I am not wrong. A Fighter will take down 3 skeletons a turn pretty reliably. For a Wizard they typically need to be grouped together in an AOE, which is not common, certainly not round after round.
I don't think I have ever seen a Wizard in play catch 8 skeletons in an AOE.
If it is common as you say, can you post some videos of streamed games online showing this? If you can't find skeletons other similar creaatures will do. I think this is a strawman that you've never actually seen in play.
I don't have the time in my life to watch multiple 2 to 4 hour videos, to find a high level party fighting CR 1/2 skeletons, with a wizard, who uses an AOE just to make a point to you. I waste enough of my time spending the hour it takes to go through these posts.
DM once put me in a situation where I caught 50 skeletons with a lightning bolt, it was a silly scenario. More seriously, I have consistently seen casters catching four or five enemies in an AOE. And if I was going to have a bunch of skeletons face a level 18 party, I'd surely have more than 8 of them in the encounter. Considering a fireball covers a 40 x 40 square unless I was dealing with a MASSIVE arena that is going to cover a large section of the room.
Well you missed some .... Solar for example. You also left out all the Dragons that can move off turn. There are only what 25 or so CR16+ in the monster manual? with half of them being Dragons.
In any case here is a list of CR 16+ that can teleport off turn or as a bonus action. This does not include creatures that can move off turn or that are immune to restrained. Add those in and you have more than half of the official published monsters of that level:
Acerack
Adult Amethyst Dragon
Adult Saphire Dragon
Amythyst Greatwyrm
Ancient Amethyst Dragon
Ancient Crystal Dragon
Ancient Emerald Dragon
Ancient Sapphire Dragon
Ancient Topaz Dragon
Androsphinx
Archaic
Zariel
Bael
Blue Abishai
Cosmic Horror
Demagoth titan
Drow Favored Consort
Drow Matron Mother
Drow Mother of Rebellion
Factal Skall
Githzeri Anarch
Iggwilv
Imix
Laeral Silverhand
Lessor Star Spawn Emmisary
Miirym
Moloch
Moledeus
Nightmare beast
Nintra Siotta
Planar INcarnate
Saphire Greatworm
Shadrix Silverquill
Solar
Titvilus
Topaz Great Worm
Trobriand
Vieled presence
Yan-C-Bin
Ygorl
Like I said that is just CR16+ monsters that can do some type of teleport or plane shift off turn.
I missed the Solar? No I didn't. I literally mentioned it. I mentioned four monsters, how did you miss 25% of my examples. Also, "moving off turn" is not teleporting. SO I didn't miss that dragons do that, they weren't teleporting, so I didn't include them.
But, let's break this down:
Named, Unique villains: Acerack, Zariel, Bael, Factal Skall, Iggwilv, Imix, Laeral Silverhand, Moloch, Shadrix Silverquill, Yan-C-Bin, Ygorl, Titvilus
Actually, that's an action: Archaic, Drow Favored Consort,
Planeshift isn't teleport: Drow Matron Mother,
Couldn't Find: Drow Mother of Rebellion, Miirym, Nintra Siotta, Trobriand
Okay, these count: Adult/Ancient/Greatwyrm Amethyst Dragon, Adult/Ancient/Greatwyrm Sapphire Dragon, Adult/Ancient/Greatwrym Crystal Dragon, Adult/Ancient/Greatwyrm Emerald Dragon, Adult/Ancient/Greatwyrm Topaz Dragon, Androsphinx, Solar, Blue Abishai Cosmic Horror, Demagoth titan (though it has to within 20 ft of someone for full effect), Githzeri Anarch, Lessor Star Spawn Emmisary (though it has to be within 15 ft of someone for full effect), Molydeus, Nightmare beast, Planar Incarnate, Veiled Presence
Okay, so I'm seeing a lot of gem dragon, and a smattering of other things. Now, I can't filter out the unique enemies, so I'm going to have to count them, I see 39 statblocks here? Now, you claim was "most" enemies at this level can teleport as either a bonus action or legendary action. Edit: Ah, correction. Your claim was that OVER HALF of the enemies at this CR could do this.
I count 289 statblocks of CR 16 or higher, so your 39 here make up... 13% of all monsters at this level. Does it happen? Yes. Does it happen often? ONly if your DM focuses on these statblocks.
It depends on the initiative order. If it is just the Wizard, Dragon, Fighter in the fight then absolutely he can do it every single round.
If there is a Rogue in there and you assume everyone has
Incomplete thought, and why would I assume it is a party of two people?
He can use 3 legendary actions between his turn and his next turn, the Wing buffet with movement counts as two. I don't understand why this is so hard.
Because you keep making assumptions like the only two people in the fight are the wizard and the fighter. In a normal party, with more than two people, the dragon wouldn't be able to immediately spam their wing buffet after every single turn. The other characters, therefore could hit the dragon with other areas of effect, that the dragon then could not immediately dart away from.
I would prepare to counter Dragonfear before I prepared to counter lightning. But is 65 average damage on a failed save, 33 on a success (which is not easy for a Wizard or a Fighter) and 17 with both a success and resistance.
An attack sequence does 53 if all 3 hit, but some of that is lightning damage too, and none of it is magical.
5 of it is lightning, I looked. Also, I wonder how you would prepare for Dragonfear. DO fighter's have natural immunity to it? Or would you need, I don't know.... magic.
No its not, because if he can;t damage anyone while moveing then all he could have used that for is moving anyway.
The dragon gets 3 legendary actions per turn. IF no one is within reach then there is nothing being wasted because he could not have damged anyone anyway.
Do you not understand this? If you do nothing at all and pick your nose, the only thing he can do with his legendary action is move because no one is close to him. Your Web changed nothing unless there is someone in reach .... in which case they take damage when he moves.
It is actually a bad trade. Again if you do nothing except pick your nose the Dragon dies with Legendary resistances and you have one more spell slot when the fight ends.
Whether the Dragon has 2 Legendarys or 3 or 1 left whe he dies it is irrelevant. The only time it matters is if you actually get him to 0 and there is a spell cast after that which he fails the save on. There is almost no chance that will happen with a normal size party of this level before the fight is over. While you are "making a good trade" the rest of the party is going to kill the Dragon.
Moreover it is not going to get to that because the Dragon is not likely going to have to save at all.
What would be a good trade? A 2nd level magic missile three rounds in a row (assuming he is still alive on the 3rd round). That won't take any legendary resistances but it might actually kill him earlier, save a turn and the damage he would do.
And you just continually prove the point. The only possible things the dragon could do is deal damage, or run away from the web spell. No other party member could have a more dangerous spell ready for him. The only things that could take legendary resistance is my wizard's spells, nothing and no one else is doing anything. Except the fighter who is going to solo the dragon, taking 15 or so attacks for somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 damage at least.
You think in terms of spamming the same move over and over, not in terms of how your tactics can manuever the enemy for your team.
I did not insist that you use Web.
Please provide a quotation for that.
Why don't you provide a quotation that I did? I know how I set up example scenarios. And this constant shifting of the parameters against a singular opponent is not how I do it.
Again please focus on what I said. You put quotes up there and I NEVER said that.
I said - just because it is someone else's default action does not mean you are not playing.
I never said someone else is "making the checks or taking the actions". There is something called player agency YOU decide what YOUR PC does (or tries to do). Not another player, not the DM, not his ability scores or build. YOU make those decisions and that is "playing the game"
Why would I decide to force myself into a situation where I am more likely to cause harm to the party than be helpful? You don't send your 3rd best member to do things, you send the best person for the job. Yeah, I could bully my way to front and INSIST that I get to make the rolls... but when I know someone else is better suited for the challenge, why would I hurt the team that way?
Then don't discuss tactics.
To start with discussing tactics during a battle or encounter is metagaming.
No it isn't.
Discussing them before a battle or encounter you know is coming is not meta, but it is also not fun. I know a lot of tables do it, but I find it immersion breaking, it typically fails to play out like expected anyway and we spend a bunch of time talking about what we are going to do instead of doing it.
If you play instead of talking other characters won't always be the superior choice because the dice will drive the results. The only reason they are the "superior choice" when discussing tactics is because you are making assumptions on what will and will not be successful.
Also, you are so focused on combat, you aren't thinking this through. Encounters aren't just combat. We discuss who is the best to handle a negotiation (when we have the chance to) we discuss who is best to scout, and who is best to hold the back line. We discuss who is going to attempt to get through a trapped door. We don't just all immediately charge forth to be the first person to make any roll, because the dice might favor us. That's just flat out rude. Especially given we are play-by-post and people might not even get a chance to read the post from the DM before someone like me could get five posts deep in responding.