D&D 5E Your thoughts on Legendary Actions

[Stalker0]

There was a lot of discussion about the mechanics of legendary actions in another thread, so I have opened this thread up for the discussion.

 

[Branduil]

Without legendary actions, solo boss fights easily degrade to repetitive slogs, as often happened with 4e solos. Actions are extremely valuable in 5e, and without LA solos would operate at such an extreme deficit compared to the PCs that it would be hard to make their fights interesting.

 

[SigmaOne]

I like the idea of Legendary Actions, but so far the ones I've seen are along the lines of "more of the same". Which is fine, but not inspiring. However; the Lair Actions I've seen are game-changers... definitely inspiring.

 

[jace]

I like the idea of Legendary Actions, but so far the ones I've seen are along the lines of "more of the same". Which is fine, but not inspiring. However; the Lair Actions I've seen are game-changers... definitely inspiring.

Totally. The Lair Actions are much more interesting. The Legendary Actions have just as much potential to be interesting, but the examples so far don't do anything particularly interesting with them.

 

[The Hitcher]

Totally. The Lair Actions are much more interesting. The Legendary Actions have just as much potential to be interesting, but the examples so far don't do anything particularly interesting with them.

I think the point of legendary actions (as opposed to lair actions), is that the monster get to do the things it normally does, but out of normal sequence. It would be weird if a monster could do things out of sequence that it can't do on its actual turn.

Edit: Maybe defensive maneuvers would be an exception, but they can do those with their reaction, anyway.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Totally. The Lair Actions are much more interesting. The Legendary Actions have just as much potential to be interesting, but the examples so far don't do anything particularly interesting with them.

Well, since they can be enacted potentially multiple times a round, you don't really want them to be too interesting. Or complex, also because of their potential frequency.

But I really am looking forward to the Beholder

 

[Mistwell]

Here is the objection I saw from the other thread. I don't agree with the objection, but I am trying to present it fairly:

Legendary actions are tied to PCs actions. You get a maximum you can use (we've seen three, presumably this number varies by creature), but you can only use them after a PC takes it's turn that round.

This is objectionable to some because the number of attacks the creature gets depends on the number of foes it is facing, and not it's own ability to make attacks. If it faces three foes, it gets three legendary actions per 6 second round, but if it faces two foes it only gets two legendary actions in that same 6 seconds, and against one foe it gets only one legendary action in that time.

So I guess the objection is this feels too metagame to some, and unnaturally controlled by the outside factor of "number of foes" which does not seem linked to the creature itself (there is nothing in the description of the creature that really explains why it would attack less against fewer foes in a given period of time).

To use a comic book analogy, the Hulk gets stronger the angrier he gets, and he gets angrier when he is hit harder by a foe - so his strength is based on the foe he is facing. Similarly, Legendary creatures attack more, the more they are attacked. So their number of attacks grows with the number of foes. But while Hulk's superpowers explain this growth in strength based on the foe's strength, there is nothing in the Legendary creature write-ups that explains the growth in number of attacks based on number of foes.

 

[Ainamacar]

With a slightly different action economy one could probably have achieved the feel of legendary actions without introducing a separate mechanic for it.

For example, let bonus actions be fuel for reactions (and other out-of-turn things) and don't fix their number strictly at 1 per turn. Normal creatures, even the PCs, would get a single bonus action each turn, however, so the game could play very similarly to what exists now. In this context legendary creatures would simply be those creatures with additional bonus actions each turn and some fearsome out-of-turn uses for them.

This would be somewhat more challenging to design and balance than the current system (especially the potential to "waste" bonus actions...probably a big reason reactions are a separate thing), so I can understand why they locked down the "normal" action economy first and then added legendary actions on top.

 

[kenmarable]

I'm a big fan (with the caveat of not having used them yet in game, but the concept seems great). Captures more of the back and forth feel I would like high level solo fights to have. Whether it's the Fellowship taking on a cave troll or PCs taking on a dragon, that back and forth flow and unpredictability of the monster feels more fun and exciting to me.

Plus, I like how it scales with group size (at least a little). Probably very rarely an issue in practice, but somewhere deep down I really like subtly responsive design (and not just in game design).

 

[Sir Brennen]

Here is the objection I saw from the other thread. I don't agree with the objection, but I am trying to present it fairly:

Legendary actions are tied to PCs actions. You get a maximum you can use (we've seen three, presumably this number varies by creature), but you can only use them after a PC takes it's turn that round.

This is objectionable to some because the number of attacks the creature gets depends on the number of foes it is facing, and not it's own ability to make attacks. If it faces three foes, it gets three legendary actions per 6 second round, but if it faces two foes it only gets two legendary actions in that same 6 seconds, and against one foe it gets only one legendary action in that time.

So I guess the objection is this feels too metagame to some, and unnaturally controlled by the outside factor of "number of foes" which does not seem linked to the creature itself (there is nothing in the description of the creature that really explains why it would attack less against fewer foes in a given period of time).

To use a comic book analogy, the Hulk gets stronger the angrier he gets, and he gets angrier when he is hit harder by a foe - so his strength is based on the foe he is facing. Similarly, Legendary creatures attack more, the more they are attacked. So their number of attacks grows with the number of foes. But while Hulk's superpowers explain this growth in strength based on the foe's strength, there is nothing in the Legendary creature write-ups that explains the growth in number of attacks based on number of foes.

Totally playing devil's advocate here, because I'm completely on board with LA's.

So it should be the combined strength of the foes, not the number. What if it's just a single, very powerful foe, then? Shouldn't a Legendary dragon be using all of it's LAs if its fighting another Legendary dragon?