It’s never fair to have an entire group of adventurers fighting a lonely, Big Bad Evil Guy, is it? Sure, you can have minions, but they’re usually not strong enough to do decent damage. Luckily,Dungeons & Dragonsgives its more powerful creatures something called Legendary Actions.
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Legendary Actions help your baddie to be more threatening and effective in combat. Nothing is stopping you from adding those to your homebrew creatures or even making unique Legendary Actions. Use these actions that exist for official monsters to help you decide what creature to use or what Legendary Action to add to your homebrew monster.
Don’t forget - When using these creatures (or adding these abilities to your monsters); you’re free to lower or increase the values shown here, as well as tweak the effects.
10Blinding Gaze
From the Solar creature, you have a pretty complicated way to mess around with one of your players, especially depending on the party’s composition. You can target one of the players and force them into a DC (difficulty class) 15 Constitution saving throw. If they fail, they’ll be blinded.
But what makes this Legendary Action powerful is that only spells like Lesser Restoration can undo it. It won’t go away by itself,nor will a rest fix this one.If no one in the party knows a restoration spell, then the player is in a real bind.
9Eye Rays
Beholders are already difficult creatures to fight against, and this Legendary Action doesn’t help the players at all. Essentially, they have many eyes, which can shoot a ray with a different effect, and they can shoot three of these at random during their turn.
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The Legendary Action allows you to throw an extra ray in between turns. Its effects can vary from damage, paralysis, petrification, and even disintegration. It’ll be hard to add this on a homebrew monster since it requires the whole ray set, but you can always homebrew a monster and use the Beholder sheet.
8Psychic Drain
From the Aboleth skill set comes Psychic Drain. A fun creature to use if you want to mind control players, this ability is not only painful, but it increases your survivability as well. You’ll cause 3d6 psychic damage to a creature of your choice, which will be converted into healing for your monster.
Damage and healing combined in a simple attack. It consumes 2 Legendary Actions rather than just one, but being able to hurt someone and recover yourself on the same roll, and one that won’t even consume your action, makes this ability worth it.
7Energy Drain
Another drain attack here, courtesy of the Demilich. It doesn’t have healing properties for the monster, unlike the previous one, though the damage is the same (3d6). The target can even attempt to save themself with a Constitution saving throw of 15.
What makes this powerful though is that, if you hit it, it won’t decrease the player’s current health, but instead, it’ll decrease their maximum health. If you do this over and over and make their maximum health reaches zero, they die, with no death-saving throws to save them. And the only way to recover this lost health is through Greater Restoration or something with a similar effect. Pretty deadly if used repeatedly.
6Trembling Strike
Empyreans are also powerful creatures from the monster manual, and their abilities show their might well. Although Trembling Strike won’t be as useful by itself, this is very effective if your boss has a lot of minions to help them - especially ifthese minions can fly.
Essentially, you may force everyone within 60 feet (18 meters) of you into a very difficult Strength saving throw, and they are knocked prone if they fail. Then, have your minions land and attack everyone who fell, or attack them with the Empyrean themself. All of this happens with advantage as long as it’s in close range.
5Wing Attack
A pretty straightforward attack known by pretty much any dragon, Wing Attack is a good combination of attack and defense. You force everyone in ten feet (three meters) - or 15 feet (four and a half meters), depending on the dragon - into a Dexterity saving throw, whose difficulty also varies on the dragon. Whoever fails will take damage and fall prone.
With that out of the way, the dragon can fly at half of their flying speed. Using this before the dragon’s main action is useful since you can trap everyone around you in a good position to use your breath weapon immediately, or just attack the fallen people with an advantage.
4Paralyzing Touch
Liches are fun, aren’t they? For the DM, at least. One of their basic attacks not only causes damage but also forces the target into a Constitution saving throw. If they fail, they get paralyzed for a minute. They can attempt to escape again on their turn, but still, damage and a paralyzing effect are a beautiful combination.
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Thanks to a Legendary Action, they can also use this powerful attack in-between turns rather than wait for their turn. you’re able to take your attack and then use the ability between other people’s turns for your creature, making it quite deadly.
3Channel Negative Energy
Who said you need to cause damage to be a threat? Mummy Lords have a powerful Legendary Action that can turn a bad situation into a worse one. When you activate this ability, no one within 60 feet (18m) of you will be able to recover hit points at all.
It will last until your creature’s next turn, so don’t use it if you’re next or close to that in the turn order. Regardless, stopping the party from healing is a menacing power to have, and not even corners and barriers can save them from this negative energy area you created.
2Heal Self
you may’t fight if you’re dead. Though some DMs sometimes like to change health values to make the enemy last a bit longer, why not just give yourself a healing ability? Players might get angry about the healing, but they’ll see you’re going by the book.
Besides, as a Legendary Action, you can do it after taking a big attack, and you won’t waste your action or bonus action healing yourself. Heal Self costs three Legendary points and only heals 2d8+2 though, so depending on how much health you have, you might want to tweak these values. Unicorns are not strong creatures, so they don’t have strong healing either.
1Teleport
Many creatures have a teleport ability with different ranges, some being regular actions. However, some also have it as a Legendary Action, making it far more versatile. An ability like this gives you a lot of control of the battlefield since you swap locations without any effort.
You can also save yourself if you’re in a tough spot, or even have all the players come at you. Once this happens, you can teleport and attack the place you were with a big area attack, such asthe classic Fireball.
Bonus: Extra Attack
You know, sometimes the best solution is also the simplest. Instead of focusing on all types of weird extra abilities you can have, why not take advantage of your Legendary Action to simply attack again? In fact, most creatures with Legendary Actions have the option to use one of their regular attacks.
If your basic attack already has powerful effects, such as the aforementioned Eye Rays or Paralyzing Touch, simply being able to use them again is more than enough to make your monster a bigger threat.
