Godly rewards and which are best.
Tucked away discreetly in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (both the 2014 and 2024 editions) is a nifty little mechanic called blessings. It doesn’t get noticed much, but it’s super handy to have some ready made boons to hand to players in certain circumstances.
But what exactly are blessings, how do they work and which ones are best (if your DM is kind enough to let you choose)? Read on to find out.
What are blessings?
Blessings are supposed to be pretty rare boons that characters are granted by a deity for some incredible act. These are not magic items, they are permanent enhancements to your character that might even take you beyond the capabilities of ordinary mortals.
How do you obtain a blessing?
Your run of the mill adventuring activity won’t cut it here. Rescuing damsels, killing trolls or lifting curses are all too minor. This requires an accomplishment of truly momentous proportions. One that would catch the attention of a god!
Often a blessing will be the reward for completing a quest on behalf of a god. In fact, the DMG gives 3 examples of worthy acts to receive a blessing (though this isn’t an exhaustive list):
- Restoring the most sacred shrine of a god
- Foiling an earthshaking plot by the enemies of a god
- Helping a god’s favoured servant complete a holy quest
Of course, a blessing being bestowed is down to the DM. It’s also something that is not only rare, but likely will only happen once (though multiple blessings can be bestowed).
What blessings can you receive?
The DMG outlines 7 blessings that can be granted (though you could come up with your own) and there are 3 more that can be found in Phandelver Below: The Shattered Obelisk and Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden:
- Blessing of health: Gain +2 constitution up to a maximum of 22.
- Blessing of protection: Gain +1 to AC and saving throws.
- Blessing of magic resistance: Gain advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
- Blessing of understanding: Gain +2 wisdom to a maximum of 22.
- Blessing of Valhalla: Be able to summon spirit warriors as if you’ve blown the silver horn of Valhalla (but only once every 7 days). This means each blow of the horn summons 2d4+2 warriors with the berserker stat block (or 2 warriors if you’re using the 2024 rules).
- Blessing of weapon enhancement: One non-magical weapon you have becomes a +1 weapon whenever you wield it (so others can’t gain the benefit when they wield it).
- Blessing of wound closure: You gain the benefits of a periapt of wound closure. This means you stabilise on your next turn whenever you are dying and, whenever you roll hit dice for regaining hit points, the number of hit points regained is doubled. The 2024 version of this item is slightly different causing death saving throws to roll at least a 10, but the essence is similar.
- Blessing of Dumathoin (PBtSO): Gain darkvision and 1 minute of truesight every long rest.
- Blessing of the Solipsistic mind (IDTotF): Add d8 to ability checks and saving throws using wisdom, intelligence and charisma for an hour each long rest. You can’t use reactions during this time. There is a prerequisite with this one that you must have a Far Realm encounter with esoteric truths from an ancient tome.
- Blessing of the frostmaiden (IDRotF): Gain immunity to cold damage and the ability to cast cone of cold once per long rest.
Which blessings are best?
Perhaps your DM is feeling kind and allows you to choose your blessing, it does state outright that these should be beneficial to the player. Or maybe you’re a DM that wants to make sure that they grant a particularly potent blessing to their players. Well, I’ve ordered all the blessings available roughly from least to most powerful (though some character builds may find certain blessings more powerful than others):
10. Blessing of weapon enhancement
A +1 weapon is decent, especially at lower levels, but most blessings won’t come in early gameplay, they’ll come later when many characters already have magic weapons that are likely to be equal to or superior to a +1 weapon. Even if you grab this and don’t already have a better weapon, you’ll likely get one later in the campaign making this blessing pointless. For comparison, an artificer can make a +1 weapon at level 2. So good at early levels but likely not that useful at mid and higher levels.
9. Blessing of Valhalla
This one is decent enough, but gets worse the higher the levels you go. Berserkers are CR2, but you do get an average of 7 of them. That’s 469 hit points between them, which is a substantial meat shield. That is, unless you’re using the 2024 rules, in which case you get 2 of them which isn’t great except at low and maybe early mid levels. Their damage output diminishes with levels too with just a +5 to hit, are they threatening enough to provide enough of a distraction for enemies? They probably are for all but really high level encounters. But remember, this is a once per week use and the 2024 version is significantly weaker so it’s good, but not really good.
8. Blessing of wound closure
Good, but the biggest benefit is when you’re dying which isn’t where you want to be. Stabilise means you’re still down too. If the party is good at stabilising and healing anyway, then this is less useful. How useful double hit points is likely depends on the length of your adventuring days. Many won’t need to use all their hit dice each adventuring day. If that’s often the case at your table, then this can be a little redundant too. Useful for longer adventuring days though.
7. Blessing of Dumathoin
Darkvision is so easy to grab it’s almost not worth considering within this context. However, truesight is much harder to get and often requires spells. It’s quite situational though, but really useful when it comes up. Warlocks can grab it at level 15, but that’s permanent true sight, this just lasts a minute. A level 2 spell in see invisibility will probably handle many of the scenarios when you’d want to use truesight anyway so I’d be more inclined towards that kind of solution. This is still good though and truesight is better than see invisibility.
6. Blessing of the Frostmaiden
Cold immunity is great in a Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign but only decent in most other campaigns. Access to cone of cold could be great, especially for non-spellcasters as it has baked in DC that’s decent and an AoE option.
5. Blessing of the solipsistic mind
This covers more than half of spell saving throws and many more from non-spell monster features too. In fact it’s broader than the blessing of magic resistance in that sense, though the blessing of magic resistance covers all ability scores. This also helps with ability checks which includes all your knowledge and face skills as well as perception. But this is only for an hour and must be used in advance with an action. It also prevents you using reactions. There becomes quite a few caveats to this which I think reduce its effectiveness a lot, even if it’s very powerful when you can time its use right. Also keep in mind that this has some serious restrictions on when it can be granted.
4. Blessing of understanding
Not universally excellent. Some classes won’t get much from this, but for a druid, cleric or ranger, it’s really strong. It opens up your spellcasting to be even more potent as well as the most common saving throw ability and means things like your perception will be better. This might be the best blessing for those 3 classes, but it’s obviously less good on most classes.
3. Blessing of health
More hit points and better concentration saving throws (and other constitution saving throws) is universally good. A barbarian may get more from this as it can boost their unarmored defense beyond their normally capacity. Just be aware that there could be a conflict with primal champion if you make it to level 20. The ability score maximum doesn’t stack.
2. Blessing of magic resistance
This is a lot of extra resilience against what are often nasty effects. It’s not always clear what constitutes a magical effect, but in theory, that can be quite broad. This is a huge resilience buff and great on anyone.
1. Blessing of protection
Broader in protection than the blessing of magic resistance because it affects all saving throws and attack rolls too. But also smaller in impact for each defence. It’s tough to choose between the 2 if I’m honest, but if you’re facing lots of magical beings and spellcasters, then go with the blessing of magic resistance, but if you’re up against less magic or varied threats, then this is probably the better option.
That’s all the blessings outlined in the dungeon master’s guides and other books and how well they perform. If you’re not keen on these, then you can create your own. You could easily replicate a magic item and make it a permanent buff or simply use a different ability score to buff if that fits your party better. Otherwise, you have here a bunch of mechanically set blessings you can bestow on your party when the need arises.
