D&D 5E (2024) Epic Boons Ranking

[Clint_L]

So… the number of big fights per day was brought up, but it seems we came to opposite conclusions …

Recovery gives two effects that work just once per long rest. It has been argued (cogently, I would say) that the size of these two benefits is a bit bigger than what Fortitude gives. I think this is true, and it favors Recovery in the context of a single big fight.

Fortitude, on the other hand, provides two benefits that are "passive", or always on. It raises your max HP (though by less than what Recovery would provide in one shot), and it gives the (arguably minor) ribbon of increasing the efficacy of healing. It is argued that the improved healing is minor because in the heat of battle, you benefit more from spending one (or as few as possible) discrete action(s) to get as much HPs healed as possible, and in that context the Fortitude bonus is a small fraction of the total healing you get. Whereas during downtime you can use lesser forms of healing spread out over many actions, each of which dole out the little extra bonus. All in all, the passive Fortitude benefits are therefore lesser in the context of one big fight compared to the expendable Recovery benefits.

My point was, however, that if we make the assumption that at epic levels there is plenty of healing available during downtime (both with and without short rests), then the number of big fights per day affects the balance of power between the two boons.

Fortitude’s always on passive benefits not only increases healing efficiency such that the downtime has a greater likelihood of bringing the character back to full health, but importantly, the raised ceiling of max HP can therefore be replenished multiple times per day. This means you can get into multiple big fights with those extra HPs in the tank (assuming you had at least a little bit of downtime between them, though not even necessarily as much as a short rest).

My big criticism of Fortitude is that it isn't much better than Tough, which is an entry-level feat. Doesn't seem properly EPIC. Whereas recovery will definitely give you a huge moment when it kicks in. It's most likely to be taken by a frontline warrior, so when you are fighting an ancient dragon or something and the paladin goes down...only to surge back to their feet at half HP, that would be properly EPIC.

When I look at the list of Epic Boons, that's what I'm asking myself: does it feel properly epic? (And also, is it good?)

On the other hand, Irresistable Offence would definitely offer some epic moments but I think it is very weak overall, so maybe I'm just full of it, or at least woefully inconsistent.

 

[Silam]

My big criticism of Fortitude is that it isn't much better than Tough, which is an entry-level feat. Doesn't seem properly EPIC.

That's fair, although it may also be fair to ask whether Fortitude is not sufficiently stronger than Tough, or Tough is too close to the strength of an Epic Boon ...

In any case, the way I see it, a character who's general theme is toughness should probably have both Tough and Fortitude (and maybe even Recovery too, if they multi-classed in just the right way...!). Since neither of these feats are repeatable, if you're already Tough, then Fortitude is the next logical milestone on the journey to Toughness Paragon... And if you're lugging such a fat HP cauldron around, maybe the bonus to healing is an economic necessity, lest the party Cleric ditches you for being too healing hungry ...

Whereas recovery will definitely give you a huge moment when it kicks in. It's most likely to be taken by a frontline warrior, so when you are fighting an ancient dragon or something and the paladin goes down...only to surge back to their feet at half HP, that would be properly EPIC.

When I look at the list of Epic Boons, that's what I'm asking myself: does it feel properly epic? (And also, is it good?)

Again, I think that's fair. Passive abilities in general aren't very dramatic. I wouldn't fault anyone for thinking they don't "feel epic". But as for whether they're good, that's more of a quantitative question, and answering the question involves understanding the framing... hence why the number of big battles per day is a critical factor, no matter how much maths and theory crafting ruin the epic mood

 

[saviirkad]

Dimensional Travel: after taking the magic or attack action, you may immediately teleport up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space you can see. "A" tier for any class. This is just incredibly valuable in so many situations. And fun!

In the final fight against the BBEG, it came down to our sorceress facing him down on her lonesome. She threw absolutely everything at this guy, but by the end of her turn he was left standing with 2 HP.

I'd explained before that the BBEG's ritual would finish if he got his next turn. At this point, his fate was sealed, but if the ritual goes off, the consequences will far outlive him. This turn was their absolute last chance to stop him, and he was left at 2 HP. Her actions, reactions and bonus actions were consumed.

And then a player pointed out that she had taken the Dimensional Travel boon, and it took no actions. And she was in range to teleport above the BBEG.

With 3d6 falling damage split between the two of them, all she had to do was not roll three 1s. She rolled a 1, a 1, and a 2.

And that is how our BBEG got taken out by the sorceress throwing the people's elbow from the top ropes, disrupting the ritual.

Best boon ever.

 

[Silam]

In the final fight against the BBEG, it came down to our sorceress facing him down on her lonesome. She threw absolutely everything at this guy, but by the end of her turn he was left standing with 2 HP.

I'd explained before that the BBEG's ritual would finish if he got his next turn. At this point, his fate was sealed, but if the ritual goes off, the consequences will far outlive him. This turn was their absolute last chance to stop him, and he was left at 2 HP. Her actions, reactions and bonus actions were consumed.

And then a player pointed out that she had taken the Dimensional Travel boon, and it took no actions. And she was in range to teleport above the BBEG.

With 3d6 falling damage split between the two of them, all she had to do was not roll three 1s. She rolled a 1, a 1, and a 2.

And that is how our BBEG got taken out by the sorceress throwing the people's elbow from the top ropes, disrupting the ritual.

Best boon ever.

Wow. And then she had really thrown absolutely everything at this guy

 

[Clint_L]

That's exactly what I mean, though - an epic boon shouldn't just be "good," it should have potential for that "wow factor."

 

[Silam]

That's exactly what I mean, though - an epic boon shouldn't just be "good," it should have potential for that "wow factor."

I hear ya. It’s certainly nice to pursue that "wow factor".

That is why, personally, I prefer taking half-feats that give my characters cool new abilities, even though objectively not all of these feats are actually that good, and a +2 stat might often be stronger.

On the other hand, I think we shouldn’t delegate the responsibility of generating that wow factor entirely to crunchy mechanics. Sometimes, we have to put a bit of effort to come up with epic fluff.

For example, if a character is built on the theme of toughness, it may be mostly passive abilities that make them mighty, but they can still roleplay that. For example, shrugging off an attack, like Goku vs Nappa:

I don’t… even need to dodge this!

It might be a more faithful representation to say that Goku spent a reaction to use some power (Deflect Energy, or some spell, if you subscribe to the school of thought that Saiyans are Sorcerers or whatever). But you could also interpret it simply as: he has a naughty word ton of HPs, and so even if the attack touches his AC, he doesn’t care, he just takes it without flinching, and the Kiai is pure fluff. Maybe he does it solely to throw a little intimidation roll.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I’d love to see this!

But I would like an equivalent to the 3e Epic Level Handbook even more. I think those were the best epic rules I’ve seen from any edition. In 4e, epic levels 21-30 were baked into the core rules with comprehensive content, but I didn’t like 4e in general for other reasons… in 5e there are the boons but they feel like an afterthought. Fine little exclamation points at levels 19-20 but a bit lacking as the sole mechanic of progression beyond level 20 (IMHO). It’d be great to get a robust 5e ELH

While I still value my Epic Level Handbook, I actually think it's methodology wasn't ideal.

The stated premise that if you are still playing the game after 20 levels what you want is just more of the same (apparently with bigger numbers) has a couple flaws. The first is that it assumes people played 20 levels to get there, rather than just starting there. The second, and more important one is that you actually don't want something new!

What I like about Epic Boons (and the ability to take additional feats and ASIs) is that it provides a form of advancement for PC-like species that is fundamentally different than that of monsters like dragons, demon princes, or deities. It keeps built in limits. Even if your advancement is assumed to be drawing on overt supernatural power (not every boon needs to assume that, just like not every class), your mortal frame has certain limits. After you have a Con 30, Tough, Fortitude, and Recovery, you have all the HP a mortal can have. You can't have more HD. But you also have 20 full class features and can stack on more class features like abilities.

Epic monsters, on the other hand, can and usually do have bigger raw numbers, but even if you assume their statblock neglects to include capabilities they have that aren't likely to be relevant in a fight vs PCs, they still likely have less class-derived types of abilities than PCs.

I like what that does. It says that monsters that advance through innate power are fundamentally different than PC-like creatures that advance through skill. I like this difference much, much better than the idea that NPCs are different than PCs, and am actually making some house rules to codify this across the board by replacing NPC statblocks with statblocks that are basically built as simplified PCs (just going one step further than how it was in 2014), and therefore differ from monsters by having those class features and higher proficiency bonus (based on their level rather than CR), compared to monstrous species which don't have class levels, but have higher HP and lower proficiency bonus.

But, I still think there are good ideas to mine from the 3e ELH. I handle epic spellcasting by saying that it is a way to use wish to more reliably to accomplish certain things. Basically, you cast wish but use components or other things to safely channel its power and reliably get results that exceed 9th-level spells. This relies on how I treat wish as having its power being as limited as other 9th-level spells, and only exceeding that power level by cosmically drawing power from elsewhere. The reason wishes can smack you is because the spell actually wants to give you what you ask for, but has to find a way to do so with its limited power, hence teleporting you to the owner of the powerful item you request, or sending you forward in time until the enemies you requested the death of have all died of old age, etc. It's not actually trying to mess with you in some trickstery way. It's just doing its creative best to actually function rather than failing due to being asked for something beyond its power.

Epic spellcasting is anticipating this and providing more power so that the spell doesn't have to do that.

I think there are other ideas from the ELH that could be brought into 5e while still fundamentally using the epic boon system rather than a more direct level 21+ system.

 

[Silam]

While I still value my Epic Level Handbook, I actually think it's methodology wasn't ideal.

The stated premise that if you are still playing the game after 20 levels what you want is just more of the same (apparently with bigger numbers) has a couple flaws. The first is that it assumes people played 20 levels to get there, rather than just starting there. The second, and more important one is that you actually don't want something new!

What I like about Epic Boons (and the ability to take additional feats and ASIs) is that it provides a form of advancement for PC-like species that is fundamentally different than that of monsters like dragons, demon princes, or deities. It keeps built in limits. Even if your advancement is assumed to be drawing on overt supernatural power (not every boon needs to assume that, just like not every class), your mortal frame has certain limits. After you have a Con 30, Tough, Fortitude, and Recovery, you have all the HP a mortal can have. You can't have more HD. But you also have 20 full class features and can stack on more class features like abilities.

Epic monsters, on the other hand, can and usually do have bigger raw numbers, but even if you assume their statblock neglects to include capabilities they have that aren't likely to be relevant in a fight vs PCs, they still likely have less class-derived types of abilities than PCs.

I like what that does. It says that monsters that advance through innate power are fundamentally different than PC-like creatures that advance through skill. I like this difference much, much better than the idea that NPCs are different than PCs, and am actually making some house rules to codify this across the board by replacing NPC statblocks with statblocks that are basically built as simplified PCs (just going one step further than how it was in 2014), and therefore differ from monsters by having those class features and higher proficiency bonus (based on their level rather than CR), compared to monstrous species which don't have class levels, but have higher HP and lower proficiency bonus.

But, I still think there are good ideas to mine from the 3e ELH. I handle epic spellcasting by saying that it is a way to use wish to more reliably to accomplish certain things. Basically, you cast wish but use components or other things to safely channel its power and reliably get results that exceed 9th-level spells. This relies on how I treat wish as having its power being as limited as other 9th-level spells, and only exceeding that power level by cosmically drawing power from elsewhere. The reason wishes can smack you is because the spell actually wants to give you what you ask for, but has to find a way to do so with its limited power, hence teleporting you to the owner of the powerful item you request, or sending you forward in time until the enemies you requested the death of have all died of old age, etc. It's not actually trying to mess with you in some trickstery way. It's just doing its creative best to actually function rather than failing due to being asked for something beyond its power.

Epic spellcasting is anticipating this and providing more power so that the spell doesn't have to do that.

I think there are other ideas from the ELH that could be brought into 5e while still fundamentally using the epic boon system rather than a more direct level 21+ system.

You make some good points. I too like how PCs get more skilled, which is represented via class features, feats, etc. I also agree that I prefer NPCs to be built like PCs (at least important NPCs or bosses should be, while it can be a fine shortcut to use the monster-like NPCs for less important underlings).

It is actually for these reasons that I like how the ELH allowed continuing to progress in class levels beyond 20. I find it weird that a character gets frozen at 20, and then can only draw from a separate pool of special powers. Essentially, in the 5e system, if you're playing an epic campaign, and you want your character to have 9th level prepared spells (i.e., not just slots), then you must invest 17 or your 20 levels in a full spellcasting class. If you do any other build with 16 or fewer levels from your full spellcasting class, then you are barred from learning 9th level spells forever. Doesn't matter if you go up to level 100, you just missed the boat mate. Your formative years are behind you and you can't learn anything new now. You can do weird stuff like getting back up at half health after going from 1 to 0 HP, but learning the next spell level you were on the verge of knowing, that's off limits forever. There can be good gameplay design/balance reasons for this, but I find that it takes away a bit of credibility and immersion for me.

A big difference between 3.5e and 5e is the bounded accuracy concept. The difference between low and high-level characters, as far as basic numbers go (attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, etc) is not as dramatic as it was in 3.5e. In 3.5e, the combat ability of a character with a +20 BAB versus one with a +1 BAB was truly dramatic. And the ELH allowed this to scale infinitely. So even at level 20, you could still get the effect of "this creature operates on a different league than me" by meeting a level 40 NPC. And that level 40 NPC could honestly tell the PCs "look, even though I can mop the floor with you guys, there is this other evil creature who can mop the floor with me" (because they're level 60). With bounded accuracy, you can't really have these dramatic power differences which set up situations like "no one can go up to the eye of Sauron and stab it", but we can take this months long journey to travel discretely in the country side until we destroy the ring in Mount Doom.