Agter our latest DnD game our regular DM once again thought loudly on how to make dragons have more teeth. And it got me thinking about how Dragonbane handles capital M monsters differently.
DnD Monsters tend to have a slew of ways to nullify the PCs disabling abilities (magic resistance, legendary resistance). What those does are forcing the party to spend a couple of rounds having their cool stuff be nullified. For me that is boring. Without it though - CC fest and an underwhelming fight.
Dragonbane being a different beast and makes Monsters dangerous in a different way. With way less disabling abilities the PCs fun stuff isn’t nullified and foes don’t get CC’ed to death. So everyone can do their thing. Which Monsters can do multiple times each round (multi-attack but full turns) and their attacks always hits. Think about that - Monsters’ attacks always hits. That brings danger and tension. The attacks are randomly selected lowering the rise of catastrophe, or increasing it as the GM cannot pull their punches.
To help the PCs out they have the option to take a defensive action (dodge, parry) which have already led to clutch moments. It comes at the cost of having an offensive action and the defensive action cannot be taken if they already have acted this round. Cost benefit choices whoooo! In a way it goes from Monster dodge (legendary resistance) to PC dodge. And PCs can build for defensive actions. And it can give you a counter attack. Defending is cool.
To sum it up. DnD gives monsters staying power by nullifying the PCs cool stuff allowing them to stay fighting. Dragonbane has less disables in general so Monsters have no need to nullify them. So Monsters stay around longer naturally bringing danger the PCs can actively try to avoid.
I’m not familiar with Dragonbane - if it doesn’t have PC ability nullification, how do “Monsters” deal with PC control abilities? Stunning Strike, Hold Monster, Hypnotic Pattern, etc, all need to be answered in some way, or even the biggest encounters can be trivialized.
I am also not familiar but as OP said,
With way less disabling abilities the PCs fun stuff isn’t nullified and foes don’t get CC’ed to death.
just means that there are no/very few PC control abilities? So the only way to deal with it in DnD would be to forbid them.
Very sparse with such abilities and those that exist generally don’t apply to Monsters. Some only apply up to human sized targets. No hypnotic patterns, hold monsters etc.
Dragonbane leans a bit into OSR aporoaches here in that you will have to work with the GM and the fiction to get things capable of trivialising encounters. But then the encounter vs the Monster wasn’t fought in battle but in strategizing and preparation.
Okay, so that gets to the crux of the “problem” with d&d, then - characters have fairly easy access to very effective crowd control abilities, so big monsters in d&d need a way to counter those. The answer, then, is to either give the monsters the ability to nullify character abilities, or remove character abilities. One of those things will generally go over better with your players than the other…
The way DnD is built does require the counter dance. Big abilities are part of its features. So there need to be ways to counter those abilities. That is the (modern?) DnD way.
It would be a lot of work to change the system, but I’ve said for a while that saving throws should have degrees of success, and bosses should have all saves reduced by a severity level, so they take partial effects, but are immune to the most severe effects.
Secondly, incapacitation should have levels like exhaustion, with one level being similar to slow or mind whip, two being as incapacitation is in standard 5e, except for legendary or lair actions which are only stopped at level three.
Or why not simply have degrees of success on EVERYTHING? But as you say it would be a lot of work. Folks have done it, just look at yhe various dicepool system or even Pathfinder 2e.
On a sidenote I find saves boring. I enjoy actively rolling skills much more engaging. And all spells being “attack rolls”.
Keeping it strictly in D&D terms, I’d give it a Legendary Resistance that can be used each round as a reaction. Each time it’s used it also consumes one of the multi attacks.
In this way the enemy avoids being crippled but is still weakened for the round and the players get less bruised for it. It feels they’ve earned it rather than wasted a resource.
Narratively it’s rearing back to avoid a blow so it can’t bite this turn, or a claw parries. Maybe the spell that was supposed to entangle instead damages a wing, halving flight speed.
Turn those resistances into opportunities to strike back.
