Some of the most potent spells and features in D&D are focused around locking down enemies and limiting what they’re able to do. These crowd control (CC) abilities are incredibly impactful – when they work, they can completely change the dynamics of a battle. A dragon might be torn out of the sky and forced to battle on the ground by Earthbind, an enemy berserker might become paralyzed by Hold Person, an enemy spell caster might be Counterspelled or Silenced to neuter their ability to battle the party. A Polymorph might entirely end an encounter before it even has the chance to begin.
However, they can be a bit of a gamble. When a player spends their action on many of these abilities, their foes have the chance to resist them with a saving throw and be utterly unaffected, or have some other roll of the dice impact their effectiveness. Between the chance to fail, concentration requirements, and resource cost, these abilities are overall pretty balanced in battle.
But … there’s another facet of this piece of design that isn’t clear from the source books alone. When it comes to the use of these abilities, they affect a player in combat in a much heavier way than the DM’s monsters. And, while there are tools the party can use to address these abilities (attacking a concentrating spell caster, using Dispel Magic or a Restoration spell), it isn’t always something that feels like it’s a good use of their own turn. They might be too far from their allies or their enemies to affect the spell’s duration or otherwise unable to do something about the spell. In the upper levels of D&D, a character might have one of their weaker saving throws targeted and be unable to resist the effect, and in a difficult battle, it might be several turns before anyone in the party can find a moment that they aren’t also dangerously threatened to do something about their ally’s situation.
In effect, a player might be effectively removed from the battle by one of these abilities, leaving them to sit and simply watch the game continue without their input, only making a roll every so often to attempt to resist the effect. Is it good encounter design to disable your players with these spells? These people have all taken time out of their busy lives, maybe they’re even paying for a babysitter – is it fair to them for this to happen? Is it fun?
My players and I have discussed these abilities at length between sessions regularly since my campaign began two years ago. Lately, I’ve been using them a lot less than I ever had before in any 5th edition game I’ve run. We’ve talked about the degrees of effect they use in Pathfinder’s second edition, adjusting spells to function just for one round but to work outright, a stacking bonus or other cumulative effect to increase the likelihood for an affected creature to succeed over time – we still haven’t nailed any specific changes down for our next game, but it continues to be a regular topic.
And this isn’t intended to say that you should avoid using control effects against your players. I only think it’s important to be aware of how these effects sit on the scales on either side of the DM screen. So, today, we’re going to talk about some of the small adjustments we have made, and some of the design built into D&D intended to address CC (and how it still falls a bit short).
Giving the Players an Answer
One way we decided to address these abilities was to put more tools into the hands of the martial characters to use in response to control effects. A Dispel Magic or Restoration spell can end CC from the hands of spell casters, but giving the martial characters some limited use effects to overcome CC themselves had a dual purpose in helping bring them upward in effectiveness to close that existent gap between them and the spell casters.
So, we modified the Fighter’s Indomitable feature, allowing them to substitute whatever type of save they were asked to make with a Constitution saving throw instead when they used the feature. After the change, the fighter almost always succeeded against these effects with his proficient saving throw, but only so long as he had uses of Indomitable. It felt like a measured adjustment – repeated application of lockdown effects would overcome his ability to resist them and require another answer, but a single spell couldn’t neuter the fighter outright.
We also built a new feature for the barbarian I called Rage Against Restraint. When the barbarian was affected by a CC effect, I allowed him to burn a use of his rage to end the effect at the end of his turn. I ended up deciding this was too conservative in its implementation, and I’ve since adjusted it to allow the barbarian to end the effect at the start of his turn for the same cost. It’s also limited further by only having a single use, but I think it wouldn’t be game breaking if it were usable more often, perhaps just costing a use of their rage. This would only become infinite CC breaking at 20th level, and it still has them under the effects until their turn begins, which might allow enemies to capitalize on the effect anyway. Our change to Indomitable allows a fighter a second attempt at the save, potentially avoiding the effect, so when compared, I think Rage Against Restraint is weaker than the change to Indomitable, so it doesn’t need to be so harshly limited.
Both of these features came online for the party around the same time, Rage Against Restraint sort of introduced as a bit of a band-aid fix as we adjusted Indomitable, but I think they’ve both worked out well. I might even in the future include Rage Against Restraint as a feature at 7th or 9th level just as a carte blanche for barbarians at my table.
Experienced players are probably realizing this is a bit familiar to Wizards’ own mechanic designed to aid their bosses against these effects, legendary resistance.
Legendary Resistance: a Poor Compromise (for Monsters)
To ensure a boss isn’t utterly neutered by CC effects, paralyzing them and allowing the party to burst their entire pool of hit points before they can take a swipe of their own, Wizards of the Coast included “Legendary Resistance.” Significant monsters such as dragons and liches and other bosses created for each module published have the ability to force-succeed on a limited number of saving throws (usually three). Each homebrew boss I’ve built has had a number of these to stand their own if the party decided to focus them down outright.
In effect, they’re a tax the party has to pay to succeed in using any lockdown effects against a powerful boss. However, without them, an insistent monk might simply stun-lock a boss and never allow it a turn, neutering the keystone encounter everyone’s been waiting for. These monsters need an answer for these effects, so they can function as a boss, but the design of the feature falls short.
It’s the distilled problem of “save-or-suck” spell design. On a binary pass-fail system, significant monsters need a way to ensure they aren’t as ruined by these effects as their minions are. CC effects are so utterly debilitating in D&D, that they need an answer. If the system was built with gradations of success, such as in pathfinder’s second edition, these abilities wouldn’t be useless at the start of a boss fight.
There’s some quick and easy ways to help make this feel a bit better, with and without adjusting the feature outright. If you don’t want to personally redesign Legendary Resistance, then simply being a bit more descriptive with how a monster overcomes these effects can help. If the dragon is overcoming Hold Monster, describe it angrily snarling through the effect, succumbing until a final burst of rage allows it to escape. If a powerful demon lord is overcoming a Banishment, perhaps he had prepared for the battle with a ward that shatters, consuming the spell, but leaving them more vulnerable against future magics.
For more active adjustments, you could force your monsters to sacrifice health to shake these effects off, or spend some of its action economy on ending the effect. Perhaps as a legendary action that can’t be used until the end of the next member of the party’s turn. You could build your own degrees of effectiveness – maybe your dragon has its speed reduced, suffers disadvantage on his attack rolls, and allows a single critical hit from a melee attack, but that’s the full extent of a Hold Monster’s effect on him, and only for one round maximum. I’m building an upcoming boss encounter for my campaign to have the “legendary resistance” the boss has function a lot like how I’ve built Rage Against Restraint, the creature only able to end these effects on their own turn.
Try things out, take some swings, but if it isn’t a big problem for your table, don’t reinvent the wheel. As long as everyone’s having fun, you’re running an excellent game. Overall, I hope Legendary Resistance receives some more attention in the playtest for OneD&D – I’d love to see Wizards try some different approaches to see if they can land on something better before the next edition of the game releases, but we’ll have to wait and see.
As always, thank you for reading. Good luck out there, heroes.
Ben Stovall Blog 
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