D&D 5E MM: How many high levels monsters have some form of magic resistance?

[aramis erak]

Eh. It's not too far off for 3e and 4e, in effect. In 3e you had to take a full-round action, provoke AoOs, and it just made it a critical that you got to save against: the DC was ridiculous, but frankly the number of immunities in 3e meant that your chances of CdGing effectively was much less (both for landing an initial condition and for the thing not being immune to critical hits, death effects, etc)

In 4E, you had to do half the target's hp in one hit to kill it. You're not going to do that even with a crit in 5e.

Since we're talking about ~20th level you can assume several crits (iterative attacks) instead.

Every edition is different, but there's a reason I mentioned an assassin - hold person is low level, and you should kill any humanoid (especially a rogue-like one) with a round of autocrits. As opposed to hold monster which might find a creature that has too many hp to compete.

They failed to kill a sleeping kobold with a crit... the rogue didn't, but the mage did. (He did drop him 1 point shy of dead. With a fire bolt crit.)

I saw more crits with damage under 5 last night than I thought possible. Of the 6 crits I rolled last night, only one exceeded 5 points. (Dagger crits don't do much.)

And some of the human NPCs are into the 20 HP range; in my group of 3rd levels, 3 of them generate 6d6 on crits, . The two rogues, using their sneak attack (Advantage vs prone gives 2d6 more damage; crit doubles the dice thrown, wepaons are either 1d6 or 1d8 base) get either 2d8+4d6 or 6d6 on a crit. The fighter with greatsword does 2d6 base, doubled on crit, +2d6 for being a half-orc, for 6d6. But they aren't going to kill a 50-some hp knight who's held. It will take, on average, 3 hits to zero said knight, and another 2 to ensure he's dead. In a large combat, that can be a lot of time taken aside.

 

[Scorpio616]

The damage scaling relies on the conceit that you fight a healthy mix of low level opponents throughout the entirety of the campaign. Being able to fireball the 20 gnoll archers that accompany the Balor, even as it ignores the fireball, is supposed to still be a vital use.

A fine example.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Heh, I'm playing a diviner. But the adventure we've been doing makes it very difficult to play to a diviner's strengths; we been in a rather brutal hack and slash fest, with literally no chance to rest in a town, get supplies, or anything like that; we woke up in a dungeon full of zombies, and have been clawing ourselves out for about six level now. :/

At least as the diviner you get the rather useful 'potent' ability - have you had the chance to say "I've forseen that he blows his save against this spell" yet?

 

[Sailor Moon]

Unless the monster has some sort of Spellcraft, how would they know to do an insta save vs your high level spells? Why wouldn't they end up wasting it on lower level spells that you throw?

Sounds like metagaming to me.

 

[Riley37]

I'm seeing this mostly as thread about whether spellcasters are over-nerfed. From a different point of view:

In terms of world-building, this list seems totally appropriate to me. The Dragon Turtle and Purple Worm are high-CR mainly because they are *big*, and also because they have special movement (swimming, burrowing). The Kraken likewise - it has Freedom of Movement, but that's not a stops-all-spells defense. Dragons, demons, golems, and so forth, are high-CR largely *because of their innate magic*. When a critter is magic incarnate, when it's built of Weave as much as built of matter, then heck yes, it should not be easily stopped by Hold Monster and so forth.

If one of your early Actions is casting a high-level Concentration buff on a fighter ally, and the next six to twenty actions are casting other spells which don't conflict with Concentration, I think that's not a horrible ratio of support to direct action; and you're using magic where it can be extra effective, rather than trying a brute force "My magic offense beats your magic defense!" against a foe who is *more innately/essentially magical* than you are.

If you want a high-CR encounter which is easily handled by high-level magic, then toss a Swarm of T-Rex at the party, and the wizard can say "I got this". She'll cast Meteor Swarm, and the T-rexes will become a meatier swarm. (BBQ T-rex - them's good eatin'!)

 

[EroGaki]

At least as the diviner you get the rather useful 'potent' ability - have you had the chance to say "I've forseen that he blows his save against this spell" yet?

I've used it to that effect one time, so that my Hold Person actually landed. For a round.

I seem to mostly roll high on my Portents, so they mainly are used to auto save on saving throws or when I absolutely *must* hit on an attack roll.

 

[Moorcrys]

As a DM I would allow someone who took the Elemental Adept feat to ignore Magic Resistance vs. attacks using their chosen element.

Might make the Adept feat a little more palatable at higher levels.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Now, all that said, will you equal the fighter's performance against a solo legendary monster? No. Guess what: You're not supposed to. Slugging it out with giant monsters is the fighter's time to shine; you don't get to steal her spotlight just because the campaign's reached high levels. Your time to shine is when dealing with large groups of foes, or situations that can't be solved by brute force.

I find this argument unsatisfying, for reasons which are best expressed by swapping the classes round:

"will you equal the wizards performance against a solo legendary monster? No. Guess what. You're not supposed to. Slugging it out with giant monsters is the wizards time to shine; you don't get to steal the spotlight just because the campaigns reached high levels. Your time to shine is when dealing with large groups of foes, or situations that can't be solved by brute force".

I imagine that fighters would be up in arms if they were relegated to dealing with the large groups of foes, and just supported the wizard who deals with the solo legendary monster. And quite rightly so.

I think that the fighter and the wizard should both be able to pull their weight with the solo legendary monster and with the large group of lesser foes. Otherwise one class is condemned to second class citizen role, which ain't right.

 

[Dausuul]

I find this argument unsatisfying, for reasons which are best expressed by swapping the classes round:

"will you equal the wizards performance against a solo legendary monster? No. Guess what. You're not supposed to. Slugging it out with giant monsters is the wizards time to shine; you don't get to steal the spotlight just because the campaigns reached high levels. Your time to shine is when dealing with large groups of foes, or situations that can't be solved by brute force".

I imagine that fighters would be up in arms if they were relegated to dealing with the large groups of foes, and just supported the wizard who deals with the solo legendary monster. And quite rightly so.

I think that the fighter and the wizard should both be able to pull their weight with the solo legendary monster and with the large group of lesser foes. Otherwise one class is condemned to second class citizen role, which ain't right.

You're ignoring the second part of that: "Or situations that can't be solved by brute force."

As a high-level wizard, I can enslave people to my will with a wave of my hand. I can teleport the entire party thousands of miles. I can turn into a bird or a bug or a giant bear. I can travel to distant planes, I can drag the dead from their graves to serve me, I can put my soul in a gemstone and take over the body of someone whose body I like better than mine, I can transform whole landscapes with illusion magic.

The high-level fighter can swing a sword real good.

So who's the second-class citizen here, again? Let the fighters have their dragonslaying fun. It's just about all they've got.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I didn't ignore it - I specifically included it in the quote.

But, and this is a big but, fighters can get magic items that let them do tonnes of stuff outside of just hitting things. Always have, always will.

I think my point stands. Better if both classes can be effective at both situations.