C.2 Epic Fates

After 21st level, characters no longer gain levels normally. However, they can still increase their personal power as they make progress towards their ultimate fate.

When you reach rank 7, you may choose an epic fate that you qualify for, or you may delay choosing until you meet the prerequisites for your desired fate. You do not start with any ranks in your chosen epic fate. Each epic fate specifies ways that you can make progress towards that epic fate. Whenever you make dramatic progress towards your epic fate, your rank in that epic fate may increase, at the discretion of the Game Master.

Epic fate abilities are beyond ordinary magic. They are closer to the reality-warping abilities of deities. Even epic fate abilities that are ostensibly mundane can achieve things that would normally be impossible. Creatures that are immune to magic, such as high level characters with the Null feat, are still affected normally by magical ✨ epic fate abilities.

C.2.1 Ascendant

You have begun to see through the weave of the world and glimpse the higher truths beyond. As your insight into the true nature of reality grows, you begin to transcend the physical realm. Eventually, you become a being of pure energy.

Prerequisites: You must have spent at least a week living in at least three of the following locations: Aqua, Ignis, Luna, Nexus, Terra, Ventus, and the Astral Expanse. In addition, you must have an Intelligence or Perception of at least 2.

Progression: You must discover and spend time in exotic environments with unusual properties, especially with energy-related phenomena, to discern the underlying structure of the universe revealed in extremes. This involves a mix of meditation, observation, and potentially dangerous personal experience. Discovering potentially valuable locations may require extensive research. In order to reach the highest ranks, you must journey into forbidden realms of powerful magic, like the inner sanctums of major deities or the horrific depths of the Eternal Void.

Ascendant Ranks

Rank1–Energetic Soul ✨: Whenever you use an ability, you can give that ability the Cold, Electricity, and Fire tags. In addition, whenever you take or deal damage from an ability that has any of those tags while not incorporeal, you and your equipment briefly become incorporeal. While you are incorporeal in this way, you gain an average fly speed and lose all other movement modes (see Flight). This flight has a height limit of 60 feet. In this form you are considered native to the air, so flying in this way does not make you unsteady (-2 accuracy, Armor, Brawn, Ref).

Rank2–See Through the Weave ✨: You can see everything within 120 feet of you perfectly, regardless of obstacles of any kind or light levels. This is similar to blindsight, except that it also ignores solid obstacles of any kind, allowing you to have line of sight through walls. You can perceive the presence of obstacles just as well as you can see what lies behind them.

Rank3–Reach Through the Weave ✨: When you use any of your abilities, you can use any location within 60 feet of you as a targeting proxy. You do not need line of effect to your chosen location. For example, this allows you to make melee attacks against creatures up to 60 feet away. This changes your line of effect, but does not change your line of sight.

Rank4–Become Energy ✨: You become permanently incorporeal, along with any equipment you carry. The fly speed from your energetic soul ability also becomes permanent. In addition, you no longer age and can never be injured.

Rank5–Ascension ✨: You cannot be killed, only dissipated. When you die, you automatically resurrect in a new body at a random location within 100 miles of your death after 1d8 hours. Resurrecting in this way does not cause the normal penalties for resurrection.

C.2.2 Avatar of Life

You are vibrantly and fully alive in a way other people can only dream of.

Prerequisites: You must be alive. In addition, you must have some contact with Gaia, the ultimate source and destination for all life. This could be benevolent, such as by gaining her blessing, or hostile, such as by stealing a sliver of her power for yourself.

Progression: To progress towards this epic fate, you must lifebond living things that are either individually powerful or massive in number.

Avatar of Life Ranks

Rank1–Lifebond ✨:

Rank2–Vibrant Senses: You gain a +10 bonus to the Awareness skill and a +2 bonus to your Perception. In addition, you gain lifesense with a 300 foot radius and lifesight with a 120 foot radius. If you already have either of those abilities, you increase their range by that amount. Your lifesense and lifesight can also penetrate up to 1 foot of any solid material.

Rank3–Burgeoning Life: Your maximum hit points are doubled. In addition, whenever you regain hit points, you regain the same number of hit points at the end of your next turn. This ability does not trigger itself.

Rank4–Lifebond Infusion ✨: Creatures that you are lifebonded to gain the benefit of your vibrant senses ability. Non-creatures that you are lifebonded to gain the benefit of your burgeoning life ability, and they grow at a hundred times their normal rate while only requiring their normal nutrients.

Rank5–Bonds Beyond Death ✨: When you die, your lifebonds do not end. If any part of your corpse is brought to anything you are lifebonded to, you are automatically resurrected after 8 hours in its presence. Resurrecting in this way does not cause the normal penalties for resurrection. In addition, any creature that you are lifebonded to can choose to sacrifice a piece of its life to resurrect you without a corpse. This requires 24 hours. If you are resurrected in this way, that creature suffers penalties as if it had also been resurrected (see Resurrection).

C.2.3 Axiom

You embody a specific universal truth or constant of the universe. When you gain this epic fate, you choose an axiom to adopt as your own. Your axiom can be a philosophical concept, a directive, or a material fact, as long as it can be expressed at its most basic level in one or two words and it is widely applicable. "Fight", "Choice", "Truth", "Gravity", "Change", and "Exist" are all valid examples of axioms.

Prerequisites: You must spend at least a week contemplating the many facets of your axiom and accepting it as your own.

Progression: To progress towards this epic fate, you must change the universe to more closely resemble your axiom. This could take many forms. For example, if your axiom is "Truth", you could spend time hunting down and killing all known liars and oathbreakers in a given country, or you could reform a country’s educational system to correct systematic misconceptions about the world. To reach higher ranks, the scope and significance of your changes must increase. In addition, as you reach higher ranks, you become increasingly incapable of acting against your axiom.

Axiom Ranks

Rank1–Internalized Axiom: You gain a +4 bonus to one attribute and two skills that are thematically related to your chosen axiom.

Rank2–Immutable: You become immune to conditions and all debuffs defined in Circumstances and Debuffs. In addition, you no longer age.

Rank3–Walk the Affinity Web ✨: You can intuitively sense the direction to any locations within 500 miles of you that are strongly connected to your axiom. In general, this can only sense locations that involve large numbers of people, such as cities, or extraordinarily powerful individuals. For example, an axiom of "Fight" could sense two armies fighting, but not a tavern brawl or a village defending itself from a goblin raid. Each location has its own distinct "signature". This does not give you any other information about the location by itself, but once you have been to a location, you can recognize it again with this ability.

As a standard action, you can teleport yourself and up to ten allies to any location that you sense with this ability. Teleporting in this way increases your fatigue level by 1.

Rank4–Axiomatic Adherence ✨:

Rank5–Universal Truth: You are as immortal as the concept you embody. When you die, you automatically resurrect in a new body after 8 hours at the location in the universe that most strongly embodies your axiom. That location does not have to be on the same plane as where you died, but it must exist outside of the Aligned Planes. If no location in the universe is sufficiently related to your axiom, you die permanently.

C.2.4 Deity

People have begun to worship you, putting you on the path to become a deity. As your followers grow, you become capable of ever greater miraculous acts, and you can grant your followers some of your power. Eventually, you ascend into the pantheon of gods.

Prerequisites: You must have at least a hundred worshippers with souls to choose this epic fate. In addition, you must not have any cleric archetypes.

Progression: To progress towards this epic fate, you must gain a significant number of additional worshippers. In general, you must at least double your worshippers to progress towards each new rank of this fate, though this can vary widely. Having worshippers among many different places is more valuable than converting an isolated group to worship you, though both are helpful.

Deity Ranks

Rank1–Domain Influence: Choose a cleric domain. You gain all abilities from that domain except for its mastery ability. In addition, your worshippers become eligible to gain cleric archetypes, though they cannot exceed a maximum rank in those archetypes of twice your rank in this epic fate (to a maximum of 7). This does not grant additional archetypes to worshippers who have already chosen their three archetypes, and is usually only relevant to NPC worshippers.

Rank2–Prayers ✨: You hear all prayers directed to you. Once per week, you can teleport yourself and up to ten allies any distance within the same plane as a standard action. Your destination must either be a worshipper actively praying to you or a holy place dedicated to you. In addition, choose a second cleric domain. You gain all abilities from that domain except for its mastery ability.

Rank3–Domain Masteries: You gain the mastery abilities from the domains you chose with your domain influence and prayers abilities.

Rank4–Demigod: You become a demigod. You no longer age normally, and you cannot die from old age. You become a soulforged native to a Spiritual Plane matching your alignment. For details about the Spiritual Planes, see the Grimoire of Guidance. While you are on that plane, you can teleport to any plane with your prayers ability from this epic fate. In addition, you can use that teleportation ability once per hour instead of once per week.

Rank5–Deification: You become a minor deity. You are transported to a Spiritual Plane matching your alignment, and you gain divine dominion over an amount of territory in that plane. While you are in your territory, you can freely reshape your territory with a thought to match your desires, and you are immune to all damage and conditions. Unlike major deities, you are still able to leave your home plane. However, you suffer a -2 penalty to your fatigue tolerance whenever you are not on your home plane.

While you are on any Spiritual Plane, you can teleport to anywhere within your home plane as a standard action. In addition, there is no limit on the number of times you can teleport with your prayers ability from this epic fate.

C.2.5 Hero of Legend

You are widely known as a hero, rescuing those in need. As your deeds of heroism spread, you gain abilities to help you protect others. Although you will eventually die, your legend will live on, inspiring others to save people as you did.

Prerequisites: You must be publicly known to be involved with saving at least one major country or similarly large group of people from some sort of disaster to choose this epic fate.

Progression: To progress towards this epic fate, you must publicly contribute to saving large numbers of people from death or other major disasters in a way that builds your reputation. Reaching the higher ranks typically requires saving a significant fraction of a major plane from some sort of catastrophe.

Hero of Legend Ranks

Rank1–Worthy Hero: You and all allies who can see or hear you are immune to being frightened and panicked. In addition, you gain a +100 bonus to your maximum hit points.

Rank2–Heroic Intervention: As a standard action, you may choose any number of allies within Long (90 ft.) range. Whenever a chosen creature would be attacked, that attack is made against you instead. If the attack would have targeted both you and that ally, the attack only targets you once, not twice. This ability lasts until you dismiss it as a free action.

Rank3–Invincible Hero: You gain a +4 bonus to all defenses. In addition, you cannot be vulnerable (-4 defenses) for any reason.

Rank4–Answer the Call ✨: You gain an intuitive sense for when people need your aid. Whenever someone on the same plane as you is in danger, you are aware of the existence of that danger. You can sense the general category of danger (fire, combat, drowning, etc.) and a very approximate direction and distance. This generally allows you to sense if a large number of people are in danger from the same thing. As a standard action, you can teleport any distance within that plane to reach a person in danger.

Rank5–Heroic Legacy: If you die, your legend lives on. You may choose a worthy successor, either before your death or after your death from your afterlife plane. When you die, or as soon as you choose a successor while dead, your successor immediately gains the Rank 1 benefit from this archetype. As long as your successor lives and remains worthy, you cannot choose to be resurrected from your afterlife. As a player, you may choose to play as your successor instead of your original character if the GM allows it.

C.2.6 Mutant

Your body has been altered by battle scars and strange experiments. As your mutations grow ever more extreme, you become more powerful - and more monstrous. Eventually, you can regenerate from death itself, though some scars never fade.

Prerequisites: Dangerous experiments to mutate your body in extreme ways must have been performed on you. You can choose the nature of these experiments, such as alchemical or magical. Some mutants do this to themselves, while others find willing collaborators. In addition, you must have a Constitution of at least 2.

Progression: To progress towards this epic fate, you must continue ever more radical forms of experimentation. As you become inured to ordinary alterations to your body, you must travel and research to find unique substances of immense power to fuel the experiments. To reach the higher ranks, you must undergo experiments that kill you far more often than they succeed, so you will need to be resurrected multiple times to continue down this path.

Mutant Ranks

Rank1–Unnatural Arsenal: You grow an extra functioning arm and hand. In addition, you gain a wide variety of natural weapons (see Table 9.6: Natural Weapons). You gain a bite, horn, ram, stinger, and tentacle. In addition, two of your hands become claws. You gain these weapons in addition to any natural weapons you already have, no matter how biologically implausible that may be. In addition, each of your natural weapons has the Sweeping (3) weapon tag in addition to its other weapon tags.

Rank2–Regeneration: At the end of your turn, you regain hit points equal to 20 times your rank in this epic fate. In addition, you may increase the result of one of your vital wounds by 1, to a maximum of 10. If you are unconscious, this automatically applies to your most severe vital wounds first.

Rank3–Monstrous Form: Your size increases by one size category. In addition, you gain a wide variety of movement modes.

You gain an average climb speed, an average swim speed, and a slow burrow speed. Wings also grow from your back, granting you an average fly speed with a 60 foot height limit (see Flight).

Rank4–Two Heads Are Better Than One: You grow a second head. Whenever you gain a condition, you choose which head gains the condition, with the restriction that the chosen head must not already have more conditions than the other head. At the start of your turn, you can choose which heads are active until your next turn. You are only subject to the effects of the conditions affecting active heads. If you choose for both heads to be active, you can use an extra minor action during your turn.

Rank5–Regenerative Immortality: You can regenerate from any wounds, even lethal ones. When you die, your regeneration ability continues functioning. Once that ability improves your vital wounds so they are all above 0, you return to life. However, each time you die, you gain a new scar that your regeneration always recreates.

If your corpse is mutilated, burned, immersed in acid, or fully destroyed, this process can take much longer to complete, but it cannot be fully stopped. A drop of blood, flake of skin, or other remnant of your corpse will always persist and regenerate eventually. If your body is separated into pieces while you are dead, each piece will attempt to regenerate individually. Your soul will automatically return to the first piece that regenerates completely, at which point the remaining fragments will wither and die.

C.2.7 Paradox

You exist partly outside of the ordinary flow of time and destiny. Your very existence wreaks havoc on prophecies and the orderly sequence of events. As your alterations to the natural timeline of the universe grow in scope, your ability to bend time to your whims grows in turn. Eventually, you become a fixed point across all of time.

Prerequisites: You must have been directly involved with an action that resulted in a significant change to at least one major country or similarly significant entity. Any type of change is acceptable, as long as it is important to history and would not have happened without your involvement.

Progression: To progress towards this epic fate, you must be alter the course of other major events that will be remembered to history. Reaching the higher ranks typically requires changing the fate of major planes, or creatures of similar importance.

Paradox Ranks

Rank1–Temporal Aberration: Your actions, and events involving you, cannot be observed in any effect that sees or predicts the future. This applies against both magical abilities and abilities that rely on direct observation. Prophecies are only able to describe how events would happen without your intervention, and are blind to any changes you might cause.

In addition, whenever you would make a movement, you can make two different movements and then decide which one was the movement you actually made. You can make this decision after observing how other creatures react to your movement, but before taking any other actions.

The other movement never happened, and had no effect. Only the movement itself is reverted in this way. Any other abilities you used during the resolution of that movement, such as the sprint ability, still happened, so you would still gain fatigue and resolve other effects.

Rank2–A Fork In Time’s Road: Whenever you would take a standard action, you can take two different standard actions and then decide which one was the action you actually took. You can make this decision after seeing all die results and observing all effects of both actions, but before taking any other actions.

The other action never happened, and has no effect. Only the standard action itself is reverted in this way. Any other abilities you used during the resolution of that action, such as the desperate exertion ability, still happened, so you would still gain fatigue and resolve other effects.

Rank3–Choose Fate: Once per short rest, whenever you or any other creature you are aware of rolls an attack or check, you can choose the result of that die. You can choose to use this ability after learning the result of the action using that die roll, including whether it succeeded or failed and the result of any damage dice based on the attack. However, you must use it before any other actions resolve. If you use this to make an attack explode, subsequent dice after the die you modify in this way are rolled normally. Using this to affect an enemy’s action may change the actions taken by other enemies in that enemy’s allied group, which the GM should resolve.

Rank4–Paradoxical Defense: Whenever a creature attacks you, it must reroll the attack roll once and keep the lower result. This does not protect any other targets of the attack.

Rank5–Fixed Point: You become an immutable fact across all of time. You no longer age. Whenever you die, history is rewritten so you retroactively never died instead. The changes are as subtle and believable as possible, but even extraordinary coincidences can occur to save you from death. You typically still end up unconscious from vital wounds, and are always removed from combat or otherwise unable to usefully act for at least ten minutes, but you survive.

C.2.8 Slayer

You are a killer of legendary skill. As your body count increases, you gain abilities to help you track down and kill increasingly powerful foes. Eventually, your powers threaten the gods themselves, allowing you a unique ability to transcend death.

Prerequisites: You must be directly involved with slaying at least one elite creature with a level of at least 21.

Progression: To progress towards this epic fate, you must publicly contribute to slaying increasingly dangerous and fearsome foes. To reach the higher ranks, you must kill creatures of singular power whose influence is felt across multiple planes. This might include demon princes, supreme dragons beyond even the power of wyrms, or the nightmarish precursor aberrations in the Eternal Void.

Slayer Ranks

Rank1–Lethality: The damage bonus you gain from getting a critical hit is doubled. This means that a regular critical hit deals triple damage, a double critical deals five times normal damage, and so on.

Rank2–Precision Killer: You gain a +4 bonus to your accuracy. In addition, you can inflict critical hits on any creature regardless of its body structure, magic items, or other abilities.

Rank3–Mark of the Slayer: As a minor action, you can choose to mark any creature you can unambiguously identify. This includes any creature you can see, as well as any creature you know the name of and can differentiate from other similar creatures. You can only mark one creature at a time, and applying a new mark replaces any previous mark. You cannot use this ability to replace a mark that is less than a week old if the recipient of the previous mark still lives.

This mark is visible on the creature’s body with a design that is recognizably yours. It appears on top of any clothing or other attempt to conceal it, even if the creature is invisible. Anyone can recognize the significance of the mark with a difficulty value 15 Knowledge (arcana or local) check, and creatures that understand the significance of the mark may refuse to give your target aid of any kind to avoid risking your wrath.

You know the exact distance and direction to any creature you have marked with this ability that is on the same plane as you. If they are not on the same plane as you, you know which plane they are on, but not their location within that plane. As a standard action, you can create a scrying sensor adjacent to them that you can see and hear through. The sensor lasts as long as you sustain it as a free action. It moves to stay adjacent to the target, regardless of its speed.

Rank4–Slayer’s Journey ✨: As a standard action, you can teleport yourself and up to ten allies any distance within the same plane to the location of a creature affected by your mark of the slayer ability from this epic fate. You cannot precisely choose the destination of this ability, and it does not leave you immediately adjacent to the marked creature. Generally, it leaves you just outside any sort of fortress or defenses the marked creature has constructed. After using this ability, you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest.

Rank5–Godslayer: Creatures cannot be immune or impervious to your attacks. You can punch ghosts, set fire to fire elementals, and so on. In addition, you can destroy artifacts and even inflict damage on deities in their divine dominion. As a result, even deities fear to interfere with you directly. If you ever die, you can generally threaten or fight your way past any planar guardians to leave your afterlife whenever you want. After you do this once, you become a soulforged native to your afterlife plane, since your new body is formed from the essentia of that plane.

C.2.9 Undying

You have sought out strange magical power in search of a way to artificially prolong your life. As your power grows, you become increasingly able to resist death and return from it. Eventually, you will transcend death entirely.

Prerequisites: You must perform a series of rituals to prepare yourself for immortality, at least one of which must be rank 7 or higher. There are many kinds of immortality that you can pursue with this epic fate, and the exact nature of the rituals will change depending on the type of immortality you pursue.

Progression: You must discover powerful new magic rituals that support your particular form of immortality. This generally requires exploring sites of ancient magic, gaining favor with powerful creatures who have relevant knowledge or abilities, and independent experimentation based on your findings.

Undying Ranks

Rank1–Death Familiarity: You become so familiar with the trauma of injury and death that your mind and body adapt to it. You ignore all vital wound effects other than death, and you no longer suffer a penalty when you resurrect.

Rank2–Life After Death ✨: If you die from any cause other than old age, you automatically resurrect according to nature of your chosen path to immortality. For example, you can have a phylactery regenerate a new body for you like a lich, or you can create clones of yourself or golems that you inhabit if your first body dies. You must always return in a new body of some sort.

Your specific form of immortality determines where you return, such as at the site of your death or at your personal sanctum. However, it cannot be based on the location or state of your old corpse, since that corpse is no longer “you”. Your corpse can still be used for ordinary resurrection methods before this process completes. The timing of your resurrection may also differ based on your immortality, but you cannot complete your resurrection sooner than one day after the time of your death. After you resurrect in this way, this ability does not function for 48 hours, allowing you to be killed normally.

This immortality may change your base species, such as if you become a lich or move your body into a flesh golem. If it does, you retain all benefits and modifiers from your original species other than size, and you gain the effects of the new species in addition.

Rank3–Artificial Life ✨: Whenever you resurrect with your life after death ability, your new body gains a +2 bonus to two attributes of your choice. The attributes are determined differently for each new body. In addition, that resurrection functions even if the cause of your death was old age, and you can control the physical age of your new body.

Rank4–Deathcaller: You are deeply familiar with death, and know how to most effectively inflict it on others. Whenever you cause a living creature to lose at least half its hit points in a single turn, you may kill that creature outright. In addition, your artificial life ability affects three attributes of your choice.

Rank5–True Immortality ✨: You become fully immortal. There is no time limit after the resurrection from your life after death ability where you become vulnerable to a true death. In addition, the resurrection can complete as quickly as one minute after your death. If a physical component limits your immortality, such as a phylactery, it can no longer be damaged or destroyed without the direct intervention of a rank 5 Slayer.