Legendary Action Count and Descriptions are Missing

[HHammond]

In order to use Legendary Actions at least knowing the count is important. Within the SRD document Legendary Action counts and descriptions are included, so I'm unsure any reason this couldn't be included.

As an example for the Ancient Red Dragon:

The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

I think this could be added in the following ways:

1. Add legendary_action_count and legendary_action_desc fields to the Monster schema. This is simple and straight forward.
2. Add a first action to the Monster.legendary_actions array which includes the description text, similar to how Mulitattack is presented. I don't like this solution because Multiattack fits the formatting of all other actions, and the legendary_actions does not meet the formatting of all other legendary actions. It could be argued this is similar to the spell casting special ability.
3. Add legendary action counts and description to the special_abilities array, similar to the Spell Casting feature.
4. Update the schema so legendary_actions is an object with desc, count, and actions are fields. This is a breaking API change so it's probably not wise to do it.

There are 29 monsters with legendary actions in the current json data, so I've pulled the description text for all of them (actually, 29 in the json, 30 in the SRD, I've submitted a PR to add legendary actions to Adult Brass Dragon #346):

Aboleth
The aboleth can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The aboleth regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Adult Black Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Adult Blue Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Adult Bronze Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Adult Copper Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Adult Gold Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Adult Green Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Adult Red Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Adult Silver Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Adult White Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Ancient Black Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Ancient Blue Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Ancient Brass Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Ancient Bronze Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Ancient Copper Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Ancient Gold Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Ancient Green Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Ancient Red Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Ancient Silver Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Ancient White Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Androsphinx
The sphinx can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The sphinx regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Gynosphinx
The sphinx can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The sphinx regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Kraken
The kraken can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The kraken regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Lich
The lich can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The lich regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Mummy Lord
The mummy lord can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The mummy lord regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Solar
The solar can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The solar regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Tarrasque
The tarrasque can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The tarrasque regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Unicorn
The unicorn can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The unicorn regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Vampire
The vampire can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The vampire regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Adult Brass Dragon
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

The only thing I'm unsure of is that it seems each creature with legendary actions has 3, so not including this field could have been a conscious decision, but if that's the case I'd still argue this is useful information for people using the API.

[fergcb]

Whether this was omitted because of the redundancy you mention, or simply through oversight, I can definitely see a case for including the number of legendary actions a creature can take.

Even though all of the creatures in the SRD can only take 3, some creatures in the Monster Manual can take 4, so it would be useful for people extending the data for personal use.

[bagelbits]

I actually like option 4 best even though it's changing the schema.

[Rarst]

One nuance with this block is that the way it refers to a monster isn't currently present in data or could be easily derived from it.

E.g. I templated it with monster's name and it produces output such as The Vampire, Vampire Form can take 3 legendary actions... :)

[bagelbits]

Heh. That's fair now that we've split forms out like that. We would either a separate field for the regular name without the form, or we don't include the form in the name and have it be a separate field.