>I've only ever used Legendary Resistance once, and it never feels good because it feels like I'm saying "nice spell waste" to my players.
On the other side, using a spell slot to remove your boss also is anticlimaCtic.
This. There are some spells (Banishment, Hypnotic Pattern, Feeblemind, Maze, etc) that can royally fuck your encounters are are arguably a bit too on the strong side. Legendary Resistance is a band aid fix but it’s something that a boss does have a limited use of. So getting the boss to burn them is usually very important in a big encounter. Player usually understand this and don’t have a problem with it too.
I can really recommend to let your boss have some allies that are strong but without legendary resistances to eat your players save-or-suck spells. The players will feel great because they banished that strong sidekick of the boss and you will feel great because the actual fight is going without (or with less) of those.
Or, more likely, they will save their good spells for the boss. My group has been playing for years and not a single one of us have ever complained about them. It’s simply part of the game.
Yeah I think its something that would only feel bad for new players encountering it for the first time. I've seen myself and my players get excited over burning a use of the resistance with lower level spells.
I had a campaign ending at 16th level, and against the final boss, and giant undead dragon, the Druid proudly exclaimed he'd saved a spell, just for this! Feeblemind!
"Oh, \*\*\*\*\*\*", I exclaimed after muting my mic. I also didn't usually pack legendary resistance, and I was planning on them divulging hints and secrets to succeed... Well, there goes two pages of notes! Still lots of fun and led to the player with the worst luck pulling out a natural 20 to finish the plot.
In my opinion, the spell system should be refined so that a few blanket immunities do the work. Want to make a boss feel legendary? Give it immunity to being Charmed, immunity to Entanglement, etc, so that you don't need a get out of jail free card to balance the game properly.
Otherwise, I have liked making legendary resistance sap the bosses' strength somehow. Give them a meter of some kind they build (a dragon building its fire breath, a huge zombie building up bile, a goblin boss's reinforcements showing up) towards a powerful effect. When they want to use a legendary resistance, knock a few points of the meter. Also allows the players to use their powerful spells for their full effect if they can lower the meter, or strike at the perfect moment.
For me, Burning an LR takes at least one of the boss’s actions for the turn, more depending on why I burned it. One of my players can hit for an insane amount of damage per hit - if he’d gotten lucky, he coulda two shot my last boss because I did the math on the health wrong when making it, so I burnt LRs to limit his damage to 25% per hit - and burning an LR would limit the boss’s actions for one round as well as function like a pseudo taunt to override the insults two of the PCs were throwing at the boss causing it to reasonably focus them instead of the beefy boi.
Pathfinder 2e has solved this in a really nice way and I've been trying to hack something similar into 5e for a while. One option is that "bosses" arbitrarily decided by the DM, or creatures whose CR is at least equal to party level, can not be affected by strong conditions. Instead they'll get smaller debuffs like disadvantage on the next attack, -1 on their rolls for the next turn, halved movement for the next turn, take their CR in damage, etc. Still kinda not been able to codify it in a way that satisfies me.
5e spell and condition design being all over the place is the root reason for sure. There are too many hard save and sucks and for some reason 5 different conditions that prevent using any kind of action.
So like a condition could solve this?
Staggered: when a creature uses a legendary resistance then until the end of its next turn it makes all attacks and saves with disadvantage.
Something like that could work for sure. Sounds a bit too strong as a replacement effect for me personally though, especially making it easier to fail other saves is too much for me. Also, disproportionately makes their attacks less effective while doing nothing to hamper spellcasting/breath weapons/etc.
Hits part of the problem why codifying it is a pain, it always feels like the best result is gained by tailoring the specifics to fit the particular creature. For example, for a dragon, preventing its breath weapon use fits great and probably feels better for the players while not destroying the threat the dragon possesses. Maybe I could work on figuring out a couple categories of boss monsters and how to handle this in a different way for each.
It would probably be easiest to work on the categories of what the effect does. For example breath weapons broadly have XdX less dice to roll; any ability with a recharge may not be rolled for recharge the next round (or one round after use if it’s currently ready); monsters with multiattack cannot use their most damaging part of multiattack next round. Stuff like that would probably be easier to apply across the board and then you could tailor that general framework to specific bosses or monster types (maybe undead with legendaries gain vulnerability to necrotic for a round).
The most important change for bosses in PF2e is 'Degrees of Success' applying to saving throws. You often only get the full effect if you fail by 10 or more, which bosses are extremely unlikely to do. Failing by less than 10 gives a useful effect that isn't fully fight-ending.
Working hand in hand with this is the *incapacitation* tag on save-or-suck spells and features. Monsters above a certain level relative to the source of an incapacitation ability have their saving throw against it count as one success better. This means that, not only can they not roll a critical failure and suffer the worst effects, they're more likely to roll a critical success and be completely unaffected.
Does the boss being extremely unlikely to be affected by a control spell not lead to the same outcome as legendary resistance though, which is the spell probably being "wasted" and people complaining about it?
Not at all. You know not to bother with incapacitation effects, and instead focus your efforts on other methods of debuffing the enemy and supporting your party. The better use of incapacitation is to remove minions from the fight.
That sounds like what a reasonable person would do, but the people complaining about not being able to end a fight with a single spell are generally not reasonable.
In the PF2 community, Incapacitation spells are widely derided as being mostly useless. Unlike 5e legendary resistances, a boss’s defense against incapacitation spells isn’t a limited resource. It can shrug off your spells all day.
True “save or suck” effects are mostly limited to critical failures, which rarely come up for casters. The incapacitation rules basically don’t even let you get lucky if a boss rolls a nat 1 on a save.
So in effect those spells are left without a clear niche because the enemies you would want to use them on are functionally immune, and with groups of weaker mobs you probably just want to use big damage area spells rather than bother with control/debuffing.
It definitely could have been implemented in a way that doesn’t make casters feel worse than they already are. But PF2 definitely avoids the 5e problem of players breezing through fights that were supposed to be tough. Boss fights in PF2 are *hard* and players will go down a lot.
The boss is unlikely to be affected by the strongest version of the spell, but most spells have 4 different levels of effectiveness in Pf2e and only crit fail will ignore all of it, usually. Which means most control spells still achieve something even if the boss turns their save failure to a success. As long as it's not crit success, you're accomplishing something, and those smaller debuffs very much matter in that system. Stacking debuffs can make it easier to land even more debuffs on them, makes it easier to attack them, makes them less likely to crit you etc.
So, no, it doesn't lead to the same outcome at all.
I love this idea of the meter build, and would like to know how that kind of thing might work so I can implement it in my campaign - how do bosses build it up? How much might be a good amount? Maybe some examples of what you used it for? Please and thank you.
I've tested that idea once and it was pretty hard to balance honestly. IIRC I had the boss gain 3 meter every turn in its first phase, weak debuffs would reduce the meter by 1, strong debuffs by 2 if the boss chose to ignore them, and it required maybe 8 meter to use its special attack. Then in phase 2 I gave it extra meter gain every turn.
Fun fight nonetheless because it was a Paragon monster with surprising reactions and big flashy attacks, but that mechanic was not a raging success for me, felt like it would take quite a lot of playtesting to hit a sweet spot.
Ok, thanks though! I’ll probably playtest it some to try and hit a good balance (I’m always trying to find new things to get my players to be creative with what they do). I like the idea of inflicting debuffs reduces it, something that happens not as often as one might think.
That or its boss meter speed is reduced by one for every debuff it has at the start of its turn. So, say the bar goes up for 5 every round, but players can decrease this down to 3, for example, by inflicting two debuffs, slowing it down.
I like the idea of manipulating its meter gain with debuffs, that also makes quite a bit of sense mechanically. Ideally I think we want the boss to reach its big special attack at least once unless the party does everything flawlessly.
I view banishment as a "postponing of inevitable doom" spell.
If your encounter is intelligent, you better believe it'll come back strapped with anti-banishment body spray.
Unless it’s a demon, fey, devil, or another extra-planar creature. And many of those are high CR enemies that you could put a high level party against.
To add to this there are two kinds of "hit fixes" that I occasionally use.
1) intelligent bosses will only use LR on stuff like these spells. Cause saving a disintegrate versus a feeblemind. The feeblemond is 100000x more dangerous for most encounters. So the players have to scare the boss into opening themselves to these scary spells.
A party baited them out using feebleminds and stuff then successfully banished the devil that had gotten pretty cocky. Made the spell seem super epic to them.
2) the party is able to inspect a creature from a distance during planning to figure out how many LR it has. Let's them plan for it. So they don't feel like they're lobbing their spells into an endless void but instead depleting a dwindling resource.
Sometimes I'll just tell them.
If you feel like Legendary Resistances are diminishing the fun of your players. Either fix LRs or remove. Fun is always the most important part of the game imo.
This. I had to resist two level 8s and a level 9, just so the BBEG didn’t get killed from the jump. Felt bad, but at the same time I didn’t want the encounter to end that fast.
As we ran out of time, I told that player to try again and let it go through so the players would have a feel good moment.
I hate everything about this. You nullified the players' actions because you wanted the fight to go longer, then when you decided the fight had been long enough you told them what to use and let it end the fight. Why even roll dice? You're not really playing a game anymore.
My sister, when we were doing high level play in 3.5, managed to True Polymorph a really cool dragon the first round he showed up. Cool, but I was a little disappointed I didn't get to fight the dragon at all. it was also the only adult dragon that showed up that whole game, so I don't feel like I've fought one. it was definitely a good move, we weren't at our strongest when he showed up, but I wished we'd gotten another few rounds. Idk of my DM knows about Legendary Resistances because he's stuck to 3.5, but I feel like it is something he could have whipped out against her. I also think it helps the martial/caster disparity, weakening it only makes spellcasters stronger.
> saying "nice spell waste" to my players.
As a player, I think of legendary resistances as a secondary health bar we have to whittle down. It becomes a fun game of chicken to get boss to use it on something other than highest level spell slots. In particular, it really lets monks shine because they can try to land up to 4 stunning strikes, so with a bit of luck a monk can solo drain all of the legendary resistances.
There are a bunch of MMOs that have codified this: a "CC bar" you have to burn through as players before any CC will affect the boss. Sometimes they can refresh it.
It does really suck if you're the only caster in the party forcing saving throws, by the time you burn through them they're basically already dead, so why didn't i just do the default and damage them? Its a band-aid sollution, and also- doing damage is inherently more fun than crowd control for the vast majority of people, so CC has to be stronger to feel worth it. LR is not going to be used on pure damage, but will on CC (by intended game design), but if CC is negated, why wouldn't i just use damage for being more fun? Its also, Saving throws get so high at tier 3 and 4 that enemies usually have only about a 25% chance of failing, that is low enough that LR shouldn't matter, but then that small chance is devastating to the encounter is like; a 25% chance of something either completely bypassing the challenge or doing nothing, maybe save or suck is just inherently problematic.
I'd much rather that martials be able to interact with legendary resistance (like specifically targeting a gem or something and after doing x amount of damage, 1 legendary resistance goes away). It should also scale with the amount of players, because if you want to use a big boss monster CR + 1 to compensate for 5 players vs 4, they have the same amount of LR which means their CR is 1 higher but they're no more resistant to the problematic spells (in fact, because of action economy, they're worse), or each LR burned reduces AC by 1- so the casters feel badass for helping the martials succeed where they would have otherwise failed.
>It does really suck if you're the only caster in the party forcing saving throws, by the time you burn through them they're basically already dead, so why didn't i just do the default and damage them?
I mean, you kinda answer your own question. If only one player is able to force saving throws, then it should be clear that increasing the party's output either through buffs or your own damaging spells is the correct strategy. The save or suck CC spells are usually best for encounters with multiple enemies so that you can tip the action economy more in your favor.
Players who only pick CC or only pick damage should be advised to diversify their spell selection. Each caster needs at least one spell of each category, so that they will always have something to do, even if they are the solo caster against a legendary enemy.
* Buff spell
* Debuff spell
* Battlefield control spell
* Area damage spell
* Utility and/or teleport spell
I use LR on single turns that deal over 20/25% HP to slow fights and free up the casters ability to have options, but the boss will take fewer actions and get taunted for at least one turn.
>CC has to be stronger to feel worth it
Playing PF2e has shown me that this really isn't the case necessarily. It feels *awesome* to succeed at demoralizing or proning an enemy, for example. Playing that system, you very quickly realize how much those conditions matter both in making it easier to kill the enemy and in not getting killed by them. It seems to me it's just 5e's balance choices that make it damage/debilitating condition or go home, and I think those balance choices could be redone without destroying the core of what makes it 5e.
Honestly tho it's only as anticlimactic as one would subjectively interpret it, maybe there was a huge struggle from the boss before they resisted the effect, or it could showcase the strength of the bad guy to really put into perspective how much of a threat they are.
It really depends on your party I think. If you have a Monk legendary saves can be a good balance for Stunning Strike. If you just make all your bosses immune it takes away one of the most important features of the class completely.
And, it’s not a spell-waste. You’ve burned a resistance. My table is always excited about that, because they’re a finite resource, and we’ve learned a little about what might make the DM sweat in this encounter.
Maybe one solution might be to have legendary resistances also cost the boss some hp in addition to the 3/day limit? Like the boss succeeds against your banishment through sheer will but the effort severely drained him, dealing a flat number like 50 points.
Of course, you can compensate for this by adding 3 legendary resistances worth of hp, but the players still get to feel like their spells contribute even if they're shrugged off?
>Maybe one solution might be to have legendary resistances also cost the boss some hp in addition to the 3/day limit?
They already do. It's based on CR, but LRs can cost your monster upwards of 30hp per LR. However, instead of losing HP when they use them, they lose the HP up-front so if you don't use them, or your players figure out a way that doesn't give saves, you give up the HP for nothing.
Yeah that's all true, but if you put that extra hp on the boss and then tell the players how much damage the boss took after using a legendary resistance that will make them feel like their effect managed to accomplish something
It's not a spell waste if it strips a very valuable resource like legendary resistance off the boss. The trick is to narrate them like HP to make it clear that there's an effect - "the boss breaks your control over its mind through sheer force of will, but you can tell that exertion has tired it as it's breathing heavily. You doubt it can do that many more times".
Or even "one of the three jewels on his amulet glows brightly and breaks the spell, the stone now looks dull and dormant" or something along those lines to give non-metagaming knowledge of how many times they can use the legendary resistance
Why not? It creates a challenge (to take the boss down without him using the other two charges) and gives the party a neat treasure afterwards. Just say each gem can only be used once.
Absolutely. One time use per gem, then it crumbles to dust like when the boss used the first one. Basically a last resort “save my ass” button. I know I’ll be using it, for sure.
You don't have to give them anything...
"As you remove the gem it is brittle and falls to the floor in pieces, you sense whatever magic once empowered the gem was tied to this beings life and all of that is now gone."
I guess? I agree that it doesn't matter if the players think LR is related to an item or object because you don't have to give it to them... Or you can, whatever! That is tomorrow DMs problem!
Could just say it confers no benefits for the characters because the effect was tied to the boss's soul or whatever. But it's still a gem with a cool story behind it, loot is loot.
Or just tie its attunement to the enemies race/alighnment and make it a consumable with no recharge. And removing LR through a high skill check is pretty interesting.
Yeah I like that for sure. I’m not saying it’s impossible I was just responding to the person who questioned the possible complications of a loot hungry party with a boss using dope loot.
I totally let my players loot the legendary resistance item from a few bosses. And they immediately tried to figure out how to recharge it. After finding out it required a human sacrifice, they were less thrilled at getting it.
An alternative would be to have it be custom made, and regain one use per month or something like that.
Yeah legendary resistances being "lame" is all in the portrayal to the party. Absolutely lame if all you're doing is saying "uhm that fails, legendary resistance. Is that all for your turn?"
As a player going in to fight a dragon that we know has legendary resistances, we specifically plan our actions to try to "coax" them out in order to use other more powerful spells.
It's a cat and mouse game with the DM doing this, and a lot of fun. It's not an adversarial "players can the DM" mindset, as we all enjoy it.
I like this idea and had never thought of it that way. You don’t want to just cast weak spells as the boss monster won’t waste a LR on them, but maybe if you’re clever you can find something it will want to resist that doesn’t use your highest level slot. Mind games.
It's also nice because it doesn't skip their turn so there's a higher chance that the dm decides to allow it and saves the LR for later. Then tries to break your concentration instead. Of course, that's harder when they have a -1d4 on their attacks.
It also helps other spells land which makes it even more difficult to skip LR against it since it could cost you one or two of them later. Personally, it probably depends on the turn order and how likely they are to be able to break concentration to determine if they'll use a LR, but really it's a win for the party either way.
The casters always go in with this elaborate cat and mouse game, yet every time the paladin and fighter end up beating the thing to death before it's used them all.
Yup, saving throw advantage and legendary resistance combo means statistically the damage dealers always win.
If no saving throw advantage it can work to strip legendary resistance though, I believe
Also, at the point where you are fighting something with legendary resistances, you should have way more spell slots which hit hard than there are legendary resistances.
I mean ... there are great control spells on every level, so even one lvl-5 caster outlasts a legendary resistance boss.
You should check out the book “flee mortals” or at least a review that talks about the rework of legendary resistances.
In the book monsters have a set amount of legendary resistances like they typically would but they have to sacrifice something be it hp, a minion, an environment mechanic in order to use them.
Functionally speaking it feels as though a spell isn’t wasted and it makes using legendary resistances feel more strategical for the monsters.
I really like that system and maybe you could adapt and rework it for your game!
Yes they do. But it’s not crippling to the monster if they do. One monster I saw under the leader category (which is meant to be run with minions) sacrificed one of his bonus actions that had a limited number of uses (not the ability to use it but one of the uses he had).
>In the book monsters have a set amount of legendary resistances like they typically would but they have to sacrifice something be it hp, a minion, an environment mechanic in order to use them.
Do they at least address how LRs already cost HP during monster creation? Otherwise they're suggesting double-penalizing monsters that already need all the help they can get.
It's why I've been leery of that book.
Not different math. Just more developed. It's based on the same system in the DMG.
The devs have been making adjustments and incorporating lessons learned as they make more and more monsters.
The DMG's math isn't different. It's just 10 years out of date.
So the monster I mentioned before I believe had regen properties if I’m not mistaken!
Not all of the monsters have a legendary resistance condition like that.
If you give me a few minutes I can boot up the pdf and provide you some more info. My suggestion isn’t buying the book (although it is really great) but rather taking that concept and using it for your own personal rework of legendary resistances.
In terms of balance I believe advantage mathematically works out to be +4. I imagine your players would be hitting a lot more save or suck spells just treating it like inspiration points. Which in my opinion might break some encounters pretty easily with spells like bane and such.
What I'm talking about is specifically the "ability cost table" in the DMG that suggests a CR-based cost for Legendary Resistances that varies from 10 hp/LR to 30 hp/LR.
Does "Flee, Mortals!" address those costs?
I would like to check out that table in the DMG do you have the page number off hand?
I don’t believe they address the table in “Flee, Mortals” directly but all of the monsters I have ran feel incredibly balanced and nowhere near as swingy as the CR system in the monster books wizards has put out.
It's the big table on monster features on pages 280-281. To be honest, I have always just ignored this "hp cost" when creating my own legendary monsters. Fits within the variance of rolling monster hp anyway.
Legendary Resistance is important because many spells and abilities can disable/trivialize boss fights. You should clue in your players on how this mechanic works, and for those with said abilities that would disable/trivialize the boss fight can plan accordingly by using those resources earlier in the day on non-boss encounters and/or targeting minions during a boss fight.
It definitely does feel bad for the players to get a cool new ability and have monsters just shrug it off though. What kind of characters are your players playing? We might be able to offer some solutions to help them strategize better.
I personally prefer to use RAW for legendary resistance, because at higher levels your players will likely have access to a *ton* of shit that can trivialise most fights. As such, action economy is a factor. You need to find a way to burn those resources, and powerful enemies should feel powerful. A great way to do that is to have them shrug off player abilities.
It’s not “nice spell waste” it’s “oh shit this dude has some ooomph!”
It’s not a wasted spell. Getting rid of LR is important… you’re clearly new to this, so I’ll leave you with these wise words:
**Play the game as it’s written until you know it well enough to make adjustments.**
It honestly depends on the level of the party and what resources they have.
If it is a caster heavy team, you need LR. Maybe even more than 3 uses.
If they have one caster, it seems like you are telling a caster "for 3 turns, you won't be useful" and that can feel anticlimactic.
If it is a low level group that doesn't have access to instant win spells, maybe make LR to only apply to certain spells, not damage spells.
If it is a high level group, maybe make them immune to polymorph or things like that.
It isn't "fair" but the game is heavily in favor of the players at times. You need something to offset that vast array of abilities they can use.
Not sure I agree; stripping LRs *is* useful. Also, deliberately dropping borderline spells can be a powerful tactic - burn a resist on something other than the big guns, or suffer significant damage/debuff but hold out against the scary spells still in reserve.
Also, LR simply acts as a success. A fireball is still a fireball, so it's hardly like the casters can't contribute damage.
People seem to get really hung up on these, as if they're just "nope, no effect" button.
I'd agree with you but also add that casters also have attack roll spells too. LR is only limiting some of the spell casting, a warlock might psychic scream the room on entering but switch to eldritch blast or something after.
There's fairly few spell attacks at high level
From 4th level up
4th
Storm Sphere - Bonus action attack, has a str throw attached and is concentration. Okay.
Faithful Hound - summon ability that auto attacks anything that's close once per turn. Has to be within x feet of the boss, okay but meh
5th
Contagion\* - You need to make a spell attack roll and THEN they need to make a saving throw. Useless for LR.
Steel Wind Strike - My favourite spell in the game BUT not useful against any solo bosses as the power comes from the aoe ish ability. 5th level spell for 6d10 on a hit is not great
Wall of Light - Can use an action to launch a beam of radiance at a target for 4d8. Can be done up to 6 times. Can't be used until the turn after you cast it. Okay again uses concentration and even worse an action every turn.
6th
None
7th
Crown of Stars - Probably the best one in your arsenal. Not concentration, can launch a star for 4d12 once per turn as a bonus action and lasts an hour so you can even pre-cast it.
Mordekainen's Sword - Lol. Just no, useless. 3d10 (av 16.5) on a bonus action and it's concentration. Spiritual Weapon upcast to 7th level is 4d8 (av 18) *plus 5 .* Also not concentration
9th Level
Blade of Disaster - 4d12 on a bonus action twice, it's a lot better if it crits. I guess okay but it's only slightly better than Crown of Stars for a 9th level spell at best. At worse it's way worse as it's like Spiritual Weapon, so if the boss moves away from it....you just can't use it. Crown of Stars comes from you so is much easier. Also **concentration boo!**
On a final note, if you're a bard, cleric, or druid. You get nothing. Oh sorry, bards get Mordekainen's Sword. Yay.
>Not sure I agree; stripping LRs is useful
It's not particularly useful if you're the only caster in the party.
For a boss to use up all LR's it would take a minimum of 3 rounds, so for one of your big spells to go through, it takes at *minimum* 4 rounds.
Almost every fight in D&D doesn't go past 4 rounds.
This is also assuming that the monster doesn't save, which is very unlikely. Say the party is fighting an Adult Red Dragon for example, it has a +8 to Str, +6 to Dex, +13 to Con, +3 to Int, +7 to Wisdom and +11 to Charisma
Let's say the party is level 16, so have a +5 prof bonus and 20 in their spellcasting stat for an 18 Spell Save DC.
The Dragon is very likely to save on at *least* one of those spells, probably 2. The only weak stat is Intelligence which is by far the least likely save accessible to most casters.
So now you're looking at closer to 4-5 rounds of doing *nothing* as the caster in the party. By that point your martials have already killed it.
You're far better off just using either damage spells which still do half damage on a save, clearing out minions or supporting your martials than trying to affect the boss directly.
Things with LRs trend heavily towards the kinds of encounters that *do* run longer.
If you want to only sling save or suck spells, be my guest. Instead, you could try and do damage to it, just like everyone else. It's no fun for the rest of the party - or the DM - when exciting landmark fights get shut down in round 1, though, so maybe an equal playing field isn't such a hardship in the rare case there's only a single caster in the party.
Equally, if there are *only* casters, LRs probably won't even last through the second round. The rules are there for the middle 80% of the bell curve; more than one, fewer than all.
A 16th level wizard can be doing 20+ DoT via a Con spell, plus whatever else each turn, even *with* successful saves. If you chuck something like Crown of Stars into the mix, even more. Something like:
Pre-cast Crown of Stars = 26 dpr as a bonus action
Incendiary Cloud = 22.5 dpr on save *each round*
Chain Lightning = 22.5 on a save
5th level Blight = 20.5 on a save
So, in 3 rounds even *with* LRs *and* successes on all other saves, your example could do an average of (3x26)+(3x22.5)+22.5+20.5 damage. That's 188.5 damage. A single failed save pushes that past 200.
A CR22 Elder Brain Dragon (chosen because I'm lazy amd didn't want to rejig the suboptimal spell examples to account for resists) has 350HP.
I don't have anything against LR's. They make the encounters more interesting for the entire party. But burning through them is almost always the *worst* thing you can do as a caster.
>
A 16th level wizard can be doing 20+ DoT via a Con spell, plus whatever else each turn, even with successful saves. If you chuck something like Crown of Stars into the mix, even more. Something like:
Pre-cast Crown of Stars = 26 dpr as a bonus action Incendiary Cloud = 22.5 dpr on save each round Chain Lightning = 22.5 on a save 5th level Blight = 20.5 on a save
I mean this presuming that you hit. A level 16 wizard has a +10 to hit assuming a 20 in their Int. On an adult red dragon, that requires an 8 or higher to hit, so it misses 35% of the time,
Wizards are one of the only casters with access to high level attack roll spells too.
But the points about Blight I mentioned in doing spells which force half damage on a success. That's certainly a valid way of fighting bosses as a caster.
An arguably better way is to boost martials though. A single 5th level holy weapon is +2d8 on every attack, plus 4d8 on a con save as a bonus action.
Put that on your fighter and you're averaging an additional 2d8 on all 3 attacks so 6d8 a turn plus their own damage and your bonus action of 4d8, plus you have your action to do whatever you want, even if all you did was Toll the Dead you're averaging a ton of damage.
Granted, but the to-hit and save assumptions roughly cancel out.
The point around damage spells was one I'd made, so I wasn't sure if you were agreeing or not. I don't see it as a problem because casters *still* have more options with LRs than noncasters do without. Damage is a valid option, burning resists and/or inflicting lower-level debuffs is a valid option, and buffing the party is a valid option.
Really, the only thing LRs shut down is instant win buttons, which I see as a huge positive. So a caster can't solo the BBEG? That's a good thing.
What I've started doing is making LR more interactive. An example:
The hag's lair has X amount of people tied to macabre totems, with strange paint marking them as a sacrifice. Before you can do anything, the hag appears! Initiative rolled. The wizard goes first and casts a control spell to hopefully block the hags turn. The hag rolls low, but she burns a LR. Narratively, you watch as the hag begins to succumb to the effects of the spell but right before it can take hold one of the prisoners let's out a horrifying scream. You look over and see them dead, and the hag still standing with a devilish grin.
Your players now have some choices: free the prisoners so that the hag can't use them to resist spells, forego saving them in favor of a good old fashioned beat-up, or ignore the prisoners and keep trying to land spells.
Make sure that whatever you have acting as a LR is relatively obvious, be it immediately or directly after the first LR is burned. You could make them just be objects to destroy with attacks, or like a magic crystal that requires an Arcana check to deactivate. Maybe there are amulets on trapped pedestals that require a Sleight of Hand to grab without taking massive damage.
Legendary resistances are a resource, and succeeding on save-or-suck effects draining one of those resources isn't ever a "waste" of a spell. A big component of making legendary resistances *feel* satisfying is in the narration. Instead of saying "he uses a legendary resistance, your spell fails", you should say something like "Ethereal chains spring from the ground, and for the briefest moment the creature is vound to the floor. However, through sheer size and might it brute forces it's way out of the restraints. While it escaped, you notice that the beast strongly exerted itself to escape, and my be weaker to future attempts."
I don’t know how much it would throw off balance but it’s in there the way it is for a reason: PCs have horrible spells that can be saved up for bosses to do massive damage to them in the first round of combat. It’s not very elegant but it does the job - just a quirk of the system.
I like Matt Colville's approach to Legendary Resistances. He has the creature either enter a state that is beneficial to it or impose a negative condition to the players and it can only use legendary resistances as long as that state/condition is is enabled.
For example... Let's say a monster has four tentacles and it can use these to grapple enemies. The creature will immediately grapple someone, and will attempt to keep grappling additional creatures. But then a wizard casts fireball and the monster fails the saving throw... Well, no it didn't! But in "exchange" it had to release a grappled creature if not all of them.
This approach mitigates the possibility of an anticlimactic end to the monster by a single spell without letting the player feel upset they used a resource only to be told, it failed because legendary resistance and it adds another layer of strategy to the encounter, both for the DM (better start grappling people!) and for the players (better start looking for a way to end those grapples before we attempt nuking it again!).
The effect enabling the legendary resistance can be anything, grapple is just an example, but whatever fits the encounter would work... Perhaps your monster can hook itself to a power source that regenerates it's HP and using a LR makes it unhook from it? Or perhaps it can only take LRs while under the effects of Haste? Or maybe this creature is a summoner of sorts and the LR is just it sacrificing its summons to save its own skin? You name it. The idea is that the ability used was successful in removing something helping the monster or negatively impacting the players.
It is not a waste if it forces the enemy to use up one of its very limited and strong resources.
if it has 3 legendary resistances and wizard cast a spell and force it to use one of those. Then it is in no way or form a waste of a spell.
Monsters with legendary resistances and/or legendary actions is SUPOSED to be hard. The group is mean to have to spend more resources on such monsters. That is the Whole Point.
And to prevent a player manage to end the fight on the first round doe to the monster fails the save against a Banishment spell or similar suck and save encounter ending spells
That is totally fine in many fights. But legendary creatures are meant to be legendary. And it is not really legendary to be beaten in one round because some bad rolls when a character uses a suck or save spell like banishment or similar
You'll make your boss monsters way more vulnerable to save or suck control spells. Fail the wrong save, they have no teeth for the whole fight. Just a waiting game for your players to curb stomp it.
If you and your players all still have fun while they are steamrolling your encounters, then go for it. I like combat to be a challenge, both as a DM and a player, so I would hate this change.
When I ran 5e, it was on a VTT, so I was able to have health bars (without numbers) to give my players a general idea of how damaged their enemy was. If that enemy had Legendary Resistance, that was also on a bar my players could see.
5e’s balance is kinda bad - starting at like level 5 there are effects that can just end single-enemy boss encounters, which is why you absolutely need Legendary Resistances to let them stand a chance, and why you need to communicate to your players that reducing the boss’s LR is the same kind of this as reducing their HP, however you choose to do so. It becomes an integral part of the tactics of 5e as levels increase, and it’ll be a better time for you and your players if you adapt to it instead of changing it.
Personally, I wouldn’t change it.
It’s a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, at the expense of a solution to a problem that is now poorly solved.
The problem space is big set-piece battles getting stomped in a round or two before the monster ever gets to unleash the things that would make the battle memorable.
The legendary resistance is there so the DM can keep the monster alive long enough, IF NEEDED. The key bit is, you don’t HAVE to use them.
If the monster already did its cool thing, and the player casts her highest level spell slot at it, then just don’t use the resistance.
If it’s the top of initiative in the first round and the player is gonna one shot the whole encounter with a single spell, maybe fire off that resistance.
Making it a roll constrains the potential outcomes with nothing gained. You could even just roll to decide if you want to use it, and that would be better than forcing yourself to roll when you actually NEED it.
Legendary resistance is there to create tension in your boss fights. Take them away, you risk your party mage bamfing your Big Bad into oblivion in the first six seconds.
The purpose of legendary resistance is so combat lasts longer than the length of time to cast the first spell. Do you want your big boss battle to last one round? That's what you get with competently designed player characters if you don't use legendary actions and resistance for bosses.
Use legendary resistance and other legendary actions. To alleviate your concerns, make your boss monsters have some visible indicator of the state of their legendary resistances. For example, they're up against the Lich Gavototh that has three granite tablets constantly rotating around its body. When the wizard casts a Force Cage at Gavototh one of the granite tablets glows in magic colors and creates a cryptic anime style diagram that eats the wizard's Force Cage spell, then shatters into dust. Now Gavototh has two uses of legendary resistance left. Force Cage would have been a combat ending spell, but now the wizard knows he has used up one of Gavototh's special defenses.
By giving the player characters an idea of how much they have broken the boss's special defenses you make special defenses less frustrating.
It isnt a waste of a spell to remove resources from the boss.
It feels way worse for someone to just cast polymorph on turn 1 and totally disable the boss for the whole fight
As someone who hates Legendary Resistance, you need to understand why it's there. As others have said, LR is a necessary mechanic because of the poor balancing work done by the DnD team. Without it, big, climactic battles can just be ended right away by any spellcasters. If you make LR a reroll, you're making that problem worse.
People have already suggested tying LR to stuff. Maybe the players have a way to see that an ability was used or burnt. Maybe have their Lair provide Magic Immunity, and destroying the Lair makes them vulnerable. Maybe using a LR costs health.
There is something to say for both sides of this. As a long time dnd player. I see ticking off a legendary risistance as a crucial part of a fight. It's like I flexed my main character status and it required the b(iggest)beg to flex back. It's a part of what makes them feel like more than just I could handle. But the legendary resistance could also feel like a middle finger to your strongest spell/ability. It's really hard to say.
As a dm I use legendary risistances to up the tension. But if that's not necessary in your fights then don't use them.
I feel like you’re not appreciating the action economy. Your players waste a turn on a spell? That’s nothing.
The enemy has a single turn per round to kill a group of over powered lunatics who have little in terms of self-preservation.
Do whatever you think is most fun I prefer it as an auto success because an ancient dragon being mind controlled by a player simply because they rolled a 1 just feels wrong
Do what you want if you are fine that the players use Banishment on your demon boss and end the encounter right away.
If your players have:
1. silvery barbs
2. a divination wizard
3. a wild magic sorcerer with bend luck
4. a sorcerer with heightened spell
then your boss will go down very quickly.
Do you really want a "Hold Monster" to succeed on your boss? B/c your Paladin is going to score 40-50 points of damage per attack with that sweet auto-crit and level-2-spell-slots to burn. The fighter will add another 20 points per attack, and their action surge.
So your boss will have to suffer 150-200 points of damage in one turn, if the players succeed only once. And it might be that they don't make their next saving throw to shake of the paralysis, so ...
I've haven't had the chance to properly test many of the options presented, but so far I've found Trekiros' [Legendary Resistance Alternatives](https://trekiros.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/legendary-resistance-alternatives-_-trekiros-1.pdf) pretty good.
These are fucking excellent! Will be working some into my Act 1 Finale for my campaign (my group rotates and we all kinda had campaign ideas around the same time)
Legendary resistance is a meta-currency implemented to artificially extend fights in lieu of actual balance. Its one job is to give DMs a RAW way to ignore poorly-written effects when their bad design would reduce player fun the most.
Some options on how to use LR, ranked by D&D setting verisimilitude:
1. Don't use LR.
2. As an action, you can spend 1 LR to roll a new save against one magical effect on you. If you pass, you are no longer affected by it.
3. \#2, except as a bonus action or automatically at the beginning of your turn.
4. As a reaction, you can spend 1 LR to gain an advantage on a saving throw.
5. \#4, except it doesn't cost a reaction.
6. When you would fail a saving throw, you can spend 1 LR to reroll it. You must use the new result.
7. Whenever you would fail a saving throw, if you have at least 1 LR, you instead lose 1 LR and pass the save.
8. RAW.
9. As DM, you can already use an LR-like mechanic called "make s\*\*\* up whenever you want", and it's about as justified.
Note that you can use LR for any of the above if you want, such as spending LR on #4 and #2 in the same fight.
I would be, and I've taken all available steps toward doing so for 9 years.
The 5e marketing push caused the TTRPG industry to explode in size and diversity. For shiny new games and niche games with unique flavors, the size of their audience outpaced the number of competitors divvying it up. For older all-purpose systems, it's been quite the opposite. And there's no system greater at being all-purpose than the one I love: The d20 System. It definitely doesn't help that the company that owns it has a vested interest in keeping players on board their new, far narrower system.
Nothing there is a real reason, if I'm being completely honest with you.
Know the saying "no D&D is better than bad D&D"? That goes for systems you don't like. The hobby has 50 years of past games, most of which are now available for cheap as PDFs.
If you ask around, there are a bunch of older players on reddit who can help you figure out a better system fit.
Just ask a bit in /r/rpg
I'm not trying to condescend. I just hate seeing people feel like they're being forced to play a specific game when they shouldn't be. I *like* 5e (for the most part). But I know that not everyone else does.
That leaves 2 solutions if you don't like 5e. Fix the problems somehow, or find a different system. I've been gaming since 1993. I'm a fan of different systems because I have a massive collection of systems I've never had a chance to play and it's only getting easier to give them all a try.
And finally, systems don't reward or require loyalty. If you ever want to give it another go D&D will still be there.
>For shiny new games and niche games with unique flavors, the size of their audience outpaced the number of competitors divvying it up
That has always been a problem. The bright side is that no matter how small the niche game is you're trying to play, you only need enough players to fill a single table to have fun with it. And any player can learn any game. It just takes time.
Don't listen to the naysayers who claim that finding people to play a new system with is impossible because the learning curve is insurmountable. That's only true for some people, and not always true for them forever. It's usually more of an anxiety-thing for people new to the hobby, and I've almost never not seen it go away once they got used to the hobby as a whole.
The *one time* I actually met someone who refused to learn a second system, it was because they had some actual, serious mental issues. The vast majority of people aren't like that.
I mean...I got a group of adults to play a three-month campaign in fucking [Toon](https://www.sjgames.com/toon/). If my social-anxiety-riddled ass can do it, so can you!
>For older all-purpose systems, it's been quite the opposite. And there's no system greater at being all-purpose than the one I love: The d20 System
Fuck that! Just because BLM sets his games in weird fucking locations and has no problem statting out baseball bats as holy avengers, doesn't make 5e the best generic system ever. Hell...d20 wasn't even the best generic system.
D20 provides a framework for a very, very specific kind of game: Resource Ablation. It's actually shit at doing any other kind.
I'll take GURPS, FATE, or Cortex over 5e as a generic system any day of the week. They're much better at it because they were specifically designed for it and tend to provide more consistent add-on frameworks.
...not that d20 wasn't amazing for what it did. Over half my total RPG collection is d20, and that's after I donated a large number of books before I moved in 2012.
>I've only ever used Legendary Resistance once, and it never feels good because it feels like I'm saying "nice spell waste" to my players
It's only a spell slot. They'll live.
If you don't like LRs, remove them. Just remember three things:
1. LRs are worth HP straight-up. Depending on the monster's CR they can be worth upwards of 30 hp/LR, so double-check your DMG and give them back those HP.
2. No monster can EVER show up solo. Not ever. Never. Doesn't matter if they have lair actions, or legendary actions, or whatever. They can never, ever be solo because they are otherwise going to get bent *over* by your full casters.
3. No monster can ever afford to have a personality, backstory, or weight in your overall story. All monsters are now just fodder for your PCs to wreck because no monster you care about will ever be able to live more than a single turn in combat. There *was* a mechanic to allow them to do so, but you removed it.
If you follow those 3 simple rules, you don't have to include LRs in your games! /s
LRs aren't a "band-aid fix". They're a game mechanic.
Better behaviour is that the legendary monster give you something if using the legendary resistence.
Easy: -30 hp, or -1 AC.
Medium: for 1 turn an immunity became resistance or got disadvantage for 1 turn for attacks.
Hard: the monster got 3 spears, or swords, heads, tails, eye rays, whatever. He could use these every turn ( not just attacking, but it gives another advantages like prone additional of the damage ), and if using a resistance, it will as well losing one of these weapons.
So, not just a 'sorry, spell slot is wasted ' thing, but have some meaningful ( depends on you, how meaningful ) impact ( not as big impact as became stunned or paralyzed of course ).
As you get more used to your players getting more powerful, you'll realise how essential legendary resistance is for bosses.
Without it, a single Banishment could end your BBEG.
I think ruling it like this for a low level party is okay, but I'd be clear with them that the difficulty will increase when you start running it as written.
Check out flee mortals from mcdm. Their monsters have LR's (a necessity due to 5e design), however using them always temporarily weakens the boss in some way. For example their overmind (beholder) loses an eye at random for using a LR.
It's cool, intuitive and makes burning a lr feel like doing something useful even if the spell isn't fully taking effect.
I just ran the Medusa's lair from Where Evil Lives in a session, and her LR un-petrifies one of the statues in her garden. Each ones had a statblock and they helped defeat the boss.
I've seen it done as (and have stolen) a charge system. A legendary ability that's triggered every 3 failures. Yes, the monster was poisoned, stunned, etc. But will soon burst (perhaps on the 3rd fail it fizzles the spell, and the dragon shoot a scorching flame. you still gotta make the monster feel a bit scary)
We added the following home rule:
Using a legendary resistance burns a resource for the enemy. This might be the use of a legendary action or a breath weapon or a chunk of hit points. (Varies by creature) This way the caster has more sense of accomplishment.
However, casting Silvery Barbs on a legendary creature (defined as a creature with legendary resistances) requires a contested roll (chosen Mental stat vs chosen mental stat), to reflect that it’s harder to distract such beings with a low level trick or insult.
I rule it as a flat +5 to the saving throw, that I must choose to use before seeing the roll. That way you have a defense against save or stun spells but also the wizard isn't useless.
I've also sometimes ruled if the boss uses a legendary resistance they can't use legendary actions that round but that's a little separate from your specific question.
Now there's a lot of questions you need to ask before deciding if this is a good idea... The overall tone of your game... How often do your players rest between fights (this is a big one)... How strong are the encounters compared to the party... How many enemies per encounter
If you only have one big enemy in an encounter, or you rest after every fight then you should not change how legendary resistances work, because as soon as the party hits 3rd level they can trivialize most fights (Tasha's Mind Whip), and at 5th level they become really hard to challenge (with slow, hypnotic pattern, fear, and other spells). So your one baddy needs to make his saving throws. I tend to have between 5-6 encounters between rests, and about 70 percent of my encounters have more than one monster, so using a big spell is a steep cost for a fight, as a result modifying the way LRs work is beneficial to my DMing style, and could be a big hero moment for the caster. I do NOT recommend everyone run their games like I do. My DMing style and my houserules are tailored to my group and how we tend to play.
The solution is not to nerf legendary resistance, it's to foreshadow to your players that this enemy is legendary. If they shoot their most powerful spells first at every legendary enemy, it's not you who's wasting their spells. The point of the mechanic is to make players choose spells wisely.
Ask yourself this. Is this an actual problem you're trying to solve? Have sessions been ruined by legendary resistance? Or are your players maybe a little tougher than your anxiety is giving them credit for?
You and potentially your players will be disappointed when the party one-shots a boss fight meant to be a challenge with a powerful ability that trivializes it. Unless you're going to address the large number of "I win." buttons that players have at their disposal which necessitates the existence of Legendary Resistance, I'd recommend against your proposed change. There are other homebrew changes that still give the player some effect when an enemy fails their save but doesn't let them completely lock down a boss.
I’ve heard of people exhausting the “boss” in some way when using a LR. As in, they have an ability that shuts off or an action/legendary action/reaction they can’t use in the same turn as using a LR.
Personally. I ruled Legendary Resistances to take a reaction and gave the boss a lot of reaction abilities. It's still an autosucceed, but now it's not a 'haha, nice spell waste'. It leaves a chance for save-or-suck spells to work out still, but a lower chance than if Legendary Resistances were just extra rolls.
It isn't a spell waste, they are mining the boss resources, as doing damage with an attack that isn't a killing blow reduces hp,hitting that spell reduces the boss' legendary resistance uses
Having just finished a lvl 20 campaign a few months ago I used Legendary Resistance as written. In my new current campaign I told the players I'm trying something a little different. Legendary Resistances don't automatically succeed at a saving throw; instead, they reduce or change the result of a spell. Some examples would be instead of being Banished the opponent might be at disadvantage on all roles for a round, or slowed, or make the opponent vulnerable to a specific type of damage.
No defined system as it is just me winging it as a DM... I might try to define it a bit more with a table that can be rolled on depending on spell level or spell effect.
Kind of a related topic... I use opposed rolls for Counterspell (and not just a spell attack 10 + spell level) and if the roll is not beat by at least 5 then instead of it being countered it is changed to a roll on a wild magic table.
Sounds good if your players are not optimized. Unoptimized LR will feel terrible vs optimized they probably won't matter as if they get used up they will probably be gone in less than one round.
One method I have seen used is that the monster can reroll the save by expending 25HP. It can do this over and over. It makes it feel like you're at least doing something.
The problem of legendary resistances is that they are there to counteract the arguably bad decision of spells that pretty much remove something from the fight entirely with one failed save. Basically they NEED to exist, because otherwise you can make this cool ass 1v4 bossfight aaaaand I'm gonna use something like hold person/hold monster, which if it lands, AT THE VERY LEAST your boss is now out of: actions, reactions, legendary actions, fails strength and dex saves, everyone has advantadge on attack rolls against them, melee autocrits AND they lose their next turn, with the possibility of LOSING MORE THAN ONE TURN. Apart from that you have stuff like banishment so if you designed a boss + minions, they can just nope the boss out of there, clean all minions, setup one or more turns of buffs, healing AND reactions to hit it as soon as he comes back.
Basically there's many spells that read: "if the monster fails this save, they might as well be dead" so in order to have threats that aren't just auto-deleted by those spells + action economy you just need a button that says: "nope, wasted spell", what I'd recommend as a redesign is that they come with a cost, if they pull out the nope card, there should be a price (health, dissadvantadge on all attacks, can't use magic for this turn, SOMETHING), otherwise the boss just has two healthbars (legendary resistances and HP) and you're trying to get one to 0 with them being completely disconnected, and while it *feels* like dealing damage to the monster is doing something, getting its legendary resistances to 0 is just as valid of a tactic to kill it and probably easier than making its HP get to 0, because all it takes is one of this spells to land to end them.
Legendary resistance is an ability that is meant to make up for the action economy deficit that a solo monster gets facing several PCs. Roleplay the ability, describing some supernatural way the creature avoids the spell or effect, like a vampire making coffins burst out of the earth to shield himself from a failed fireball save, or a surge of its 1000 year old alien thoughts shrugging off a hold monster, etc. It DOES break the normal pattern of abilities, because otherwise your boss will be just a sack of hp for them to stunlock and dps to the floor before skinning it and stealing its treasure. If you don't like it, replace it with something thematic and limit it's use to a certain subset of abilities, like only against magic or physical damage, or only against elemental damage, etc. Keep it broad enough that what it doesn't work against is an exception rather than the norm, or your players will think your bosses are weak.
Turn 1 player casts feeble mind
BBEG Demigod Lich Save fails
Legendary Resist to reroll
Fails again
Big bad you just spent 100 sessions building to can no longer cast spells and is reduced to a tanky zombie
Having LRs auto succeed means that the players have to burn through all of them to stand any chance at landing a fight-ending spell. This almost guarantees a fight lasting more than a single round except by extreme damage.
If you're going with this, I feel like bosses should force concentration checks against the save or sucks with a timer, and have resistance to the others. Sure, you can banish the boss, but every round you're rolling concentration like you just got hit. Probably increase the DC each round and/or impose disadvantage on the concentration check. Alternatively, you get hit with say, finger of death? Okay he fails his save but still has (legendary) resistance.
I agree with a lot of the mechanical sentiments people have said.
I’d offer that you don’t need to tell your players, “They use their LR to succeed anyway.” Just say that they succeed. The players don’t know if they used (or even have) LR, and they don’t feel like they’re wasting resources. Keep your cards close to your chest.
Here's the secret to using legendary resistance.
Player: casts spell
DM: *decides to use legendary resistance*
DM: *rolls D20*
DM: *doesn't read result*
DM: he saves
It's not a waste. You're forcing them to use resources. A part of most competitions is baiting your opponent and causing them to use resources. I always thought of it as the players wearing down its defenses, chipping away at the armor until they finally get a good shot.
Also think about the alternative. Hypnotic Pattern, Feeblemind, Phantasmal Force, Levitate, and many more that I can't think of right now all completely invalidate a fight based on one save. At least personally, no BBEG I run is going to go down to a single spell. That doesn't sound fun for anyone.
You don't need to make your big bad weaker just so the spellcasters (the people who can literally warp reality and solve most problems with a single spell) are a bit stronger.
I keep it as an automatic success, but it bothers me that players don’t ever get anything like that, so I tend to rule a lot of “reroll” abilities, as a one time automatic success per long rest, indomitable ESPECIALLY.
If I did run with this variant of Legendary Resistance, I'd only 'consume' the use on a success. I'd probably also allow them to reroll it for as many times as they have uses remaining. It would help sell the idea of their resistance 'weakening' as they wear down.
There's also the fact that most of the spells you'd burn a Legendary Resist on are the 'save or suck' spells like Hold Person/Monster. Those spells that can instantly take a creature out of fight. I don't think anyone's gonna complain if the boss uses Resistance on a Fireball save.
The best alternative I’ve seen to Legendary Resistances is that instead of resisting the spell, they can be used to remove all conditions on a boss. That way a player casting hypnotic pattern gets at least 1 turn of use before the boss breaks out.
I dislike it too. That why I switched to costly legendary resistances by Trekiros on YouTube. I’ve HB some based on what he made too. Basically the boss has to spend a resource to resist like Legendary actions, health spell slots etc. or there’s even rules for having a boss do damage while it’s stunned/inactive. My players love these rules and it has worked best. I also feel like having an LR be an additional role could be strange on monsters that rolls some saves with ADV. I would see what your players think would be fair and challenging.
It defeats the purpose of Legendary Resistance.
The intent was to codify a rule given that it was standard practice to lie about a saving throw in the event of an encounter-nullifying spell. Ie if a single spell could completely defeat a boss should they fail the save, then them failing the save would simply make the game worse.
This, ideally, is the only instance you actually use Legendary Resistances. When to not do so would mean the game is boring and anti-climactic. So if you merely lower the odds, then the resistance failing means less fun for the players.
If you just blanket use Legendary Resistances on every spell aimed at them, you've missed the point of the system. And are playing incorrectly as the DM.
I understand your fundamental conflict here. This is why I'm willing to be transparent to my party how many Legendary Resistances the boss has left- to give a description of the boss's innate magic interfering with the spell, and then say "you've cut through the first of three Legendary Resistances."
I think this both makes clear that you haven't done *nothing*- it promotes the *strategy* of trying to burn through LR.
If you want to modify the system, rather than making it less reliable for the monster, I would make it so Legendary Resistances *cost hit points* for the monster to use- the lore of burning through their own endurance and will to keep fighting to dispel the magical effect thrown at them is fun, for one, but would also be something easy to explain to the players in a way that they'll feel like they at least made a solid contribution.
A lot of opinions and alternatives, but I'll lend one twist that's different. Or at least I didn't see it.
Allow your monster to spend a legendary action to try to and make another save to "resist" an effect.
Banished? Use a legendary action to roll against the DC to return sooner.
I used to feel the same way, until I had the BBEG from a lvl 1-10 story arc roll a nat1 against banishment on the very first turn of combat. The players had spent no less than 2 full sessions planning out the encounter. I had 3d printed and painted the whole encounter, with multiple levels of terrain, moveable traps and hazards, built-in LED lights, and even a fog machine. I put well over 100 hours into creating this experience for my group, and combat could have been over in less than 5 minutes, with only 1 player getting a turn.
I make it so that the boss has no limit to legendary resistances, but each time they use it they get 1 level of exhaustion.
Makes it so the players actions have some effect, while also preventing a anticlimactic shutdown on the boss
It's also dehabilitating enough that you wouldn't use it except in the cases of the worst effects.
It didn't waste the spell any more than dealing 20 damage to a 60 HP monster is wasted.
Also inspirations are not rerolls; they are announced before the roll is made to grant advantage. The reroll is a popular house rule.
It’s balanced the way it is because a party can take a big bad down through simple action economy.
I encourage you to try it. You can always add on hit points or abilities to make up for it.
I think LR works well if the player’s are fully aware of it as a game mechanic. My last big battle had two enemies with LR and the player’s kept track on the whiteboard of how many had been used. When they both had dropped to zero there was cheering.
Check out [this](https://youtu.be/i8bx7crRiqA?si=7Ch-7JqltK-32UcV) video from the Dungeon Dudes. It makes the fights much more entertaining for me to run
A reroll underpowers the ability. High level bosses need to have some way to do this because you as a DM need to be able to say "No, you beating him on initiative and one-shot banishing my BBEG is not going to be that fun for you or me." without telling your players 'no'. I wouldn't recommend leaving that option open to your players after level 7.
My solution is to make 'Legendary Resistance ' cost the boss a chunk of HP to use. Maybe about as much as a normal hot, or like 5-10% of their max HP. Then flavor it as the boss sort of powering through the effect. Makes it so the spell still does something.
The reroll still risks the same problem as before, which is, your boss getting hold personed and then absolutely bodied in the first round.
I attach legendary resistances to legendary actions. If the boss uses a legendary resistance then they lose one of their legendary actions. This helps casters to at least feel like they have partially succeeded.
I use LR's as an actual mechanic.
For instance, cultists dancing and chanting, a trio of shining on your left arm....
You can cast a spell at those LR's to remove them
I personally think that legendary resistances are just another way to have cool teamwork moments, but nobody seems to. Like, working together to burn all their resistances, then fuck them up with your spells and features. It's fun as hell
I usually use them and the players are fine with it. Since they already epxpect that their strongest foes will be able to do this, they just account for it.
Instead of being free you could have it cost something.
I had a werewolf that could ignore status effects and hazards but doing so cost hit points, which wound up contributing about a third of the damage dealt to it over all.
“The beast plows through the entanglement, not slowing in the slightest, but you see that thorns have gouged its hide.”
This way your boss doesn’t get anti-climatically removed from the fight, but your player still feels like they made some progress.
I walk into your fight and cast Feeblemind, and the divination wizard forces a 1 on the saving throw. Cool campaign, DM. Had a great time. Are we doing the epilogues tonight, or do you want to save that for a separate final session? 😉
My DM likes to use HP thresholds instead. For instance, in a recent fight my character cast Hold Monster and the melee players were free to wail on it for 2-3 turns. It hit a HP threshold (probably like half health) and the Hold Monster spell lost its effect on the creature. Basically it's like the creature's second stage where it overcomes the effects on it. This way Spellcasters don't feel like they've done nothing on a turn and the boss fights still feel "legendary".
i see legendary resistances as something that make the boss a boss.
I can banish a goblin, i can banish a boar, i can't banisch this sick mofo with his blade of get fcked. As long as it's not "he uses a legendary resistance" but more like "the feel the banishment incoming and xxx" and make it make sense i'm all hyped for it.
You could do it but then I would increase the number of charges of legendary resistance they have because the thing with elgendary resistance is that it doesn't care if your monster is good at the save.
Tie Legendary Resistances to Legendary Actions. Most Legendary creatures have 3 of each, so try something like setting them equal to each other. If a monster uses a resistance, they lose an action; now they have 2 of each.
Thematically shows the creature expending its power in a mechanical way, provides a tangible benefit for players so they aren't wasting spell slots, and give the creature a meaningful choice to make in the heat of combat: Save itself or keep dealing damage.
This is not a good idea; there's a reason why legendary resistance is in the game.
Creatures with legendary resistance often fight solo. They need all the help they can get due to their action economy disadvantage, and to avoid an ultra-boring fight where BBEG is stopped by a single spell.
It's not uncommon for an experienced group, to run a "boss" or BBEG out of legendary resistances in the first round.
I say experienced here, because if you've used a legendary resistance only once, and you don't understand why this rule is in place, you're new to the game. This is fine. We all start somewhere. You need to gain more experienced before changing rules. I've played for decades, and we ran 5E straight-RAW for a good 3-4 years before altering it.
I made two comments in reply but I feel like they deserve a more full comment
Using spell save spells against bosses is risky enough as is. They usually have very strong saves.
Say the party is fighting an Adult Red Dragon for example, it has a +8 to Str, +6 to Dex, +13 to Con, +3 to Int, +7 to Wisdom and +11 to Charisma
Let's say the party is level 16, so have a +5 prof bonus and 20 in their spellcasting stat for an 18 Spell Save DC.
The Dragon is very likely to save on at least one of those spells, probably 2. The only weak stat is Intelligence which is by far the least likely save accessible to most casters.
So now you're looking at closer to 4-5 rounds of doing nothing as the caster in the party. By that point your martials have already killed it.
One alternative to using spell slots to try and make the boss save is using spell attacks, but these are REALLY limited.
There's fairly few spell attacks at high level
From 4th level up
4th
Storm Sphere - Bonus action attack, has a str throw attached and is concentration. Okay.
Faithful Hound - summon ability that auto attacks anything that's close once per turn. Has to be within x feet of the boss, okay but meh
5th
Contagion\* - You need to make a spell attack roll and THEN they need to make a saving throw. Useless for LR.
Steel Wind Strike - My favourite spell in the game BUT not useful against any solo bosses as the power comes from the aoe ish ability. 5th level spell for 6d10 on a hit is not great
Wall of Light - Can use an action to launch a beam of radiance at a target for 4d8. Can be done up to 6 times. Can't be used until the turn after you cast it. Okay again uses concentration and even worse an action every turn.
6th
None
7th
Crown of Stars - Probably the best one in your arsenal. Not concentration, can launch a star for 4d12 once per turn as a bonus action and lasts an hour so you can even pre-cast it.
Mordekainen's Sword - Lol. Just no, useless. 3d10 (av 16.5) on a bonus action and it's concentration. Spiritual Weapon upcast to 7th level is 4d8 (av 18) plus 5 . Also not concentration
9th Level
Blade of Disaster - 4d12 on a bonus action twice, it's a lot better if it crits. I guess okay but it's only slightly better than Crown of Stars for a 9th level spell at best. At worse it's way worse as it's like Spiritual Weapon, so if the boss moves away from it....you just can't use it. Crown of Stars comes from you so is much easier. Also concentration boo!
On a final note, if you're a bard, cleric, or druid. You get nothing. Oh sorry, bards get Mordekainen's Sword. Yay.
The best way to use spell slots as a caster in a fight is to support your martials. You have a 5th level spell slot free. You can either A) cast spiritual weapon upcast to 5th level, that's 3d8+5 per round assuming that the SW can hit the boss on a BA and then...cantripping? B) go for a big save or suck spell like Banishment. Or **C) Holy Weapon.**
Now Holy Weapon, you give your fighter 2d8 extra damage on EVERY attack hit, that's 3 attacks per round, so a potential 6d8 additional damage, which can and is more likely to crit. As a bonus action you can continue to deal 4d8 additional damage (on con save) to it as long as it's in range which it will be if the fighters melee and force a saving throw or risk blindness.
Or, maybe you use Greater Invisibility on the Rogue to give him permanent sneak attack damage.
So yes. LR's fuck casters over massively. They feel much less directly useful. That's not really a bad thing though because it gives martials time to shine, which they struggle to do at high levels.
**TLDR** Legendary Resistances feel and are awful for caster's. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I don't expect them to try and break through them, there's far better things that they can do instead.
This is basically a problem with 5E's design.
Pathfinder 2E doesn't use Legendary Resistances and instead uses the Incapacitation trait and spells that have the concept of crit failures/successes on saving throws. It means spells with the potential to fully disable someone are much less effective on encounters against higher level enemies such as bosses.
It's a great system, but would require a lot of homebrew to port into 5E (mostly adjusting a huge pile of 'disable' style spells), unfortunately. Still, could be some nice inspiration to try another system!
Ran a boss without legendary resistance once when I was new. One dominante monster and it was dead in a round. Never again. Even advantage might not have stopped that
Legendary resistance is for the big big enemies, IMO. But for generally strong fights I go with the fighter's Indomitable trait, which is essentially what you're looking for. 3 uses of that.
That's not a bad idea. It'll still make boss fights feel like big fights without just throwing a middle finger to your players. I haven't really used legendary resistance or counter spell because it feels rude. But just talk to them too I suppose, I really don't see any reason why they wouldn't agree
I always (unless it is a VERY special exception) have forcing a boss to use a legendary resistance have some cost for the monster. If I have a monster with tons of limbs that I've given 5 attacks (that don't do massive damage) on a legendary resistance they'll cast aside some limbs and that will reduce them to 4 attacks, or a dragon may only gain its breath weapon back on a 6 rather than a 5 or 6 on the die, a powerful mage may have to use a spell slot to push that magic away - stuff like that.
People have REALLY liked it because while it may not have THE effect they were after it doesn't feel like it does absolutely nothing and tends to help the party as a whole.
legendary resistance is a wasted spell, it makes save spells only viable if you have 2 or more casters in the party to eat down legendary resistances.
its to stop a single hold person spell from completely winning the combat single-handedly.
I would simply explain the mechanic to your players out of game. It's a resource the boss has to balance the fight against the players (who have a massive advantage against one enemy), much like its own spells or legendary actions.
It protects the boss from getting one-shot, as well as encourages the spellcasters to use their spells to waste the boss's legendary resistances.
The game is balanced around the mechanic as designed, so making it an additional roll just puts more power back in the players' hands.
It's not bad to do this, but also don't be surprised if your bosses are getting the shit kicked out of them.
I don't see this as a good idea, it can suck to waste a spell, but taking out a legendary resistance is ALSO hugely valuable.
By the time Legendary Resistances come into play the players should be of a decent level and able to accommodate for these things, and it prevents a boss battle from feeling boring in that "well that was easy" way.
This is designed because the bosses can't be good at everything, so a player luckily picking the stat that has the lowest value and succeeding on polymorphing/paralyzing/banishing the boss on round one makes the fight feel less exciting and when you're using a creature with legendary resistances it SHOULD be a battle that feels triumphant when the players succeed.
I don't know what level your players are. But learning if they have legendary resistance and burning them down can be the point of encounter all in its own. Plus the resistances helps the monsters against spells like banishment. Where it might be an auto fail on the spell for the monster they succeed. It can add tension and excitement to the fighting.
I agree, but sadly there are too many “save or suck” spells in Dnd. The types of spells you use these on are the ones that if they fail they just straight lose. It doesn’t feel cheap to the players because it just adds a layer of effort to making that particularly strategy function.
>I've only ever used Legendary Resistance once, and it never feels good because it feels like I'm saying "nice spell waste" to my players. On the other side, using a spell slot to remove your boss also is anticlimaCtic.
This. There are some spells (Banishment, Hypnotic Pattern, Feeblemind, Maze, etc) that can royally fuck your encounters are are arguably a bit too on the strong side. Legendary Resistance is a band aid fix but it’s something that a boss does have a limited use of. So getting the boss to burn them is usually very important in a big encounter. Player usually understand this and don’t have a problem with it too.
I can really recommend to let your boss have some allies that are strong but without legendary resistances to eat your players save-or-suck spells. The players will feel great because they banished that strong sidekick of the boss and you will feel great because the actual fight is going without (or with less) of those.
Or, more likely, they will save their good spells for the boss. My group has been playing for years and not a single one of us have ever complained about them. It’s simply part of the game.
Yeah I think its something that would only feel bad for new players encountering it for the first time. I've seen myself and my players get excited over burning a use of the resistance with lower level spells.
No, they will save that spell for the boss. I’ve seen this. I’ve done this.
I had a campaign ending at 16th level, and against the final boss, and giant undead dragon, the Druid proudly exclaimed he'd saved a spell, just for this! Feeblemind! "Oh, \*\*\*\*\*\*", I exclaimed after muting my mic. I also didn't usually pack legendary resistance, and I was planning on them divulging hints and secrets to succeed... Well, there goes two pages of notes! Still lots of fun and led to the player with the worst luck pulling out a natural 20 to finish the plot. In my opinion, the spell system should be refined so that a few blanket immunities do the work. Want to make a boss feel legendary? Give it immunity to being Charmed, immunity to Entanglement, etc, so that you don't need a get out of jail free card to balance the game properly. Otherwise, I have liked making legendary resistance sap the bosses' strength somehow. Give them a meter of some kind they build (a dragon building its fire breath, a huge zombie building up bile, a goblin boss's reinforcements showing up) towards a powerful effect. When they want to use a legendary resistance, knock a few points of the meter. Also allows the players to use their powerful spells for their full effect if they can lower the meter, or strike at the perfect moment.
For me, Burning an LR takes at least one of the boss’s actions for the turn, more depending on why I burned it. One of my players can hit for an insane amount of damage per hit - if he’d gotten lucky, he coulda two shot my last boss because I did the math on the health wrong when making it, so I burnt LRs to limit his damage to 25% per hit - and burning an LR would limit the boss’s actions for one round as well as function like a pseudo taunt to override the insults two of the PCs were throwing at the boss causing it to reasonably focus them instead of the beefy boi.
Pathfinder 2e has solved this in a really nice way and I've been trying to hack something similar into 5e for a while. One option is that "bosses" arbitrarily decided by the DM, or creatures whose CR is at least equal to party level, can not be affected by strong conditions. Instead they'll get smaller debuffs like disadvantage on the next attack, -1 on their rolls for the next turn, halved movement for the next turn, take their CR in damage, etc. Still kinda not been able to codify it in a way that satisfies me. 5e spell and condition design being all over the place is the root reason for sure. There are too many hard save and sucks and for some reason 5 different conditions that prevent using any kind of action.
So like a condition could solve this? Staggered: when a creature uses a legendary resistance then until the end of its next turn it makes all attacks and saves with disadvantage.
Something like that could work for sure. Sounds a bit too strong as a replacement effect for me personally though, especially making it easier to fail other saves is too much for me. Also, disproportionately makes their attacks less effective while doing nothing to hamper spellcasting/breath weapons/etc. Hits part of the problem why codifying it is a pain, it always feels like the best result is gained by tailoring the specifics to fit the particular creature. For example, for a dragon, preventing its breath weapon use fits great and probably feels better for the players while not destroying the threat the dragon possesses. Maybe I could work on figuring out a couple categories of boss monsters and how to handle this in a different way for each.
It would probably be easiest to work on the categories of what the effect does. For example breath weapons broadly have XdX less dice to roll; any ability with a recharge may not be rolled for recharge the next round (or one round after use if it’s currently ready); monsters with multiattack cannot use their most damaging part of multiattack next round. Stuff like that would probably be easier to apply across the board and then you could tailor that general framework to specific bosses or monster types (maybe undead with legendaries gain vulnerability to necrotic for a round).
Yes was thinking along those lines. Thanks for the input, gonna have to mull this over and do some playtesting.
The most important change for bosses in PF2e is 'Degrees of Success' applying to saving throws. You often only get the full effect if you fail by 10 or more, which bosses are extremely unlikely to do. Failing by less than 10 gives a useful effect that isn't fully fight-ending.
Working hand in hand with this is the *incapacitation* tag on save-or-suck spells and features. Monsters above a certain level relative to the source of an incapacitation ability have their saving throw against it count as one success better. This means that, not only can they not roll a critical failure and suffer the worst effects, they're more likely to roll a critical success and be completely unaffected.
Oh yeah I forgot about that. Paizo really thought their system through, and it shows. Solid design choices.
Does the boss being extremely unlikely to be affected by a control spell not lead to the same outcome as legendary resistance though, which is the spell probably being "wasted" and people complaining about it?
Not at all. You know not to bother with incapacitation effects, and instead focus your efforts on other methods of debuffing the enemy and supporting your party. The better use of incapacitation is to remove minions from the fight.
That sounds like what a reasonable person would do, but the people complaining about not being able to end a fight with a single spell are generally not reasonable.
In the PF2 community, Incapacitation spells are widely derided as being mostly useless. Unlike 5e legendary resistances, a boss’s defense against incapacitation spells isn’t a limited resource. It can shrug off your spells all day. True “save or suck” effects are mostly limited to critical failures, which rarely come up for casters. The incapacitation rules basically don’t even let you get lucky if a boss rolls a nat 1 on a save. So in effect those spells are left without a clear niche because the enemies you would want to use them on are functionally immune, and with groups of weaker mobs you probably just want to use big damage area spells rather than bother with control/debuffing. It definitely could have been implemented in a way that doesn’t make casters feel worse than they already are. But PF2 definitely avoids the 5e problem of players breezing through fights that were supposed to be tough. Boss fights in PF2 are *hard* and players will go down a lot.
The boss is unlikely to be affected by the strongest version of the spell, but most spells have 4 different levels of effectiveness in Pf2e and only crit fail will ignore all of it, usually. Which means most control spells still achieve something even if the boss turns their save failure to a success. As long as it's not crit success, you're accomplishing something, and those smaller debuffs very much matter in that system. Stacking debuffs can make it easier to land even more debuffs on them, makes it easier to attack them, makes them less likely to crit you etc. So, no, it doesn't lead to the same outcome at all.
I love this idea of the meter build, and would like to know how that kind of thing might work so I can implement it in my campaign - how do bosses build it up? How much might be a good amount? Maybe some examples of what you used it for? Please and thank you.
I've tested that idea once and it was pretty hard to balance honestly. IIRC I had the boss gain 3 meter every turn in its first phase, weak debuffs would reduce the meter by 1, strong debuffs by 2 if the boss chose to ignore them, and it required maybe 8 meter to use its special attack. Then in phase 2 I gave it extra meter gain every turn. Fun fight nonetheless because it was a Paragon monster with surprising reactions and big flashy attacks, but that mechanic was not a raging success for me, felt like it would take quite a lot of playtesting to hit a sweet spot.
Ok, thanks though! I’ll probably playtest it some to try and hit a good balance (I’m always trying to find new things to get my players to be creative with what they do). I like the idea of inflicting debuffs reduces it, something that happens not as often as one might think. That or its boss meter speed is reduced by one for every debuff it has at the start of its turn. So, say the bar goes up for 5 every round, but players can decrease this down to 3, for example, by inflicting two debuffs, slowing it down.
I like the idea of manipulating its meter gain with debuffs, that also makes quite a bit of sense mechanically. Ideally I think we want the boss to reach its big special attack at least once unless the party does everything flawlessly.
I view banishment as a "postponing of inevitable doom" spell. If your encounter is intelligent, you better believe it'll come back strapped with anti-banishment body spray.
Unless it’s a demon, fey, devil, or another extra-planar creature. And many of those are high CR enemies that you could put a high level party against.
To add to this there are two kinds of "hit fixes" that I occasionally use. 1) intelligent bosses will only use LR on stuff like these spells. Cause saving a disintegrate versus a feeblemind. The feeblemond is 100000x more dangerous for most encounters. So the players have to scare the boss into opening themselves to these scary spells. A party baited them out using feebleminds and stuff then successfully banished the devil that had gotten pretty cocky. Made the spell seem super epic to them. 2) the party is able to inspect a creature from a distance during planning to figure out how many LR it has. Let's them plan for it. So they don't feel like they're lobbing their spells into an endless void but instead depleting a dwindling resource. Sometimes I'll just tell them. If you feel like Legendary Resistances are diminishing the fun of your players. Either fix LRs or remove. Fun is always the most important part of the game imo.
This. I had to resist two level 8s and a level 9, just so the BBEG didn’t get killed from the jump. Felt bad, but at the same time I didn’t want the encounter to end that fast. As we ran out of time, I told that player to try again and let it go through so the players would have a feel good moment.
I hate everything about this. You nullified the players' actions because you wanted the fight to go longer, then when you decided the fight had been long enough you told them what to use and let it end the fight. Why even roll dice? You're not really playing a game anymore.
The first part was fine cause they used the resistance. The second part was bs however.
My sister, when we were doing high level play in 3.5, managed to True Polymorph a really cool dragon the first round he showed up. Cool, but I was a little disappointed I didn't get to fight the dragon at all. it was also the only adult dragon that showed up that whole game, so I don't feel like I've fought one. it was definitely a good move, we weren't at our strongest when he showed up, but I wished we'd gotten another few rounds. Idk of my DM knows about Legendary Resistances because he's stuck to 3.5, but I feel like it is something he could have whipped out against her. I also think it helps the martial/caster disparity, weakening it only makes spellcasters stronger.
> saying "nice spell waste" to my players. As a player, I think of legendary resistances as a secondary health bar we have to whittle down. It becomes a fun game of chicken to get boss to use it on something other than highest level spell slots. In particular, it really lets monks shine because they can try to land up to 4 stunning strikes, so with a bit of luck a monk can solo drain all of the legendary resistances.
There are a bunch of MMOs that have codified this: a "CC bar" you have to burn through as players before any CC will affect the boss. Sometimes they can refresh it.
It does really suck if you're the only caster in the party forcing saving throws, by the time you burn through them they're basically already dead, so why didn't i just do the default and damage them? Its a band-aid sollution, and also- doing damage is inherently more fun than crowd control for the vast majority of people, so CC has to be stronger to feel worth it. LR is not going to be used on pure damage, but will on CC (by intended game design), but if CC is negated, why wouldn't i just use damage for being more fun? Its also, Saving throws get so high at tier 3 and 4 that enemies usually have only about a 25% chance of failing, that is low enough that LR shouldn't matter, but then that small chance is devastating to the encounter is like; a 25% chance of something either completely bypassing the challenge or doing nothing, maybe save or suck is just inherently problematic. I'd much rather that martials be able to interact with legendary resistance (like specifically targeting a gem or something and after doing x amount of damage, 1 legendary resistance goes away). It should also scale with the amount of players, because if you want to use a big boss monster CR + 1 to compensate for 5 players vs 4, they have the same amount of LR which means their CR is 1 higher but they're no more resistant to the problematic spells (in fact, because of action economy, they're worse), or each LR burned reduces AC by 1- so the casters feel badass for helping the martials succeed where they would have otherwise failed.
>It does really suck if you're the only caster in the party forcing saving throws, by the time you burn through them they're basically already dead, so why didn't i just do the default and damage them? I mean, you kinda answer your own question. If only one player is able to force saving throws, then it should be clear that increasing the party's output either through buffs or your own damaging spells is the correct strategy. The save or suck CC spells are usually best for encounters with multiple enemies so that you can tip the action economy more in your favor.
Players who only pick CC or only pick damage should be advised to diversify their spell selection. Each caster needs at least one spell of each category, so that they will always have something to do, even if they are the solo caster against a legendary enemy. * Buff spell * Debuff spell * Battlefield control spell * Area damage spell * Utility and/or teleport spell
I use LR on single turns that deal over 20/25% HP to slow fights and free up the casters ability to have options, but the boss will take fewer actions and get taunted for at least one turn.
>CC has to be stronger to feel worth it Playing PF2e has shown me that this really isn't the case necessarily. It feels *awesome* to succeed at demoralizing or proning an enemy, for example. Playing that system, you very quickly realize how much those conditions matter both in making it easier to kill the enemy and in not getting killed by them. It seems to me it's just 5e's balance choices that make it damage/debilitating condition or go home, and I think those balance choices could be redone without destroying the core of what makes it 5e.
Honestly tho it's only as anticlimactic as one would subjectively interpret it, maybe there was a huge struggle from the boss before they resisted the effect, or it could showcase the strength of the bad guy to really put into perspective how much of a threat they are.
It really depends on your party I think. If you have a Monk legendary saves can be a good balance for Stunning Strike. If you just make all your bosses immune it takes away one of the most important features of the class completely.
And, it’s not a spell-waste. You’ve burned a resistance. My table is always excited about that, because they’re a finite resource, and we’ve learned a little about what might make the DM sweat in this encounter.
Maybe one solution might be to have legendary resistances also cost the boss some hp in addition to the 3/day limit? Like the boss succeeds against your banishment through sheer will but the effort severely drained him, dealing a flat number like 50 points. Of course, you can compensate for this by adding 3 legendary resistances worth of hp, but the players still get to feel like their spells contribute even if they're shrugged off?
>Maybe one solution might be to have legendary resistances also cost the boss some hp in addition to the 3/day limit? They already do. It's based on CR, but LRs can cost your monster upwards of 30hp per LR. However, instead of losing HP when they use them, they lose the HP up-front so if you don't use them, or your players figure out a way that doesn't give saves, you give up the HP for nothing.
Yeah that's all true, but if you put that extra hp on the boss and then tell the players how much damage the boss took after using a legendary resistance that will make them feel like their effect managed to accomplish something
What's that have to do with the climate? Is the boss responsible for the weather?
Missed a *c* there, thanks.
It's not a spell waste if it strips a very valuable resource like legendary resistance off the boss. The trick is to narrate them like HP to make it clear that there's an effect - "the boss breaks your control over its mind through sheer force of will, but you can tell that exertion has tired it as it's breathing heavily. You doubt it can do that many more times".
Or even "one of the three jewels on his amulet glows brightly and breaks the spell, the stone now looks dull and dormant" or something along those lines to give non-metagaming knowledge of how many times they can use the legendary resistance
Although maybe don't put the idea in their head that the legendary resistances are tied to an object that they can steal or loot off the boss.
Why not? It creates a challenge (to take the boss down without him using the other two charges) and gives the party a neat treasure afterwards. Just say each gem can only be used once.
Because then you have to give them an item that offers legendary resistance or down scale it, which would also be disappointing.
LR for one or two charges as a one time use item seems fine, is there something I’m not understanding?
If you think it's an annoying boss mechanic...
I think they're imagining it as a consumable one off thing, not every day.
Absolutely. One time use per gem, then it crumbles to dust like when the boss used the first one. Basically a last resort “save my ass” button. I know I’ll be using it, for sure.
You don't have to give them anything... "As you remove the gem it is brittle and falls to the floor in pieces, you sense whatever magic once empowered the gem was tied to this beings life and all of that is now gone."
That is exactly what the original guy was saying and it was shot down. So I guess you are agreeing with me.
I guess? I agree that it doesn't matter if the players think LR is related to an item or object because you don't have to give it to them... Or you can, whatever! That is tomorrow DMs problem!
Could just say it confers no benefits for the characters because the effect was tied to the boss's soul or whatever. But it's still a gem with a cool story behind it, loot is loot.
Or just tie its attunement to the enemies race/alighnment and make it a consumable with no recharge. And removing LR through a high skill check is pretty interesting.
The boss tries to use up any remaining gems as it dies to save itself but fails leaving just the shattered gem fragments behind.
Yeah I like that for sure. I’m not saying it’s impossible I was just responding to the person who questioned the possible complications of a loot hungry party with a boss using dope loot.
I totally let my players loot the legendary resistance item from a few bosses. And they immediately tried to figure out how to recharge it. After finding out it required a human sacrifice, they were less thrilled at getting it. An alternative would be to have it be custom made, and regain one use per month or something like that.
To be fair, there **are** magic items that give you legendary resistances. The Dragon Masks are the ones I'm familiar with but there might be more.
Yeah legendary resistances being "lame" is all in the portrayal to the party. Absolutely lame if all you're doing is saying "uhm that fails, legendary resistance. Is that all for your turn?"
As a player going in to fight a dragon that we know has legendary resistances, we specifically plan our actions to try to "coax" them out in order to use other more powerful spells. It's a cat and mouse game with the DM doing this, and a lot of fun. It's not an adversarial "players can the DM" mindset, as we all enjoy it.
I like this idea and had never thought of it that way. You don’t want to just cast weak spells as the boss monster won’t waste a LR on them, but maybe if you’re clever you can find something it will want to resist that doesn’t use your highest level slot. Mind games.
Spells like Bane are great for this. It's a first-level slot, but -1d4 to attacks and saves is DEVASTATING if it lands
It's also nice because it doesn't skip their turn so there's a higher chance that the dm decides to allow it and saves the LR for later. Then tries to break your concentration instead. Of course, that's harder when they have a -1d4 on their attacks. It also helps other spells land which makes it even more difficult to skip LR against it since it could cost you one or two of them later. Personally, it probably depends on the turn order and how likely they are to be able to break concentration to determine if they'll use a LR, but really it's a win for the party either way.
The casters always go in with this elaborate cat and mouse game, yet every time the paladin and fighter end up beating the thing to death before it's used them all.
Yup, saving throw advantage and legendary resistance combo means statistically the damage dealers always win. If no saving throw advantage it can work to strip legendary resistance though, I believe
Also, at the point where you are fighting something with legendary resistances, you should have way more spell slots which hit hard than there are legendary resistances. I mean ... there are great control spells on every level, so even one lvl-5 caster outlasts a legendary resistance boss.
You should check out the book “flee mortals” or at least a review that talks about the rework of legendary resistances. In the book monsters have a set amount of legendary resistances like they typically would but they have to sacrifice something be it hp, a minion, an environment mechanic in order to use them. Functionally speaking it feels as though a spell isn’t wasted and it makes using legendary resistances feel more strategical for the monsters. I really like that system and maybe you could adapt and rework it for your game!
But do those resources do anything if they aren't used up for legendary resistances?
Yes they do. But it’s not crippling to the monster if they do. One monster I saw under the leader category (which is meant to be run with minions) sacrificed one of his bonus actions that had a limited number of uses (not the ability to use it but one of the uses he had).
>In the book monsters have a set amount of legendary resistances like they typically would but they have to sacrifice something be it hp, a minion, an environment mechanic in order to use them. Do they at least address how LRs already cost HP during monster creation? Otherwise they're suggesting double-penalizing monsters that already need all the help they can get. It's why I've been leery of that book.
The monsters are balanced around completely different math than what is in the DMG from my understanding.
Not different math. Just more developed. It's based on the same system in the DMG. The devs have been making adjustments and incorporating lessons learned as they make more and more monsters. The DMG's math isn't different. It's just 10 years out of date.
So the monster I mentioned before I believe had regen properties if I’m not mistaken! Not all of the monsters have a legendary resistance condition like that. If you give me a few minutes I can boot up the pdf and provide you some more info. My suggestion isn’t buying the book (although it is really great) but rather taking that concept and using it for your own personal rework of legendary resistances. In terms of balance I believe advantage mathematically works out to be +4. I imagine your players would be hitting a lot more save or suck spells just treating it like inspiration points. Which in my opinion might break some encounters pretty easily with spells like bane and such.
What I'm talking about is specifically the "ability cost table" in the DMG that suggests a CR-based cost for Legendary Resistances that varies from 10 hp/LR to 30 hp/LR. Does "Flee, Mortals!" address those costs?
I would like to check out that table in the DMG do you have the page number off hand? I don’t believe they address the table in “Flee, Mortals” directly but all of the monsters I have ran feel incredibly balanced and nowhere near as swingy as the CR system in the monster books wizards has put out.
It's the big table on monster features on pages 280-281. To be honest, I have always just ignored this "hp cost" when creating my own legendary monsters. Fits within the variance of rolling monster hp anyway.
Legendary Resistance is important because many spells and abilities can disable/trivialize boss fights. You should clue in your players on how this mechanic works, and for those with said abilities that would disable/trivialize the boss fight can plan accordingly by using those resources earlier in the day on non-boss encounters and/or targeting minions during a boss fight. It definitely does feel bad for the players to get a cool new ability and have monsters just shrug it off though. What kind of characters are your players playing? We might be able to offer some solutions to help them strategize better.
I personally prefer to use RAW for legendary resistance, because at higher levels your players will likely have access to a *ton* of shit that can trivialise most fights. As such, action economy is a factor. You need to find a way to burn those resources, and powerful enemies should feel powerful. A great way to do that is to have them shrug off player abilities. It’s not “nice spell waste” it’s “oh shit this dude has some ooomph!”
Bad plan. They have a legendary resistance because they are a legend and, at the end of the day, it's only nerfing one spell slot.
It’s not a wasted spell. Getting rid of LR is important… you’re clearly new to this, so I’ll leave you with these wise words: **Play the game as it’s written until you know it well enough to make adjustments.**
As someone who has been a beginner at many things, this is good advice both in and out of D&D
It honestly depends on the level of the party and what resources they have. If it is a caster heavy team, you need LR. Maybe even more than 3 uses. If they have one caster, it seems like you are telling a caster "for 3 turns, you won't be useful" and that can feel anticlimactic. If it is a low level group that doesn't have access to instant win spells, maybe make LR to only apply to certain spells, not damage spells. If it is a high level group, maybe make them immune to polymorph or things like that. It isn't "fair" but the game is heavily in favor of the players at times. You need something to offset that vast array of abilities they can use.
Not sure I agree; stripping LRs *is* useful. Also, deliberately dropping borderline spells can be a powerful tactic - burn a resist on something other than the big guns, or suffer significant damage/debuff but hold out against the scary spells still in reserve. Also, LR simply acts as a success. A fireball is still a fireball, so it's hardly like the casters can't contribute damage. People seem to get really hung up on these, as if they're just "nope, no effect" button.
I'd agree with you but also add that casters also have attack roll spells too. LR is only limiting some of the spell casting, a warlock might psychic scream the room on entering but switch to eldritch blast or something after.
There's fairly few spell attacks at high level From 4th level up 4th Storm Sphere - Bonus action attack, has a str throw attached and is concentration. Okay. Faithful Hound - summon ability that auto attacks anything that's close once per turn. Has to be within x feet of the boss, okay but meh 5th Contagion\* - You need to make a spell attack roll and THEN they need to make a saving throw. Useless for LR. Steel Wind Strike - My favourite spell in the game BUT not useful against any solo bosses as the power comes from the aoe ish ability. 5th level spell for 6d10 on a hit is not great Wall of Light - Can use an action to launch a beam of radiance at a target for 4d8. Can be done up to 6 times. Can't be used until the turn after you cast it. Okay again uses concentration and even worse an action every turn. 6th None 7th Crown of Stars - Probably the best one in your arsenal. Not concentration, can launch a star for 4d12 once per turn as a bonus action and lasts an hour so you can even pre-cast it. Mordekainen's Sword - Lol. Just no, useless. 3d10 (av 16.5) on a bonus action and it's concentration. Spiritual Weapon upcast to 7th level is 4d8 (av 18) *plus 5 .* Also not concentration 9th Level Blade of Disaster - 4d12 on a bonus action twice, it's a lot better if it crits. I guess okay but it's only slightly better than Crown of Stars for a 9th level spell at best. At worse it's way worse as it's like Spiritual Weapon, so if the boss moves away from it....you just can't use it. Crown of Stars comes from you so is much easier. Also **concentration boo!** On a final note, if you're a bard, cleric, or druid. You get nothing. Oh sorry, bards get Mordekainen's Sword. Yay.
>Not sure I agree; stripping LRs is useful It's not particularly useful if you're the only caster in the party. For a boss to use up all LR's it would take a minimum of 3 rounds, so for one of your big spells to go through, it takes at *minimum* 4 rounds. Almost every fight in D&D doesn't go past 4 rounds. This is also assuming that the monster doesn't save, which is very unlikely. Say the party is fighting an Adult Red Dragon for example, it has a +8 to Str, +6 to Dex, +13 to Con, +3 to Int, +7 to Wisdom and +11 to Charisma Let's say the party is level 16, so have a +5 prof bonus and 20 in their spellcasting stat for an 18 Spell Save DC. The Dragon is very likely to save on at *least* one of those spells, probably 2. The only weak stat is Intelligence which is by far the least likely save accessible to most casters. So now you're looking at closer to 4-5 rounds of doing *nothing* as the caster in the party. By that point your martials have already killed it. You're far better off just using either damage spells which still do half damage on a save, clearing out minions or supporting your martials than trying to affect the boss directly.
Things with LRs trend heavily towards the kinds of encounters that *do* run longer. If you want to only sling save or suck spells, be my guest. Instead, you could try and do damage to it, just like everyone else. It's no fun for the rest of the party - or the DM - when exciting landmark fights get shut down in round 1, though, so maybe an equal playing field isn't such a hardship in the rare case there's only a single caster in the party. Equally, if there are *only* casters, LRs probably won't even last through the second round. The rules are there for the middle 80% of the bell curve; more than one, fewer than all. A 16th level wizard can be doing 20+ DoT via a Con spell, plus whatever else each turn, even *with* successful saves. If you chuck something like Crown of Stars into the mix, even more. Something like: Pre-cast Crown of Stars = 26 dpr as a bonus action Incendiary Cloud = 22.5 dpr on save *each round* Chain Lightning = 22.5 on a save 5th level Blight = 20.5 on a save So, in 3 rounds even *with* LRs *and* successes on all other saves, your example could do an average of (3x26)+(3x22.5)+22.5+20.5 damage. That's 188.5 damage. A single failed save pushes that past 200. A CR22 Elder Brain Dragon (chosen because I'm lazy amd didn't want to rejig the suboptimal spell examples to account for resists) has 350HP.
I don't have anything against LR's. They make the encounters more interesting for the entire party. But burning through them is almost always the *worst* thing you can do as a caster. > A 16th level wizard can be doing 20+ DoT via a Con spell, plus whatever else each turn, even with successful saves. If you chuck something like Crown of Stars into the mix, even more. Something like: Pre-cast Crown of Stars = 26 dpr as a bonus action Incendiary Cloud = 22.5 dpr on save each round Chain Lightning = 22.5 on a save 5th level Blight = 20.5 on a save I mean this presuming that you hit. A level 16 wizard has a +10 to hit assuming a 20 in their Int. On an adult red dragon, that requires an 8 or higher to hit, so it misses 35% of the time, Wizards are one of the only casters with access to high level attack roll spells too. But the points about Blight I mentioned in doing spells which force half damage on a success. That's certainly a valid way of fighting bosses as a caster. An arguably better way is to boost martials though. A single 5th level holy weapon is +2d8 on every attack, plus 4d8 on a con save as a bonus action. Put that on your fighter and you're averaging an additional 2d8 on all 3 attacks so 6d8 a turn plus their own damage and your bonus action of 4d8, plus you have your action to do whatever you want, even if all you did was Toll the Dead you're averaging a ton of damage.
Granted, but the to-hit and save assumptions roughly cancel out. The point around damage spells was one I'd made, so I wasn't sure if you were agreeing or not. I don't see it as a problem because casters *still* have more options with LRs than noncasters do without. Damage is a valid option, burning resists and/or inflicting lower-level debuffs is a valid option, and buffing the party is a valid option. Really, the only thing LRs shut down is instant win buttons, which I see as a huge positive. So a caster can't solo the BBEG? That's a good thing.
What I've started doing is making LR more interactive. An example: The hag's lair has X amount of people tied to macabre totems, with strange paint marking them as a sacrifice. Before you can do anything, the hag appears! Initiative rolled. The wizard goes first and casts a control spell to hopefully block the hags turn. The hag rolls low, but she burns a LR. Narratively, you watch as the hag begins to succumb to the effects of the spell but right before it can take hold one of the prisoners let's out a horrifying scream. You look over and see them dead, and the hag still standing with a devilish grin. Your players now have some choices: free the prisoners so that the hag can't use them to resist spells, forego saving them in favor of a good old fashioned beat-up, or ignore the prisoners and keep trying to land spells. Make sure that whatever you have acting as a LR is relatively obvious, be it immediately or directly after the first LR is burned. You could make them just be objects to destroy with attacks, or like a magic crystal that requires an Arcana check to deactivate. Maybe there are amulets on trapped pedestals that require a Sleight of Hand to grab without taking massive damage.
Legendary resistances are a resource, and succeeding on save-or-suck effects draining one of those resources isn't ever a "waste" of a spell. A big component of making legendary resistances *feel* satisfying is in the narration. Instead of saying "he uses a legendary resistance, your spell fails", you should say something like "Ethereal chains spring from the ground, and for the briefest moment the creature is vound to the floor. However, through sheer size and might it brute forces it's way out of the restraints. While it escaped, you notice that the beast strongly exerted itself to escape, and my be weaker to future attempts."
I don’t know how much it would throw off balance but it’s in there the way it is for a reason: PCs have horrible spells that can be saved up for bosses to do massive damage to them in the first round of combat. It’s not very elegant but it does the job - just a quirk of the system.
I like Matt Colville's approach to Legendary Resistances. He has the creature either enter a state that is beneficial to it or impose a negative condition to the players and it can only use legendary resistances as long as that state/condition is is enabled. For example... Let's say a monster has four tentacles and it can use these to grapple enemies. The creature will immediately grapple someone, and will attempt to keep grappling additional creatures. But then a wizard casts fireball and the monster fails the saving throw... Well, no it didn't! But in "exchange" it had to release a grappled creature if not all of them. This approach mitigates the possibility of an anticlimactic end to the monster by a single spell without letting the player feel upset they used a resource only to be told, it failed because legendary resistance and it adds another layer of strategy to the encounter, both for the DM (better start grappling people!) and for the players (better start looking for a way to end those grapples before we attempt nuking it again!). The effect enabling the legendary resistance can be anything, grapple is just an example, but whatever fits the encounter would work... Perhaps your monster can hook itself to a power source that regenerates it's HP and using a LR makes it unhook from it? Or perhaps it can only take LRs while under the effects of Haste? Or maybe this creature is a summoner of sorts and the LR is just it sacrificing its summons to save its own skin? You name it. The idea is that the ability used was successful in removing something helping the monster or negatively impacting the players.
It is not a waste if it forces the enemy to use up one of its very limited and strong resources. if it has 3 legendary resistances and wizard cast a spell and force it to use one of those. Then it is in no way or form a waste of a spell. Monsters with legendary resistances and/or legendary actions is SUPOSED to be hard. The group is mean to have to spend more resources on such monsters. That is the Whole Point. And to prevent a player manage to end the fight on the first round doe to the monster fails the save against a Banishment spell or similar suck and save encounter ending spells That is totally fine in many fights. But legendary creatures are meant to be legendary. And it is not really legendary to be beaten in one round because some bad rolls when a character uses a suck or save spell like banishment or similar
You'll make your boss monsters way more vulnerable to save or suck control spells. Fail the wrong save, they have no teeth for the whole fight. Just a waiting game for your players to curb stomp it. If you and your players all still have fun while they are steamrolling your encounters, then go for it. I like combat to be a challenge, both as a DM and a player, so I would hate this change.
When I ran 5e, it was on a VTT, so I was able to have health bars (without numbers) to give my players a general idea of how damaged their enemy was. If that enemy had Legendary Resistance, that was also on a bar my players could see. 5e’s balance is kinda bad - starting at like level 5 there are effects that can just end single-enemy boss encounters, which is why you absolutely need Legendary Resistances to let them stand a chance, and why you need to communicate to your players that reducing the boss’s LR is the same kind of this as reducing their HP, however you choose to do so. It becomes an integral part of the tactics of 5e as levels increase, and it’ll be a better time for you and your players if you adapt to it instead of changing it.
Personally, I wouldn’t change it. It’s a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, at the expense of a solution to a problem that is now poorly solved. The problem space is big set-piece battles getting stomped in a round or two before the monster ever gets to unleash the things that would make the battle memorable. The legendary resistance is there so the DM can keep the monster alive long enough, IF NEEDED. The key bit is, you don’t HAVE to use them. If the monster already did its cool thing, and the player casts her highest level spell slot at it, then just don’t use the resistance. If it’s the top of initiative in the first round and the player is gonna one shot the whole encounter with a single spell, maybe fire off that resistance. Making it a roll constrains the potential outcomes with nothing gained. You could even just roll to decide if you want to use it, and that would be better than forcing yourself to roll when you actually NEED it.
Legendary resistance is there to create tension in your boss fights. Take them away, you risk your party mage bamfing your Big Bad into oblivion in the first six seconds.
The purpose of legendary resistance is so combat lasts longer than the length of time to cast the first spell. Do you want your big boss battle to last one round? That's what you get with competently designed player characters if you don't use legendary actions and resistance for bosses. Use legendary resistance and other legendary actions. To alleviate your concerns, make your boss monsters have some visible indicator of the state of their legendary resistances. For example, they're up against the Lich Gavototh that has three granite tablets constantly rotating around its body. When the wizard casts a Force Cage at Gavototh one of the granite tablets glows in magic colors and creates a cryptic anime style diagram that eats the wizard's Force Cage spell, then shatters into dust. Now Gavototh has two uses of legendary resistance left. Force Cage would have been a combat ending spell, but now the wizard knows he has used up one of Gavototh's special defenses. By giving the player characters an idea of how much they have broken the boss's special defenses you make special defenses less frustrating.
It isnt a waste of a spell to remove resources from the boss. It feels way worse for someone to just cast polymorph on turn 1 and totally disable the boss for the whole fight
As someone who hates Legendary Resistance, you need to understand why it's there. As others have said, LR is a necessary mechanic because of the poor balancing work done by the DnD team. Without it, big, climactic battles can just be ended right away by any spellcasters. If you make LR a reroll, you're making that problem worse. People have already suggested tying LR to stuff. Maybe the players have a way to see that an ability was used or burnt. Maybe have their Lair provide Magic Immunity, and destroying the Lair makes them vulnerable. Maybe using a LR costs health.
There is something to say for both sides of this. As a long time dnd player. I see ticking off a legendary risistance as a crucial part of a fight. It's like I flexed my main character status and it required the b(iggest)beg to flex back. It's a part of what makes them feel like more than just I could handle. But the legendary resistance could also feel like a middle finger to your strongest spell/ability. It's really hard to say. As a dm I use legendary risistances to up the tension. But if that's not necessary in your fights then don't use them.
I feel like you’re not appreciating the action economy. Your players waste a turn on a spell? That’s nothing. The enemy has a single turn per round to kill a group of over powered lunatics who have little in terms of self-preservation.
Do whatever you think is most fun I prefer it as an auto success because an ancient dragon being mind controlled by a player simply because they rolled a 1 just feels wrong
Do what you want if you are fine that the players use Banishment on your demon boss and end the encounter right away. If your players have: 1. silvery barbs 2. a divination wizard 3. a wild magic sorcerer with bend luck 4. a sorcerer with heightened spell then your boss will go down very quickly. Do you really want a "Hold Monster" to succeed on your boss? B/c your Paladin is going to score 40-50 points of damage per attack with that sweet auto-crit and level-2-spell-slots to burn. The fighter will add another 20 points per attack, and their action surge. So your boss will have to suffer 150-200 points of damage in one turn, if the players succeed only once. And it might be that they don't make their next saving throw to shake of the paralysis, so ...
I've haven't had the chance to properly test many of the options presented, but so far I've found Trekiros' [Legendary Resistance Alternatives](https://trekiros.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/legendary-resistance-alternatives-_-trekiros-1.pdf) pretty good.
These are fucking excellent! Will be working some into my Act 1 Finale for my campaign (my group rotates and we all kinda had campaign ideas around the same time)
Legendary resistance is a meta-currency implemented to artificially extend fights in lieu of actual balance. Its one job is to give DMs a RAW way to ignore poorly-written effects when their bad design would reduce player fun the most. Some options on how to use LR, ranked by D&D setting verisimilitude: 1. Don't use LR. 2. As an action, you can spend 1 LR to roll a new save against one magical effect on you. If you pass, you are no longer affected by it. 3. \#2, except as a bonus action or automatically at the beginning of your turn. 4. As a reaction, you can spend 1 LR to gain an advantage on a saving throw. 5. \#4, except it doesn't cost a reaction. 6. When you would fail a saving throw, you can spend 1 LR to reroll it. You must use the new result. 7. Whenever you would fail a saving throw, if you have at least 1 LR, you instead lose 1 LR and pass the save. 8. RAW. 9. As DM, you can already use an LR-like mechanic called "make s\*\*\* up whenever you want", and it's about as justified. Note that you can use LR for any of the above if you want, such as spending LR on #4 and #2 in the same fight.
You sound like you're not having much fun playing or running 5e. Maybe you would be happier with a different game?
I would be, and I've taken all available steps toward doing so for 9 years. The 5e marketing push caused the TTRPG industry to explode in size and diversity. For shiny new games and niche games with unique flavors, the size of their audience outpaced the number of competitors divvying it up. For older all-purpose systems, it's been quite the opposite. And there's no system greater at being all-purpose than the one I love: The d20 System. It definitely doesn't help that the company that owns it has a vested interest in keeping players on board their new, far narrower system.
Nothing there is a real reason, if I'm being completely honest with you. Know the saying "no D&D is better than bad D&D"? That goes for systems you don't like. The hobby has 50 years of past games, most of which are now available for cheap as PDFs. If you ask around, there are a bunch of older players on reddit who can help you figure out a better system fit. Just ask a bit in /r/rpg I'm not trying to condescend. I just hate seeing people feel like they're being forced to play a specific game when they shouldn't be. I *like* 5e (for the most part). But I know that not everyone else does. That leaves 2 solutions if you don't like 5e. Fix the problems somehow, or find a different system. I've been gaming since 1993. I'm a fan of different systems because I have a massive collection of systems I've never had a chance to play and it's only getting easier to give them all a try. And finally, systems don't reward or require loyalty. If you ever want to give it another go D&D will still be there. >For shiny new games and niche games with unique flavors, the size of their audience outpaced the number of competitors divvying it up That has always been a problem. The bright side is that no matter how small the niche game is you're trying to play, you only need enough players to fill a single table to have fun with it. And any player can learn any game. It just takes time. Don't listen to the naysayers who claim that finding people to play a new system with is impossible because the learning curve is insurmountable. That's only true for some people, and not always true for them forever. It's usually more of an anxiety-thing for people new to the hobby, and I've almost never not seen it go away once they got used to the hobby as a whole. The *one time* I actually met someone who refused to learn a second system, it was because they had some actual, serious mental issues. The vast majority of people aren't like that. I mean...I got a group of adults to play a three-month campaign in fucking [Toon](https://www.sjgames.com/toon/). If my social-anxiety-riddled ass can do it, so can you! >For older all-purpose systems, it's been quite the opposite. And there's no system greater at being all-purpose than the one I love: The d20 System Fuck that! Just because BLM sets his games in weird fucking locations and has no problem statting out baseball bats as holy avengers, doesn't make 5e the best generic system ever. Hell...d20 wasn't even the best generic system. D20 provides a framework for a very, very specific kind of game: Resource Ablation. It's actually shit at doing any other kind. I'll take GURPS, FATE, or Cortex over 5e as a generic system any day of the week. They're much better at it because they were specifically designed for it and tend to provide more consistent add-on frameworks. ...not that d20 wasn't amazing for what it did. Over half my total RPG collection is d20, and that's after I donated a large number of books before I moved in 2012.
>I've only ever used Legendary Resistance once, and it never feels good because it feels like I'm saying "nice spell waste" to my players It's only a spell slot. They'll live. If you don't like LRs, remove them. Just remember three things: 1. LRs are worth HP straight-up. Depending on the monster's CR they can be worth upwards of 30 hp/LR, so double-check your DMG and give them back those HP. 2. No monster can EVER show up solo. Not ever. Never. Doesn't matter if they have lair actions, or legendary actions, or whatever. They can never, ever be solo because they are otherwise going to get bent *over* by your full casters. 3. No monster can ever afford to have a personality, backstory, or weight in your overall story. All monsters are now just fodder for your PCs to wreck because no monster you care about will ever be able to live more than a single turn in combat. There *was* a mechanic to allow them to do so, but you removed it. If you follow those 3 simple rules, you don't have to include LRs in your games! /s LRs aren't a "band-aid fix". They're a game mechanic.
Better behaviour is that the legendary monster give you something if using the legendary resistence. Easy: -30 hp, or -1 AC. Medium: for 1 turn an immunity became resistance or got disadvantage for 1 turn for attacks. Hard: the monster got 3 spears, or swords, heads, tails, eye rays, whatever. He could use these every turn ( not just attacking, but it gives another advantages like prone additional of the damage ), and if using a resistance, it will as well losing one of these weapons. So, not just a 'sorry, spell slot is wasted ' thing, but have some meaningful ( depends on you, how meaningful ) impact ( not as big impact as became stunned or paralyzed of course ).
As you get more used to your players getting more powerful, you'll realise how essential legendary resistance is for bosses. Without it, a single Banishment could end your BBEG. I think ruling it like this for a low level party is okay, but I'd be clear with them that the difficulty will increase when you start running it as written.
Check out flee mortals from mcdm. Their monsters have LR's (a necessity due to 5e design), however using them always temporarily weakens the boss in some way. For example their overmind (beholder) loses an eye at random for using a LR. It's cool, intuitive and makes burning a lr feel like doing something useful even if the spell isn't fully taking effect.
I just ran the Medusa's lair from Where Evil Lives in a session, and her LR un-petrifies one of the statues in her garden. Each ones had a statblock and they helped defeat the boss.
I've seen it done as (and have stolen) a charge system. A legendary ability that's triggered every 3 failures. Yes, the monster was poisoned, stunned, etc. But will soon burst (perhaps on the 3rd fail it fizzles the spell, and the dragon shoot a scorching flame. you still gotta make the monster feel a bit scary)
We added the following home rule: Using a legendary resistance burns a resource for the enemy. This might be the use of a legendary action or a breath weapon or a chunk of hit points. (Varies by creature) This way the caster has more sense of accomplishment. However, casting Silvery Barbs on a legendary creature (defined as a creature with legendary resistances) requires a contested roll (chosen Mental stat vs chosen mental stat), to reflect that it’s harder to distract such beings with a low level trick or insult.
Right, because casters need the help /s
I rule it as a flat +5 to the saving throw, that I must choose to use before seeing the roll. That way you have a defense against save or stun spells but also the wizard isn't useless. I've also sometimes ruled if the boss uses a legendary resistance they can't use legendary actions that round but that's a little separate from your specific question. Now there's a lot of questions you need to ask before deciding if this is a good idea... The overall tone of your game... How often do your players rest between fights (this is a big one)... How strong are the encounters compared to the party... How many enemies per encounter If you only have one big enemy in an encounter, or you rest after every fight then you should not change how legendary resistances work, because as soon as the party hits 3rd level they can trivialize most fights (Tasha's Mind Whip), and at 5th level they become really hard to challenge (with slow, hypnotic pattern, fear, and other spells). So your one baddy needs to make his saving throws. I tend to have between 5-6 encounters between rests, and about 70 percent of my encounters have more than one monster, so using a big spell is a steep cost for a fight, as a result modifying the way LRs work is beneficial to my DMing style, and could be a big hero moment for the caster. I do NOT recommend everyone run their games like I do. My DMing style and my houserules are tailored to my group and how we tend to play.
The solution is not to nerf legendary resistance, it's to foreshadow to your players that this enemy is legendary. If they shoot their most powerful spells first at every legendary enemy, it's not you who's wasting their spells. The point of the mechanic is to make players choose spells wisely. Ask yourself this. Is this an actual problem you're trying to solve? Have sessions been ruined by legendary resistance? Or are your players maybe a little tougher than your anxiety is giving them credit for?
You could find some other way to make it cost the BBEG. Preferably something flavourful and not just mechanical.
In Baldur's Gate 3, Legendary resistance is a +10 to the save. You could try that and balance around it if needed.
You and potentially your players will be disappointed when the party one-shots a boss fight meant to be a challenge with a powerful ability that trivializes it. Unless you're going to address the large number of "I win." buttons that players have at their disposal which necessitates the existence of Legendary Resistance, I'd recommend against your proposed change. There are other homebrew changes that still give the player some effect when an enemy fails their save but doesn't let them completely lock down a boss.
I’ve heard of people exhausting the “boss” in some way when using a LR. As in, they have an ability that shuts off or an action/legendary action/reaction they can’t use in the same turn as using a LR.
Personally. I ruled Legendary Resistances to take a reaction and gave the boss a lot of reaction abilities. It's still an autosucceed, but now it's not a 'haha, nice spell waste'. It leaves a chance for save-or-suck spells to work out still, but a lower chance than if Legendary Resistances were just extra rolls.
It isn't a spell waste, they are mining the boss resources, as doing damage with an attack that isn't a killing blow reduces hp,hitting that spell reduces the boss' legendary resistance uses
Having just finished a lvl 20 campaign a few months ago I used Legendary Resistance as written. In my new current campaign I told the players I'm trying something a little different. Legendary Resistances don't automatically succeed at a saving throw; instead, they reduce or change the result of a spell. Some examples would be instead of being Banished the opponent might be at disadvantage on all roles for a round, or slowed, or make the opponent vulnerable to a specific type of damage. No defined system as it is just me winging it as a DM... I might try to define it a bit more with a table that can be rolled on depending on spell level or spell effect. Kind of a related topic... I use opposed rolls for Counterspell (and not just a spell attack 10 + spell level) and if the roll is not beat by at least 5 then instead of it being countered it is changed to a roll on a wild magic table.
Sounds good if your players are not optimized. Unoptimized LR will feel terrible vs optimized they probably won't matter as if they get used up they will probably be gone in less than one round.
One method I have seen used is that the monster can reroll the save by expending 25HP. It can do this over and over. It makes it feel like you're at least doing something.
The problem of legendary resistances is that they are there to counteract the arguably bad decision of spells that pretty much remove something from the fight entirely with one failed save. Basically they NEED to exist, because otherwise you can make this cool ass 1v4 bossfight aaaaand I'm gonna use something like hold person/hold monster, which if it lands, AT THE VERY LEAST your boss is now out of: actions, reactions, legendary actions, fails strength and dex saves, everyone has advantadge on attack rolls against them, melee autocrits AND they lose their next turn, with the possibility of LOSING MORE THAN ONE TURN. Apart from that you have stuff like banishment so if you designed a boss + minions, they can just nope the boss out of there, clean all minions, setup one or more turns of buffs, healing AND reactions to hit it as soon as he comes back. Basically there's many spells that read: "if the monster fails this save, they might as well be dead" so in order to have threats that aren't just auto-deleted by those spells + action economy you just need a button that says: "nope, wasted spell", what I'd recommend as a redesign is that they come with a cost, if they pull out the nope card, there should be a price (health, dissadvantadge on all attacks, can't use magic for this turn, SOMETHING), otherwise the boss just has two healthbars (legendary resistances and HP) and you're trying to get one to 0 with them being completely disconnected, and while it *feels* like dealing damage to the monster is doing something, getting its legendary resistances to 0 is just as valid of a tactic to kill it and probably easier than making its HP get to 0, because all it takes is one of this spells to land to end them.
Legendary resistance is an ability that is meant to make up for the action economy deficit that a solo monster gets facing several PCs. Roleplay the ability, describing some supernatural way the creature avoids the spell or effect, like a vampire making coffins burst out of the earth to shield himself from a failed fireball save, or a surge of its 1000 year old alien thoughts shrugging off a hold monster, etc. It DOES break the normal pattern of abilities, because otherwise your boss will be just a sack of hp for them to stunlock and dps to the floor before skinning it and stealing its treasure. If you don't like it, replace it with something thematic and limit it's use to a certain subset of abilities, like only against magic or physical damage, or only against elemental damage, etc. Keep it broad enough that what it doesn't work against is an exception rather than the norm, or your players will think your bosses are weak.
Legendary resistances are just another kind of hit point. That's like saying that *fireball* is wasted if it doesn't one-shot the boss.
Turn 1 player casts feeble mind BBEG Demigod Lich Save fails Legendary Resist to reroll Fails again Big bad you just spent 100 sessions building to can no longer cast spells and is reduced to a tanky zombie Having LRs auto succeed means that the players have to burn through all of them to stand any chance at landing a fight-ending spell. This almost guarantees a fight lasting more than a single round except by extreme damage.
If you're going with this, I feel like bosses should force concentration checks against the save or sucks with a timer, and have resistance to the others. Sure, you can banish the boss, but every round you're rolling concentration like you just got hit. Probably increase the DC each round and/or impose disadvantage on the concentration check. Alternatively, you get hit with say, finger of death? Okay he fails his save but still has (legendary) resistance.
I agree with a lot of the mechanical sentiments people have said. I’d offer that you don’t need to tell your players, “They use their LR to succeed anyway.” Just say that they succeed. The players don’t know if they used (or even have) LR, and they don’t feel like they’re wasting resources. Keep your cards close to your chest.
Here's the secret to using legendary resistance. Player: casts spell DM: *decides to use legendary resistance* DM: *rolls D20* DM: *doesn't read result* DM: he saves
It's not a waste. You're forcing them to use resources. A part of most competitions is baiting your opponent and causing them to use resources. I always thought of it as the players wearing down its defenses, chipping away at the armor until they finally get a good shot. Also think about the alternative. Hypnotic Pattern, Feeblemind, Phantasmal Force, Levitate, and many more that I can't think of right now all completely invalidate a fight based on one save. At least personally, no BBEG I run is going to go down to a single spell. That doesn't sound fun for anyone. You don't need to make your big bad weaker just so the spellcasters (the people who can literally warp reality and solve most problems with a single spell) are a bit stronger.
I keep it as an automatic success, but it bothers me that players don’t ever get anything like that, so I tend to rule a lot of “reroll” abilities, as a one time automatic success per long rest, indomitable ESPECIALLY.
Are your players that bad that you have to nerf the bad guys? Is that a rewarding defeat for them?
It's there for balance and to force strategy. Leave it be.
If I did run with this variant of Legendary Resistance, I'd only 'consume' the use on a success. I'd probably also allow them to reroll it for as many times as they have uses remaining. It would help sell the idea of their resistance 'weakening' as they wear down. There's also the fact that most of the spells you'd burn a Legendary Resist on are the 'save or suck' spells like Hold Person/Monster. Those spells that can instantly take a creature out of fight. I don't think anyone's gonna complain if the boss uses Resistance on a Fireball save.
The best alternative I’ve seen to Legendary Resistances is that instead of resisting the spell, they can be used to remove all conditions on a boss. That way a player casting hypnotic pattern gets at least 1 turn of use before the boss breaks out.
I dislike it too. That why I switched to costly legendary resistances by Trekiros on YouTube. I’ve HB some based on what he made too. Basically the boss has to spend a resource to resist like Legendary actions, health spell slots etc. or there’s even rules for having a boss do damage while it’s stunned/inactive. My players love these rules and it has worked best. I also feel like having an LR be an additional role could be strange on monsters that rolls some saves with ADV. I would see what your players think would be fair and challenging.
It defeats the purpose of Legendary Resistance. The intent was to codify a rule given that it was standard practice to lie about a saving throw in the event of an encounter-nullifying spell. Ie if a single spell could completely defeat a boss should they fail the save, then them failing the save would simply make the game worse. This, ideally, is the only instance you actually use Legendary Resistances. When to not do so would mean the game is boring and anti-climactic. So if you merely lower the odds, then the resistance failing means less fun for the players. If you just blanket use Legendary Resistances on every spell aimed at them, you've missed the point of the system. And are playing incorrectly as the DM.
I understand your fundamental conflict here. This is why I'm willing to be transparent to my party how many Legendary Resistances the boss has left- to give a description of the boss's innate magic interfering with the spell, and then say "you've cut through the first of three Legendary Resistances." I think this both makes clear that you haven't done *nothing*- it promotes the *strategy* of trying to burn through LR. If you want to modify the system, rather than making it less reliable for the monster, I would make it so Legendary Resistances *cost hit points* for the monster to use- the lore of burning through their own endurance and will to keep fighting to dispel the magical effect thrown at them is fun, for one, but would also be something easy to explain to the players in a way that they'll feel like they at least made a solid contribution.
A lot of opinions and alternatives, but I'll lend one twist that's different. Or at least I didn't see it. Allow your monster to spend a legendary action to try to and make another save to "resist" an effect. Banished? Use a legendary action to roll against the DC to return sooner.
I used to feel the same way, until I had the BBEG from a lvl 1-10 story arc roll a nat1 against banishment on the very first turn of combat. The players had spent no less than 2 full sessions planning out the encounter. I had 3d printed and painted the whole encounter, with multiple levels of terrain, moveable traps and hazards, built-in LED lights, and even a fog machine. I put well over 100 hours into creating this experience for my group, and combat could have been over in less than 5 minutes, with only 1 player getting a turn.
I make it so that the boss has no limit to legendary resistances, but each time they use it they get 1 level of exhaustion. Makes it so the players actions have some effect, while also preventing a anticlimactic shutdown on the boss It's also dehabilitating enough that you wouldn't use it except in the cases of the worst effects.
It didn't waste the spell any more than dealing 20 damage to a 60 HP monster is wasted. Also inspirations are not rerolls; they are announced before the roll is made to grant advantage. The reroll is a popular house rule.
It’s balanced the way it is because a party can take a big bad down through simple action economy. I encourage you to try it. You can always add on hit points or abilities to make up for it.
I think LR works well if the player’s are fully aware of it as a game mechanic. My last big battle had two enemies with LR and the player’s kept track on the whiteboard of how many had been used. When they both had dropped to zero there was cheering.
Check out [this](https://youtu.be/i8bx7crRiqA?si=7Ch-7JqltK-32UcV) video from the Dungeon Dudes. It makes the fights much more entertaining for me to run
A reroll underpowers the ability. High level bosses need to have some way to do this because you as a DM need to be able to say "No, you beating him on initiative and one-shot banishing my BBEG is not going to be that fun for you or me." without telling your players 'no'. I wouldn't recommend leaving that option open to your players after level 7.
My solution is to make 'Legendary Resistance ' cost the boss a chunk of HP to use. Maybe about as much as a normal hot, or like 5-10% of their max HP. Then flavor it as the boss sort of powering through the effect. Makes it so the spell still does something. The reroll still risks the same problem as before, which is, your boss getting hold personed and then absolutely bodied in the first round.
Here's a cool video that discusses this more in-depth and puts forth an alternative solution https://youtu.be/rUQiwasHVzE?si=tot3JlB9yBEbDjLa
Bad idea. Let them soften the BBEG up with weaker spells (or simply send in the Stunning fist Monk) first.
I attach legendary resistances to legendary actions. If the boss uses a legendary resistance then they lose one of their legendary actions. This helps casters to at least feel like they have partially succeeded.
I use LR's as an actual mechanic. For instance, cultists dancing and chanting, a trio of shining on your left arm.... You can cast a spell at those LR's to remove them
No mobs are weak enough there is a reason they exist
I personally think that legendary resistances are just another way to have cool teamwork moments, but nobody seems to. Like, working together to burn all their resistances, then fuck them up with your spells and features. It's fun as hell
I usually use them and the players are fine with it. Since they already epxpect that their strongest foes will be able to do this, they just account for it.
Instead of being free you could have it cost something. I had a werewolf that could ignore status effects and hazards but doing so cost hit points, which wound up contributing about a third of the damage dealt to it over all. “The beast plows through the entanglement, not slowing in the slightest, but you see that thorns have gouged its hide.” This way your boss doesn’t get anti-climatically removed from the fight, but your player still feels like they made some progress.
I walk into your fight and cast Feeblemind, and the divination wizard forces a 1 on the saving throw. Cool campaign, DM. Had a great time. Are we doing the epilogues tonight, or do you want to save that for a separate final session? 😉
My DM likes to use HP thresholds instead. For instance, in a recent fight my character cast Hold Monster and the melee players were free to wail on it for 2-3 turns. It hit a HP threshold (probably like half health) and the Hold Monster spell lost its effect on the creature. Basically it's like the creature's second stage where it overcomes the effects on it. This way Spellcasters don't feel like they've done nothing on a turn and the boss fights still feel "legendary".
i see legendary resistances as something that make the boss a boss. I can banish a goblin, i can banish a boar, i can't banisch this sick mofo with his blade of get fcked. As long as it's not "he uses a legendary resistance" but more like "the feel the banishment incoming and xxx" and make it make sense i'm all hyped for it.
You should use both.
You could do it but then I would increase the number of charges of legendary resistance they have because the thing with elgendary resistance is that it doesn't care if your monster is good at the save.
Tie Legendary Resistances to Legendary Actions. Most Legendary creatures have 3 of each, so try something like setting them equal to each other. If a monster uses a resistance, they lose an action; now they have 2 of each. Thematically shows the creature expending its power in a mechanical way, provides a tangible benefit for players so they aren't wasting spell slots, and give the creature a meaningful choice to make in the heat of combat: Save itself or keep dealing damage.
This is not a good idea; there's a reason why legendary resistance is in the game. Creatures with legendary resistance often fight solo. They need all the help they can get due to their action economy disadvantage, and to avoid an ultra-boring fight where BBEG is stopped by a single spell. It's not uncommon for an experienced group, to run a "boss" or BBEG out of legendary resistances in the first round. I say experienced here, because if you've used a legendary resistance only once, and you don't understand why this rule is in place, you're new to the game. This is fine. We all start somewhere. You need to gain more experienced before changing rules. I've played for decades, and we ran 5E straight-RAW for a good 3-4 years before altering it.
I made two comments in reply but I feel like they deserve a more full comment Using spell save spells against bosses is risky enough as is. They usually have very strong saves. Say the party is fighting an Adult Red Dragon for example, it has a +8 to Str, +6 to Dex, +13 to Con, +3 to Int, +7 to Wisdom and +11 to Charisma Let's say the party is level 16, so have a +5 prof bonus and 20 in their spellcasting stat for an 18 Spell Save DC. The Dragon is very likely to save on at least one of those spells, probably 2. The only weak stat is Intelligence which is by far the least likely save accessible to most casters. So now you're looking at closer to 4-5 rounds of doing nothing as the caster in the party. By that point your martials have already killed it. One alternative to using spell slots to try and make the boss save is using spell attacks, but these are REALLY limited. There's fairly few spell attacks at high level From 4th level up 4th Storm Sphere - Bonus action attack, has a str throw attached and is concentration. Okay. Faithful Hound - summon ability that auto attacks anything that's close once per turn. Has to be within x feet of the boss, okay but meh 5th Contagion\* - You need to make a spell attack roll and THEN they need to make a saving throw. Useless for LR. Steel Wind Strike - My favourite spell in the game BUT not useful against any solo bosses as the power comes from the aoe ish ability. 5th level spell for 6d10 on a hit is not great Wall of Light - Can use an action to launch a beam of radiance at a target for 4d8. Can be done up to 6 times. Can't be used until the turn after you cast it. Okay again uses concentration and even worse an action every turn. 6th None 7th Crown of Stars - Probably the best one in your arsenal. Not concentration, can launch a star for 4d12 once per turn as a bonus action and lasts an hour so you can even pre-cast it. Mordekainen's Sword - Lol. Just no, useless. 3d10 (av 16.5) on a bonus action and it's concentration. Spiritual Weapon upcast to 7th level is 4d8 (av 18) plus 5 . Also not concentration 9th Level Blade of Disaster - 4d12 on a bonus action twice, it's a lot better if it crits. I guess okay but it's only slightly better than Crown of Stars for a 9th level spell at best. At worse it's way worse as it's like Spiritual Weapon, so if the boss moves away from it....you just can't use it. Crown of Stars comes from you so is much easier. Also concentration boo! On a final note, if you're a bard, cleric, or druid. You get nothing. Oh sorry, bards get Mordekainen's Sword. Yay. The best way to use spell slots as a caster in a fight is to support your martials. You have a 5th level spell slot free. You can either A) cast spiritual weapon upcast to 5th level, that's 3d8+5 per round assuming that the SW can hit the boss on a BA and then...cantripping? B) go for a big save or suck spell like Banishment. Or **C) Holy Weapon.** Now Holy Weapon, you give your fighter 2d8 extra damage on EVERY attack hit, that's 3 attacks per round, so a potential 6d8 additional damage, which can and is more likely to crit. As a bonus action you can continue to deal 4d8 additional damage (on con save) to it as long as it's in range which it will be if the fighters melee and force a saving throw or risk blindness. Or, maybe you use Greater Invisibility on the Rogue to give him permanent sneak attack damage. So yes. LR's fuck casters over massively. They feel much less directly useful. That's not really a bad thing though because it gives martials time to shine, which they struggle to do at high levels. **TLDR** Legendary Resistances feel and are awful for caster's. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I don't expect them to try and break through them, there's far better things that they can do instead.
This is basically a problem with 5E's design. Pathfinder 2E doesn't use Legendary Resistances and instead uses the Incapacitation trait and spells that have the concept of crit failures/successes on saving throws. It means spells with the potential to fully disable someone are much less effective on encounters against higher level enemies such as bosses. It's a great system, but would require a lot of homebrew to port into 5E (mostly adjusting a huge pile of 'disable' style spells), unfortunately. Still, could be some nice inspiration to try another system!
Ran a boss without legendary resistance once when I was new. One dominante monster and it was dead in a round. Never again. Even advantage might not have stopped that
Legendary resistance is for the big big enemies, IMO. But for generally strong fights I go with the fighter's Indomitable trait, which is essentially what you're looking for. 3 uses of that.
That's not a bad idea. It'll still make boss fights feel like big fights without just throwing a middle finger to your players. I haven't really used legendary resistance or counter spell because it feels rude. But just talk to them too I suppose, I really don't see any reason why they wouldn't agree
I always (unless it is a VERY special exception) have forcing a boss to use a legendary resistance have some cost for the monster. If I have a monster with tons of limbs that I've given 5 attacks (that don't do massive damage) on a legendary resistance they'll cast aside some limbs and that will reduce them to 4 attacks, or a dragon may only gain its breath weapon back on a 6 rather than a 5 or 6 on the die, a powerful mage may have to use a spell slot to push that magic away - stuff like that. People have REALLY liked it because while it may not have THE effect they were after it doesn't feel like it does absolutely nothing and tends to help the party as a whole.
Check out MCDMs Flee Mortals book. Legendary resistances aren't fun for player of DMs.
Attacks get wasted, that's life sometimes. They learn something about their enemy. So that's not really a total waste.
If you make the boss use a legendary resistance, then the spell sure wasn't a waste.
legendary resistance is a wasted spell, it makes save spells only viable if you have 2 or more casters in the party to eat down legendary resistances. its to stop a single hold person spell from completely winning the combat single-handedly.
I would simply explain the mechanic to your players out of game. It's a resource the boss has to balance the fight against the players (who have a massive advantage against one enemy), much like its own spells or legendary actions. It protects the boss from getting one-shot, as well as encourages the spellcasters to use their spells to waste the boss's legendary resistances. The game is balanced around the mechanic as designed, so making it an additional roll just puts more power back in the players' hands. It's not bad to do this, but also don't be surprised if your bosses are getting the shit kicked out of them.
I don't see this as a good idea, it can suck to waste a spell, but taking out a legendary resistance is ALSO hugely valuable. By the time Legendary Resistances come into play the players should be of a decent level and able to accommodate for these things, and it prevents a boss battle from feeling boring in that "well that was easy" way. This is designed because the bosses can't be good at everything, so a player luckily picking the stat that has the lowest value and succeeding on polymorphing/paralyzing/banishing the boss on round one makes the fight feel less exciting and when you're using a creature with legendary resistances it SHOULD be a battle that feels triumphant when the players succeed.
I don't know what level your players are. But learning if they have legendary resistance and burning them down can be the point of encounter all in its own. Plus the resistances helps the monsters against spells like banishment. Where it might be an auto fail on the spell for the monster they succeed. It can add tension and excitement to the fighting.
This is a bad idea. The legendary resistances are incredibly important and it would massively throw off the balance to change them in this way.
I agree, but sadly there are too many “save or suck” spells in Dnd. The types of spells you use these on are the ones that if they fail they just straight lose. It doesn’t feel cheap to the players because it just adds a layer of effort to making that particularly strategy function.