https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/1ibv1mn/are_legendary_resistances_fun/
Robot eye comedy guy: has some good ones, many from vid games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUQiwasHVzE
PDF here:https://trekiros.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/legendary-resistance-alternatives-_-trekiros-1.pdfMight buy this: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/432499/Save-or-Suck?src=youtube&affiliate_id=2038543
- COSTLY RESISTANCES
- many armed badguy has 6 arms, 6 attacks. Can lose an arm to use a LR
- I guess he "swings up an arm and it is blown off, but avoids the death save roll/disintegration ray."
- Evil Mage - he uses up a level 6 or higher spell slot to Auto save on a roll.
- "The mage is caught off guard for a second, but blasts your fireball with his cone of cold to cancel it out".
- Or the party spell just does damage
- for high level super thing, does 20% damage, OUCH
- AKA Blood sacrifice
- Or party's spell locks them for one round instead of infinite rounds (or even half a round?)
- Maybe take away one LR plus "all" their Legendary Actions for that round/next round.
- DESTRUCTABLE RESOURCES
- The 3 pillars behind the dragon that must be destroyed to get past LR
- The boss has immune to 3 types of dmg, but weak to 1 or 2 types of dmg.
- Fuzzy here but maybe, You kick those weaknesses asses, and now it's not resistant to anything. Something where the players get a nice progression that they can figure out, not blind luck on rolling da dice.
- MULTI PHASE ENCOUNTERS
- Make the boss "3 encounters" so each mega spell gets rid of one of those encounters.
- Perhaps 3 phases of the boss
- Maybe for Strahd, it is Phase 1, bat-human-form, phase 2 = wolf-man form, phase 3 = real vamp.
- (((he reminds, don't let SNOWBALL effect happen in boss fights. Bring back the tension halfway through battle, so the players don't feel like it's a done deal and boring.)))
- I'll say, this is like the Souls Games annoying boss mode... they get super duper annoying smart when they are almost dead and will easily one shot you. It's just annoying in Souls games b/c it is ALLLLLL about being patient and only patient.
- PASSIVE THREATS
- Boss powers that are doing damage even if boss is paralyzed (just less damage)
- Like giant spears thrust into ground, doing lightning to area, but not super crazy damage total since boss cant do his normal attacks if paralyzed.
- Strahd - how about ... swarm of 50 bats... super high attack roll they do 50 dmg, medium roll they do 25 dmg. AOE might take them all out (thinking 3-5 minis to represent 50 bats).
- REWORK ALL SAVE or SUCK spells
- They put out something on the DMguild you can buy that does this.
- I think he said it was him plus the same ppl that made the MCDM Flee Mortals monster manual... maybe.
- Pathfinder also does this, eh?
- critical save is 5 or 10 over the DC, etc.
- OK, that's a lot of work, but makes sense.
- You always get what you signed up for.
Pathfinder has cool options:
Yeah it makes me wish D&D 5e took the PF2e approach to spells where there is varying degrees of success instead of just pass/fail.
Like look at Confusion for example:
Pass: nothing happens.D&D 5e:
Fail: Confused for 1 minute, save every round to end early:Critical Success: nothing happens.PF2e:
Success: stunned for 1 round.
Fail: Confused for 1 minute, save every round to end early.
Critical Fail: Confused for 1 minute, no save to end early.This means even if you pass the save, the spell still does something. However... Fighters get the best saves, AND their saves are treated as one tier higher, so not only are their chances of getting a success high, it's actually a critical success, making them VERY difficult opponent to lock out of a fight.
Disclaimer: Crits in PF2e work differently than 5e, a crit in PF2e is 10 over the DC, so if your save DC is 18, and they roll a 28, then that's a crit. Creatures with high saves will still give you a hard time against some spells, but for saves they're not good in, it may be physically impossible for them to get a critical success.
Do also note that “stunned” and honestly most non-crit fail CC effects don’t completely disable a creature, rather taking away 1/3 actions or reducing numbers.
Another idea person:
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No need for legendary actions, which I’ve always found a bit awkward and don’t properly fix the action economy of a single monster.
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No need for legendary resistance as if they do get CC’d they will have many more opportunities to pass a saving throw and end it. (This doesn’t innately fix certain spells that just end the encounter or have no safe after the initial failure, but those are rare in the level ranges I typically DM.) Using disabling tactics becomes much more viable and satisfying because you might deny the enemy a few turns, rather than feeling like you’re brute forcing through a wall of legendary resistances.
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When the encounter starts going bad and players begin dropping rather than spiraling out of control the monster also gets fewer actions which really helps limit the circumstances where due to a few bad rolls the party gets into a situation where the only way to avoid a TPK is for the villain to act progressively stupider.
It works for me and my players tend to like it. I only run this for specific solo boss monsters and always tell the party it’s one of those upfront.
I really like:
Other games, or even other designers operating within 5e, handle this better. For instance, Pathfinder uses a degree of success system, where all spells have partial effect on successful saves, and rather than negating the effect completely allows the boss to still be partially effected. Meanwhile, MCDM in Flee Mortals (by far the best 5e monster book), made it so that a monster suffers a meaningful and specific penalty whenever they use a legendary resistance: for instabce, their beholder equivalent has to permanently sacrifice an eye whenever they do so, diminishing their combat power and versatility.
https://shop.mcdmproductions.com/collections/flee-mortals-the-mcdm-monster-book
https://www.tribality.com/2024/02/13/flee-mortals-review/
I like the:
"The dragon pulls power from 3 giant pillars in the back of the cave to resist your spell, one crumbles, two remain.". And let the players go whack them down so there are no more LR left.
IvyHemlock said it:
What I do, is make LR's visible and interactable. Compare:
"The adult red dragon uses a legendary resistance. Your spell does nothing"
Versus:
"In response to your spell, The adult red dragon draws power from the three ruby pillars in the back of the room. As a result of this power surge, he succesfully resists your spell, but one of the ruby pillars collapses, seemingly devoid of further power"
Note:
Sir-xer21 says: I don't have a solution, but enforcing a cold war on high level spells is a garbage mechanic. it isn't just "not fun", it erases high level spells because no one's using their one or two high level slots they get just to be told "no".
MarkZist
That's why the powerful high level single-target spells are at least partially effective without being gated by a save, e.g. Maze, Irresistable Dance and Forcecage. (Talking about 5e.2014)
Sir-xer21
not every spell is like that though. a lot of high level single target spells have save gates. Time Ravage, True Polymorph, Reality Break, Feeblemind, Dominate Monster, etc. LR just wipes those out of use entirely.
ANOTHER IDEA: Daniel02carroll says Flavor it to the type of enemy. Lich burns health or highest level spell slots to use legendary resistance Big tanky enemy lowers its AC each time it uses a LR Enemies with minions sacrifice minions. Enemies with traps or lair actions sacrifice those. Enemies with legendary actions lower the amount they can take each round.
The answer is to change them based on the enemy imo Alternatively just lower heath is fine, as then your casters and martials are targeting the same resource
And another IDEA: genobeam
Maybe cc spells only work for 1 round and then are automatically broken? For big bosses maybe they only make the boss skip half their attack or half their movement for a round or something. At least then it would feel like you're not completely wasting your spell slot.
Also:
This reminds me. There was someone on here a few months back that had suggested a system where boss monsters (they used a red dragon specifically) get special resources that are required to use their bigger nastier abilities. So as an example say a dragon has a resource that they build 1 of every round passively. Using their breath weapon costs them 5 of said resource. One of their legendary actions is to basically generate additional resource now (so not just dishing out attacks but giving the DM a tactical choice for legendary actions). Then you have them forced to spend that 2 or 3 of the same resource to break through like a legendary resistance. It builds in that when a player triggers a "legendary resistance" it costs the monster in a way that directly helps the party by delaying a big attack etc. If the monster doesn't have enough resource to legendary resist their way out they are stun locked until they either passively generate enough to use one to end the effect on them or they get to use legendary actions to generate enough to break out of it. Was a really cool mechanically driven way to still have them and also make it so even triggering a "legendary resist" had a really tangible effect on the flow of battle from the player side.
Another:
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No. They feel like a separate health bar. They're too weak when you have multiple casters and they're too strong when you don't have enough casters. The problem is that you interact with them or you don't, at all. If you're the only caster in your group, you're gonna need 4 turns to stick a failed save on the boss, and if you have multiple casters you could it on the first turn. Why spend all these resources picking at the LRs when by the time you're done the martials have already killed the boss ?
Solution: Interactive LRs that reward depleting them. This isn't my idea but I've been using it for a while with great success. For example, maybe the boss has X number of flying weapons around him that attack the party every turn. But when the boss uses a LR, one of them disappears. That's one less attack the party has to take care of.
It's also pretty versatile. I've used the same philosophy (a player's action should advance the combat scenario somehow) for different uses of LRs. Sometimes they change a boss' resistances or immunities. Sometimes they affect their movement. Sometimes they affect their senses (vision range, etc.) I've had positive feedback from my players so far
And Remember descriptions of failure can be cool:
They are needed to keep some types of encounters engaging.BUT if you just describe it as "Nope, your spell fails" it feels extra bad.
But "You see the spell take hold, their limbs stiffen. Then his eyes flash red and energy courses through his veins and infernal power shatters the bonds of your Hold Person"
I understand you won't always have mental bandwidth to do that for every spell, just like some attacks are just "you hit for 10 damage". But when you do it, it makes the effect feel impressive.
Another good point:
do you have alternatives you use in your games?
The idea behind Legendary Resistance is that a fight with a Legendary enemy in D&D would be pretty unfun if the PCs waltzed in and instantly won the fight by using any of the game's many more-or-less insta-kill save-or-suck effects. But the key word in all that is "instantly" - nobody cares if you Disintegrate the BBEG if you do it on turn, idk, five. The ultimate goal of LR is to keep a Legendary enemy alive long enough that it can die only when dramatically appropriate.
To that end, the weird cat-and-mouse guessing meta-game that LR creates is entirely unnecessary. All you need is a simple "The [Legendary enemy] succeeds on all saving throws unless [some specific condition has been met]". And this condition could be anything! A generic "It auto-succeeds while above half health" or "It auto-succeeds before turn 4", or you can tailor it to the specific boss, like "The dragon succeeds on all saves unless it is prone (giving you a clean shot at its exposed underbelly)" or "Vecna succeeds on all saves unless you cut off his hand and gouge out his eye".
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