Legendary Monsters in 5e & how to fix them

Hey! Evan here,

Nimble 2 is launching next week! and I have an embarrassing D&D admission: I've never ran a legendary monster correctly. More on that in a sec.

Legendary Monsters!

I remember when I first started playing D&D, I had one pie-in-the-sky goal: I wanted to fight & defeat a DRAGON! The very thought of it to level 1 Gobbo Stabberson (goblin rogue, of course) was so exciting to me...how awesome must that feel! What cool abilities would a dRaGoN have? Could we find out its weaknesses? Strategize as a team the best way to take it down??

No. It turns out dragons in 5e are just big bags of hit points (with a spicy breath weapon—that randomly?!? comes back). And they're tuned for a relatively narrow party size and level. Better hope your GM knows what he's doing otherwise, if you add one more player the fight can become trivialized—one fewer and you might just have a TPK on your hands. This was disappointing, to say the least. 

Legendary monsters should be the MOST exciting battles for you and your players to face, but often they are the most disappointing. 

For the GM because they die often too quickly, don't do enough damage, don't accurately portray the fantasy of the BBEG, or because they can be extremely difficult to run correctly! That's why, as a GM, I don't know that I've ever ran a Legendary Monster "properly" because their stat blocks are so convoluted and packed with information I don't need, it's easy to miss something (I almost always do). Or because they're so underpowered or boring that I need to do some heavy homebrewing to make them more interesting.*

For the players Legendary Monsters are disappointing, for all the same reasons, but also because Legendary Resistances ruins their fun! 

Legendary Monsters have a few core problems:

• Balance is on a knife's edge. Being exactly the right level of difficulty is extremely difficult across differing levels, party sizes, swingy dice and more. Get this wrong and you can ruin a year's long campaign (but no pressure, GM). 

• Legendary Resistances are an UNFUN, band-aid mechanic. On the one hand you need them as a GM to not just have Tiamat stunned and banished on the first turn of combat, but on the other hand... your players want to do cool stuff!

• They are either too boring or too complicated to run properly (I can remember far too many times, right after my party has defeated a boss monster I notice something new, hidden in the (poorly laid out) stat block that would have made it a much more challenging fight).

A solution should address ALL of these issues while also feeling really cool and unique. Legendary Monsters should act in a familiar way, but if they could have their own (easy, fast, and intuitive) mechanics to make them stand out, that would be really nice too.

The Nimble 5e solution:

Legendary Monsters acts after EACH hero. This way, whether you have a small table of 2 or 3 players, or a big table of 12+ players, you can use the SAME UNMODIFIED stat block. This makes them feel really unique, they're harder to pin down and defeat before they can do anything cool, and it has the added benefit of elegantly fixing the balance problem for the GM too.

What makes a Legendary encounter so exciting is the cinematic back & forth "who is going to win?" So, Legendary monsters also get unique abilities that trigger as their health dwindles. As the Hero Party starts to win, the Legendary Monster all of a sudden gets more dangerous!

Bloodied: at half health the monster gains a scary new ability that can turn the tide of battle.
Last Stand: When near death, the monster gains 1 more ability that makes it final moments truly terrifying.

Also, Legendary Resistances can be used to Save or negate damage from a single attack—but at a steep cost that can turn the tide of battle back in the Hero's favor. As a Hero, you WANT to trigger the Legendary Monster's Legendary Resistances!

Here we have a tactically very interesting DRAGON (that won't make the GM's brain melt)! It has clear play patterns that an attentive party can discover as well as interesting abilities that makes fighting it feel unique. There are ways for the GM to set up powerful attacks, control the battlefield with movement and positioning, and equally interesting ways for the party to work together to avoid being eaten.

There are subtle and important differences between his Bite, Claw, and Tail attacks. If you want to set up a lot of damage later, use bite! If you want MAX damage NOW, claw attack! If you want to control the battlefield and move the heroes around, tail attack!

Aura of Rot doesn't seem that terrible until you're cursed with Cruelty's Gift.  You can almost feel the rot creep in, slowly at first, then more viciously as it drains your hero's health. And as soon as you feel like you've got things under control his aura DOUBLES. 

Dangerous? Absolutely. Easy to run? That too.

Other Legendary monsters may summon minions when bloodied like the Spider Queen's:  “Avenge Your Queen, My Brood!“ At 60 HP, summon 4 spiderlings (1d6 sized minions) per hero anywhere within 60 ft., they act next.

Or, like the necromancer Vael, Undying, they may begin to shimmer a sickly black-green color and gain: Shield of Cruelty. At 140 HP, Vael gains the reaction Shield of Cruelty. (1 time use) If Vael would be damaged, instead he may reflect that much Radiant damage back at the attacker.

Also included are suggestions on how to build your own legendary monsters, normal encounters and how to tweak the difficulty on the fly in a way that respects the story and your hero's decisions.

Nimble 2 is packed with great tips and tools to make GMing a breeze. It's a factory of awesome, memorable moments! I'm really looking forward to sharing more with you all as the campaign unfolds. Feel free to reply to this email and let me know your thoughts so far.

Pledge Tier Previews

This is not necessarily final, as much as what I'm currently planning. You've got just a few days to give me any feedback! I've tried to make it affordable at various levels so that as many people as possible can play while also adding some cool fancy things for people who like myself prefer fancy physical things. 

Thoughts? Does the value seem fair for what you're getting? Anything you'd love to see included? Are you planning on backing, if so, what level, let me know (just reply to this email)!

The project is launching NEXT WEEK, Tuesday the 23rd at 8:30 am (EST). If you can back in the first 48 hours I'm planning on doing an Early Backer Bonus you won't want to miss!

Can I count on your pledge?

Click here to count yourself in! 

Thanks! 

– Evan @ Nimble Co.

*Now, there are other really cool 3rd party books that spice up monsters and make them a lot more tactical and better balanced. Some of my favorites are Forge of Foes, Flee, Mortals!, and the Monstrous Menagerie You should totally check them out if you haven't already (they are all compatible with Nimble 5e). They go a LONG way in fixing many of these issues.