D&D 5E Best PHB Ranger Guide Ever

The following is the best guide to use with a Ranger you will ever read or ever need. Most guides go through all the options and rate them colours. I am going to condense that down to a very short basic 101 guide to playing a ranger.


Equipment. Use a bow.

Abilites. Dex and con are the best abilities,wisdom as a tertiary. With the default array go 16/14/14.

Races. Pick a variant human for the bonus feat. If the variant human is not allowed any of the dex based races but probably a wood elf.

Class. Well you are a ranger. Pick the hunter ranger. Build said ranger right.


Feats. Pick the sharpshoter feat, buff dex to 20. Profit. After that take whatever feats you like (I like resilient con or alert). With rolled stats higher than the default array crossbow expertise is also good (you have other things to do with your bonus action).

Spells. Go read hunters quarry. Use hunters quarry.

Class features. Archery Style, Hordebreaker (synergy with sharpshooter -5/+10), Escape the Horde, Volley, Uncanny dodge.

Q&A

Why archery over melee?

Its better due to the sharpshooter feat. Also rangers are not proficient in con saves (for concentration) so you don't really want to try messing around with hunters quarry in melee or tripping over to many bonus actions dual wielding.

Why hordebreaker over colossus slayer?

Due to the way Hordebreaker works with the sharpshooter feat. If you do not want to use the -5/+10 part of the sharpshooter feat or you DM likes metagaming against you in encounter design colossus slayer is perfectly fine.

And thus concludes my best ranger guide ever. I feel it is a bit to long so any suggestions to shorten it are welcome. That is all.

Yup, that's certainly the recipe for the generic (archery themed) ranger.....

Oh wow, the 'this-is-broken' thread of the week somehow found it's way into the CharOps section.

Yunru said:

Oh wow, the 'this-is-broken' thread of the week somehow found it's way into the CharOps section.

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Na its if you want to have a decent ranger its more or less what you pick. Assuming you want to go archery.

People seem to think rangers suck. They don't the beasatmaster kinda does and the melee ranger is mostly average with 1 exception.

Zardnaar said:

Na its if you want to have a decent ranger its more or less what you pick. Assuming you want to go archery.

People seem to think rangers suck. They don't the beasatmaster kinda does and the melee ranger is mostly average with 1 exception.

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Well... can't disagree with that.

Hi,

The Races section might warrant expansion. An Aarocoa (sp?) gets boosts to Dex and Wis, and always-on flight (14th or 18th level feature for some classes) seems an intriguing alternative for a ranged ranger. Better than early Sharpshooter in some games.

Anyway,

Ken

Ovarwa said:

Hi,

The Races section might warrant expansion. An Aarocoa (sp?) gets boosts to Dex and Wis, and always-on flight (14th or 18th level feature for some classes) seems an intriguing alternative for a ranged ranger. Better than early Sharpshooter in some games.

Anyway,

Ken

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Miss the PHB part of the title?

Well ... I can't disagree that the number and types of effective PHB Ranger builds are very limited.

I believe I may have a stronger Ranger build.
Be a race that gets longbow proficiency. Be a Valor Bard.

Zardnaar said:

Equipment. Bow.

Abilites. Dex. Con secondary, wisdom as a tertiary.

Races. Pick a variant human for the bonus feat. If not allowed, any dex based race.

Class. Hunter ranger.


Feats. Sharpshooter, your choice after 20 Dex.

Spells. Hunters quarry.

Class features. Archery Style, Hordebreaker, Volley.

Q&A

How does it work? Shoot things until they die. Sharpshooter technically boosts every attack in a volley for each -5.

Click to expand...

Shortened it for you