```metadata
title: 'Rule Variant: Legendary Immunity & Turns'
description: >-
  A simple rule variant for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, allowing legendary
  resistances to be replaced by actions that remove conditions, and legendary
  actions to be replaced by additional turns a powerful monster can take against
  larger party sizes.
tags: ''
systems:
  - 5e
renderer: V3
theme: 5ePHB

```

```css
.coverHeader {
position:absolute;
transform:scale(2, 2) !important;
font-weight:bold;
font-size:32px;
color:white;
width:700px;
text-shadow:1px 1px 2px #000000, -1px 1px 2px #000000, 1px -1px 2px #000000, -1px -1px 2px #000000;
top:75px;
text-align:center;
}

.coverDiamond {
background-image:url("https://www.gmbinder.com/assets/img/DiamondDD.png");
background-size:400px;
background-repeat:no-repeat;
position:absolute;
left:210px;
top:115px;
width:400px;
height:12px;
}

.coverSplotch{
background-image:url('https://www.gmbinder.com/assets/img/UNR8ilF.png');
background-size:350px;
position:absolute;
left:0;
bottom:180px;
width:345px;
height:56px
}

.coverFooter {
position:absolute;
font-size:25px;
line-height:1.1;
color:white;
bottom:100px;
right:55px;
width:700px;
text-shadow:1px 1px 2px #000000, -1px 1px 2px #000000, 1px -1px 2px #000000, -1px -1px 2px #000000;
filter:opacity(100%);
text-align:center;
}
```

# Rule Variant: Legendary Immunity & Turns
## The Rules
### Legendary Immunity
___
At their discretion, a DM can replace a creature's Legendary Resistance trait and any condition immunities they choose with the following actions:
- ***Legendary Immunity.*** The creature ends any of the following effects on itself of its choice:
	- Any conditions.
	- Any levels of exhaustion.
	- Any reduction to its ability scores.
	- Any effect replacing its game statistics.

The creature can use this action even if it is otherwise unable to take actions. The creature also retains the use of this action even if its game statistics change.

#### Legendary Actions
- ***Legendary Immunity (Costs 2 Actions).*** The creature uses its Legendary Immunity.

### Legendary Turns
___
At their discretion, a DM can replace a creature's Legendary Actions with the following trait:
- ***Legendary Turns.*** Immediately after the end of another hostile creature's turn, this creature can take an additional turn, regaining the use of its movement, actions, and reactions. This creature does not gain this trait's benefit while its next turn in initiative order would take place before that of any other hostile creature.

When replacing a creature's Legendary Actions in this way, the creature's legendary actions are added to its actions, if they are not part of its action list already, and no longer cost legendary actions to use.

{{note
##### Brewer's Note:
Altering a legendary creature using these options can make it significantly more challenging to fight. When applying the Legendary Turns trait to a creature, consider treating its CR as if it were 1 higher than its listed value for each additional party member above 2. If the party has only one member, decrease the creature's CR by 1 instead.
}}

\column
## The Reasons Why
*5e* has trouble making single enemies challenging. While there are many factors behind this tied to the power player characters can attain, particularly at higher levels, two of the key flaws in boss design are legendary actions and resistances: in theory, legendary actions are supposed to balance out the action economy discrepancy between lone monsters and an adventuring party, while legendary resistances prevent a single, powerful monster from being neutered through an entire party's worth of crowd control.

In practice, both mechanics have come up severely short: legendary actions fail to adequately make up for the large differences in action economy between lone bosses and a party of three or four, let alone more, while legendary resistances provide only a temporary buffer against crowd control, one that can be easily whittled down by spamming cheap single-target effects, most infamously of all Stunning Strike. Neither of those mechanics scale with party size and both are easy to trivialize when one knows their limitations, which makes for boss encounters that are difficult for DMs to make suitably challenging, let alone tailor to their party, without adding a ton of minions to the fight (and *Wizards of the Coast* seem to have acknowledged this, as several bosses summon monsters).

With this in mind, the above aims to address those mechanical issues by replacing current legendary mechanics with a trait and action that would let bosses scale naturally with a party's size, as well as deal with persistent harmful effects differently: rather than ignore the first few big-ticket effects almost entirely then fall defenseless, a boss would still suffer the effects of a failed save, yet have the option to cleanse itself of particularly debilitating effects at the cost of most of its turn. With either or both of these traits, players could still have an impact on combat by reducing a powerful opponent's actions, but wouldn't be able to trivialize combat against them through crowd control spam or cheesy combos such as *Forcecage* and *Sickening Radiance*. Additionally, no matter the party's size, a legendary monster would still be able to have agency at regular intervals, giving the DM plenty of opportunities to let their boss do their thing.

{{pageNumber,auto}}