Legendary Actions were a bad idea in 5e. They're a bad idea now.

[claiminglight]

They were one of my major reasons for staying away from 5e as a tabletop game, and they remain so now.

The conceit of D&D is that, even if you have magic and monster with wonderous and terrible abilities, they're bound by the same rules of internal logic and physics. If an enemy wizard can cast a spell, you can learn that spell. If an enemy who can't fly falls, they take X amount of damage when they land. And so on.

Legendary actions are a straight up violation of the central logic of the game- that being "We're all moving at the same time, the turns are just there to keep track of it all". But if my fighter hits the Boss on his turn, then the Boss uses a legendary action and teleports next to my paladin, and my paladin his the boss on his turn, then the Boss was literally in two places at the same time.

While we're at it, if a creature can take turns out of order when they feel like it, why not just change other parts of the central ruleset the players and the game agreed to? Why not have monsters sometimes not have hit points as a concept, or sometimes have no ability scores at all, or have 9 of them with names chosen at random from a dictionary?

Ugh. I hate legendary actions. I'm convinced somebody thought they were a "rule of cool" idea, they pooped it out in a design meeting and nobody thought too hard about since.

[Aldain]

Legendary actions would have been fine if they strictly existed as a response to certain actions/damage thresholds, but getting to randomly act out of turn, usually with something powerful is just the worst.

Nothing is worse than ending your turn and watching a character die to a Legendary Action regular attack that happens to be a critical hit.

[Chezident]

Action economy is one of the defining design traits of 5e. A group of players, by sheer dint of having more chances to succeed, are likely to stomp anything in front of them that doesn't one shot them.

Legendary actions serve the purpose of evening out the action economy and stripping away a little of that advantage in numbers without having to add minions or contrivances. They represent supreme speed or wit or power that present an actual challenge to a group of coordinated players, rather than a vampire eating three attacks of opportunity as he back tracks across the arena getting smacked around whenever players catch up.

[Kasa]

Yes because a Tarrasque in 3.5 was playing by the same rules as the players.

[claiminglight]

@Aldain: Sure, maybe. Case-by-case, I imagine I'd agree. But that sort of thing sounds to me like a special ability. Which nobody ever has trouble with. The specific issue for me is the violation of the fundamental rules of the game I'm playing. I'm not allowed to reroll/fubb my dice rolls, and the "DM" isn't allowed to say that we're suddenly not playing a turn-based game.

@chez- :D I don't think your position makes much sense. You're saying that any average group of players, because they will outnumber a solo boss, are likely to stomp any solo boss, in any and all TTRPG systems. And that's why 5e, alone, has allowed bosses to cheat. No other system has, on average, challenged a PC.

If legendary actions are a result of speed, how much speed? If wit, how much wit? If I get 90 feet of movement a round and 30 Int, can I have two legendary actions? Do the bosses have 90 feet and 30 Int?

@Kasa - XD Famously, nobody uses the tarrasque when discussing rules and gets taken seriously. But I can field that nonetheless. Special abilities are one thing. They're operating within the rules of the system to create something unique. But there are certain elemental properties of any game that are sacred to the game. For instance: if you were to find a wall clip in this game and were able to fly outside of the map, would you be using an exploit? Or would you be using a PC-based legendary action?

[Peter B]

I love legendary actions. :) Both as a player and as a DM. When a named creature has more options then just act in turn order they transform into a real threat and the stakes are raised.

[zero]

lair actions ultimately take up something that has existed in D&D for over a decade: a creatures refreshable actions, generally called "spell like abilities"

the argument of "everything a creature in D&D does so can a player" is also, equally untrue, there is no spell in the game that mimics a ghosts posession, there is no spell in the game that mimics a liches ability to return from the dead as long as their philo is still alive. so on and so forth.

ultimately legendary actions are the modern name for a system in 4e they caried over, in which specific actions refreshed on a "4,5,or 6" or something along those lines.

they are a tool used to allow a creature that is alone/with far fewer minions then needed to still keep up with the action economy the game provides.

consider the example: a vampire alone, vs 4 players, he loses easily, even if his CR is higher, due to the nature of action economy, having lair actions gives him extra actions to help mitigate this issue to some extent, which is why the system exists: to make what is symbolic of "boss encounters" more challange, to make them stand out as opposed to another encounter.

[Kasa]

Originally posted by claiminglight:

@Kasa - XD Famously, nobody uses the tarrasque when discussing rules and gets taken seriously. But I can field that nonetheless. Special abilities are one thing. They're operating within the rules of the system to create something unique. But there are certain elemental properties of any game that are sacred to the game. For instance: if you were to find a wall clip in this game and were able to fly outside of the map, would you be using an exploit? Or would you be using a PC-based legendary action?

I legitimately have no idea what you mean, and since when was it decided that you can't be serious about tarrasques?
They are cannon CR 20 encounters, but for the sake of argument how about a 3.5 demilich?
CR 29 and literally immune to all magical and supernatural effects (even those cast by gods) except shatter (but only deals 1/2 damage), dispel evil (fort save for 1/2), and holy smite as well as immune to cold, electricity, polymorph, and mind-affecting attacks. On top of all it's other special abilities.

[claiminglight]

@zero: Special abilities are defining traits of individual monsters: ie: vampires suck blood. Legendary actions are rules that apply to *bosses*. Which is an out of game concept.

So, if you're a vampire intern who's just got out of vampire college, you can suck blood. But, even if you never learn anything but how to make coffee at your vampire internship, you're suddenly able to defy the rules of the universe (as defined by the game rules) as soon as the universe declares you "not an intern, but instead a boss".

@Kasa I'm not sure why you bring up a demilich either. They might be argued to be too powerful, or not powerful enough, or anything else. Whatever the case may be there, the point is that they're playing by the rules. We accept as part of the universe that humans are different from dragons- and so dragons have physical advantages and drawbacks that humans don't have. But it's totally different to say that the definitions of the universe change when an out-of-game label gets applied to something. That's the point I was trying to make when I mentioned wall clipping exploits. While certainly effective, by skipping a dungeon out of bounds, you're breaking the rules you agreed to when you started the game-- in particular with this one, the rule that you'll pretend that the world is real for a while and walk through a dungeon instead of, say, opening up a code file and rolling the end credits.

[Kasa]

So the point your trying to make is you think legendary actions are against the rules, but I don't understand.

I gave you a few examples of creatures that do things that the PC's can't do according to the rules, in 5e legendary creatures can do things the PC's can't because they are as different from the PC's as humans are from dragons and thus have different abilities. In this case they have legendary actions and the PC's don't ya?

The tarrasques can't die unless wished dead after it has taken it's full HP worth of damage +10 and is immune to most spells, the demilich can revive from death as long as it's phylactory is safe, it's also immune to magic except for 3 very specific spells.

These are things that are "against the rules" according to your point since they can do them and no one else can.

[claiminglight]

Kasa, the central point involves a concept called The Magic Circle in games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_circle_(virtual_worlds)

Imagine we're talking about baseball and you're a pitcher. As the pitcher, you don't have control over who you're pitching to. The first guy may have a terrible batting average. The second guy might hit home runs constantly. As the pitcher, you accept that's part of the game. Sometimes you have easy guys to strike out, sometimes hard. And when they do hit the ball, you may have to respond by trying to catch it, duck out of the way, etc. That's baseball.

But say the third guy that comes up to bat misses the first pitch, but then he bends over, takes the ball out of the catcher's hands, and throws it. That doesn't count right? Because that's not baseball. That's something else. But then, some ump tells you that it's allowed, because that guy's not a normal hitter. He's a boss. "Why is he a boss?" you might ask. And the ump just says cuz.

In a turn-based game, we go in agreeing that it's turn-based game on a grid. And that means certain things. It means that people take turns, and they move in grid spaces. If a monster is allowed to *not* take turns, then he may as well be allowed to *not* move in grid spaces.

lol actually, that's funny to me! What if you had a monster in 5e who was allowed to move on the grid lines between spaces, and your spells/attacks couldn't target him because they only allowed you to attack "any space within range 5" or whatever. I'd be interested in hearing about why that'd be much different from legendary actions.

[zero]

Originally posted by claiminglight:

@zero: Special abilities are defining traits of individual monsters: ie: vampires suck blood. Legendary actions are rules that apply to *bosses*. Which is an out of game concept.

So, if you're a vampire intern who's just got out of vampire college, you can suck blood. But, even if you never learn anything but how to make coffee at your vampire internship, you're suddenly able to defy the rules of the universe (as defined by the game rules) as soon as the universe declares you "not an intern, but instead a boss".

and yet: no "rules of the universe" are broken, you have your unique features that no player can mimic, and you have your legendary actions, something that ultimately has always existed by other names.

same cereal, new name

[Kasa]

See that's what I don't understand about your point, no one changed the rules. Legendary actions are in the rules for 5e, by playing 5e you agree to those rules.

In 3.5 some monsters were immune to magic, by playing 3.5 you're agreeing to those rules.

The rules are not changing, the game changed, your not playing AD&D or 3.5 or 4e or pathfinder, you're playing 5e and in 5e legendary actions exit. It sounds like you just don't like the rules to the game which is kind of to bad seeing as we are playing "baseball" and not claiminglight-ball.

[claiminglight]

Kasa: Right, I'm not arguing that the rules on legendary actions aren't written in the rulebook. They certainly are. Of course I know that. So, I must mean something else. :D

@Zero: Say your a Sorak in this game. Soraks can polymorph. Can a Sorak polymorph into a boss?

[zero]

Originally posted by claiminglight:

Kasa: Right, I'm not arguing that the rules on legendary actions aren't written in the rulebook. They certainly are. Of course I know that. So, I must mean something else. :D

@Zero: Say your a Sorak in this game. Soraks can polymorph. Can a Sorak polymorph into a boss?

not how polymorph works, but nothing is stopping a sorak from being a creature with legendary actions, and also having polymorph, neither of those contradict or "break the rules of the universe" as you state.

[Aldain]

Originally posted by claiminglight:

@Aldain: Sure, maybe. Case-by-case, I imagine I'd agree. But that sort of thing sounds to me like a special ability. Which nobody ever has trouble with. The specific issue for me is the violation of the fundamental rules of the game I'm playing. I'm not allowed to reroll/fubb my dice rolls, and the "DM" isn't allowed to say that we're suddenly not playing a turn-based game.

I'm a bit more used to seeing things like that in other RPGs, not so much in actual tabletop (where I imagine a bad DM can abuse Legendary actions to table-flipping levels), but overall I think in Solasta in particular it more is an issue of implementation than theoretical concept.

I could see something like a Defiler using Dark Veil if you try to use Daylight to exploit its weakness as a good example of a boss being aware of it's own weaknesses.

The problem is that the Legendary Actions it can take in Solasta proper don't react to anything and are just bonus actions thrown out for the sake of trying to balance the action economy out.

To put it simply, as currently implemented it is a counterbalancing method that doesn't quite pan out as well as it could have because it is too general, but if it were more specific to circumstances and served as a response to the flow of battle it would have been a fair system that also still shows the cunning/powerful nature of Legendary enemies.

...I'm mostly just typing out my opinion on the topic now, feel free to disregard me if I'm just talking in circles.