The difference is between a 2nd turn and Legendary Actions is: you get your movement, regain your reaction, and can make another save if you failed against an ongoing effect. And you don't have to remember to use LA after another's turn. It's right there in the initiate order!
@@valentinegodek4681 More akin to Thieves' Reflexes. Legendary Actions don't catch "repeat the saving throw at the start of your turn" which is another useful defense to give solos. AND using a 2nd turn instead of LAs also gives you another reaction each round. Triggering "your next turn" does a lot in terms of mechanics that LAs don't
@@ZipperonDisney ahhh okay I was thinking the same thing. "Why not just call this a Legendary Action?" But solely for the reroll on saves and the regained reaction, I like that a lot.
Just add a gun from a military mini to the model. And if it's a really high level party, get a bolter from a 40k miniature and stick it on with blu tack.
Threaten would be better i guess but Taunt still works. Taunting is intimidating, someone that can taunt confidently against multiple opponents is pretty damn scary
@@postomnis6134 but the intent behind a taunt isn't to be intimidating, it's to have someone engage you and probably make them angry enough so they make a mistake. Like, Taunt: DC 16 Cha check. On a failed save the target has disadvantage on their next attack and if they miss you get an attack of opportunity.
This is why I like the incapacitate trait in Pathfinder 2nd edition. You're giving this creature advantage on all saving throws against all magic. Otherwise it might get hit with a save or suck effect. In Pathfinder 2nd edition the save or suck spells have the incapacitate trait and anything that is immune to incapacitation effects cannot be affected by them. They also do not work against creatures which are a certain number of levels above your characters. You basically know that those spells are not for boss fights unless you're targeting minions and it is in the spell description. The incapacitation tag is right next to the name.
Seen quite a few people have problems with "following the rules" There are no rules outside League play. They're more like guidelines. DnD for me is about the adventure and imagination that involves story telling and a world of creativity and fun. Following every rule to the letter doesn't sound fun.
Imagination and storytelling aren't D and D, they are TTRPGs in general. D and D is just the rules, nothing else. If people want to follow those rules that's 100% fair. There are good reasons to play by the books.
This extra turn idea is so cool! I'm running a dungeon this weekend that's going to culminate in a boss fight against the party's nemesis, and I can't wait to see their faces when I say it's Master Mirror's turn... again...
You could also add minions to up the Encounter CR. It’s a Creature that doesn’t have great perception for a hunter. Adding 4 blood hawks with keen sight and pack tactics makes this a deadly encounter for Four Level 3 characters.
I love this idea! Legendary resistances and actions can make a monster seem to overpowered. I love the way you did this. You are so creative and totally need to start Kickstarter or something to create your own tabletop RPG. However I understand the love to continue to play dungeons & dragons. I love it too.
Extra rounds, even limited ones, are one of the best ways to keep action economy from ripping a lone monster to shreds. I still think limited legendary actions(recharge on primary turn) would be a good thing to have against a higher level party, so long as they arent overcompensating for an already solved problem (basically they should change the way you approach the thing)
Make it a duo by mounting a dulahan granting it both a partner and a completely different set of attack your players have to be concerned about be it crossbow or melee Also it allows you to add light armor from the saddle so the action of chopping of its head would really just break the saddle inflict some bleed and dismount the now really pissed off rider bonus points if the riders a berzerker
My rule: the solo monster get a minor action that can use at the end of another creature turn and can use it to do 1 attack, dealing damage equal to its CR+ main stat, or repeat a failed save, or move, or that sort of stuff, abd then have 3 minor resistances, to repeat a failed save. That's it, super simple and works for every moster as a template and works wonders so far
You can also have it use its wings more for hit and run. Then have it have a VERY HIGH (strangely high) dodging. After it's killed finding out it is able to phase and its either being controlled by some puppeteer that is phasing it. Or they can't actually kill it until they kill it physically, and find a way to kill its shadow presence also.
This content is super helpful!! Love to see how to scale things up because D&D does such a poor job of putting out higher level content but the players still want it!
Did something like this just made the manticore harder by taking some inspiration from the Percy Jackson book by giving it the ability to change shape into a humanoid. And it was working as a spy which lead to a 1v2 against some of my players made it a great encounter.
Love the idea (also had the moment where I thought"all-without-legendary-actions-and-here-are-some-legendary-actions-for-you"), but I think MCDM did a great job to bring this design to a great pace with their action-oriented monsteres ^^
I personally use Giffyglyph Monster Maker to create boss battles. Bosses from there get Paragon Actions × the party size - 1. Paragon gives bosses an extra chance to retry end of turn saves, and to use an Action or use their movement.
Thats pretty good and i would like you to give visual hint that it is different from everyday monster. An after image, a glitch, an orb inside mouth so your mm reading player too dont felt cheated instead think like, yes this is cool modified monster.
What I did was let them know it was scary enough to keep a whole village of dwarves from using the mountain trail. The players had never faced a manticore in-world before, so they had no expectation of what it "should" be like.
Huh, idk why i never thought of giving a singular creature more than 1 turn in a single round of combat🤔. That definitely spices things up a bit without being completely unreasonable. It's like a lair action but for a creature, i like it
Or have them have to get to it like in white plume mountain in the inverted ziggurat. Forcing a party to think and than add more hp and an environmental resistance easy enough. A single one should always be a threat to a decent sized party. Don't be afraid to give a hurting to players,make them think that's the fun it it :D. The turn move sounds like a good idea more like a modified proficiency action like in 2e than a legendary in 5th. Clever.
I recently did a manticore fight with a duo on top of a mage tower. The manticore would swap out after each round one flying and one on top of the tower. At half hp the player closest had to do a save or be thrown off the tower.
Or you can keep it flying in the air, firing off tail spikes until it's almost out of them. I also gave mine a "Spike Burst" which was a 30ft cone DC13 Dex save, where it deals Xd4 piercing damage, or half as much on a success. Where X=number of spikes it had left. Helped speed up a fight that was dragging on because the party wasn't able to do much as it flew around.
@@MostLikelyMortal I used this against five 4th level characters. It downed one and killed another. I wanted a deadly threat though. To be less deadly for your group, I'd just lower the HP down to 102 (+50%) and take away the STR buff. The WIS save DC set to 13
@@ZipperonDisney thanks! They’ve been kicking my butt so far, there’s just so much to learn about balancing fights and I’ve been taking it on the easier side just in case. I have a battle arena encounter they’ll be going through soon, little to no chance of dying (part of the encounter), just so I can ramp up the difficulty without a TPK and experiment. This manticore setup should be fun!
Usually, I would just try to find another statblock that's closer to what I'm looking for challenge-wise and has similar abilities to what I want in the fight. Then just call it whatever I want.
So I'm going to say all of this as someone who has actually used similar ideas in a game before. Giving advantage on all saving throws vs magic is arguably stronger than legendary resistance. At 4 saves it's already outclassed the other option. It makes it to where your spellcasters can't do damage. And with the "mini-turn" since it's not tied to a resource (and because it can use a CC ability during it) it'll likely make for a much more annoying fight than if it just did have legendaries. Also potentially having it go later in initiative because of the -10 doesn't really change the action economy, one reason being it can still potentially frighten a target before it gets to act if it *does* roll higher than a dex-dumper or low roller. And if it survives long enough to CC multiple characters, they also aren't doing damage. Legendary and lair actions would be better balanced, more intuitive, and more interesting of an encounter. From a DM and player perspective these proposed changes are likely to make the fight memorable not because it was frustrating. Take it from someone who made similar mistakes, this fight will be nothing but 1-2 hours of both sides failing at killing the other until the party eventually kill it anticlimactically.
Sooooo, i just watched a video on how d&d works, and thought i had a good handle on it..... then like 2 hours later this short showed up... and I just realized i dont know anything... im confused. But it sounds cool..
I know I'm probably doing it wrong but I don't use health I just play a fight until the players aren't having fun then I end it so it doesn't get boring or overpowered
Bit late to the party, but I'd also suggest that it's a way of DMing that your players will catch onto sooner rather than later, and that's if they haven't already. When they do, they are going to stop approaching your combat encounters as if they have any weight at all, because they know the choices they make don't actually matter. That's not to say that tweaking hp up or down occasionally is a bad thing - in fact it's great for exactly the reasons you said - but you really can't rely on it for every single fight.
Eh, besides the name (is a manticore really a villain?) my main issue with them is the script. I prefer the flexibility of choosing each round even at the cost of complexity
My very first ever encounter I ran as a dm was a manticor... That cr 3 nearly killed the three party group of level ones. That manticor did the stomping lol
@@nothing4mepls973 except right in the rulebook where it says they are? In every monster manual printed since the 2016 erratta? Enjoy your ban tomorrow, troll
I don't understand why people are beefing with this. Isn't this just a way to make an encounter a little more engaging? And people make home-brew content anyway. The whole point of dnd is if you don't like a particular element of it you can change it to suit your groups needs
Thank you! I was thinking about this today it’s insane, i wanted to use a manticore as a boss that my player meet in a canyon but it was way to weak and then I stumbled across this video You helped me so much thank you!
I find it helps to just give it a bunch of health and some small enemy helpers like birds or bugs. It would really suck to fight a monster in the middle of a bee swarm.
"Without giving it legendary resistance" Then step one is doubling its hitpoints... thats the same thing. Legendary resistance cuts incoming damage in half, so its the same as doubling the hitpoints.
By create a whole new "second action" rule when legendary actions are literally a thing? Give it two legendary actions, with the options of: - Move (1 L. Action): The Manticore moves up to it's speed without provoking opportunity attacks; - Attack (1 L. Action): The Manticore makes a melee attack - Taunt (2 L. Actions): The manticore uses its taunt action + You literally gave it no boost to DPR. Yeah it'll last one more round, but it's damage will be pathetic so the party will never feel like it's a challenge. You're just making tge combat longer by not letting your combats end
@@nickromanthefencer add?? an extra die of damage??? give it 1d8 poison damage as its claws are coated in it, or necrotic damage is its slashes cause you to bleed, idk, literally anything
Tbf, the point of LAs is for solos to balance out the section economy. If manicure is fighting a 4 person party (let's say 2 casters 2 martials) I dunno if a single added turn works. I like the adv. on magic saves, though I wonder if that might have the opposite effect of rendering save or sucks virtually useless. Completely unrelated, I once had a DM who swapped out LR for Spell Deflect. 3 times a fight, they could deflect a successful spell against them to someone else (the target gets disadvantage on saves)
I feel like advantage on saves against magic is just going to make your casters have less fun than giving it resistance to magic damage without telling them. Nobody wants to have everything they throw at something miss while the noncasters play normally essentially
Just got that Manticore in the Arkhan the Cruel set myself, except I'm looking to use it on some low level adventurers for whom CR 3 will hopefully prove a real challenge
It's the flying that makes it challenging to lower level parties. But it'd guess the one in the MM stops being a real boss after 2nd level, and it's devastating at 1st level.
@@ZipperonDisney that is a pretty interesting design. But then again you only have 24. Is there a way to replenish your spikes? Like they grow back but only after a certain amount of turns? And in the meantime, could you use your tail as a close range club instead?
I mean. My players are going to ask why it's stronger though. As am I. If something is stronger than normal, there should be a good reason. Personally, might be better to have a wizard in the back buffing the manticore behind the scenes. Makes it more interesting, less weird rules, and gives your players some intrigue to figure out
The first thought I legitimately had was "If you say increase its HP, I swear to god!" HP is out of control in modern RPGs. If a 5 or 10 year old tries to kick my ass, he's not going to do very well. Same if I try to fight a tiger. Why? Because the smaller character is puny compared to the bigger character! And the bigger character's HP doesn't change! Either halve all the damage or raise it's AC or something. Second, you suggest Advantage of saving throws, which I also saw coming. Why don't you just give it a higher saving throw rather than use a wild mechanic that adds a random bonus of +1 to +19, and tends to generate d20 rolls above 10? Third, a +2 to strength sounds reasonable, but why not just say it has a +2 to hit and does double damage due to the size and weight difference instead. Forth, a CURSEWORDING fear mechanic!!! Rolling a die and telling the players what they feel is cheap. CURSEWORD! Fifth, a limited second turn on a separate initiative? Honestly, that one's cool with me except for the burden of using INITIATIVE. Just have it go either at the top of the round and the middle if it can reasonably act faster, or in the middle and at the end if the players reasonably act faster.
Very funny to see people losing their minds in the comments over what is basically running two manticores instead of one, but with the flavour of a solo boss fight. So yeah if you want this to be RAW, just make it a mating pair of Manticores.
Limited. Second. Turn. ..... Like, halfway through the initiative count before its next actual turn? That could be a really effective counterbalance for solo bosses getting whalloped by team-minded players
I would not use all the spines if you save some let them be poison throwing knives for the party. From my dming time and player time getting unique weaponry from enemies makes the fight feel more rewarding.
That's another modification I did when I ran this encounter. By the book, manticore spines don't do poison damage! (Can't remember if the ranger harvested them though...)
