Variant Class Capstones

[Sparky McDibben]

Inspired by the 2020 Wishlist thread, does anyone have any variant class capstones they'd like to see?

I'd like to see a version of the barbarian capstone applied to sorcerers: "At 20th level, your Constitution and Charisma scores both increase by 4. Your maximum for those scores is now 24."

[diplomancer]

Yes, some capstones definitely need boosting.

For the Bard, something like "at the beginning of each of your turns, you get one Bardic Inspiration (d8)"

[Jerrykhor]

Pretty much all of the capstones need reworking. They don't reflect how gonzo the game has become long before a PC reach 20. Capstones should be mind-blowingly powerful, once you read it it should grab your attention and spark the interest in sticking with the class all the way to 20.

For sorcerer, it should be something like, "All the Metamagic options are now available to you. You can choose one metamagic to be your signature, and you can cast it for free."

[Kwinza]

Pretty much all of the capstones need reworking. They don't reflect how gonzo the game has become long before a PC reach 20. Capstones should be mind-blowingly powerful, once you read it it should grab your attention and spark the interest in sticking with the class all the way to 20.

For sorcerer, it should be something like, "All the Metamagic options are now available to you. You can choose one metamagic to be your signature, and you can cast it for free."

^^ This.

There's not a single capstone in the game worth sticking around for.
They should be crazy powerful, but some are meh and others are outright awful.

Examples;
The Barb one is useless. if at 20 you don't have some form of giant strength belt, your DM isn't very nice lol
The Monk one is less than useless. You gain 4 ki at the start of every fight "IF" you have 0 but you already regain all 20 of your ki after a short rest....

[T.G. Oskar]

There's not a single capstone in the game worth sticking around for.
They should be crazy powerful, but some are meh and others are outright awful.

Examples;
The Barb one is useless. if at 20 you don't have some form of giant strength belt, your DM isn't very nice lol
The Monk one is less than useless. You gain 4 ki at the start of every fight "IF" you have 0 but you already regain all 20 of your ki after a short rest....

I dissent from that opinion. Sure, there ARE some capstones that are a giant heap of dung, but not all of them are. In fact, the Barbarian is a pretty solid capstone - in particular, because you can't really rely on magic items. Not just because it's a boost to Strength, it's a boost to Constitution; you know, the score that grants them better AC and HP. So, a Barbarian that has focused in boosting Strength and Constitution to 20 will have the benefit of a +2 to-hit and damage, +2 on all Strength skills, +2 on all Strength and Constitution scores, +2 to AC and around 40 additional HP all at once. If you have a Belt of Giant Strength, you're sacrificing one of your attunement slots to potentially get your Strength to 27 or 29, because otherwise the effect is wasted.

Other solid capstones are Cleric (I mean, it's essentially a Wish spell that you can use 1/week, virtually no restrictions whatsoever) and Paladin (you can choose your capstone, but they end up being essentially "1/day, you go Super Saiyan on all evildoers, and you choose what kind of Super Saiyan you end up being"). You could argue that Druids (infinite Wild Shapes, which might not seem as much until you realize Wildfire Spirit can now be summoned indefinitely, WHILE having you transform as well; also, Moon Druids are now essentially immortal), Rogues (1/day turn a nat 1 into a nat 20, or negate a critical hit) and Wizards (two uses of a 3rd level spell of your choice without expending spell slots, though YMMV in that the real capstone is Spell Mastery with its ability to have infinite Shields and whatnot) are also pretty solid.

What I feel, though, and this is something I can concur, is that the other half are either boring or completely pointless. This affects more the classes that depend on point pools (Bards, Monks, Sorcerers) because they get the shaft. Fighters get a fourth attack, which is the definition of Boring but Practical (you can spend that attack on another action like Shove, or just go nova with Action Surge and attack eight times with a solid weapon), Rangers get a laughable ability (you can add Wisdom to your attack and damage rolls! ...Except that once per turn, and only to your favored enemies. Hope you get to make opportunity attacks against your favored enemy!), and Warlocks get a useful but too limited ability (so, you can recharge your short-rest rechargeable spell slots, of which you get only four total, but not your Mystic Arcanas. Hooray!) This is a solid example of why you feel capstones are so pointless, but as I mentioned above, there are very solid capstones. So it's mostly 50/50, though YMMV.

I do agree that some capstones need some refurbishing, in order to make them something useful. For example:
Bards could get the ability to cast Bless at-will. If they spend a Bardic Inspiration die while doing so, allies that benefit from that spell use your Bardic Inspiration hit dice. You could have the provision that Valor Bards get to also allow their Bardic Inspiration die to apply to damage rolls, because they could use the aid.
Fighters could get to add their proficiency bonus to all weapon damage rolls. Since they also get their fourth attack at this level, this means they can potentially deal up to 24 points of damage with any weapon. Dagger? Longsword? Longbow? Even the paltry Unarmed Strike gets a massive damage boost. Sure, this might seem a much more unfair boost to some subclasses than to other (*coughcoughBattlemastercoughcough*), but it's an overall boost, a simple one, and an effective one at that.
Monks can get resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage, and 1/long rest they can get infinite Ki for 1 minute. That means infinite Stunning Strikes, infinite Flurry of Blows, and a massive boost to 4E and Sun Soul Monks, who all of a sudden can unleash their Elemental spells at maximum power at every occasion.
Rangers definitely need a massive revision, but I'd say that having Foe Slayer apply to Favored Foe (that is, whoever is the target of Hunter's Mark) and make it add Wis to attack and damage rolls is fair enough. That said - this is far from being the best choice, but that's because the Ranger's issue is the chassis itself.
Sorcerers should get a double whammy - 1/long rest, gain infinite Sorcery points for 1 minute, and the ability to use two Metamagics at once. That way, they can essentially recharge all their spell slots (but only one per action) and/or use them to Quicken + Twin every spell they desire.
Warlocks should just get 1/long rest infinite spell slots at max power for 1 minute. That way, that "magic minute" allows them to unleash very powerful spells in a very short amount of time.

Now: they're not the most flashy (other than the "infinite resource" ones), but they're worthwhile IMO. That said, YMMV - do note that, even though capstones are cool, not every table gets to use them, and even then, they probably use it for one big battle and that's it. There's a reason most capstones are boring; they're a sort of "thank you" reward for sticking up all 20 levels, but they don't heavily punish multiclassing either. If you plan to enhance capstones, that means you're ready to unleash higher-level content, which is IMO just as necessary.

[diplomancer]

Yes, some capstones definitely need boosting.

For the Bard, something like "at the beginning of each of your turns, you get one Bardic Inspiration (d8)"

Scrap that, that's way too lazy, let the game designers earn their keep. Bards are the only class that have only 3 levels with subclass features. Their 20th level capstone should also be subclass based.

[TIPOT]

Scrap that, that's way too lazy, let the game designers earn their keep. Bards are the only class that have only 3 levels with subclass features. Their 20th level capstone should also be subclass based.

Honestly, if you were going all out on this I don't think it'd be unreasonable to have all the capstones based upon subclass.

[Dr. Cliché]

Sorcerers should get a double whammy - 1/long rest, gain infinite Sorcery points for 1 minute, and the ability to use two Metamagics at once. That way, they can essentially recharge all their spell slots (but only one per action) and/or use them to Quicken + Twin every spell they desire.

I honestly don't like this style of capstone.

I think something like 'At the beginning of each of your turns, if you have fewer than 10 Sorcery Points you regain a number of Sorcery Points equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1).' would be better.

Basically, make the Sorcerer finally feel like a walking font of magic.

[Amechra]

I miss the Monk's playtest capstone - it set all of their ability scores to 20 if they weren't somehow higher.

[micahaphone]

I like some beginning-of-turn regeneration, maybe if you're at half supply of your points. Like if a monk is at 10 ki or less, regen 1 ki at the beginning of your turn. You get the choice of having a free flurry of blows, a stunning strike, or a patient defense/step of the wind, or to save it for another turn. You still have resource limitations, but your baseline ability is raised.


Or hell let 'em have a point of regen every turn. They'll enter combat with full points but it's level 20.

[NOMster]

Here are some ideas (https://www.dmsguild.com/product/233195/20th-Level-Class-Features-Revisited)

[T.G. Oskar]

I honestly don't like this style of capstone.

I think something like 'At the beginning of each of your turns, if you have fewer than 10 Sorcery Points you regain a number of Sorcery Points equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1).' would be better.

Basically, make the Sorcerer finally feel like a walking font of magic.

This one is far more exploitable?

The capstone I suggested allows the Sorcerer to go nova, and while it's exploitable, it's not entirely so: you can spend that minute recovering all your spell slots, but for the most part the idea is to use it on a tough battle, with two Metamagic effects on a single spell to feel like you're twisting magic to suit your needs.

Your suggestion, broadly speaking, means that you have at the very least infinite 3rd level spell slots. By that moment, you should have a Charisma of 20, so you recover 5 Sorcery Points every turn, which then you spend into a spell slot through Flexible Casting. While that might not be possible during battle, the fact that you can do that outside of battle means that in roughly 1 minute you can recover up to 10 spell slots, which would generally imply all your 1st, 2nd and 3rd level spell slots, and if you have those available, you could potentially restore even 4th and 5th level spell slots. Sure, it's no 6th or higher spell slots, but there's a ton of useful spells between 1st to 5th level anyways. And you'd always end up with 14 Sorcery Points (it has to be fewer than 10, so the minimum amount of Sorcery Points required to work is 9; with a Charisma of 20, that means you recover 5 SP that turn, so you end up with 14 SP and then stop recovering - you can thus work it so that you always end up spending the exact amount of Sorcery Points required so that when you need to "cap out", you end up with 9 remaining Sorcery Points).

My suggestion makes Metamagic and other options much more useful; mostly, because it limits the amount of time it's active, but breaks the limitations upon which you can use those Sorcery Points in the first place, and gives you incentive to use them. (If you don't use Metamagic or anything, then you can recover those spell slots and go straight for 5th level ones.) Your suggestion merely incentives the use of Flexible Casting to work effectively as having infinite 1st to 5th level slots. This is just straight killer on Divine Soul Sorcerers, who are arguably some of the best buffers in the game, limited only by their concentration - this would allow you to always have spells like Bless, Spiritual Weapon, Spirit Guardians, Mass Cure Wounds, Flame Strike, Dawn, Haste, Mirror Image, Web, Storm Sphere, Synaptic Static and others on command, and still have enough Sorcery Points to abuse them.

Of course, if the idea is to have an elegant way to get infinite spell slots (or at least be able to recharge all your spell slots outside of battle) while still giving them something useful, then I agree it's a very clever way to do so. However, it feels as an exploit.

[Dr. Cliché]

This one is far more exploitable?

Yes . . . ?

Isn't that the entire point?

These are Capstone. If the players get to use them at all, then they're at the point in the game where they can challenge literal Dukes of Hell.

I thought the entire point was to have Capstones be less boring and less garbage. :smallconfused:




The capstone I suggested allows the Sorcerer to go nova, and while it's exploitable, it's not entirely so: you can spend that minute recovering all your spell slots, but for the most part the idea is to use it on a tough battle, with two Metamagic effects on a single spell to feel like you're twisting magic to suit your needs.

But it's also really boring. It's a nova ability on a class that's already far too focused on nova-ing.

It lasts for all of 1 minute after which they go back to just being a regular Sorcerer.

[diplomancer]

Yes . . . ?

Isn't that the entire point?

These are Capstone. If the players get to use them at all, then they're at the point in the game where they can challenge literal Dukes of Hell.

I thought the entire point was to have Capstones be less boring and less garbage. :smallconfused:




But it's also really boring. It's a nova ability on a class that's already far too focused on nova-ing.

It lasts for all of 1 minute after which they go back to just being a regular Sorcerer.

Capstones should be powerful, but should not be too insanely powerful that they make the game unfun, which I think yours does. An equivalent one for the Barbarian, for instance, would be something like "you cannot take damage". Powerful? No doubt. Does it mean that there isn't anything that can challenge the Barbarian? Of course there is, they can, for instance, be turned to stone. But still it makes most battles really weird. Fighter would get something like "you always hit with your attacks", rogues would be something like "you always get maximum sneak attack damage", and so on. It's just unfun.

I think what should be done is to look at the more powerful capstones, like the Druid's, the Cleric's, and the Paladin's, and work with things at approximately that level of power, but I don't think there is any real need to go beyond that level.

[Anderlith]

Capstones could maybe have an “Avatar of Theme” vibe where you start to tap into the Divine “Jungian/Platonic Ideal” of your class.

So the Barbarian turns into an indestructible embodiment of rage & a savage engine of destruction

The Bard for a moment becomes the Spirit of Song which enthralled all who see & hear

The Paladin IS the Sword of God(s) for a brief span

The Sorcerer gains UNLIMITED POWER!!! For half a minute

The Wizard speaks the secret Name of Magic he has spent his lifetime to find & understand