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Plantae
2018-01-09, 01:38 PM
As a reward for completing a particularly arduous quest (and attuning to a magical place of power), I'm planning on rewarding each of the player characters in my current campaign with a specific ability, as magic items in this setting are rare and powerful. I'm not too concerned about these abilities being balanced overall, but I want to make sure they're all on roughly the same power level, so no one feels like they got the shaft.

The characters are a Ranger (Beast Conclave, revised version), a Paladin (Oath of the Conquerer), a Bard (College of Whispers), a Monk (Way of the Open Hand), and a Druid (Circle of the Land). Here's what I had in mind for each character.

Ranger
Hunter’s Vendetta. You may designate a target you can see as your sworn enemy. When you hit this creature with a weapon attack, you deal an additional 2d6 damage. You also know the distance and the direction to this creature as long as it is on the same plane as you. This lasts 24 hours or until you choose another sworn enemy. Once you use this ability, you can’t use it again until you complete a long rest.

I based this on the Revenant and on the Oathbow abilities. The ranger is motivated by vengeance, so it seemed suitable.


Paladin
Inner Radiance. You can cast spirit guardians one additional time per day, even when your reliquary [Divine Focus] is not in your possession. Your Divine Smite deals an extra 1d8 damage against evil-aligned individuals who reject the True Faith.

The paladin already has the ability to cast spirit guardians through a once a day magic item (the reliquary). He's trying to root out corruption in his church, thus the smite ability.

Bard
Resonant Words. When you cast vicious mockery, add your Charisma modifier to damage, even against creatures that succeed on their saving throw. When you target a creature with vicious mockery, you can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to deal extra damage equal to your Psychic Blades.

I know vicious mockery is already a pretty potent cantrip, but the bard really enjoys relying on it and has used it to great effect in the past.

Monk
Wardance. As a bonus action, you may enter a war dance. While in this stance, you have advantage on Dexterity checks and Dexterity saving throws, a +2 bonus to AC, and resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. Your war dance lasts 1 minute, or until you are knocked unconscious. Once you this ability, you can’t use it again until you complete a long rest.

The monk belongs to a specific group of elvish monks called wardancers. He's on a quest to achieve spiritual enlightenment and has a strong sense of duty as he seeks to redeem his family name.

Druid
Nature’s Wrath, Nature’s Bounty. When you strike a creature with a druid spell, you may deal an extra 3d6 damage to the target. For 3 rounds, the target’s speed is also halved, it takes a -2 penalty to AC and Dexterity saving throws, and it can’t use reactions; on its turn, it can use either an action or a bonus action, but not both. Once you use this ability, you can’t use it again until you complete a long rest.
In addition, when using Wisdom (Herbalism), you discover twice as many ingredients. Your herbal remedies also last twice as long and heal creatures by an additional hit points equal to your Wisdom modifier.

The druid is the most attuned to places of power in my campaign, which have roots in natural magic. I'm using some optional rules for herbalism that the player really enjoys.

Sariel Vailo
2018-01-09, 04:03 PM
Id like to do this for my players so id like your line of reasoning how did you come up with this idea

Lalliman
2018-01-10, 02:28 AM
They're hard to judge, but none of them seem grossly out of line compared to the others. My only objections are:

1) The druid's ability uses a reaction despite being used on your turn. Seems like it should be a bonus action, or just no action at all considering it's only once per long rest.

2) It seems like kind of a "**** you" that the monk has to spend their precious ki on Wardance, even though it's once per long rest anyways. It doesn't make it underpowered, but it's slightly annoying when none of the others have to spend their core resources to fuel their ability.

JeenLeen
2018-01-10, 10:47 AM
For the Ranger ability, as written, you don't need to see the target, so this is a perfect way to track anyone they are willing to declare as their foe. That could potentially ruin some plots you may have in mind, especially about someone hiding or using a fake name.
I'd recommend at least saying the ranger needs to either see the target or picture its face, so you can't use it to find somebody you have never seen but know by name.

I can agree with the above about losing the Ki expenditure for the monk.

For the Paladin ability, is it extra damage against "godless individuals" and "heretics who are evil" OR against "evil godless individuals" and "evil heretics"? No criticism of mechanics here, but I found it slightly ambiguous. (I reckon you mean the target must be evil, and either follow no god or be a heretic. Also assuming, for this purpose, heretic means someone who is officially a member of a church or claims to follow a god but has heretical views according to that church/god. Note that, as written, it would work on heretics in other churches, too. So if your guy follows Pelor, but an evil follower of Vecna believes secrets should be shared, the extra damage would work on that heretic.)

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Balance-wise, the Druid power seems better than the others. Also, that the Bard ability is the only one without a rest restriction makes it sound better than the others, but I reckon it's okay as-is. I'm not too familiar with those spells, not having played a bard. (The paladin boost in Divine Smite damage is also no rest restriction, I realize, but it's restricted by the restrictions on uses of Divine Smite.)

When you show them to the party, I would suggest letting them know to talk to you if any of them feel they got a weak reward compared to the others. (At least, if your group isn't the type to try to use that as leverage for more power for more power's sake.) That way any OOC resentment is probably defused before it can really start.

Plantae
2018-01-10, 11:30 AM
Thank you for the comments. They're all very helpful. :smallsmile:

Sariel Vailo
I've done something similar in several other campaigns I've run in the past. I tend to run settings where magic items are very rare, so I like to reward the PCs with unique homebrew abilities instead. My usual approach is to use the things a character does during a campaign and what's in their backstory to come up with an ability that really matches their personality and their actions. The PCs earn the abilities when they accomplish something monumental or heroic.

In this case, the recent adventure was about corruption in the ley lines. A blight had spread that consumed a large mountain valley, bringing sickness and death and creating mutated undead creatures and elementals. It was caused in part by a dark ritual, but it was exacerbated by a war that had been waged between the valley's natives and imperial settlers (who shared the paladin's god). The valley was somewhat isolated, so it had been long abandoned, but the PCs had to take the road through it when another pass was blocked by snow. The PCs took it upon themselves to actually heal this blight, when they had several opportunities to just press on and avoid the valley's dangers, so I wanted to give them an appropriate reward.

Lalliman
Good points! Changed Nature's Wrath to an on-hit ability. Dropped the ki cost to Wardance and made it a bonus action to activate.

JeenLeen
Good catch on Hunter's Vendetta. I've changed it to a target you can see.
Replaced the paladin smite ability with a more campaign-oriented wording. The paladin keeps to what is called the "True Faith." My intent is that the extra smite damage works on evil-aligned individuals who don't.
For Resonant Words, vicious mockery is generally regarded as a solid spell already, but the bard is not otherwise invested in combat abilities, so I'm okay with this becoming her bread-and-butter.

For the druid ability: any suggestion on what to do to tone it down a little?
I'll also make sure to check with my players to make sure they're happy with their rewards. They're not power-gamers at all, so I don't expect they'll try to leverage it in any way.