Legendary Resistance-less

Legendary Resistance (3/day): If the creature fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead.

I dislike this ability. It is not fun at all.

I understand why it exists - because otherwise there are way too many save or suck powers that can easily leave any boss struggling to take a single turn while the party murders them - but giving the boss several Get Out of Jail Free cards per day, with no clear indication to the players that their attack worked and the monster just decided that "Nope, I don't like that!" feels unfair and unfun to me. On a second thought, giving a clear indication what just happened might be worse, as the player just wasted a limited resource and there is not even a trick to be learnt and abused later - it just doesn't work until brute-forced by running the boss out of their daily uses.

 

Here are d6 alternatives to Legendary Resistance. While this is parlance specific to D&D 5e, these abilities should be easy to use for any OSR boss just as well.

1. Save Immunity: The boss automatically succeeds on any saving throws it is proficient in.

I like immunity on bosses more than resistances. Giving a boss one or two immunities and clearly communicating that to the players gives them a nice restriction to work around, which breed creativity. Giving a boss some resistances basically just prolongs combat.

2. Save Adaptation: The boss automatically fails when it makes a saving throw of each type for the first time, but always succeeds afterwards.

A variation on Save Immunity, this means that the players' powers just work (fun) but cannot keep the boss bound for long (also fun). It also forces the players to change their approach each round - no spamming the same spell over and over. Few fights will take more than 4 or 5 rounds and this power should reset between encounters, so the boss probably won't become immune to everything.

3. Purge: As a bonus action, remove one effect affecting the boss.

This should be a bonus action, so that the boss can use it without giving up its turn completely, but works best if the boss has other bonus actions that will compete for their place in the action economy. You can debuff the boss, but it will rarely last more than a round. Still, it will cost it a bonus action it could otherwise use for more nefarious purposes. Plus if you can layer several effects, or somehow force it to use its other bonus action, you can keep the debuffs going. This is my second favourite, as it gives the GM some fun decisions to make in the heat of combat and at the same time prevents the boss from sucking for long even if it fails every single saving throw.

4. Reflect: When targeted by a spell that allows a saving throw, the boss and the caster roll an opposed ability check. If the caster fails, their spell is redirected back at them.

Very scary power that nonetheless doesn't help if the boss fails and gets caught in whatever nasty spell the wizard had prepared. High risk, high reward.

5. Unfair Exchange: As an action, the boss targets one enemy that must make a saving throw. On failure, the boss and the target exchange all their temporary effects.

The boss tries to switch its debuffs for a PC's buffs. Once again, very scary but dependant on a failed saving throw of the PC.

6. Redirect: As a reaction when it fails a saving throw, the boss can redirect the effect to one of its nearby underlings.

This is pretty close to the original Legendary Resistance, but the players get a clear indication that their power worked, that the boss is evil, abusing its minions like that, and that there is a solution - remove all minions. Also their power still works, if against a minion, so nothing feels wasted. This is my definite favourite.

For extra fun, instead of minions, give the boss several fully independent shadow clones and have it switch places and effects with the clones. Chaos reigns.

d12 Stranger Backgrounds

1. Found in a circle of ancient stones. You can speak with animals/plants/elements/the Dead (choose one), but may never learn to read, write or do complex maths. Start with a fetish.
2. Wandered out of a cave rumoured to lead to the Nightmare Below. You don't need to and cannot sleep or dream. Start with a map that shows a long lost secret.
3. Arrived as the only passenger on a derelict, rotting ship. If the whole party dies, you somehow survive but lose everything you are wearing and carrying. Start with bad dreams.
4. Fled a sinking paradise island nobody has ever heard of. When you sing, reroll non-aggressive Reaction with a +2 bonus. Start with a harp and an insufferable optimism.
5. Escaped from a plague pit. Your rotting flesh can be sealed up with mud and squashed bugs. Mindless undead ignore you unless you attack first. Start with a hooded cloak.
6. Raised in a forgotten monastery. Your bare hands and feet count as sledgehammers. Start with a bald head, a mendicant bowl and an endless supply of koans.
7. Sealed in a sarcophagus. Immaculate. Beautiful. Uncanny. Immune to filth, mutation and ageing. Start knowing d4 rare languages.
8. Survived in the woods. Become an animal until dawn when touched by moonlight. Choose the animal the first time you change. Start with d4 extra rations of raw meat.
9. Grew up in a cult that recently died out. Before every session, the GM gives you a prophetic dream. Start with d4 followers that consider you a living god.
10. Born of a dead mother, saved by illegal alchemy. Turn monsters to potions with a night of work. Start with a bloody cough and a mutation.
11. Conceived immaculately; born under a fateful star. Once ever, you can perform a miracle. Start with a ring that glows near evil.
12. You were always here, just out of sight. You can always move faster than someone who is running away and fleeing for their life. Start with friends among thieves and children.

From Bing Image Creator

Anime Fighting, or HD as Actions

You know how in anime the combatants are getting faster and faster as they grow in power, dodging bullets and throwing a thousand punches per second? This is something I've been playing around with, rules-wise. The rule is very simple:

Every round of combat you can take [HD] actions.

 

From JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

  

There are no special kinds of actions anymore - reactions or movement will take one of your actions now. Other possible actions might include defensive stunts or combat manoeuvres. This applies to both PCs and NPCs. High level enemies will get a lot of actions, which keeps the action economy a bit more balanced. Hypothetically.

Now, this rule is intended mostly for fighters, who will be able to zip across the whole battlefield or take down a group of mooks or strafe around a monster, throw up some dust to get advantage on an attack and then decapitate it, all in a single round once they get a few levels under their belt. But what about wizards? Two options, really.

Option one, which I like better: Wizards get only a single action per round, but their spells get progressively more powerful with HD - spell power should scale fast enough to keep up with fighters' endless barrage of actions. Dominions might be a good measure of spell power - by spell level 4, there are spells to conjure a fortress, call meteors, buff a whole army or blot out the Sun.

Option two: Wizards get just as many actions as fighters, but spell casting now takes a number of actions equal to the level of the spell. High level spells should once again be appropriately more powerful to still be worth casting when you can throw out six first level spells at once at HD 6. Yes, the wizard can also throw out six attacks per round. Either let them (this is anime, after all), and/or make them really bad with weapons skills.

In either case, casting spells is effectively slower than swinging a sword, which nicely preserves the common trope of fighters protecting wizards until they can finish their incantation and demolish the opposition.

This obviously completely reshapes the way that combat plays out and while I have tried it out slightly in a solo game, I have not attempted to put together a comprehensive and balanced rules document. However, this nicely boosts fighters and at least for me captures the anime feeling of fighting an absolutely overwhelming threat, whether it is your first level party struggling against a single ogre who suddenly has four actions per round, or when a superhero-levelled fighter drops a squad of enemies before they can even act at all.

The Three Tombs of Words

There are three Great Books, artifacts of prodigious power that are hidden and protected in three corners of the world. Each one is capable of changing the world.

 

Book of Void by AppleSin

  

The Book of Names

The book contains the three names of every being that lives, lived and will live.

• Given name is the first name that a creature was ever granted or referred to with. It holds a mystical significance in many rituals. Especially magic users are careful to keep their given name a secret, while devils and the Folk will gleefully buy them.
• Taken names are any names, nicknames or titles that a creature is/has/will use, no matter how obscure.
• True name is the cornerstone of one's identity, the true self. Mastering one's true name unlocks great power, but if anyone else finds one's true name, they gain power over them.

Not only can the Book be used to learn the names of any being, it can also be used to erase names. When a given or taken name is erased, it fades from the memories of the whole world. All deeds and misdeeds will be forgotten. But when a true name is erased, that person's identity will fade. They will, slowly and torturously, become a Blank, a being without history, purpose or fate. An unperson.

The Book is located in a great underground library in the Steel Mountains. A lost dwarven dynasty had dug deep halls into the mountains and filled them with endless knowledge in the form of books and scrolls and tablets from all over the world. The dwarves have mostly disappeared, but the scholars they invited to their library remain. And deep within the library, hundreds of floors below where any normal scholar dares to delve, where the books cease and only endless wards and traps and guardian golems are present, is a vault of curse-rock holding the Book of Names.

The Book of Years

The book contains the whole of the past, the present and the future of the world. It can all be changed. A change in the future becomes a prophecy, a fixed point in time that will come to pass. But changing the present or the past is more complicated. The minds of people are rarely completely changed, and many historical events have a lot of inertia, so things will happen similarly anyway. But if the change is large enough, a bit of the world might change without the rest of the world following suit, resulting in paradoxes like ancient civilisations who were always there but no one remembers, or an event that everyone remembers but there are no physical signs of it, or people who have no parents, etc.

The book is found in a small shrine in a beautiful oasis deep within Utabi, the Red Desert. A magic circle around the oasis displaces it to infinity, making any journey to the oasis impossible.

The Book of Laws

The book contains all the Laws of the universe, physical and metaphysical. Rewriting it can fundamentally change the world, or destroy it with a single stroke of a quill.

The book is said to be protected by a whole pantheon of forgotten gods somewhere in the sunken continent of Kal Cher. Maybe.

 

How do you actually use these books in your game? You don't, or at least not the whole books, unless you wish to destroy the setting. But a single page, somehow stolen and lost?

d6 Book Hooks

1. The old king is dead and his heir is about to be crowned. The heir is the last one of the dynasty, the only royal remaining in the country... Wait, but what about all the cities that had been ruled by... nobody for years? And the statues that depict people no one remembers? And who is this guy in lavish clothes, begging you to help him, because he doesn't know who he is and why does he have this signet ring?
2. A single page from the Book of Names is available at the next Black Auction. It contains true names of the four most powerful gods of this continent, among others.
3. The Loyalists have been running the kingdom ever since the unsuccessful uprising. The Rebels have fought failed to ensure prosperity for all, but there is still a long way to go before the rightful powers could even begin to be threatened by the Rebel scum.
4. A rumour about a "scroll of prophecy", in fact a page from the Book of Years, sends every faction into a deadly race to find it first and write their own bright future.
5. A lich is looking for a scrap of paper that apparently contains one clause of the Laws of Magic. She wants to change them to suit her whims.
6. A benefactor of the party has fallen into a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories that claim that a Law has been recently rewritten and reality was changed. Why? By whom? And while some of the conspirators want to change everything back as it was before, a growing portion of them want to keep the changed Law...