I don't like the fact that got rid of the possibility of having one "big" action that requires 2 or more Legendary Actions to perform. Instead with multiple reactions they all have to be scaled around the fact that each can be triggered and used multiple times in one round.
I suppose this also raises another question that we just don’t know the answer to as we have only seen 1 legendary creature so far. I would say that on average, these Reactions seem more powerful than a typical LA. So I wonder if they are totally fine just making them much stronger? Not sure yet!
Having an extra Legendary Resistance meshes well with the new Counterspell, giving the monster the ability to not waste a spell in addition to the normal defensive use.
If you try counterspell the dragon it will make it with it's +7 save, and if it fails it chooses instead to succeed, and then throws up acidic bile at you and an ally to deal you aoe damage, then you lose concentration on the spell that you were using xD
I was looking at the stat block for the Dire Wolf between 2014 and 2024. No change to the CR but the 2024 monster HP nearly halved (from 37 to 22) and the bite damage also decreased from 2d6+3 to 1d10+3. Damage isn't a huge difference but it still dropped. It went from a 5hit dice monster to a 3 hit dice monster but the CR didn't change. The only offsets are the 2024 version got proficiency with perception checks, but this is offset by the loss of Keen Hearing and Smell, and no saving throw on being knocked prone from a bite attack.
I do wish they had reworked Legendary resistances. You don’t want your BBEG to be taken out by a save or suck spell, but I feel like this further incentives the “do more damage” builds over the more interesting control options. I don’t have an answer on how I’d revise them but I’m also no game designer.
It’s a challenging one for sure. I wish they’d taken a few public passes at what to do about Legendary Resistance. Even if they just landed back at where they began. It would have been nice to see some alternate ideas. But yeah, that type of feature is very important to not entirely trivialize a big bad.
Not the best solution, but purely for your reasoning, they could add something like "Legendary armor" or "Legendary defense" on the same pool of points as "legendary resistance" but the armor/defense can choose to ignore the damage from a source. This doesn't solve the feeling of legendary resistance, in fact you'd get the same feeling of "great so I do nothing" on big chunks of damage, but if it shares the same pool of points, so now it's up to the DM to decide what they rather resist. it should make "do more dmg" slightly less of an incentive. Alternatively, they could have taken a look at the conditions that would trivialize a big bad and given alternatives, like a damage resistance but for conditions, instead of doing the full effect it would do a "half effect". Maybe a reduced duration, a disadvantage on its next attack, saving throw or a weaker condition would be applied instead. I get why legendary resistances are there but the feeling of having to "bait them out" if you're not a damage focused character just feels bad.
The ability to auto pass a save is good, but I feel like it needs other uses that might be tempting to use against fighters, so legendary resistance isn't just an anti-spellcaster mechanic. Something like "spend a legendary resistance to nullify all damage it took this turn" would be good potentially. That lets the fighter potentially whittle away at the legendary resistances, and makes it feel like the entire party is wearing them down, not just the casters.
A thought I had to handle legendary resistance was that when they use a legendary resistance, they gain a single point of exhaustion. The idea is that even if you fail to inflict what you wanted, it still cost the monster something, and makes legendary resistance less of a "spam it whenever something inconveniences me" and more a risky decision. Haven't really tried it out yet though, so jury's still out on how effective that'd be.
Personally, most of the time I customize LR to fit the monster. Just add a penalty to using this ability that allows players to still get a reward for succeeding. Something like additional damage, or poisoned condition, losing reactions or legendary reactions for a turn e.t.c.
Legendary resistances are the great equalizers between casters with a lot of nasty spells and martials whose only job is to output damage. If you could always get your effects to stick on a big boss monster, you would invalidate a lot of classes who have to fight honestly, hit point by hit point, to get the job done.
I'm against this response. Saying it is "honest" to defeat a boss by reducing them to 0 hit points makes it sound as if that is the "right" way to play. Except it's a very videogamey thought process of "okay now we reach the boss and fight them". If you figure out how to defeat the villain without fighting them, say by undoing their plan, is that a "dishonest" way to play? Legendary resistances exist to stop powerful spells from trivialising boss encounters, but it also gives express permission for them to trivialise non-boss encounters (just watch a hypnotic pattern divide a combat in half and you'll see what I mean). Meanwhile against a boss with multiple legendary resistances, there are times where it can feel pointless to be a spellcaster as every spell you cast gets either saved by higher than normal saves, or from legendary resistances, leading to multiple consecutive dead turns where you didn't do anything. And I hate how powerful spellcasters are, but that doesn't make it fair to switch off half of their kit. We had ten years of this system, we couldn't think of anything better in ten years?
@@Unormalism You didn't 'figure out' how to defeat a monster by casting Hold Monster on it, and other one-shot spells along that line is 95% of how casters 'cleverly' defeat monsters. If you don't want a full new edition that reworks the whole combat system and invalidates all the content released in the last ten years, this is the most elegant solution for general play.
@@brilobox2 I didn't say it was "clever" to defeat the boss with Hold Monster, I said it was as valid as overcoming the boss without combat. Legendary Resistances are not an elegant solution. It is more of a bandaid fix. "Spells are too strong, so to protect bosses they just won't work against them until you've wasted several turns + spell slots trying." That encourages a terrible play pattern for players. Honestly I do want a different combat system, which is why I've largely stopped running/playing D&D. I just don't agree with any of their choices.
I like that there's like a monster hunter style of learning a monster now as you fight it. If you work out a dragon only does the corrosive miasma on a ranged attack then you can strategize around that. Perhaps you don't use range attacks to avoid it or maybe you do use them to try and force the dragon to use that reaction instead of the charm reaction Legendary actions were just at the DMs whim whereas now it feels like you can actually control a monsters behaviour slightly.
*The good* HP upgrade is nice Lair xp in statblock makes things simpler Battle ready: A much needed buff for boss monsters in general. Spellcasting: I am very happy that ancient dragons actually have a few tricks up their sleeves, beyond just being big flying lizards. Also like the spell choice, green dragons are supposed to be social manipulators. Finally, I love that the dragon can use magic and multi attack on the same turn. New LA (reactions): I definitely like the new options more in general. I am unsure what I feel about the change to reactions, especially with the trigger conditions. On one hand, this could make players fight more strategically, trying to avoid a particularily nasty reaction trigger, but on the other hand, it limits the DM in using them. I guess it could be seen as a trade for the legendary actions sometimes costing 2 points. So you'll have 2 options that are always on and 1 that has a special condition, like spending a legendary resistance. *The bad* Needless removal of skill proficiencies, removing deception and insight from a green dragon seems extremely weird, as it is supposed to be a social manipulator. At least it got a +2 to Charisma mod in exchange. Melding damage and condition immunities together makes it more annoying to look for imo. *The arguable* I am not a big fan of the new text formatting. 5e used to make it so that you could read effects like a sentence. I get that it's supposed to be easier to read at a glance, but they could have simply highlighted the relevant information instead of changing the formatting. (Since bold is already used for effect names, they could have added a like under DCs and radius.) Rend: On one hand, I understand wanting to make the basic attacks easier for the DM, but I kinda wish the tail attack stayed as a reaction, but with a flinging or knocking prone effect. Perhaps a tail swiper could even have been a dex save in a cone next to the dragon, as an aoe attack.
The rend thing does help with the player position verisimilitude, “ I’m flying in his face how quickly could this guy spin around to hit me with his tail” . The bite claw tail formula really relied on suspension of disbelief because if you’re too specific on a previous turn those attacks seem less likely to be possible but happened anyway, now your players get hit by the part that’s closest and most likely to be used based on where you are compared to the dragon
Since resistance to slashing, piercing and bludgeoning damage seems to no longer differentiate between magic and non magic damage, any fighter with a magic weapon against a creature with those resisatnce types is only going to do half damage. Thats actually quite the nerf for fighters. Unless magic weapons now do force damage?....
I don’t believe that they do as a general rule. Many magical effects now deal Force damage but I still believe that magical sword will (generally) still just deal Slashing damage.
@TheMemitim I was very happy to see those kinds of changes. Elemental damage wasn’t explored enough in 2014. Yes it was there, but there’s a lot more they could do with it!
With the new craftable 'Enspelled Weapons' in the 2024 DMG, the fighter PC can now go on a quest to create their own 'Dragon Slayer' sword that can deliver force (or psychic, radiant etc.) damage via spells like Zephyr's Strike at low levels of play or Tenser's Transformation at high levels, when fighting Ancient Green Dragons. The best thing about this is that the player and the DM can design the pathways for the PC to overcome these new more challenging Monster designs. I am cautiously optimistic about this new direction for 5.5 DnD. 😁
I'm pretty sure, based on what we've seen, that Resistance to Bludgeoning, Slashing, and Piercing is gonna be a lot rarer in this iteration, and that of those creatures who do get such Resistances, many will only get one or two, not all three. Like, the Imp used to have Resistance to non-magical Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing and now it just...doesn't. No replacement, it just lacks those Resistances. I suspect that's gonna be the most common situation for creatures that used to have those resistances unless them being resistant to normal weapons is a big part of their schtick.
Thanks for the analysis. Its already got me thinking about new and more interesting encounters. Previously I would have to homebrew the reactions or spellcasing in to challenge my group of 6 players (plus their pets, summons and familiars etc.) as they would otherwise just dominate the action economy. Adding in minions would just extend fights out where as makiing individual BBEGs with more reactions and spells per round makes them way more interesting to play as a DM and challenging for PCs. Particularly in large parties.
I wonder which is harder to remember: multiple different triggers that vary from monster to monster, or a single, consistent trigger (in the case of LA: another creature ends their turn) that applies to all legendary monsters...
the legendary reactions all make sense, don't have different costs, etc If a mage shoots a fireball at me, I auto save and then fire back with an acid ball If a fighter hits me with a sword attack I strike back with a rend If else, ie if they didn't try to attack or hurt me, I guess I'll charm them, to stop them ever hurting me, muahahaha Makes sense to me Also I can flavour the rend attacks to be whatever I want finally
will it matter? you'll have the stat block there in front of you (the DM). nobody ever expects or intended for the DM to remember this off the top of their heads. as for the players, I think it makes it harder to meta-game which is always a plus.
@@companyoflosers of course it matters. And as a matter of fact, Legendary Actions are also in the stat block and people keep forgetting, so.. what do you think will happen now that this mechanic got more complicated? It's kinda obvious
While these are "reactions" and they do technically interrupt a players turn, they have triggers which tells me that those have to happen (completely) in order to perform the reaction. So the last two there, the dragon would still be hit or take damage.
Some of the monsters from the first Mordenkainen's 2014 books, the Oblex as I recall, did indicate natural upcasting of certain spells. I am however, relieved to see this present in the new version alongside replacing an attack with a spell. I think it goes a very, very, long way to increase the effectiveness of creatures that can do martial and spellcasting features. I do want to know, however, if there are things for purely martial creatures that might simulate spell effects in terms of supernatural abilities. I obviously don't want the monsters to suffer from the same martial/caster divide as the players have.
I think it would he cool if monster lairs weren't creature specific anymore or we had guides to making creature lairs so even non-legendary creatures could have a lair.
One thing I don't like about "Legendary Reactions", which I've seen a few people mention, is that it loses out on the more hard-hitting/impactful options that Legendary Actions have, since you have to balance Legendary Reaction options against a single Rend attack, where Legendary Actions can have stronger options that have a higher action-economy cost. After thinking on it a bit though, we can apply that same "multiple action-cost" that some Legenadry Actions cost, into new and stronger Legendary Reactions. Otherwise, the thematics and mechanics for Legendary Reactions is spot on, as the boss is now literally reacting to the choices you make, as you make them
That reminds me of an MCDM boss monster, they had a really nice mechanic tied to their legendary resistance. They had 3 legendary resistances, but each of them was tied to a 'spear', on their turn they could do their regular things AND attack with EACH of these spears. These spears were dangerous, they could knock you prone and restrain you on top of dealing a good chunk of damage. So as the fight went on and you hit the monster with big spells - which they had to use legendary resistance on - you didn't feel like ah shit there went my turn, since one of the spears would shatter as they used their legendary resistance and weaken the boss's future turns. This made the fight feel like the boss was dangerous when we were still full health and as we were running out of our own resources, so was the boss. Something like that would've been a great addition.
They also removed the hard hitting "casting 2 Smites in the same turn" palading thing. I think they chose less burst design overall so the fight can be more interactive and nuanced, which I also like
I think it is very fun to give it more reactions. As a DM, narrating how your player hits the dragon and it's immediately retaliation and anger is a win in immersion. It makes it feel like a living, breathing creature that responds to player choice instead of a monster with a set routine.
Important change that didn't get mentioned: The 2024 version has significantly fewer Saves that add Proficiency. The 2014 added their Proficiency to Dex, Con, Wis, and Cha, while the 2024 one just has Dex and Wis. That's a relevant distinction. I think this is worth talking about as a design decision in general. Part (though by no means all) of Legendary Resistance feeling bad is that it only kicks in when the creature fails saves, so increasing the number of times it fails saves helps with those a bit.
I think that large, solo enemies do need to be able to handle an entire party of actions each turn, so massive AoEs, and abilities to break standard initiative should be common. I think that the best way to do it would be to always put the monster at the end of the initiative order (except perhaps on their first turn if they aren't surprised), but then they can take an action after _any_ enemy's action, with the cost being that the further they skip ahead in the order, the more limited their actions are, and the more of these actions they take, the weaker each subsequent action is that turn. So as an example, they can cast a spell after the first player turn, but it would be level 1 only, and the later in the turn they cast it (without doing anything else), the higher the level it can be. Or they could do a melee attack, but it would be a very casual swipe, barely a glancing blow of their strength and attention, whereas the deeper in the round they got, it would add hit dice, damage dice, and AoE range to it. The DM would then have the flexibility to _choose_ whether to have the boss flail around at all these ants attacking him, using a bunch of smaller effects each round, or to more patiently tank their petty nonsense and then lack out with a massive counterattack once they've finished.
@@Bundalings What about all the other reaction shut downs that exist? did they all get nerfed? Given the sheer amount of mistakes they made in the new books, I wouldn't be surprised.
I had so much fun running the Ancient Green Dragon for a one shot. So much more interesting than the regular green dragon. PCs had a lot of fun figuring out triggers and planning around them.
I like the replacement of all the marginally different attacks with just one. TBH it was not too bad with 5e but in Pathfinder it was unbelievably cumbersome with different iterative attack penalties and it makes me happy that someone, even if it's the other someone, has made this change.
I'm pretty sure almost all of the Archdevil in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes have upcasted versions of damaging spells so they're a bit more comparable to the damage they can deal with their whole action such as scorching ray or inflict wounds.
Another thing worth noting is something that didn't change. The dragon is still immune to poison and being poisoned. Which doesn't seem like a big deal because ots expected to be immune. But this means poison immunity could still be on a high number of monsters. Another thing is no mention of physical damage resistance. We already knew that magical/ non-magical distinction was going away but I was interested to see if resistance to some or all 3 of the damage types would show up. If a cr 22 dragon doesn't have resistance to piercing damage its safe to say most monsters wont have it
There doesn't seem to be big "2-3 point" legendary actions attacks anymore, but this could be replaced with a type of "Charge Up" reaction that boost the damage or adds additional effects to its next attack. This could be easily homebrewed in if it doesnt show up in the MM.
Based on what we have seen so far, I would say yes. But, it’ll really depend on if they continue and expand upon those trends across the entire scope of monsters.
5:25 - the thing that makes it feel like a NO button is - the GM gets to choose IF they use it on a failed save. meaning that you can't use lesser spellslots to get rid of the resistances. I wouldn't care that they have 3 or 5 legendary resistances if there was a reliable way to get rid of them and still have resources for my impactful spells. technically a lvl 9 sorcerer could prepare and turn ALL of their lvl 3 and 4 spell slots into 21 sorcery points giving you 3 extra 5th lvl spells to use hold monster with (one spell impactful enough that legendary resistances "needs" to be used) but even then, this dragon has +10 to wisdom saves... so without magic items the dragon only needs to roll an 8 to not have to use their legendary resistances... meaning an optimised sorcerer that preps for using 5 lvl spell slots each turn only has 50% per casting to get rid of their resistances. so - they have 30 sorcery points because they prepared - and they converted 7 per spell slot to get 4 extra 5th lvl spell slots and still have 2 points left - lets say they converted 2 lvl 1 slots and 1 lvl 2 slots so they can have a pool of 6 points. starting the battle with 5 5th lvl spell slots and 6 sorcery points a magic item that bumps the save dc +1 and their feature innate sorcery to bump it an extra +1 giving them a spellsave DC of 20 this sorcerer only has 50% chance to trigger a legendary resistance BUT they can technically quicken spell the 3 first turns and ready a magic action to cast hold monster on another creatures turn. meaning in 3 turns they can 5 times have a 50% chance to get rid of the legendary resistances but then what, they're out of spell slots... and lets say we've been extremely lucky and their *5* points are gone - only now can higher level spells ... have a 50% chance of working. and it took the entire resource base of one optimised character that prepared insanely. they are now spent and useless except for cantrip dmg... OR a druid with magic initiate can cast conjure minor elementals at 5th lvl and cast magic missile - every missile hits AND deals 1d4+1+4d8 - a lvl 1 magic missile deals 3d4+3+12d8 and unless the dragon can cast shield - it's guaranteed dmg if you stay in 15ft range. that same level druid with metamagic adept feat can on the first turn quicken conjure minor elementals and cast a first lvl magic missile (because the magic initiate feat allows you to once per long rest not expend a spell slot for that 1st lvl spell) and then subsequent turns upcast magic missile provided that the dragon is still within 15ft you do ridiculous dmg...
tbh I kinda like the idea of a mix of Legendary Actions and additional Reactions, for different situations, rather than just one or the other. And that way you could maybe restore the blocking of all reactions to Shocking Grasp and such.
I feel like a problem i kept hearing with LAs were that DMs kept forgetting to use them. Perhaps the hope with making it a reaction and giving it a trigger it might help DMs to remember to use them? Me personally, I always find abilities easier to remember when they are more interactive.
I wonder what is harder to remember: several different triggers, which change from monster to monster or a single trigger (in the case of LA, another creature ends their turn) which is the same in all legendary monsters
@KazunariGames We don't actually know how much they'll vary from monster to monster until the manual releases. They could have similar "hit by a ranged attack" trigger, or "after casting a spell" trigger. It could be that similar monsters have similar triggers or similar attacks. We'll just have to see when we get there
@@sethchambers4330 my point stays the same. Even if you assume all legendary monsters will share the same or similar triggers, 3 or more triggers are still more complicated than a single one
@KazunariGames oh, i thought we were talking about remembering to do the thing not whether it's slightly more complicated. Which in fairness it is, but that doesn't make it worse imo. I think having something like "after getting hit with a ranged attack" had the dm licking his chops waiting to activate the trigger. Not only making it easier to remember to do but also making it more exciting and memorable for everyone involved.
I have my issues with the revised rules, mostly as a player. However, as a DM, I am excited for what looks like a smoother system, and potentially harder hitting bbegs.
The ability to essentially interrupt a player's turn with these could pan out to be even stronger than legendary actions were, but I think it'll depend on a lot of factors.
Also haven't seen anyone talking about how they are probably changing all goblinoids and bullywugs from Humanoids to Fey They motioned for that in Monsters of the Multiverse with an in-world explanation, but in the new D&D Beyond adventure "Uni and the Hunt for the Lost Horn", all goblinoids and bullywugs (which lose the Bullywug subtype) are Fey rather than Humanoids
I always switched “Legendary Actions” to “Legendary Reactions” already in all of my games, for the exact reasons you mentioned. Players respond more when the creature is reacting to their own actions. You could even make it where these new réactions can never be restricted. Nothing worse than an Incapacitated Dragon reflexively Rending you after you dealt damage
Really interesting that whereas, say, MCDM have their monsters suffer some sort of penalty when using an LA, not only does the the ancient green dragon have no penalty - it actually makes an attack as well!
Remember that it’s for you, the DM, to decide if you stick to the Book or if you just use some parts of it. Nothing holds you back from inventing your own thing. For example: I let a Red Dragon named Ashmaw charge his Fire-Breath Attack, so it’s range was much longer and the Damage more devastating to Creatures and Objects within the Attack range. My Players knew about this from several NPCs who encountered the Dragon or watched it, but were scared shitless, when it did this. Ashmaw was beaten, but he still lives and each time my Players hear about a Red Dragon somewhere, they are on high alert. I think that it’s a nice Idea to give Creatures Reactions instead of legendary Actions, but I wouldn’t get rid of legendary Actions and legendary resistance. Maybe experimenting with mixing both or just use the Reactions for Creatures without a legendary Status? I think it’s fine.^^
So the removal of natural language in monsters' abilities and just the game mechanics seem to lean in more towards the 4E monster statblock design philosophy.
The problem I’ve had with legendary actions and I think I’ll have it with this new model is that I keep forgetting to use these actions when it’s the players turn. That’s why I always just let the monster use those actions on its turn. Plus a dragon making six attacks on players definitely sets the tone for how dangerous this monster is. Imagine you’re fighting a green dragon and it rapidly makes three poison spit attacks. Then it just runs up on you and starts rending you.
The CON save was cut in half. I really hope this is indicative of a larger trend with the monsters going forward. I think it would make the seemingly weak rogue much more appealing. Being able to threaten the dragon with Knock Out virtually every turn can really burn through those legendary Resistances or set up huge damage for Divine Smite or a Disintegrate.
I can see experienced DMs disliking the change from legendary actions to reactions, but I think new DMs will benefit from reactions with specific triggers to prompt them etc. I still remember the 1st time I tried using a Legendary action completely wrong due to forgetting they are technically reaction-based anyway. I do prefer the villain-action in the MCDM Flee, Mortals book though. Having limited use actions that cripple the monster/villain in a unique way for the remainder of the fight is a super interesting mechanic that I do think I'll continue to adopt in my HB bosses.
One of my favorite spells, Confusion, is getting a big boost with this new way of handling legendary actions, since Confusion still takes away reactions completely from affected targets.
I said and wrote on screen that targeting 4 because the assumption was they would swap one attack to cast it and that they would use their reaction to do it. So 4 total in very quick succession, but not at the same time.
I wish for breath weapon it was changed to roll 1d(something) next available breath rather than hoping for 5,6. I used 1d4 to determine the rounds for dragons next breath attack players know recharge is coming just not when. I will continue to used DM house rule. Also fly around as defense until ready. I like static initiative as well. I use it as DC for players roll higher than go before monster, lower go after. You can combine 1 or more PCs actions that are above or below.
Overall I like the change - reactions feel more meshed into the system well as opposed to LA - which felt kinda tacked on. I have toyed with different solutions for solo monster viabilty myself. And I tend to go more towards multiple initiative slots, with a staged set of actions myself - I have had a lot of fun with this at my table. But this is okay I suppose. Personally my eyes rolled back into my head on the return of LRs though. I understand the problem we are trying to solve here - but the solution of "actually no" is so uninspired, and unfun. It deinsentivises creative play, and doesn't have any meaningful engagement. With the player. Like, at bare minimum I would have liked to see a cost to the creature for use it - so that the players get a benefit other than "it used one of its LRs" Like, maybe attacks then become at advantage while it reals while resisting the effects. Or it loses some/all of its reactionsfor the round because it is exhausted from exerting itself against the effect. There are options here to still reward the player who caught the monster off guard without saying "actually that doesn't happen"
You could limit the number of LR per round (if you use LR, you cannot do so again before the start of your next turn) I've been considering a houserule that restricts LR to only saves that you make to end a continuous effect, not the ones at the time of casting the spell. That would allow the spells to work for at least at the start of the creature's turn, which could preven a bunch of reactions from it
Honestly, I’ve no idea why people are complaining- these are awesome changes - triggers are simple and these are quite strong, keeping the players honest My only concern is damage output seems low - but D&D has turned into “no crying at the table”
I really hope the amount of creatures with resistance to piercing, bludgeoning and slashing damage has gone down significantly. In 2014 rules, if your in tier 3 or 4 most enemies will have resistance to these kinds made from nonmagic weapons, and already kn tier 2 they show up quite a bit. Since they removed the "counted as magic weapons" feature from subclasses and replaced them with being able to do elemental damage, this presents a mitigating effect for those classes and subclasses, lkke monk, moon druid etc. however a straight fighter or barbarian or rogue, will be thourougly nerfed if they dont get access to weapons that deal alternative damage types. Reducing these classes to at worst being useless or at best being very dependant on the dm making such weapons availeable
Advantage alone isn't enough to stop Hold Monster from ending the fight before it starts. It would need to be rerolling the save with Advantage and twice or more as many uses of LR, and even then it might not be sufficient. Most fights last 3-6 rounds, and losing even a single round to a save or suck spell cripples most monsters.
Do spells like hold monster stop creatures of making legendary actions? Now on 2024 it definitely does due to them being reactions, but are they canceled by a spell of that type?
I hope you're right with this change in design philosophy, and that we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg here. It has always seemed anticlimactic to me, both as a DM and as a player, that the only way to create a truly challenging boss fight was to swarm the group with minions WHILE they battle the boss. On the players' side, action economy plus increasingly powerful actions creates an exponential increase in potency as they level up. Adding reactions that are triggered on specific types of actions against the monster (and having more than one reaction) makes the monster dynamically auto-adjust to both group size and group composition. Ranged attacks trigger reactions that counter them. Control/debuff spells trigger counters to control and debuffs. Direct attacks trigger reactions that counter these attacks. The end result looks like a boss fight will feel more challenging without as much reliance on minions, and (could) be more consistent across multiple group compositions and sizes.
I agree. I hated that you had to make sure there were minions, sometimes even respawning of minions, to make boss fights challenging. Having up to 4 reactions per round ups their action economy, but frankly, I wouldn't mind them being able to take an action EVERY turn. Even with that, characters are often getting 2 or even 3 actions per round depending on how well they can make their bonus actions and reactions work for them, so it's not like bosses have any sort of advantage on a party of characters.
I think these "Legendary Reactions" are rather neat and I find them to be harder to homebrew than legendary actions, so I have no problem with this change because I am just going to add legendary actions to any monster that I want to be extra special.
I miss the flying legendary action option that dragons had. It was a great way to avoid PCs to dogpile on a dragon when it was on the ground. Yes, now it can use rend in response to taking damage, but flying away is better than fighting back.
I under stand the anitgank reasons for the 3 reactions a round thing...but casting charm monster 4 times a turn if they want and it being upcast is not ok...especially since its not uses\spell slot related and is simply at will. i get that the CR 22 is there for a reason but i think this dragon smurfs 5 level 18s easy
I think the design is simpler and cleaner for the DM to use and that is all good. You have to suspend disbelief that a dragon can fly its full mowement, rend twice cast cloudkill and cast four hold monster spells in 6 seconds. But at this point it's insane what a PC can do in 6 second too so wtf. Proof will be in how they play at the table. If it doesn't work there's Tome of Beasts and Flee Mortals on my shelf.
I prefer the older editions' dragons where they had levels in magic-user/wizard rather than a limited spell list like in 5E. It just didn't make any sense that sorcerers apparently have "dragon's blood" but dragons themselves didn't cast spells.
This is the 3ed heavy combat way of playing, just a bit simplified. I have been saying and it is showing more and more, this is a mix of 2ed, 3ed, and 5ed all in one.
If it can cast Gaes as part of it's attack action, it can just tell you to stay out of the fight, you'll be charmed for 30 hours so you can't attack it anyway, while it proceeds to murder your party please someone find a flaw in this
This statblock doesn't look like it has gone far enough. Where are the condition immunities, so it can't be shut down by things the players will not be affected by. Frightful Presence is completely gone.
Shocking Grasp was nerfed (even damage was nerfed, which was unwarranted) but there are other stuff that can be more appealing like Slow and Hypnotic Pattern that do prevent Reactions
Admittedly no, I don’t have any “concrete” proof or anything like that. To me it just seems like the most logical conclusion based on the wording and information available. Things tend to be called what they are. These are not referred to as spell slots, Counterspell specifically refers to spell slots. By extension, I would apply this same usage to things like Ranger getting to use Hunter’s Mark a proficiency bonus times per day as they are not spell slots. I could absolutely be wrong about this, but to me it just seems like the most logical conclusion based on currently available evidence.
@InsightCheck yeah RAW you're probably right. Seems silly tho. Wizard gets 8th Level Cloudkill countered, he loses only the action. Dragon gets 8th Level Cloudkill countered and it loses the ability to cast it for the day and (probably) the rest of its life.
@@brilobox2[checking my name tag... still says "impotent RUclips commenter"] I'm not able to take it up with WotC, so commenting here will have to suffice. Counterspell had a huge change from 2014 to 2024, so I'm not sure what you are referring to.
this is great and unintentionally an amazing buff for shapechange and true polymorph spells . specially shape change that had the limitation of not able to use legendary actions . I am still mad about the legendary resistance just say no you . and the charm monster with a very high DC will be a F you to any player who dump their wisdom that is an auto fail for most barbarians and still charm is a very bad Condition where you cant remove it except by level 5 spells and higher .... The good side is that you just arent able to harm the creature its not domination so ... some DMs would isist on you doing the dragon bidding but RAW you can still act as if you are preventing two friends from fighting . healing your friend . removing a grapple and so one. it might still be very mean against low wisdom characters I have to say a vey missed opportunity to utilize the deference of dragon designs having a construct attack like a snake to reflect the nature of the dragon design would have been very RAD
Well here is one. I absolutely would not consider a per day use a spell slot. Unless they clarify otherwise, it feels like the most logical conclusion based on the wording but, of course, anything is possible.
New stat block looks terrible, they are keeping legendary resistance. they dumb down claw/claw/bite... to three attacks of generic rend. I dont even see the reason to remove legendary actions and instead make them all reactions. IT seems more limiting to restrict each reaction to only a specific trigger. If you wanted to add more reactions to legendary actions that could be easily added. done this way you can metagame around the reactions and force the dragon to not take any reactions. IE this ancient green dragon becomes useless with a bunch of casters using non-ranged attack damage and hiding in in a fog cloud spell.. IE no way for any of its reactions to trigger.
If the casters are hiding in a fog cloud, they're all getting gassed or stomped on. The only additional thing an old Ancient Green Dragon in the same situation would be able to do that the new one can't is a Wing Attack, which might as well be nothing. These new ones are FAR more dangerous. Having counters and strategies for avoiding them is good game design.
@@brilobox2 You can play around All of that green dragons reactions. Save spells at range, end your turn in a fog cloud so you cant be seen or just at a range greater than 30ft (the range of charm monster) and then the green dragon cannot take any reactions against your party. The real problem though is how inconsistent these reactions are the dragon is not garanteed to get off all three every round,. thus making it much harder to judge how dangerous the dragon is based on its CR. I have written up tons of Legendary monsters since 5E came out. my rule of thumb is to place half of the monsters per round damage potential into its legendary actions. Its a great way to balance how powerful those actions should be and to prevent the monster from just overwhelming the party on their actual turn.... this only works if the legendary creature is guaranteed its 3 legendary actions per turn.
I don't agree on your take about Counterspell wasting away "1 per day" slots if Counterspell is successful. Counterspell says "the action", "Bonus Action" or "Reaction" is wasted. That's clear. Dragon uses its action to cast a 1/day spell. It gets counterspelled. The action dragon used for casting the spell is wasted. Action in terms of action economy. You tried to use an action to cast a spell, you got counterspelled, the action was wasted. "Now, do you still want to do something else, move or use a bonus action maybe?" Nowhere does it say that 1/day slot would be expended though. A spell does only what it says it does. Now one could argue that since it makes a statement about spell slot being not expended, somehow that translates into 1/day slot being expended but that is not RAW. It's just there because game designers wanted to give a straight answer to the question that every player would have: "did I waste my spell slot?". No, you didn't, because you didn't actually cast anything. Analoguous to that is not wasting a 1/day slot because you didn't cast anything. I'll yield if there is errata or Sage Advice on this, but otherwise I think RAW, based on the principle of spell doing only what it says it does, 1/day slot is not expended when you get counterspelled.
You’re free to disagree, I am very confident in the interpretation, as are you. I’m sure at some point we will get official wording on it. I agree, a spell does what it says it does. 2014 counterspell doesn’t say anywhere that the slot is expended, just that the “spell fails and has no effect”. We have extrapolated that to be “the spell slot is wasted”. Likewise, in 2024 “IF the spell was cast with a spell slot, the spell slot is not wasted”. This is a very typical type of if/else statement. If this, then that, otherwise… so we can logically extrapolate from that that if a spell slot is not wasted, then if it was not cast with a spell slot, whatever resource was used is wasted.
There are some other downsides to reactions design wise. While most of the main points you say still stand there are some other concerns that I have. First of all it makes it more difficult to use with older content and backwards compatibility. If you want a subclass that doesn't exist with the new rules or just an older version, but that takes away reactions with it's abilities, that can be a problematic issue. Something like, Path of the beast barbarians can make creatures use their reactions to attack minions with their 14th level ability if they fail a saving throw, and they can spam this multiple times per turn, so even if unlikely, they can take away a lot of reactions in a turn. Second issue is that of action economy. While it's true that legendary actions could also be taken away with incapacitated, reactions are also taken away with incapacitated so you have now more stuff that can take away part of the creatures action economy, since now you have to watch out for both. My concern is that spells like dissonant whispers, mind whip, become more spammed than in the 2014 rules. They are pretty low level, and do multiple things so you didn't waste a turn forcing the creature to use a legendary resistance since they also do damage, and forcing the dragon to keep using legendary resistances against those spells, which in the old rules they didn't necessary needed to do, since even without it reactions it still had legendary actions. The dragon also seems way more reliant on their legendary resistances to keep them from losing action economy than the old rules, with stuff like counterspell changing, and the change to reactions, hence why it got more. Lastly flow: you mention that reactions create a more smooth and cinematic, but the interruption can also break flow. With legendary actions players got to do their full turn before ending it, so they could spend before their turn thinking about what they would do, and do their turn pretty quickly. With reactions you interrupt the player and make them rethink their turn mid combat since they couldn't predict the reaction. While strategically interesting, it is also more interruptive, and forces players to spend more time on their turns rather than going more smoothly going turn to turn. Sure, legendary actions can also do this, with an unexpected action, but with reactions you are going to see this more often. Also reactions also have the issue of having triggers, so some abilities may not be used due to playstyle, like if you have corrosive miasma which reacts on legendary resistances and ranged attacks, but you only have melee characters that don't use many saving throws, it might be you never may use this ability. Also note aside from legendary resistances, it seems like creatures no longer have lair actions, instead of getting extra reaction and legendary resistance, which is a shame, since those were pretty interesting.
My main worry, at least at high level play, is that players will potentially have access to these reworked legendary actions because of the wording via true polymorph/shapechange.
They don't, players do not get access to legendary reactions, this will be specified in the new MM, just like players not getting legendary actions was specified in the old MM A side effect of this, is blade singers will no longer be able to turn into a many armed woman to get a whole bunch of reactions with her skill either
Legendary resistance is one of the worst parts of 5e. It takes the dice out of the equation and it's very immersion breaking. The fact that they didn't change it at all is incredibly disappointing to me as a DM.
What I want is no legendary resistances. Legendary actions are fine. Edit: as a player. I am currently midway through a legendary fight at lvl 12. So far we had 3 turns of combat and all my character managed to do was cast a self buff and was legendary resisted twice. I was not looking forward to even more of the same in the 6th ed.
Imagine if new legendary resistance would, for example, weak the bosses on use somehow. Like yes, boss aren't stanned, but now his multiattack doing only two attacks, not three. A little bit more rewarding then "f**k you and your spellslot"
One of the many reasons why 5e stat blocks are insufferable to due to the amount of information is trying to explain math in this block you need concise info to focus. We dont need to know where the +7 initiative comes from. Just accept that it is 8.
You need to highlight the area of the text you are referring to. Simply putting up a wall of text and talking about it makes for a very frustrating viewer experience, as i have no idea or time to find what you are referring to. Its really not hard to do in editing - simple block with opacity turned down. This coupled with your pace of speech i just lost interest 1/4 of the way in.
Im not sure your reasoning on counterspell holds water. If a once per day spell has been counterspelled it hasn't been cast and since the default for counterspell is not to consumecthe spell slot I would argue that it would be inconsistent to expend the spell usage.
Much better to run as a DM, I was always forgetting to to use legendary actions... but with a trigger to remind me and only having to keep track of how many reactions I have used.. I am more excited for Tier 3 and 4 play now...
I hate this change with a passion. My players and I tried it to see how it is and they hated it too. The boss has way too many things to do, 3 reactions each one costing just 1 resource to do is too much action economy. Not only that but they did nothing to fix the actual problem being Legendary Resistance and doubled down on it. On top of everything they removed Lair Actions which is just so boring. In their attempt to streamline the game and make it simpler, they just make it more boring and like a computer game which is not what a tabletop game should be.
I'm not a fan of Rend as a generic attack because some monsters have additional traits involving their Bite or Claw attacks. I just see this as 5.5E being even more overly simplified than 5E.
The biggest danger to the new system, and why legendary saves are still necessary? Raulthym's Psychic Lance. This broken AF spell incapacitates and deals damage. As it is an intelligence save, this spell can (and often does) lock down most monsters. However, I found a better way (that my players like better!) than legendary resistances. Legendary Resistance is a 'feels bad' when used against players. What I do is give legendary monsters a new trait: Shrug Off. At the start of their turn (or by spending a legendary action), conditions on the enemy end. But if this happens, the enemy has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks until the end of its turn and it has 1 less legendary action this turn. Doing it this way allows a players spell or effect to take away at least 1 action from the monster (minimum its reaction, but also at least 1 legendary action) but keeps my legendary monsters from getting completely shut down. My players also find this to be more engaging, as they no longer have to 'game out' a creatures legendary resistances and it makes battlefield control spells have at elast some meaning in high level play.
I don't really see the need for the additional simplification, given that 5E is already a simplified edition of D&D (and variants). I like some of the extra stuff, though, but @theposhdinosaur's comment covers all of that pretty well.
I still believe Legendary Resistance should also allow the creature to reduce damage by half. It's to cc spell focused of an ability and makes the control casters feel bad whenever facing legendary creatures. If the legendary creature could use its legendary resistance against dmg as well, it makes it more of a team effort to reduce them down. It's how I ran it for years and so far every group liked it.
The teamwork is in wearing down that limited pool. Players plan around legendary resistance and figure out ways to take it down so that they then hit the creature with their bigger effects. Or they completely ignore it and focus on damage. If control players don't have back up plans in the event that their usual playbook doesn't work, that's more on them than the mechanics.
@@nojusticenetwork9309 and that's the point. it's an ability mainly made so DMs bbeg don't get insta frozen, which is fine in itself, but doesn't feel good for the players who it targets. It feels much more rewarding for the team to see legendary resistances less of a deny button of the DM but a powerful innate ability to shrug off effects and dmg of all types the creature has and for them to wear it down as a team. This way, a caster who's spell got resisted, helped the martial as it now has fewer means of denying dmg, while dmg that got denied with one instead makes it more vulnerable to spells or other magic with devastating effects. It makes it feel less of a slug feast and HP race than it otherwise is. Try it once, before denying a player build around lets say charms and illusions his identity by forcing them to hasten the martials and only chug fireballs.
@@nojusticenetwork9309 I hear ya. I love how you see people claim there is a HUGE martial/caster divide to the point there is no reason to play a martial... but the same people complain how Legendary Resistances make casters feel useless and the system needs to be reworked because it (even though they are only on boss monsters you shouldn't fight frequently.) Casters dislike it because they have to stop and think about how they are going to use their magic instead of using the Press Here To Instantly Win button. They might be forced to not use their magic to win but rather to support the martials so they can win, and that's utterly inadmissible since martials are already running away with all other aspects of the game. Should we also rework flying monsters since the Strength based martial characters can't do anything but huck javelins at disadvantage while casters are unhindered to do whatever they want to them?
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I don't like the fact that got rid of the possibility of having one "big" action that requires 2 or more Legendary Actions to perform. Instead with multiple reactions they all have to be scaled around the fact that each can be triggered and used multiple times in one round.
I suppose this also raises another question that we just don’t know the answer to as we have only seen 1 legendary creature so far. I would say that on average, these Reactions seem more powerful than a typical LA. So I wonder if they are totally fine just making them much stronger? Not sure yet!
Or perhaps they added abilities that require multiple reactions.
@dwil0311 they absolutely could! We have only seen one legendary creatures so far!
@@InsightCheck Well historically, singular boss monsters have had a tough time fighting adventurers on even footing, so it might very well be needed.
@theposhdinosaur7276 100%. I’m looking very forward to seeing more of the book!
Having an extra Legendary Resistance meshes well with the new Counterspell, giving the monster the ability to not waste a spell in addition to the normal defensive use.
Absolutely!
If you try counterspell the dragon it will make it with it's +7 save, and if it fails it chooses instead to succeed, and then throws up acidic bile at you and an ally to deal you aoe damage, then you lose concentration on the spell that you were using xD
I was looking at the stat block for the Dire Wolf between 2014 and 2024. No change to the CR but the 2024 monster HP nearly halved (from 37 to 22) and the bite damage also decreased from 2d6+3 to 1d10+3. Damage isn't a huge difference but it still dropped. It went from a 5hit dice monster to a 3 hit dice monster but the CR didn't change. The only offsets are the 2024 version got proficiency with perception checks, but this is offset by the loss of Keen Hearing and Smell, and no saving throw on being knocked prone from a bite attack.
I do wish they had reworked Legendary resistances. You don’t want your BBEG to be taken out by a save or suck spell, but I feel like this further incentives the “do more damage” builds over the more interesting control options. I don’t have an answer on how I’d revise them but I’m also no game designer.
It’s a challenging one for sure. I wish they’d taken a few public passes at what to do about Legendary Resistance. Even if they just landed back at where they began. It would have been nice to see some alternate ideas. But yeah, that type of feature is very important to not entirely trivialize a big bad.
Not the best solution, but purely for your reasoning, they could add something like "Legendary armor" or "Legendary defense" on the same pool of points as "legendary resistance" but the armor/defense can choose to ignore the damage from a source.
This doesn't solve the feeling of legendary resistance, in fact you'd get the same feeling of "great so I do nothing" on big chunks of damage, but if it shares the same pool of points, so now it's up to the DM to decide what they rather resist. it should make "do more dmg" slightly less of an incentive.
Alternatively, they could have taken a look at the conditions that would trivialize a big bad and given alternatives, like a damage resistance but for conditions, instead of doing the full effect it would do a "half effect". Maybe a reduced duration, a disadvantage on its next attack, saving throw or a weaker condition would be applied instead.
I get why legendary resistances are there but the feeling of having to "bait them out" if you're not a damage focused character just feels bad.
The ability to auto pass a save is good, but I feel like it needs other uses that might be tempting to use against fighters, so legendary resistance isn't just an anti-spellcaster mechanic. Something like "spend a legendary resistance to nullify all damage it took this turn" would be good potentially.
That lets the fighter potentially whittle away at the legendary resistances, and makes it feel like the entire party is wearing them down, not just the casters.
A thought I had to handle legendary resistance was that when they use a legendary resistance, they gain a single point of exhaustion. The idea is that even if you fail to inflict what you wanted, it still cost the monster something, and makes legendary resistance less of a "spam it whenever something inconveniences me" and more a risky decision. Haven't really tried it out yet though, so jury's still out on how effective that'd be.
Personally, most of the time I customize LR to fit the monster. Just add a penalty to using this ability that allows players to still get a reward for succeeding. Something like additional damage, or poisoned condition, losing reactions or legendary reactions for a turn e.t.c.
Legendary resistances are the great equalizers between casters with a lot of nasty spells and martials whose only job is to output damage. If you could always get your effects to stick on a big boss monster, you would invalidate a lot of classes who have to fight honestly, hit point by hit point, to get the job done.
I'm against this response. Saying it is "honest" to defeat a boss by reducing them to 0 hit points makes it sound as if that is the "right" way to play. Except it's a very videogamey thought process of "okay now we reach the boss and fight them". If you figure out how to defeat the villain without fighting them, say by undoing their plan, is that a "dishonest" way to play?
Legendary resistances exist to stop powerful spells from trivialising boss encounters, but it also gives express permission for them to trivialise non-boss encounters (just watch a hypnotic pattern divide a combat in half and you'll see what I mean).
Meanwhile against a boss with multiple legendary resistances, there are times where it can feel pointless to be a spellcaster as every spell you cast gets either saved by higher than normal saves, or from legendary resistances, leading to multiple consecutive dead turns where you didn't do anything.
And I hate how powerful spellcasters are, but that doesn't make it fair to switch off half of their kit. We had ten years of this system, we couldn't think of anything better in ten years?
@@Unormalism You didn't 'figure out' how to defeat a monster by casting Hold Monster on it, and other one-shot spells along that line is 95% of how casters 'cleverly' defeat monsters. If you don't want a full new edition that reworks the whole combat system and invalidates all the content released in the last ten years, this is the most elegant solution for general play.
@@brilobox2 I didn't say it was "clever" to defeat the boss with Hold Monster, I said it was as valid as overcoming the boss without combat. Legendary Resistances are not an elegant solution. It is more of a bandaid fix. "Spells are too strong, so to protect bosses they just won't work against them until you've wasted several turns + spell slots trying." That encourages a terrible play pattern for players.
Honestly I do want a different combat system, which is why I've largely stopped running/playing D&D. I just don't agree with any of their choices.
I like that there's like a monster hunter style of learning a monster now as you fight it. If you work out a dragon only does the corrosive miasma on a ranged attack then you can strategize around that. Perhaps you don't use range attacks to avoid it or maybe you do use them to try and force the dragon to use that reaction instead of the charm reaction
Legendary actions were just at the DMs whim whereas now it feels like you can actually control a monsters behaviour slightly.
*The good*
HP upgrade is nice
Lair xp in statblock makes things simpler
Battle ready: A much needed buff for boss monsters in general.
Spellcasting: I am very happy that ancient dragons actually have a few tricks up their sleeves, beyond just being big flying lizards. Also like the spell choice, green dragons are supposed to be social manipulators. Finally, I love that the dragon can use magic and multi attack on the same turn.
New LA (reactions): I definitely like the new options more in general. I am unsure what I feel about the change to reactions, especially with the trigger conditions. On one hand, this could make players fight more strategically, trying to avoid a particularily nasty reaction trigger, but on the other hand, it limits the DM in using them. I guess it could be seen as a trade for the legendary actions sometimes costing 2 points. So you'll have 2 options that are always on and 1 that has a special condition, like spending a legendary resistance.
*The bad*
Needless removal of skill proficiencies, removing deception and insight from a green dragon seems extremely weird, as it is supposed to be a social manipulator. At least it got a +2 to Charisma mod in exchange.
Melding damage and condition immunities together makes it more annoying to look for imo.
*The arguable*
I am not a big fan of the new text formatting. 5e used to make it so that you could read effects like a sentence. I get that it's supposed to be easier to read at a glance, but they could have simply highlighted the relevant information instead of changing the formatting. (Since bold is already used for effect names, they could have added a like under DCs and radius.)
Rend: On one hand, I understand wanting to make the basic attacks easier for the DM, but I kinda wish the tail attack stayed as a reaction, but with a flinging or knocking prone effect. Perhaps a tail swiper could even have been a dex save in a cone next to the dragon, as an aoe attack.
The rend thing does help with the player position verisimilitude, “ I’m flying in his face how quickly could this guy spin around to hit me with his tail” . The bite claw tail formula really relied on suspension of disbelief because if you’re too specific on a previous turn those attacks seem less likely to be possible but happened anyway, now your players get hit by the part that’s closest and most likely to be used based on where you are compared to the dragon
Since resistance to slashing, piercing and bludgeoning damage seems to no longer differentiate between magic and non magic damage, any fighter with a magic weapon against a creature with those resisatnce types is only going to do half damage. Thats actually quite the nerf for fighters. Unless magic weapons now do force damage?....
I don’t believe that they do as a general rule. Many magical effects now deal Force damage but I still believe that magical sword will (generally) still just deal Slashing damage.
Great point, I think magic weapons like a flame tongue or the new sword of wounding (extra 2d6 necrotic on a hit) will be a lot more desired now.
@TheMemitim I was very happy to see those kinds of changes. Elemental damage wasn’t explored enough in 2014. Yes it was there, but there’s a lot more they could do with it!
With the new craftable 'Enspelled Weapons' in the 2024 DMG, the fighter PC can now go on a quest to create their own 'Dragon Slayer' sword that can deliver force (or psychic, radiant etc.) damage via spells like Zephyr's Strike at low levels of play or Tenser's Transformation at high levels, when fighting Ancient Green Dragons.
The best thing about this is that the player and the DM can design the pathways for the PC to overcome these new more challenging Monster designs.
I am cautiously optimistic about this new direction for 5.5 DnD. 😁
I'm pretty sure, based on what we've seen, that Resistance to Bludgeoning, Slashing, and Piercing is gonna be a lot rarer in this iteration, and that of those creatures who do get such Resistances, many will only get one or two, not all three.
Like, the Imp used to have Resistance to non-magical Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing and now it just...doesn't. No replacement, it just lacks those Resistances. I suspect that's gonna be the most common situation for creatures that used to have those resistances unless them being resistant to normal weapons is a big part of their schtick.
Thanks for the analysis. Its already got me thinking about new and more interesting encounters. Previously I would have to homebrew the reactions or spellcasing in to challenge my group of 6 players (plus their pets, summons and familiars etc.) as they would otherwise just dominate the action economy.
Adding in minions would just extend fights out where as makiing individual BBEGs with more reactions and spells per round makes them way more interesting to play as a DM and challenging for PCs. Particularly in large parties.
Honestly, its a decent improvement. Its not perfect, but a large stride in the right direction; which is more than i expected of them.
I wonder which is harder to remember: multiple different triggers that vary from monster to monster, or a single, consistent trigger (in the case of LA: another creature ends their turn) that applies to all legendary monsters...
the legendary reactions all make sense, don't have different costs, etc
If a mage shoots a fireball at me, I auto save and then fire back with an acid ball
If a fighter hits me with a sword attack I strike back with a rend
If else, ie if they didn't try to attack or hurt me, I guess I'll charm them, to stop them ever hurting me, muahahaha
Makes sense to me
Also I can flavour the rend attacks to be whatever I want finally
@@nyanbrox5418 didn't address any of that in my comment, but good to know you're liking the direction it's heading
will it matter? you'll have the stat block there in front of you (the DM). nobody ever expects or intended for the DM to remember this off the top of their heads. as for the players, I think it makes it harder to meta-game which is always a plus.
@@companyoflosers of course it matters. And as a matter of fact, Legendary Actions are also in the stat block and people keep forgetting, so.. what do you think will happen now that this mechanic got more complicated? It's kinda obvious
@@KazunariGames I fail to see where things are getting more complicated. It looks a lot simpler now
While these are "reactions" and they do technically interrupt a players turn, they have triggers which tells me that those have to happen (completely) in order to perform the reaction. So the last two there, the dragon would still be hit or take damage.
Some of the monsters from the first Mordenkainen's 2014 books, the Oblex as I recall, did indicate natural upcasting of certain spells. I am however, relieved to see this present in the new version alongside replacing an attack with a spell. I think it goes a very, very, long way to increase the effectiveness of creatures that can do martial and spellcasting features. I do want to know, however, if there are things for purely martial creatures that might simulate spell effects in terms of supernatural abilities. I obviously don't want the monsters to suffer from the same martial/caster divide as the players have.
Using abilities that prevent reactions just got better.
And the fight is more tactical and interactive overall, since you can learn the triggers for each reactions and then avoid provoking those triggers
I think it would he cool if monster lairs weren't creature specific anymore or we had guides to making creature lairs so even non-legendary creatures could have a lair.
One thing I don't like about "Legendary Reactions", which I've seen a few people mention, is that it loses out on the more hard-hitting/impactful options that Legendary Actions have, since you have to balance Legendary Reaction options against a single Rend attack, where Legendary Actions can have stronger options that have a higher action-economy cost.
After thinking on it a bit though, we can apply that same "multiple action-cost" that some Legenadry Actions cost, into new and stronger Legendary Reactions.
Otherwise, the thematics and mechanics for Legendary Reactions is spot on, as the boss is now literally reacting to the choices you make, as you make them
That reminds me of an MCDM boss monster, they had a really nice mechanic tied to their legendary resistance. They had 3 legendary resistances, but each of them was tied to a 'spear', on their turn they could do their regular things AND attack with EACH of these spears. These spears were dangerous, they could knock you prone and restrain you on top of dealing a good chunk of damage.
So as the fight went on and you hit the monster with big spells - which they had to use legendary resistance on - you didn't feel like ah shit there went my turn, since one of the spears would shatter as they used their legendary resistance and weaken the boss's future turns.
This made the fight feel like the boss was dangerous when we were still full health and as we were running out of our own resources, so was the boss. Something like that would've been a great addition.
They also removed the hard hitting "casting 2 Smites in the same turn" palading thing. I think they chose less burst design overall so the fight can be more interactive and nuanced, which I also like
I think it is very fun to give it more reactions. As a DM, narrating how your player hits the dragon and it's immediately retaliation and anger is a win in immersion. It makes it feel like a living, breathing creature that responds to player choice instead of a monster with a set routine.
Important change that didn't get mentioned: The 2024 version has significantly fewer Saves that add Proficiency. The 2014 added their Proficiency to Dex, Con, Wis, and Cha, while the 2024 one just has Dex and Wis. That's a relevant distinction.
I think this is worth talking about as a design decision in general. Part (though by no means all) of Legendary Resistance feeling bad is that it only kicks in when the creature fails saves, so increasing the number of times it fails saves helps with those a bit.
The high static initiative is from it having advantage in initiative
I ran the numbers in the video :P
I think that large, solo enemies do need to be able to handle an entire party of actions each turn, so massive AoEs, and abilities to break standard initiative should be common.
I think that the best way to do it would be to always put the monster at the end of the initiative order (except perhaps on their first turn if they aren't surprised), but then they can take an action after _any_ enemy's action, with the cost being that the further they skip ahead in the order, the more limited their actions are, and the more of these actions they take, the weaker each subsequent action is that turn. So as an example, they can cast a spell after the first player turn, but it would be level 1 only, and the later in the turn they cast it (without doing anything else), the higher the level it can be. Or they could do a melee attack, but it would be a very casual swipe, barely a glancing blow of their strength and attention, whereas the deeper in the round they got, it would add hit dice, damage dice, and AoE range to it.
The DM would then have the flexibility to _choose_ whether to have the boss flail around at all these ants attacking him, using a bunch of smaller effects each round, or to more patiently tank their petty nonsense and then lack out with a massive counterattack once they've finished.
I wish they made legendary resistance a reaction to give a reward for forcing the monster to use them
Then your wizard hits the monster with shocking grasp, a cantrip and shuts down all their reactions anyway. Easy exploit.
@@momomomocensoredbyyoutube9085 Shocking Grasp got nerfed, it only shuts down Opportunity Attacks now, for this exact reason.
@@Bundalings What about all the other reaction shut downs that exist? did they all get nerfed? Given the sheer amount of mistakes they made in the new books, I wouldn't be surprised.
@@momomomocensoredbyyoutube9085 I know Open Hand Monk got the same nerf. I'm not sure about other similar options, what else was there?
I had so much fun running the Ancient Green Dragon for a one shot. So much more interesting than the regular green dragon. PCs had a lot of fun figuring out triggers and planning around them.
I like the replacement of all the marginally different attacks with just one. TBH it was not too bad with 5e but in Pathfinder it was unbelievably cumbersome with different iterative attack penalties and it makes me happy that someone, even if it's the other someone, has made this change.
I actually like this change too. We can flavour it how we want.
11:39 Charm Monster is a 4th level spell, so at 5th level it can only target one additional creature
Correct, that’s why I said (but also specified on screen) that they would use both the reaction and swap one attack for a use of spellcasting
I'm pretty sure almost all of the Archdevil in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes have upcasted versions of damaging spells so they're a bit more comparable to the damage they can deal with their whole action such as scorching ray or inflict wounds.
Another thing worth noting is something that didn't change. The dragon is still immune to poison and being poisoned. Which doesn't seem like a big deal because ots expected to be immune. But this means poison immunity could still be on a high number of monsters.
Another thing is no mention of physical damage resistance. We already knew that magical/ non-magical distinction was going away but I was interested to see if resistance to some or all 3 of the damage types would show up. If a cr 22 dragon doesn't have resistance to piercing damage its safe to say most monsters wont have it
There doesn't seem to be big "2-3 point" legendary actions attacks anymore, but this could be replaced with a type of "Charge Up" reaction that boost the damage or adds additional effects to its next attack. This could be easily homebrewed in if it doesnt show up in the MM.
From both a mechanical and thematic standpoint would you call this new design approach a net positive for dnd combat?
Based on what we have seen so far, I would say yes. But, it’ll really depend on if they continue and expand upon those trends across the entire scope of monsters.
5:25 - the thing that makes it feel like a NO button is - the GM gets to choose IF they use it on a failed save. meaning that you can't use lesser spellslots to get rid of the resistances. I wouldn't care that they have 3 or 5 legendary resistances if there was a reliable way to get rid of them and still have resources for my impactful spells.
technically a lvl 9 sorcerer could prepare and turn ALL of their lvl 3 and 4 spell slots into 21 sorcery points giving you 3 extra 5th lvl spells to use hold monster with (one spell impactful enough that legendary resistances "needs" to be used) but even then, this dragon has +10 to wisdom saves... so without magic items the dragon only needs to roll an 8 to not have to use their legendary resistances... meaning an optimised sorcerer that preps for using 5 lvl spell slots each turn only has 50% per casting to get rid of their resistances.
so - they have 30 sorcery points because they prepared - and they converted 7 per spell slot to get 4 extra 5th lvl spell slots and still have 2 points left - lets say they converted 2 lvl 1 slots and 1 lvl 2 slots so they can have a pool of 6 points.
starting the battle with 5 5th lvl spell slots and 6 sorcery points a magic item that bumps the save dc +1 and their feature innate sorcery to bump it an extra +1 giving them a spellsave DC of 20
this sorcerer only has 50% chance to trigger a legendary resistance BUT they can technically quicken spell the 3 first turns and ready a magic action to cast hold monster on another creatures turn.
meaning in 3 turns they can 5 times have a 50% chance to get rid of the legendary resistances but then what, they're out of spell slots... and lets say we've been extremely lucky and their *5* points are gone - only now can higher level spells ... have a 50% chance of working. and it took the entire resource base of one optimised character that prepared insanely. they are now spent and useless except for cantrip dmg...
OR a druid with magic initiate can cast conjure minor elementals at 5th lvl and cast magic missile - every missile hits AND deals 1d4+1+4d8 - a lvl 1 magic missile deals 3d4+3+12d8 and unless the dragon can cast shield - it's guaranteed dmg if you stay in 15ft range.
that same level druid with metamagic adept feat can on the first turn quicken conjure minor elementals and cast a first lvl magic missile (because the magic initiate feat allows you to once per long rest not expend a spell slot for that 1st lvl spell) and then subsequent turns upcast magic missile provided that the dragon is still within 15ft you do ridiculous dmg...
tbh I kinda like the idea of a mix of Legendary Actions and additional Reactions, for different situations, rather than just one or the other. And that way you could maybe restore the blocking of all reactions to Shocking Grasp and such.
I feel like a problem i kept hearing with LAs were that DMs kept forgetting to use them. Perhaps the hope with making it a reaction and giving it a trigger it might help DMs to remember to use them? Me personally, I always find abilities easier to remember when they are more interactive.
I wonder what is harder to remember: several different triggers, which change from monster to monster or a single trigger (in the case of LA, another creature ends their turn) which is the same in all legendary monsters
@KazunariGames We don't actually know how much they'll vary from monster to monster until the manual releases. They could have similar "hit by a ranged attack" trigger, or "after casting a spell" trigger. It could be that similar monsters have similar triggers or similar attacks. We'll just have to see when we get there
@@sethchambers4330 my point stays the same. Even if you assume all legendary monsters will share the same or similar triggers, 3 or more triggers are still more complicated than a single one
@KazunariGames oh, i thought we were talking about remembering to do the thing not whether it's slightly more complicated. Which in fairness it is, but that doesn't make it worse imo. I think having something like "after getting hit with a ranged attack" had the dm licking his chops waiting to activate the trigger. Not only making it easier to remember to do but also making it more exciting and memorable for everyone involved.
And tbh, those triggers are no more complicated than a berserkers retaliation, the defensive duelist feat, etc
I have my issues with the revised rules, mostly as a player.
However, as a DM, I am excited for what looks like a smoother system, and potentially harder hitting bbegs.
The ability to essentially interrupt a player's turn with these could pan out to be even stronger than legendary actions were, but I think it'll depend on a lot of factors.
Fully agree.
4:31 this dragon has both proficiency bonus to dexterity and wisdom saving throws
Also haven't seen anyone talking about how they are probably changing all goblinoids and bullywugs from Humanoids to Fey
They motioned for that in Monsters of the Multiverse with an in-world explanation, but in the new D&D Beyond adventure "Uni and the Hunt for the Lost Horn", all goblinoids and bullywugs (which lose the Bullywug subtype) are Fey rather than Humanoids
I always switched “Legendary Actions” to “Legendary Reactions” already in all of my games, for the exact reasons you mentioned.
Players respond more when the creature is reacting to their own actions. You could even make it where these new réactions can never be restricted. Nothing worse than an Incapacitated Dragon reflexively Rending you after you dealt damage
I’m interested in how this effects opportunity attacks
Really interesting that whereas, say, MCDM have their monsters suffer some sort of penalty when using an LA, not only does the the ancient green dragon have no penalty - it actually makes an attack as well!
Remember that it’s for you, the DM, to decide if you stick to the Book or if you just use some parts of it.
Nothing holds you back from inventing your own thing.
For example:
I let a Red Dragon named Ashmaw charge his Fire-Breath Attack, so it’s range was much longer and the Damage more devastating to Creatures and Objects within the Attack range.
My Players knew about this from several NPCs who encountered the Dragon or watched it, but were scared shitless, when it did this.
Ashmaw was beaten, but he still lives and each time my Players hear about a Red Dragon somewhere, they are on high alert.
I think that it’s a nice Idea to give Creatures Reactions instead of legendary Actions, but I wouldn’t get rid of legendary Actions and legendary resistance.
Maybe experimenting with mixing both or just use the Reactions for Creatures without a legendary Status?
I think it’s fine.^^
D&D (ttrpg in general) is a creativity game, after all. Rules are just to help us have fun with it
So the removal of natural language in monsters' abilities and just the game mechanics seem to lean in more towards the 4E monster statblock design philosophy.
4e was a lot more complicated than these ones... But I am a big fan of 4e so who am I to complain xD
I love the new monster design philosophy (that we've seen).
Same! With yeah, the huge asterisk of “that we’ve seen”. It has me hopeful for the rest but, we gotta wait and see!
The problem I’ve had with legendary actions and I think I’ll have it with this new model is that I keep forgetting to use these actions when it’s the players turn. That’s why I always just let the monster use those actions on its turn. Plus a dragon making six attacks on players definitely sets the tone for how dangerous this monster is. Imagine you’re fighting a green dragon and it rapidly makes three poison spit attacks. Then it just runs up on you and starts rending you.
This means Slow halts "legendary actions" is one example of the change (assuming you can actually get it to fail its save lol)
The CON save was cut in half. I really hope this is indicative of a larger trend with the monsters going forward. I think it would make the seemingly weak rogue much more appealing. Being able to threaten the dragon with Knock Out virtually every turn can really burn through those legendary Resistances or set up huge damage for Divine Smite or a Disintegrate.
I can see experienced DMs disliking the change from legendary actions to reactions, but I think new DMs will benefit from reactions with specific triggers to prompt them etc. I still remember the 1st time I tried using a Legendary action completely wrong due to forgetting they are technically reaction-based anyway.
I do prefer the villain-action in the MCDM Flee, Mortals book though. Having limited use actions that cripple the monster/villain in a unique way for the remainder of the fight is a super interesting mechanic that I do think I'll continue to adopt in my HB bosses.
One of my favorite spells, Confusion, is getting a big boost with this new way of handling legendary actions, since Confusion still takes away reactions completely from affected targets.
also Slow and Hypnotic pattern, as lvl 3 spells
@@Itomon Hypnotic Pattern is much weaker though because it breaks as soon as you hit the targets, Confusion lets you keep doing full damage to them.
@@Klaital1 suitable, since its a higher level spell
One correction, Charm Monster is 4th level spell normally, so it can only target 2 people with it per casting.
I said and wrote on screen that targeting 4 because the assumption was they would swap one attack to cast it and that they would use their reaction to do it. So 4 total in very quick succession, but not at the same time.
the power of math
I think its better. The format is cleaner.
I like the lair bonus to legendary resistance.
I wish for breath weapon it was changed to roll 1d(something) next available breath rather than hoping for 5,6. I used 1d4 to determine the rounds for dragons next breath attack players know recharge is coming just not when. I will continue to used DM house rule. Also fly around as defense until ready. I like static initiative as well. I use it as DC for players roll higher than go before monster, lower go after. You can combine 1 or more PCs actions that are above or below.
I wonder if Legendary Actions and Lair Actions were combined.
Overall I like the change - reactions feel more meshed into the system well as opposed to LA - which felt kinda tacked on.
I have toyed with different solutions for solo monster viabilty myself. And I tend to go more towards multiple initiative slots, with a staged set of actions myself - I have had a lot of fun with this at my table. But this is okay I suppose.
Personally my eyes rolled back into my head on the return of LRs though. I understand the problem we are trying to solve here - but the solution of "actually no" is so uninspired, and unfun. It deinsentivises creative play, and doesn't have any meaningful engagement. With the player.
Like, at bare minimum I would have liked to see a cost to the creature for use it - so that the players get a benefit other than "it used one of its LRs"
Like, maybe attacks then become at advantage while it reals while resisting the effects. Or it loses some/all of its reactionsfor the round because it is exhausted from exerting itself against the effect.
There are options here to still reward the player who caught the monster off guard without saying "actually that doesn't happen"
You could limit the number of LR per round (if you use LR, you cannot do so again before the start of your next turn)
I've been considering a houserule that restricts LR to only saves that you make to end a continuous effect, not the ones at the time of casting the spell. That would allow the spells to work for at least at the start of the creature's turn, which could preven a bunch of reactions from it
Honestly, I’ve no idea why people are complaining- these are awesome changes - triggers are simple and these are quite strong, keeping the players honest
My only concern is damage output seems low - but D&D has turned into “no crying at the table”
I really hope the amount of creatures with resistance to piercing, bludgeoning and slashing damage has gone down significantly. In 2014 rules, if your in tier 3 or 4 most enemies will have resistance to these kinds made from nonmagic weapons, and already kn tier 2 they show up quite a bit. Since they removed the "counted as magic weapons" feature from subclasses and replaced them with being able to do elemental damage, this presents a mitigating effect for those classes and subclasses, lkke monk, moon druid etc. however a straight fighter or barbarian or rogue, will be thourougly nerfed if they dont get access to weapons that deal alternative damage types. Reducing these classes to at worst being useless or at best being very dependant on the dm making such weapons availeable
Apparently it has. I heard the Pit Fiend just doesn't have those resistances anymore, but don't quote me on that. The Imp doesn't, for sure.
I'm disappointed that the Legendary Resistance appears to be unchanged...
I would have preferred a redesign of Legendary Resistance to be that the creature has advantage on x number of saves.
Advantage alone isn't enough to stop Hold Monster from ending the fight before it starts. It would need to be rerolling the save with Advantage and twice or more as many uses of LR, and even then it might not be sufficient. Most fights last 3-6 rounds, and losing even a single round to a save or suck spell cripples most monsters.
Do spells like hold monster stop creatures of making legendary actions? Now on 2024 it definitely does due to them being reactions, but are they canceled by a spell of that type?
I hope you're right with this change in design philosophy, and that we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg here.
It has always seemed anticlimactic to me, both as a DM and as a player, that the only way to create a truly challenging boss fight was to swarm the group with minions WHILE they battle the boss.
On the players' side, action economy plus increasingly powerful actions creates an exponential increase in potency as they level up.
Adding reactions that are triggered on specific types of actions against the monster (and having more than one reaction) makes the monster dynamically auto-adjust to both group size and group composition. Ranged attacks trigger reactions that counter them. Control/debuff spells trigger counters to control and debuffs. Direct attacks trigger reactions that counter these attacks.
The end result looks like a boss fight will feel more challenging without as much reliance on minions, and (could) be more consistent across multiple group compositions and sizes.
I agree. I hated that you had to make sure there were minions, sometimes even respawning of minions, to make boss fights challenging. Having up to 4 reactions per round ups their action economy, but frankly, I wouldn't mind them being able to take an action EVERY turn. Even with that, characters are often getting 2 or even 3 actions per round depending on how well they can make their bonus actions and reactions work for them, so it's not like bosses have any sort of advantage on a party of characters.
@@indigoblacksteel1176 100% on all points.
I think these "Legendary Reactions" are rather neat and I find them to be harder to homebrew than legendary actions, so I have no problem with this change because I am just going to add legendary actions to any monster that I want to be extra special.
I miss the flying legendary action option that dragons had. It was a great way to avoid PCs to dogpile on a dragon when it was on the ground. Yes, now it can use rend in response to taking damage, but flying away is better than fighting back.
They have at will spells to sling from afar...
Hot take, but having a monster be able to fly away the moment you manage to knock it down is lame.
Doesn't this make reaction removing attacks like shocking grasp far more beneficial?
I under stand the anitgank reasons for the 3 reactions a round thing...but casting charm monster 4 times a turn if they want and it being upcast is not ok...especially since its not uses\spell slot related and is simply at will.
i get that the CR 22 is there for a reason but i think this dragon smurfs 5 level 18s easy
Honestly, good. Ish should be HARD and require significant research and prep.
I think the design is simpler and cleaner for the DM to use and that is all good. You have to suspend disbelief that a dragon can fly its full mowement, rend twice cast cloudkill and cast four hold monster spells in 6 seconds. But at this point it's insane what a PC can do in 6 second too so wtf.
Proof will be in how they play at the table. If it doesn't work there's Tome of Beasts and Flee Mortals on my shelf.
I prefer the older editions' dragons where they had levels in magic-user/wizard rather than a limited spell list like in 5E. It just didn't make any sense that sorcerers apparently have "dragon's blood" but dragons themselves didn't cast spells.
This is the 3ed heavy combat way of playing, just a bit simplified. I have been saying and it is showing more and more, this is a mix of 2ed, 3ed, and 5ed all in one.
If it can cast Gaes as part of it's attack action, it can just tell you to stay out of the fight, you'll be charmed for 30 hours so you can't attack it anyway, while it proceeds to murder your party
please someone find a flaw in this
This statblock doesn't look like it has gone far enough. Where are the condition immunities, so it can't be shut down by things the players will not be affected by. Frightful Presence is completely gone.
Hot take, high level characters should not be scared into uselessness by anything that isn't mind-altering, and Frightful Presence ain't it.
I will be giving legendary monsters more than 1 reaction.
This one already has 3, or 4 when in its lair!
Someone at WOTC's been studying GiffyGlyph's Monster Maker, I think.
Wait so if you Tasha's Mind Whip this statblock... can it just not use all its reactions?
Does this make shocking grasp more powerful by depriving reactions.
Well Shocking Grasp used to deprive ALL reactions. Now it’s just Opportunity Attacks. So it’s more narrow now.
Shocking Grasp was nerfed (even damage was nerfed, which was unwarranted) but there are other stuff that can be more appealing like Slow and Hypnotic Pattern that do prevent Reactions
No Terrifying Presence??
Lame ability, high level characters should not be scared into uselessness by anything that isn't mind-altering.
No frightful presence though
Legendary Actions were more like Legendary Reactions. And also why the Cantrip: Shocking Grasp got nerfed.
9:00 Not sure I agree with you re:counterspell and uses per day. Do you have supporting evidence?
Admittedly no, I don’t have any “concrete” proof or anything like that. To me it just seems like the most logical conclusion based on the wording and information available. Things tend to be called what they are. These are not referred to as spell slots, Counterspell specifically refers to spell slots. By extension, I would apply this same usage to things like Ranger getting to use Hunter’s Mark a proficiency bonus times per day as they are not spell slots.
I could absolutely be wrong about this, but to me it just seems like the most logical conclusion based on currently available evidence.
@InsightCheck yeah RAW you're probably right. Seems silly tho. Wizard gets 8th Level Cloudkill countered, he loses only the action. Dragon gets 8th Level Cloudkill countered and it loses the ability to cast it for the day and (probably) the rest of its life.
@@ratherfungames that was the case before, so take it up with 2014's design team.
@@brilobox2[checking my name tag... still says "impotent RUclips commenter"]
I'm not able to take it up with WotC, so commenting here will have to suffice.
Counterspell had a huge change from 2014 to 2024, so I'm not sure what you are referring to.
... did he not see "Battle ready" its alert for the dragon....
? I did? I even specifically call it out by name on more than one occasion…
this is great and unintentionally an amazing buff for shapechange and true polymorph spells . specially shape change that had the limitation of not able to use legendary actions .
I am still mad about the legendary resistance just say no you . and the charm monster with a very high DC will be a F you to any player who dump their wisdom that is an auto fail for most barbarians and still charm is a very bad Condition where you cant remove it except by level 5 spells and higher .... The good side is that you just arent able to harm the creature its not domination so ... some DMs would isist on you doing the dragon bidding but RAW you can still act as if you are preventing two friends from fighting . healing your friend . removing a grapple and so one. it might still be very mean against low wisdom characters
I have to say a vey missed opportunity to utilize the deference of dragon designs having a construct attack like a snake to reflect the nature of the dragon design would have been very RAD
Once again, I know of no DM that wouldn't day an "X"per day spell wouldn't count as a spell slot
Well here is one. I absolutely would not consider a per day use a spell slot. Unless they clarify otherwise, it feels like the most logical conclusion based on the wording but, of course, anything is possible.
Then the DMs you know are ignoring the very specific and intentional wording of things.
New stat block looks terrible, they are keeping legendary resistance. they dumb down claw/claw/bite... to three attacks of generic rend. I dont even see the reason to remove legendary actions and instead make them all reactions. IT seems more limiting to restrict each reaction to only a specific trigger. If you wanted to add more reactions to legendary actions that could be easily added. done this way you can metagame around the reactions and force the dragon to not take any reactions. IE this ancient green dragon becomes useless with a bunch of casters using non-ranged attack damage and hiding in in a fog cloud spell.. IE no way for any of its reactions to trigger.
If the casters are hiding in a fog cloud, they're all getting gassed or stomped on. The only additional thing an old Ancient Green Dragon in the same situation would be able to do that the new one can't is a Wing Attack, which might as well be nothing. These new ones are FAR more dangerous. Having counters and strategies for avoiding them is good game design.
@@brilobox2 You can play around All of that green dragons reactions. Save spells at range, end your turn in a fog cloud so you cant be seen or just at a range greater than 30ft (the range of charm monster) and then the green dragon cannot take any reactions against your party. The real problem though is how inconsistent these reactions are the dragon is not garanteed to get off all three every round,. thus making it much harder to judge how dangerous the dragon is based on its CR. I have written up tons of Legendary monsters since 5E came out. my rule of thumb is to place half of the monsters per round damage potential into its legendary actions. Its a great way to balance how powerful those actions should be and to prevent the monster from just overwhelming the party on their actual turn.... this only works if the legendary creature is guaranteed its 3 legendary actions per turn.
I don't agree on your take about Counterspell wasting away "1 per day" slots if Counterspell is successful.
Counterspell says "the action", "Bonus Action" or "Reaction" is wasted. That's clear. Dragon uses its action to cast a 1/day spell. It gets counterspelled. The action dragon used for casting the spell is wasted. Action in terms of action economy. You tried to use an action to cast a spell, you got counterspelled, the action was wasted. "Now, do you still want to do something else, move or use a bonus action maybe?"
Nowhere does it say that 1/day slot would be expended though.
A spell does only what it says it does.
Now one could argue that since it makes a statement about spell slot being not expended, somehow that translates into 1/day slot being expended but that is not RAW.
It's just there because game designers wanted to give a straight answer to the question that every player would have: "did I waste my spell slot?". No, you didn't, because you didn't actually cast anything.
Analoguous to that is not wasting a 1/day slot because you didn't cast anything.
I'll yield if there is errata or Sage Advice on this, but otherwise I think RAW, based on the principle of spell doing only what it says it does, 1/day slot is not expended when you get counterspelled.
You’re free to disagree, I am very confident in the interpretation, as are you. I’m sure at some point we will get official wording on it.
I agree, a spell does what it says it does. 2014 counterspell doesn’t say anywhere that the slot is expended, just that the “spell fails and has no effect”. We have extrapolated that to be “the spell slot is wasted”.
Likewise, in 2024 “IF the spell was cast with a spell slot, the spell slot is not wasted”. This is a very typical type of if/else statement. If this, then that, otherwise… so we can logically extrapolate from that that if a spell slot is not wasted, then if it was not cast with a spell slot, whatever resource was used is wasted.
Dragon loogie for the win!
i would always for get the lair bonuses.
There are some other downsides to reactions design wise. While most of the main points you say still stand there are some other concerns that I have.
First of all it makes it more difficult to use with older content and backwards compatibility.
If you want a subclass that doesn't exist with the new rules or just an older version, but that takes away reactions with it's abilities, that can be a problematic issue. Something like, Path of the beast barbarians can make creatures use their reactions to attack minions with their 14th level ability if they fail a saving throw, and they can spam this multiple times per turn, so even if unlikely, they can take away a lot of reactions in a turn.
Second issue is that of action economy. While it's true that legendary actions could also be taken away with incapacitated, reactions are also taken away with incapacitated so you have now more stuff that can take away part of the creatures action economy, since now you have to watch out for both.
My concern is that spells like dissonant whispers, mind whip, become more spammed than in the 2014 rules. They are pretty low level, and do multiple things so you didn't waste a turn forcing the creature to use a legendary resistance since they also do damage, and forcing the dragon to keep using legendary resistances against those spells, which in the old rules they didn't necessary needed to do, since even without it reactions it still had legendary actions.
The dragon also seems way more reliant on their legendary resistances to keep them from losing action economy than the old rules, with stuff like counterspell changing, and the change to reactions, hence why it got more.
Lastly flow: you mention that reactions create a more smooth and cinematic, but the interruption can also break flow. With legendary actions players got to do their full turn before ending it, so they could spend before their turn thinking about what they would do, and do their turn pretty quickly. With reactions you interrupt the player and make them rethink their turn mid combat since they couldn't predict the reaction. While strategically interesting, it is also more interruptive, and forces players to spend more time on their turns rather than going more smoothly going turn to turn. Sure, legendary actions can also do this, with an unexpected action, but with reactions you are going to see this more often.
Also reactions also have the issue of having triggers, so some abilities may not be used due to playstyle, like if you have corrosive miasma which reacts on legendary resistances and ranged attacks, but you only have melee characters that don't use many saving throws, it might be you never may use this ability.
Also note aside from legendary resistances, it seems like creatures no longer have lair actions, instead of getting extra reaction and legendary resistance, which is a shame, since those were pretty interesting.
My main worry, at least at high level play, is that players will potentially have access to these reworked legendary actions because of the wording via true polymorph/shapechange.
They don't, players do not get access to legendary reactions, this will be specified in the new MM, just like players not getting legendary actions was specified in the old MM
A side effect of this, is blade singers will no longer be able to turn into a many armed woman to get a whole bunch of reactions with her skill either
Legendary resistance is one of the worst parts of 5e. It takes the dice out of the equation and it's very immersion breaking. The fact that they didn't change it at all is incredibly disappointing to me as a DM.
GUYS. 10:21 I think raw you can now cancel all of the monsters reactions with the slow spell! Do you think this is intended?
Since Legendary resistant exists, I'd say its fine. Hipnotic Pattern is also a level 3 spell
Neato
Neato indeed lol!
That's my roomba
@@20storiesunder I'm not a roomba 😱😭
the loss of legendary actions is a zero loss for me. I exclusively use MCDM's Villain Actions and havent looked back
What I want is no legendary resistances. Legendary actions are fine.
Edit: as a player. I am currently midway through a legendary fight at lvl 12. So far we had 3 turns of combat and all my character managed to do was cast a self buff and was legendary resisted twice. I was not looking forward to even more of the same in the 6th ed.
Imagine if new legendary resistance would, for example, weak the bosses on use somehow. Like yes, boss aren't stanned, but now his multiattack doing only two attacks, not three. A little bit more rewarding then "f**k you and your spellslot"
One of the many reasons why 5e stat blocks are insufferable to due to the amount of information is trying to explain math in this block you need concise info to focus. We dont need to know where the +7 initiative comes from. Just accept that it is 8.
You need to highlight the area of the text you are referring to. Simply putting up a wall of text and talking about it makes for a very frustrating viewer experience, as i have no idea or time to find what you are referring to. Its really not hard to do in editing - simple block with opacity turned down. This coupled with your pace of speech i just lost interest 1/4 of the way in.
Im not sure your reasoning on counterspell holds water. If a once per day spell has been counterspelled it hasn't been cast and since the default for counterspell is not to consumecthe spell slot I would argue that it would be inconsistent to expend the spell usage.
Much better to run as a DM, I was always forgetting to to use legendary actions... but with a trigger to remind me and only having to keep track of how many reactions I have used.. I am more excited for Tier 3 and 4 play now...
I hate this change with a passion. My players and I tried it to see how it is and they hated it too. The boss has way too many things to do, 3 reactions each one costing just 1 resource to do is too much action economy. Not only that but they did nothing to fix the actual problem being Legendary Resistance and doubled down on it. On top of everything they removed Lair Actions which is just so boring.
In their attempt to streamline the game and make it simpler, they just make it more boring and like a computer game which is not what a tabletop game should be.
I'm not a fan of Rend as a generic attack because some monsters have additional traits involving their Bite or Claw attacks. I just see this as 5.5E being even more overly simplified than 5E.
The only things legendary about D&D these days are the wallet milking and AI related lies.
Interesting…
~_~
The biggest danger to the new system, and why legendary saves are still necessary? Raulthym's Psychic Lance. This broken AF spell incapacitates and deals damage. As it is an intelligence save, this spell can (and often does) lock down most monsters. However, I found a better way (that my players like better!) than legendary resistances.
Legendary Resistance is a 'feels bad' when used against players. What I do is give legendary monsters a new trait: Shrug Off. At the start of their turn (or by spending a legendary action), conditions on the enemy end. But if this happens, the enemy has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks until the end of its turn and it has 1 less legendary action this turn.
Doing it this way allows a players spell or effect to take away at least 1 action from the monster (minimum its reaction, but also at least 1 legendary action) but keeps my legendary monsters from getting completely shut down. My players also find this to be more engaging, as they no longer have to 'game out' a creatures legendary resistances and it makes battlefield control spells have at elast some meaning in high level play.
I don't really see the need for the additional simplification, given that 5E is already a simplified edition of D&D (and variants).
I like some of the extra stuff, though, but @theposhdinosaur's comment covers all of that pretty well.
I still believe Legendary Resistance should also allow the creature to reduce damage by half. It's to cc spell focused of an ability and makes the control casters feel bad whenever facing legendary creatures. If the legendary creature could use its legendary resistance against dmg as well, it makes it more of a team effort to reduce them down. It's how I ran it for years and so far every group liked it.
The teamwork is in wearing down that limited pool. Players plan around legendary resistance and figure out ways to take it down so that they then hit the creature with their bigger effects. Or they completely ignore it and focus on damage. If control players don't have back up plans in the event that their usual playbook doesn't work, that's more on them than the mechanics.
@@nojusticenetwork9309 and that's the point. it's an ability mainly made so DMs bbeg don't get insta frozen, which is fine in itself, but doesn't feel good for the players who it targets. It feels much more rewarding for the team to see legendary resistances less of a deny button of the DM but a powerful innate ability to shrug off effects and dmg of all types the creature has and for them to wear it down as a team. This way, a caster who's spell got resisted, helped the martial as it now has fewer means of denying dmg, while dmg that got denied with one instead makes it more vulnerable to spells or other magic with devastating effects. It makes it feel less of a slug feast and HP race than it otherwise is. Try it once, before denying a player build around lets say charms and illusions his identity by forcing them to hasten the martials and only chug fireballs.
@@nojusticenetwork9309 I hear ya. I love how you see people claim there is a HUGE martial/caster divide to the point there is no reason to play a martial... but the same people complain how Legendary Resistances make casters feel useless and the system needs to be reworked because it (even though they are only on boss monsters you shouldn't fight frequently.) Casters dislike it because they have to stop and think about how they are going to use their magic instead of using the Press Here To Instantly Win button. They might be forced to not use their magic to win but rather to support the martials so they can win, and that's utterly inadmissible since martials are already running away with all other aspects of the game.
Should we also rework flying monsters since the Strength based martial characters can't do anything but huck javelins at disadvantage while casters are unhindered to do whatever they want to them?