IN D&D 5e, powerful creatures like dragons have “legendary resistances”, which allow them to avoid being debilitated by powerful spellcasters without much of a fight. The way it’s implemented is lackluster, but we can port it to other systems in an improved form.

What is Legendary Resistance?

As written, legendary resistance is a fancy way of saying “the DM can just nope out of letting the creature be beaten”. It’s phrased in the rules as “If the creature fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead.” It’s a weird non-mechanic that just denies anything happened, like children playing army, shouting “I shot you!” and “Nuh-uh! You missed!”

A better way to handle it would be to have the use of a legendary resistance cause some noticeable change and reduce the creature’s effectiveness in some way. It has to sacrifice something in order to avoid a debilitating effect from the heroes.

Ferocious Resistance

Monsters level 5 to 7 have 1 use of ferocious resistance per day. Monsters level 8 to 10 have 2 uses of ferocious resistance. Monsters level 11 and higher have 3 uses.

Magic Resistance

The creature can spend 1 ferocious resistance to resist the effects of a spell or magic ability that would otherwise affect it (due to a failed saving throw or lack of saving throw). But it visibly struggles against the effect and suffers one of the following:

• 2 hp damage per level of spell (or 2d6, for a non-spell ability).
• 1 hp/spell level (or 1d6) and the magic has a reduced effect. (Only its legs are paralyzed; it’s confused instead of charmed; etc.).
• 1 hp/spell level (or 1d6) and expends a spell slot of equal level (or, for magic ability, at least 3rd level) to weave powerful counter-magic.

Try to allow the heroes’ magic to take effect for a moment–maybe even until the end of the target’s turn–but then be thrown off by the creature with great effort, so it doesn’t seem so much like it’s merely being denied.

Damage Resistance

The creature may also spend 1 ferocious resistance to avoid dying from a physical attack. It (typically) tries to flee as a result of one of the following:

• It loses a major attack type, such as breath weapon (injury to the throat, etc).
• It suffers a major scar (to the body, eye, etc.), giving it disadvantage on attacks.
• It loses an arm, leg, tail, wing, tentacle, etc.
• It loses a patch of scales or hide, causing it to suffer -2 to armor class.

Unless a creature has several arms or tentacles, avoid saying that attacks chop off more than one arm, but it keeps fighting anyway. Give it a major scar and one lost limb and then have it try to run away. Whether the heroes chase it down and do it in or just let it go, they get the win, so you aren’t really robbing them of much.

Example

Effectively now, heroes facing a monstrous kraken would have to whittle down its hit points and force it to spend one FR to avoid being taken out by a spell–causing it the loss of a special attack or more damage–then force it to spend another FR to lose a tentacle instead of dying. At that point, it would flee to the depths, if possible.

If they happen to be able to throw one last hit at it, it can spend its final FR to turn that into major scar or second tentacle loss. If it survives its horrible wounds, the beast will bide its time and, perhaps, seek revenge….