strong hint from the designers that perhaps the spellcaster's talents are better used elsewhere on the battlefield. It is the DM's job to design the encounter so that that is possible.

That means that the so-called "problem" is less in the monster design and more in the encounter design. A lot of DMs seem to think "Legendary" means "solo," even though there is no such indication in the rules. I'm sure 4e is largely to blame for this misconception, but I'm willing to bet people who never played 4e are falling into the same trap.

So if Legendary Monsters aren't meant to be Solos (rather than simply being as badly designed as MM1 solos) then there is no way out of the box that a party in a game of Dungeons and Dragons should have a decent fight against a dragon without a pack of minions. Is Dungeons and Dragons really intended to lack showdowns with the party vs a dragon?

I think this is part of why Legendary critters don't have a different XP total from other critters. An ancient white dragon and a pit fiend don't have different XP values. If you're at a level where they would be a viable threat, you still need the same total XP for the encounter with either one of 'em.

The ancient white dragon is just more badass. Which is kind of awesome.

So what you're saying is that XP doesn't reflect either how badass something is or the level of challenge it's supposed to be? Then what the hell is a monster's XP value meant to represent?

 

[I'm A Banana]

So what you're saying is that XP doesn't reflect either how badass something is or the level of challenge it's supposed to be? Then what the hell is a monster's XP value meant to represent?

Represent? Not much. Sort of "what you learned from fighting this monster" in the fiction. But it's mostly a campaign pacing mechanic (it's mostly about when and how often you get to level). For that goal, there shouldn't be any real variation in XP earned by RAW from a critter of a given CR -- a game that focuses on dragon-slaying and titan-crushing probably shouldn't advance any quicker than a game that focuses on orc-slaying and goblin-crushing.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

So if Legendary Monsters aren't meant to be Solos (rather than simply being as badly designed as MM1 solos) then there is no way out of the box that a party in a game of Dungeons and Dragons should have a decent fight against a dragon without a pack of minions. Is Dungeons and Dragons really intended to lack showdowns with the party vs a dragon?

So what you're saying is that XP doesn't reflect either how badass something is or the level of challenge it's supposed to be? Then what the hell is a monster's XP value meant to represent?

"Legendary" is already factored in when determining CR, so adding extra xp would account for it twice.

Also Legendary creatures are not meant to be faced solo at their CR. They are a medium challenge only at that point. Which means more or less beaten without too much trouble. So you need to use higher CR if you want a better challenge.

 

[Dausuul]

The problem with CR is that monster XP value is slaved to it, which means CR is trying to pull double duty: Functioning as a "this tall to ride" measure and as a measure of a monster's overall threat level. As long as every encounter contains the same number of monsters, this works fine. But there's no provision for a monster which functions as the equivalent of 4-5 weaker monsters.

I wouldn't assume that CR is performing its "this tall to ride" function in the context of legendary monsters.

 

[Joe Liker]

CR is, in general, not useful for anything -- not even the job it is supposed to do, which is to help the DM gauge the deadliness of a monster.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Don´t think it is that bad...

but I would have liked CR dissoziated from CP too. I believe, it would help to have offensive CR and defensive CR spellt out in the monster entry. This way you could gauge deadliness better.

So I want every monster to have that entry: CR: 7/3 total 5(whatever XP it is)

 

[aramis erak]

CR is, in general, not useful for anything -- not even the job it is supposed to do, which is to help the DM gauge the deadliness of a monster.

Works just fine for me. My experience with the 5E CR's is that, yes, they do work well for generating the difficulty of an encounter, and yes, they do a good job of indicating "you must be at least as tall as this to safely ride this ride".

Critters of CR≥APL+2 are a significant challenge by themselves.