Epic boon feats in D&D 2024

Everything you need to know about these high level feats, how they work and great combinations for gameplay.

What are epic boons?

Epic boons are kind of like super feats. Every class at level 19 gets access to an additional feat. This could be one of the standard feats, but for the first time, your character can now gain access to 1 of the 12 epic boons instead. They’re better than standard feats so I expect most people will opt for one of these.

Each epic boon grants an ability score increase (usually you can choose which score increases but sometimes the options are limited) as well as a powerful new ability.

One of the great things about epic boons is they can be used to increase your ability scores above the usual maximum of 20. This means that as of level 19, your character can have ability scores that now reach a maximum of 30!

To help you get there, you can now level up beyond level 20 too. There aren’t any class specific ways to level up beyond level 20, instead, at each level, you can pick a new feat (including an epic boon), giving you the chance to get very powerful!

This may also have implications for multiclass characters. It’s not clear whether after level 20, they continue taking levels in whichever class they choose, or whether they start then taking epic boons. This will be one to wait and find out on. Based on the way epic boons work in D&D 2014, I suspect standard level progression will stop after level 20, but a lot is changing in this regard for D&D 2024.

What epic boons can you take?

Each class has an epic boon recommended for them, but in reality, you can choose whatever epic boon you like (and in some cases, the recommended epic boon may not be your best option). I’ve outlined all the epic boons available along with tactics to consider when using them:

Boon of the combat prowess

Recommended class: Fighter

Ability score increase: Increase one ability score by 1 to a maximum of 30.

Ability: Whenever you miss an attack roll, you can hit instead. Once you use the ability, you can’t use it again until the start of your next turn.

Tactics: You really want a martial character using this ability over a spellcaster. And the more attacks you make, the more use you’ll gain from it. This makes it best for the likes of fighters and monks who have a lot of attacks, but rogues are worth considering too with a single attack (or 2 with two weapon fighting or the nick weapon mastery) to ensure they land that precious sneak attack.

Boon of energy resistance

Recommended class: Unknown

Ability score increase: +1 to constitution

Ability: Gain resistance to 2 damage types other than force. You can change these resistances when you take a long rest. If hit by one of these damage types, you can use your reaction to target someone within 60ft and causing 2d12 damage of that damage type on a failed dexterity saving throw.

Tactics: Unless you know what kind of creature you’re likely to face, ensure you have resistance to common damage types like poison, necrotic or fire.

Boon of fortitude

Recommended class: Unknown

Ability score increase: +1 to constitution

Ability: Increase your hit points maximum by 40 and once per day, when you’re healed, can be healed and extra amount equal to your constitution modifier.

Tactics: enjoy being tougher. You’re also a great target for healing as that healing will go further. Otherwise, enjoy being able to be less cautious.

Boon of recovery

Recommended class: Unknown

Ability score increase: +1 to constitution

Ability: Once per long rest, if reduced to 0 hit points, you’re instead brought up to half your maximum hit points. You also have a pool of 10d10s that you can use as a bonus action to heal yourself with. These recover every long rest.

Tactics: Rather than using your bonus action too often to keep topping up your health, use it once when you start to look too damaged to ensure you can make your action economy and your pool of healing go further. Just be careful you don’t wait too long.

Boon of truesight

Recommended class: Paladin

Ability score increase: Increase one of your ability scores by 1 up to a maximum of 30.

Ability: You gain Truesight out to a radius of 60 feet.

Tactics: This is a situational ability meaning it won’t always be useful. You’re relying on coming across illusions, invisibility, shapechangers and magical darkness. While such things can be incredibly devastating, they aren’t necessarily common either.

However, with a bit of engineering, you can make this ability more useful. Get your friendly neighbourhood spellcaster to take the darkness spell and have them cast it on an object you’re holding (like your armor). Now you can charge into combat granting yourself advantage and your enemies disadvantage (at least against most things) as you can see through the magical darkness.

Boon of the night spirit

Recommended class: Rogue

Ability score increase: Increase one ability score by 1, up to a maximum of 30.

Ability: While in Dim Light or Darkness, you have Resistance to all damage except Psychic and Radiant and, as a Bonus Action, you can gain the Invisible condition.

Tactics: This one’s a little situational too as you’re reliant on your DM not making every combat brightly lit, but most places should have some kind of shadows somewhere.

This one is about safety in combat and stealth outside of it. In combat, you can take your shot than slip into the shadows, a bit like a more powerful version of cunning action hide. This will give you advantage on your attack next turn (important for rogues) and keep you mostly safe.

For stealthy moments, you now get invisibility in dim light and darkness. As long as it’s night or you’re underground, you’re mostly covered making this potentially very powerful and keeping you very safe.

Its best for ranged attackers and those competent at stealth (though can make anyone pretty decent at stealth). This makes it best for rogues and rangers but also for spellcasters like wizards and sorcerers.

Having said that, nature’s veil for the ranger works in this way in combat (just less often) so does partially make this redundant. Wizards, sorcerers and bards also have access to the likes of greater invisibility which achieves a similar benefit (and a little better, certainly for combat). So perhaps the true beneficiaries of this epic boon are rogues, warlocks and clerics.

Boon of fate

Recommended class: Cleric

Ability score increase: Increase one ability score of 1 to a maximum of 30.

Ability: When you or another creature within 60 feet of you succeeds or fails on a D20 test, you can roll 2d4 and add or subtract the result from the d20 roll. Once you use this feat, you can’t use it again until you complete a Short Rest, a Long Rest, or roll for Initiative.

Tactics: Handily, this doesn’t seem to need any kind of action to use. You’ll want to save it for d20 rolls that are crucial and close, but still a failure. The likes of a save against a nasty condition or a crucial attack from a rogue’s sneak attack perhaps.

The range is large enough that you should usually be able to aid an ally with this whether you’re lurking at the back or in the thick of combat making it a useful ability for any class really.

Boon of spell recall

Recommended class: Bard, wizard

Ability score increase: Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma ability score by 1 up to a maximum of 30.

Ability: When you cast a spell using a level 1-4 spell slot, roll 1d4. If you roll the spell’s level, the slot isn’t expended.

Tactics: This ability feels a tad weak to me unfortunately. The recommended classes for this epic boon (bards and wizards) will have a large repertoire of spells at this point and while more spell uses are welcome, this equates to about 4 extra spell slot use per day if you burn through all your spell slots. However, most groups don’t have a large number of encounters per day meaning that at this stage, you’re unlikely to be getting a huge amount of benefit from this ability.

It becomes more useful for half casters who only have spells up to level 5, so most of their spells are affected by this, and with limited spells uses, a few extra spell slots will feel much more valuable. The best use case here is a paladin with their smites which can easily get burned up over a couple of combat encounters. You’d average an extra 4 or so smites per day with this ability of varying levels which does feel substantial.

With that considered, I’d suggest your better options for this epic boon are paladins and rangers (not bards and wizards) who get a similar number of spells at this level, but where these extra spell uses will be more precious.

Boon of dimensional travel

Recommended class: Ranger

Ability score increase: Increase one ability score by 1 (up to a maximum of 30).

Ability: Immediately after you take the Attack or Magic action, you can teleport up to 30 feet.

Tactics: This is great for hit and run tactics or those that need to jump from one part of the battlefield to the next. It’s superior to things like cunning action which let you disengage as a bonus action as it’s free with your action and teleporting let’s you move further.

This makes it decent for a ranger, but even better for a monk. You could argue that with their disengage as a bonus action ability, this class doesn’t need this, which they don’t. However, this now frees up their bonus action for the likes of flurry of blows. It works less well for the rogue now nick is an option instead of using your bonus action on an offhand attack, it remains free to disengage anyway.

Spellcasters like wizards and sorcerers could get mileage here to keep safe instead of using a bonus action and a spell slot in misty step. Alternatively, martials like barbarians and fighters can use it to hop to advantageous parts of the battlefield making no one safe from their fury!

Boon of irresistible offense

Recommended class: Monk, barbarian

Ability score increase: This boon of epic proportions starts by allowing you to increase your Strength or Dexterity by 1 up to a maximum of 30.

Ability: You get the ability to overcome resistance to Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing damage with your attacks. Finally, when you roll a 20 on the die for an attack roll, you get to deal damage equal to the ability score that you used to make the attack.

Tactics: Works best for classes with a high number of attacks and melee damage allowing you to overcome resistances with ease. You also get bonus damage when rolling a 20 to hit so the more attacks you make, the more you’ll land mega damage (which stacks with a critical hit). Make sure you take attacks with advantage as much as possible using the likes of flanking or the topple weapon mastery feature to achieve this.

Note that this works on a roll to hit of a 20 rather than a critical hit, so something like a champion, which makes landing a critical easier, won’t necessarily get more benefit from this ability.

This makes fighters and monks a couple of the better options for this epic boon, but the likes of paladins, rangers and barbarians make decent options too.

Boon of skill

Recommended class: No recommended class yet

Ability score increase: Increase one ability score by 1 to a maximum of 30.

Ability: Grants you proficiencies in all skills and gives you expertise in one skill.

Tactics: Weirdly, this is most effective for the non-skill monkey classes as they already have as many proficiencies as they likely need. An expertise remains nice for bards and rogues, as does more proficiencies, but you’ll likely get more mileage from other classes that want to join in the out of combat efforts.

It’s going to be most effective for high charisma, wisdom and dexterity classes as more skills are associated with these abilities. Strength and constitution are much rarer. This means it can buff the likes of monks, sorcerers, paladins and warlocks in some crucial areas.

However, at this stage, you likely either have a good spread of skills in the party, or a skills specialist, or have decided it’s not that important for the party so the question to ask is whether you really need to be good at every skill anyway…

One of my readers did point out that there’s an interesting interaction with this epic boon, and the rogue’s reliable talent feature. By taking the epic boon of skill, they effectively get a minimum roll of 10 on all skill checks, plus the bonus of their proficiency (or expertise) making them extremely reliable for any skill check.

Boon of speed

Recommended class: No recommended class yet

Ability score increase: Increase one ability score by 1 to a maximum of 30.

Ability: Lets you Disengage as a Bonus Action and adds 30 feet to your Speed.

Tactics: Great for hit and run tactics and slightly less so, but still good for martials that want to move around the battlefield a lot. Unfortunately, the core hit and run classes already have disengage as a bonus action (rogues and monks). A valor bard could make use of this, as could a ranger though.

For that reason though, you’re likely mostly here for the extra speed, which is substantial. This is universally useful for any martials. You’ll want to quickly close the gap between you and the enemy, move quickly round the battlefield and sometimes hit and run more profoundly.

The great thing here is a monk could easily transform into a Flash-like character. A centaur with 40ft speed (or a Wood Elf with 35ft as well as a few other races) with an additional 30ft from your monk class, plus 10ft from the mobile feat with another 30ft from this epic boon gives you a move speed of 110ft which is ridiculous and wonderful at the same time.

You can even apply this to the likes of swim, climb and fly speeds by being a ranger (who now gets a climb and swim speed) or a race with those types of movement speeds (like an Aarakockra or a Water Genasi). You can hurtle through the water like Aquaman or zip through the air like Captain Marvel.

The changes to epic boons and the strong integration as a core levelling up feature feels well thought out and appropriately powerful. They also offer a load of flexibility for late game character progression. Not every epic boon feels equal in power, but generally, they feel like strong options for level 19 characters and beyond.

What do you think of the new epic boons? Let me know in the comments below.

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