Talk:Past Level 20 (5e Variant Rule)

The Creator's Message

I ask that you be forgiving while reading this page it is the first time I've done any type of homebrew. Not to mention it took some time learning how to edit a page to be in an appealing format. Also I'm still very new to all tabletop game having only played D&D 5E about 8-10 times strictly as a player. Also I have yet to even make a character that's made it past level 3.

So again please be forgiving in imbalances of the page. Mabey leave a comment in this discussion page explaining where I went wrong and how to fix it or how I could improve on an idea that may not necessarily be incorrect.--FatalScythe 01:49, 6 October 2016 (MDT)

Questions

• Question 1: Are you aware of the bounded accuracy design philosophy behind 5e? Because this kind of tears that concept apart pretty thoroughly. I mean, if that's the intent, then by all means, please proceed full steam ahead! I just want to see if you understand the implications this rule would have for the underlying math of a typical game. --Kydo (talk) 10:59, 28 October 2016 (MDT)

• Answer: No, I was unaware of this until now. I appreciate you bringing it up and with time I will attempt to fully understand the philosophy. I will also attempt to edit this rule so that it will fit better within the 5e system as that was my initial intention.

--FatalScythe 06:32, 31 October 2016 (MDT)

• Question 2: What does exceeding the level cap actually represent? What does it mean, in-game? Does it represent anything at all, or is it just an excuse to arbitrarily continue level progression with the same character? --Kydo (talk) 10:59, 28 October 2016 (MDT)

• Answer: Well the reason I felt like creating a "system" that exceeded the level cap was more of a personal preference. As I do enjoy the role-playing aspects of D&D I've come to love the combat. As such I wanted to be able to start a campaign at higher levels in order to gain class features in the start of my character's creation. However this posed a problem as I would be unable to level up l, or at least leveling would be minimal. Role-play wise I wanted characters that not only would be recognized by the NPC's as powerful people, but would seek them out for help. I understand that, that is typically what level 20 represents, however, I wanted room for my character to continue to grow naturally (without use of items) while continuing to be seeked out by NPC's, and continuing their adventurer.

--FatalScythe 06:32, 31 October 2016 (MDT)

• Question 3: Some of the classes list getting an additional subclass at level 30. does this mean they get up to 3 subclasses? 8/03/2024

Areas That Could Be Improved

The wording on the warlock needs to be changed. At level 20 a Warlock has 8 Eldritch Invocations. Your guide says they have 4 at level 21. Does it increase by 4 at level 21?

Fixed. Thanks for the heads up. --Green Dragon (talk) 13:18, 2 April 2020 (MDT)

I'm a tad confused about the ASIs. Why do you only get 8 now vs the 12 from an older version. And do they all grant 2 feats or only those after lvl 40 that grant 2 feats?

Why is paladin so weak at epic levels? they don't seem to be gaining too many damaging options, and a sorcerer with booming blade would do more melee damage than a paladin smiting on both attacks. Am I missing something here?

Other Discussions

• Hi, I think this is a good approach to level 21+, looks quite sensible, and thanks for mentioning Mythic Monsters (5e Variant Rule). I'm afraid I've been lax in coming up with CR31+ challenges, my only contribution so far is Living Dimension (5e Creature). Marasmusine (talk) 16:08, 17 October 2016 (MDT)

• Thank you, it's nice to know that I didn't completely fudge it up. Also I think your Living Dimension (5e Creature) is a really unique idea. I thought it was strange that it had such low health in comparison to its CR but realized you were trying to balance the character with the way it takes damage. I would however suggest upping the health a bit since every attack will be a constant damage output.

--FatalScythe 15:48, 25 October 2016 (MDT)

• I am unsure who edited in the hyperlinks into the page, but I'd like to say I appreciate it.--FatalScythe 06:32, 31 October 2016 (MDT)

• Thanks. I just liked the idea of what you were doing, and figured I'd try to make it a little more accessible :) My apologizes if some of the links are wrong (I don't play 5e, so I may have mixed up some terminology).--GamerAim (talk) 06:46, 31 October 2016 (MDT)

• Hi, I'm new here. I made a modified version of this which is meant for multi-classing (when your total level exceeds 20). Criticism appreciated. This is the link to the google sheet

Spellcasting

I didn't see anything about spell slots, and I don't know if I just passed over it, or if it wasn't there for balance reasons, but I feel that it leaves out spellcasters a bit. --Azeric the Traveller (talk) 17:05, 29 April 2019 (MDT)

In addition, the stacking increases on cantrip damage get pretty insane. 10 eldritch blasts makes any damage dealing spell a Warlock could cast with pact magic relatively obsolete. Nemid (talk) 14:11, 18 November 2019 (MST)

Homebrew Classes

Could you provide some recommendations as to how to give a homebrew class beyond 20th level features? I am most interested in the Godslayer class found on this wiki. I'm playing a godslayer at the moment, and the DM wants us to be destroying worlds at level 10. He thinks we'll probably go to epic levels as well, so any help is appreciated. I do want to be defensively minded though since so far I seem to be the tank of the party and have yet to have an enemy make a successful attack roll against me.

More Subclasses

I believe you shouldn’t allow certain classes to allow for multiple subclasses. For the wizard, it makes sense, as their power comes from research and practice. But for a class like the cleric, for example, who gains power from a divine patron, it doesn’t make sense to gain an additional subclass because that would be the equivalent of serving another deity, which would be an incredibly strange thing.

I can understand the concern behind this, but what else do you do? If you simply just don't give them an extra subclass, they lose a significant amount of versatility every other class gets, which is more than unfair. Making domain extensions would be rather odd too, as now cleric has it's own special subclasses for this.

Anyways, who says this is them serving a second deity? A god can have more than one domain, and most do. Even then, this is post 20th level, who says they're even serving a deity?

Also, remember to sign your posts. --SwankyPants (talk) 12:59, 15 December 2020 (MST)

I can see your point, I suppose. However, I do want to say, on a less important note, a cleric not actually serving a deity in some way sounds strange. Like, is he his own god? Does he receive powers from himself? Does he gain a circuit of energy within himself granting him infinite power? That actually sounds like a cool character to play as. --Me0wFish (talk) 2:11, 15 December 2020 (MST)

Well, I wouldn't say it would be a positive feedback loop of absolute power, but think of demigods. They have cleric-esc abilities, but they aren't clerics, just really strong people with their own power.--SwankyPants (talk) 13:14, 15 December 2020 (MST)

Fighter Immunities

If you are an Aasimar that takes all 50 levels into fighter with the subclass psi warrior and then takes the epic boons stormborn and fire soul you would have abortion, because of the level 50 fighter ability that turns all immunities before level fifty to absorption and all resistance to immunities, to thunder and lighting(stormborn boon), fire(fire soul boon), cold and acid and poison(the 46 level fighter ability), bludgeoning and piercing and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons(the level 38 fighter ability) and immunity to magical bludgeoning and piercing and slashing damage(the level 42 fighter ability), necrotic and radiant(from Aasimar's Celestial Resistance trait), and psychic damage(from the psi warrior subclass feature "guarded mind"). You would take force damage as normal because the level fifty ability the fighter gets specifically says you have to choose a damage type that you don't have resistance to or immunity to but if you take the race, subclass, and epic boons as I described you could have absorption for nine very common damage types, and immunity to all other damage types besides force. It seems just a little bit strong if you ask me, even the totem warrior barbarians feature only gives you resistance. If you wanted to take it a step further you could replace the immunity to cold with immunity to force damage and then take the Eldritch Knight as a second subclass and cast protect from energy which would give you resistance to cold damage and then you would have either immunity or absorption for all other damage types. -GuyWhoHasn'tMadeAWikiAccount 5/4/2051

Well that’s certainly expansive. Keep in mind this does rely on some extra homebrew, but to be honest, it’s probably fine. Are you familiar with Achilles? A legendary fighter which only had one specific weakness? You’ve basically just made him.

Anyways, this whole variant rule pushes stuff well beyond the power level of even the Tarrasque. It’s bound to get crazy, and maximizing damage immunities is probably just part of that. I don’t know how you’d go about fixing this while maintaining relative simplicity, but even then I dunno if you gotta. Good luck regardless.--SwankyPants (talk) 12:36, 4 May 2021 (MDT)

My Experience with this Homebrew

Hi There, I doubt you (the creator) are still looking at this page, but me and some friends actually ended up using it for a campaign that I run and is still ongoing, which we lovingly call God Slayers, and I figured after DMing for this homebrew I would offer some advice for rebalancing some things, especially with the classes we played, for you and for anyone else who wants to use this homebrew. But firstly I would like to sincerely thank you, I've had an amazing time with my group playing through this campaign and it has been an absolute blast and it would not have been possible without your help and you didn't even know it. You've allowed us to experience some amazing times together, especially given the circumstances of 2020 so thank you.

Artificer

• Although we didn't end up playing Artificer, one change we have made to the class is that they gain the ability to replicate more powerful items with the magic item infusion, by level 50 being able to replicate very rare magic items as by this level, common items are next to useless.

Barbarians

• Surprisingly enough, Barbarians actually felt pretty balanced, although slightly underpowered compared to some of the other classes and their crazy abilities (namely the fighter), one rule we added is that Barbarians gain the ability to hold two handed weapons in one hand while raging (similar to the Boon of the Titans Grip)

Bard

• Bards are pretty good, we haven't made any changes to them so far and overall they're actually very well balanced, granted in our campaign at least, bardic inspiration didn't come into use a lot.

Cleric

• Similar to bard, Clerics are well balanced although we have altered their divine intervention to instead be a deus ex-machina, where a cleric can use it whenever they want but abusing this power 1. May not work, and 2. Could have negative effects.

Druid

• Only alteration is we gave them an ability score improvement similar to fighters, monks and Barbarians, but for just wisdom.

Fighter

• Alright, so Fighters. (at least in our, admittedly very combat focussed campaign) are absolutely broken balls to the walls. As another user pointed out, their immunity to most damage types makes them borderline unkillable, especially with absorption which is something no player should ever get. It made combat so difficult and no one was enjoying playing when a fighter was around, because the fighter was doing such ludicrous amount of damage (7 attacks in 1 turn, 14 with action surge is far far too many), while also not dying no matter what I did. The only way I was able to stop the fighter from tearing down everything I through at them was to get them away from the fight which isn't fun for them.

We made alot of changes to fighters, the first being their extra attack was dropped from 6 extra attacks (5 total) to 5, (6 total). We also lowered their uses for action action surge to 3. And we made the following changes to their resistances and immunities:

• At level 38, you gain resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons.
• At level 42, you gain resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from magical weapons.
• At level 46 you gain resistance to two damage types of your choice, and immunity to one damage type.
• At level 50 you gain immunity to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons.

Monk

• Monks were relatively fine, the only real problem being their infinite amount of ki, we altered this to just a maximum of 50 ki, less fantastical but infinite ki could easily be broken to do some crazy stuff. But if anything the Monk fell behind other martial classes.

Paladin

• Paladins were somewhat similar to fighters, they tended to be extremely powerful in combat, their improved divine smites, combined with their extra attacks allowed for some stupid amount of damage, 3 attacks with 12d8 radiant damage each (without using spells), was becoming way too much so we kept their attacks to just two, and we lowered their divine smites to 4d8.

Ranger

• Didn't use the ranger, have no comments.

Rogue

• Didn't use the rogue, have no comments.

Sorcerer

• Didn't use the sorcerer, have no comments.

Warlock

• Warlocks were somewhat well balanced but I would recommend in the cantrip section of the general rules to specify the rules for eldritch blast, had some arguments over what was technically "Rules as written".

Wizard

• Didn't use the wizard, have no comments.

General Rules

This is where I have the most recommendations so bare with me.

• Cantrips Cantrips are both stupidly underpowered and also overpowered to say the very least, especially when compared to the fighters damage output and the Paladins smites, Cantrips doing 10d10 for an average of 55 damage is not nearly enough when a Paladin is doing 54 damage Per divine smite, ignoring all other damage. We've doubled the damage output of cantrips to be 20d10 instead of 10.

• Spells This is where I have the biggest issue. Although Spells aren't all damaging, the damaging spells fall behind way too quickly compared to even cantrips, take a level 9 fireball, which will do only around 45 damage, halved if successful. This is simply not enough especially when a fireblast, even though only hitting one target does more damage. We've done a huge overhaul in terms of how spells work. This is the system we have implemented.

• Spells that scale when casted with a higher spell slot act as if they were casted with a one level higher spell slot at levels 25 (+1), 30 (+2), 35 (+3), 40 (+4), 45 (+5) and 50 (+6). When a spell is casted as if it is above level 9 this way, any scaling hit dice now increase by three times the previous amount, (eg a fireball that does 13d6 damage at level 9, does 16d6 damage at level 10, 19d6 damage at level 11, 22d6 damage at level 12, etc)

• It's not a perfect solution, but it is so much better than a level 9 fireball dealing less damage than a fireblast. This way a level 9 fireball will instead deal around 100~ fire damage (31d6). We've also got other systems in place that cause spells like this to deal even more damage that are part of our own homebrew. But something similar to this system is a necessary fix to stop spellcasters from falling way behind martial classes.

• Dragonborn This was something minor but we altered the dragonborn breath weapon further to make it at least somewhat useful.

• If you're a Dragonborn, your breath weapon damage increases to 6d6 at 21st level, 8d6 at 26th level, 10d6 at 31st level, 12d6 at 36th level, 14d6 at 41st level, 16d6 at 46th level and 18d6 at 50th level. If your breath weapon is a cone, it’s range increases at levels 26 (20 ft), 39 (25 ft) and 50 (30 ft), if your breath weapon is a line, it’s range increases at levels 26 (40 ft), 39 (50 ft) and 50 (60 ft)

Final Notes

Overall, I greatly appreciate the system you have put together here, there were other very minor changes we made to your past level 20 homebrew but these were some of the major ones that we felt hindered the game enough to warrant changing up the homebrew. I hope at least someone will find this useful, and if not, then oh well, it was good to get some of this off my chest. Thank you again.

Napstascott (talk) 03:55, 9 June 2021 (MDT)

Ability Score Improvements (and Druids)

Hello, just wanted to add a few more thoughts I had while looking through this page. Primarily, for the classes that get additional Ability Score increases to their maximums.

First, is that maximum increase supposed to be calculated AFTER the general increase of all of the Score maximums to 30? Because if so then the few classes that get them would all be effectively raising their maximums to 44 for only one or two of their scores while the rest of them remain capped at 30? Conversely, if it's not being applied to the 30 cap, it's still raising the relevant Ability scores to 34. I just wanted to check if you realized that and see if you wanted to either change the number of increases or add a second higher cap that can't be reached by normal Ability Score Improvements?

(Note: I am aware that Barbarians would theoretically cap out at 30 instead if you "override" their level 20 Ability that increases them to 24, but if you reapply it after the bump to 30, it equals out to the same +14 the others get)

Additionally, it might be prudent to add in an additional creature for Druids to Wild Shape into at some point, as without adding in homebrew creatures, the highest beast is only a CR 8, or a CR 12 that taught itself to be a wizard. While most druid circles won't "cap out" until almost max level (44 would be CR 8 I think, could be off by one though), the circle of the moon caps out much earlier at either level 24 for CR 8, or level 30 for the single CR 12. I'm not exactly sure what creature type would be best to add, but just some other food for thought I had.

FreezeFlame (talk) 02:18, 31 July 2021 (EST)

The Most Important Part

Epic Levels are completely useless if there is not any guide on how to balance encounters. Because this homebrew is basically abandoned, here is a very rough estimate

Level Easy Medium Hard Deadly 21 4,000 7,500 11,000 15,000 22 4,500 8,500 12,500 16,500 23 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 26 7,000 14,000 21,000 28,000 28 8,500 17,000 25,000 33,500 31 10,500 21,000 31,500 42,000 34 13,000 26,000 39,000 52,000 36 17,000 33,500 50,000 67,000

HomebrewLover781 (talk) 10:35, 7 April 2024 (CST)