James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
I think the main problem I have with Legendary Resistance is that it doesn't scale to the party. Some parties have multiple characters tossing out saving throws every turn. Some have very few. This results in the ability being crippling for some parties and quickly overcome by others. A "martial-heavy" party just chews through the monster's hit points and ignores the mechanic entirely. A "caster-heavy" party might be able to overcome LR. But if your party has only one guy who focuses on getting the monster to fail saves, it can be a real feel bad moment.
The best thing you can do when you're up against LR is to avoid all or nothing effects. Instead of trying to land a Hold Person, an effect that forces a save each turn like Moonbeam or Spirit Guardians might quickly chew through LR's. Effects that save for half damage, especially lower level spells, might trick the monster/DM into not "wasting" an LR for something so minor...but it probably has resistance to at least one fairly common damage type to be considered as well.
The second problem I have is that if a legendary monster has good saves already (and possibly magic resistance), it becomes much more of a problem than if it simply had 3x "I save" uses. It might not need to use it's LR on many saves, discouraging players from using many spells at all.
I understand that "boss monsters" really don't work, despite being an iconic part of the game, and kludges like legendary actions, lair actions, multiattacks (and multiattacks that allow spellcasting) are required to try to overcome action economy deficit, but the whole point of "big boss" fights should be to have memorable, dramatic moments. There's not enough interaction here to really feel that way. Instead it really does feel like you have to endure 7 actions between one turn and the next while anything that isn't a weapon attack just bounces off the thing until it finally drops dead (and let's not even discuss what happens if the monster has some kind of control effect aura requiring saves each turn to avoid). I'm not saying the alternative is better, ie, players stun lock a dragon and the battle is a cakewalk, but it really speaks to how weak monster design really is.
The same problems have been known for decades, yet there's very little real innovation beyond making some enemies function as an entire party of adventurers fused together into a single stat block. And there are other solutions, like monsters having phases, or a CR system that lets you actually use minions that aren't pathetically weak and unable to really do much because the big monster sucks up all the encounter budget that don't feel very well explored by D&D.
Sure, a DM could innovate at their own table, but sometimes that's a lot of work, and wouldn't it be nice if the 60 dollar monster book made by so-called professional game designers had done this work for you to make your job easier? Just a thought.
The best thing you can do when you're up against LR is to avoid all or nothing effects. Instead of trying to land a Hold Person, an effect that forces a save each turn like Moonbeam or Spirit Guardians might quickly chew through LR's. Effects that save for half damage, especially lower level spells, might trick the monster/DM into not "wasting" an LR for something so minor...but it probably has resistance to at least one fairly common damage type to be considered as well.
The second problem I have is that if a legendary monster has good saves already (and possibly magic resistance), it becomes much more of a problem than if it simply had 3x "I save" uses. It might not need to use it's LR on many saves, discouraging players from using many spells at all.
I understand that "boss monsters" really don't work, despite being an iconic part of the game, and kludges like legendary actions, lair actions, multiattacks (and multiattacks that allow spellcasting) are required to try to overcome action economy deficit, but the whole point of "big boss" fights should be to have memorable, dramatic moments. There's not enough interaction here to really feel that way. Instead it really does feel like you have to endure 7 actions between one turn and the next while anything that isn't a weapon attack just bounces off the thing until it finally drops dead (and let's not even discuss what happens if the monster has some kind of control effect aura requiring saves each turn to avoid). I'm not saying the alternative is better, ie, players stun lock a dragon and the battle is a cakewalk, but it really speaks to how weak monster design really is.
The same problems have been known for decades, yet there's very little real innovation beyond making some enemies function as an entire party of adventurers fused together into a single stat block. And there are other solutions, like monsters having phases, or a CR system that lets you actually use minions that aren't pathetically weak and unable to really do much because the big monster sucks up all the encounter budget that don't feel very well explored by D&D.
Sure, a DM could innovate at their own table, but sometimes that's a lot of work, and wouldn't it be nice if the 60 dollar monster book made by so-called professional game designers had done this work for you to make your job easier? Just a thought.
