Revised Ranger update

Yunru said:

I see, you must work for them then, no?

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It sure does seem like he's working for them...

Parmandur said:

It's not that I don't understand the criticism, I disagree with the criticism. I have seen the Beastmaster do well, and I have seen good cases made for the subclass as designed. Just because I disagree with a subjective argument doesn't mean that I don't understand it.

I have, if anything, an overly critical mind with my own opinions. My opinions are different from your opinions, and in the context of this forum set up to exchange ideas, I am sharing them.

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Good.

So you do have opinions. Great!

Now, let us discuss them, instead of hiding behind WotC's decisions.

By that I mean that if you're prepared to stand by YOUR opinion that the Beastmaster is great, that's a good basis for further discussion.

What's entirely useless OTOH is saying the class is great because WotC's numbers says it is, or because WotC needs the issue to go away.

If you truly think you can defend the PHB Beastmaster using your own words and ideas, that would be interesting. We should probably start a new thread for that.

lkj said:

They are waiting until they have the results of that survey in hand before they move forward.

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In my opinion, they don't get enough flak for this waiting game.

Folks, waiting means doing nothing, giving us nothing. There's nothing positive about it. It mostly means WotC can keep staff costs down.

Mistwell said:

I think those two additions would be enough.

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I think we agree the UA Ranger overcompensated.

We also agree the Ranger *can* be fixed. It's not an insurmountable problem (unless WotC gets hung up about treating the PHB like holy writ that may never be changed).

The issue isn't that a fix can't be found.

The issue is that the full value isn't reached until the fix is published in an official hardback.

I've lost track of exactly what your tweak does, but I trust your judgement that it would indeed negate the worst aspects of the PHB Beastmaster.

I would love for WotC to officially include it in the game, ideally by errataing the PHB.

Yunru said:

And yet said surveys placed the ranger as the least favourite class.

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What surveys? The last class popularity survey was done years ago, and, even then the Ranger wasn't the least popular class. The druid was: http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/dd-survey-results-summary

Hussar said:

What surveys? The last class popularity survey was done years ago, and, even then the Ranger wasn't the least popular class. The druid was: http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/dd-survey-results-summary

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The one they quote in the revised ranger UA.

OB1 said:

[MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION] just because WotC doesn’t want to take the disruptive step of putting out a revision to a class doesn’t mean they can’t look at other ways to increase satisfaction levels for different play styles. Feats, fighting styles, and spells all offer ways to give players more choice without the confusion of multiple versions of the class.

It will be tough having to give up a spell or a feat or a fighting style, but you can choose to do it or not. Either it’s worth the opportunity cost to you or not. Why is that a bad approach?

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I'm not sure how disruptive a rewrite would be, after all, I don't think it has been disruptive for the UA to exist, nor the numerous homebrew ranger options.

Sure, getting an "official" new class would be different in tone, but I don't think it would necessarily be terribly disruptive.


As for why some of those options are bad, Fighting Styles are too early and aren't designed to handle that much mechanical wieght. Spells are already a precious resource and highly limited for low level rangers especially (the most important levels since the majority of people will play them). Feats are optional rules, but they are the best candidates for this. However, it would by necessity be a Beastmaster exclusive feat to be robust enough to alter the class. We only just recently got racial feats and I don't think we are seeing Class feats coming down the pipe and if we did they would still be broader than a subclass feat which is what this would end up being if it was to be useful enough.

And then, depending on what changes you make exactly, it is going to be a feat, costing resources, that essentially errata's the rules for the Beastmaster, which would immediately raise the question of why not just alter the class publicly instead of trying to do it sneakily and costing us resources.

Mistwell said:

I didn't say the Beastmaster Ranger is fine (though I do think the other subclasses are fine for the Ranger). I've said throughout the thread I think it could use some additional elements, but that I think they could be done without an alternative class or errata, but simply by publishing some additional options for the existing class. Like those I mentioned.

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Guess I just feel like if you are going to change it, change it. Don't see a whole lot of point in "only kind of changing it".

Mistwell said:

The actual proposal I wrote (which I thought you read, as this was a summary of an earlier discussion in this thread) involved just aiding any allied creature of the beast sub-type. This would help with befriended animals found using the skill, or animals found using a variety of spells, or other animals in the party like a familiar. So even if you choose this fighting style and decide later to not choose beastmaster, it still has interesting utility.

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Very few spells actually get beasts, remember most of the conjuring spells bring forth Fey Spirits that simply look like beasts. This would be a hard-line reading of RAW but it is important, same with familiars in most cases.

So really, it is a fighting style that assists you if you are the type to allow random wild animals to follow and fight for the party, or if you have a Beastmaster Ranger. I don't know about your table obviously, but at mine most wild animals don't end up getting befriended by the party and fighting alongside them.

Mistwell said:

The class does need assistance for those who do not view the beast as either mostly non-combat, or more disposable. I think you've mistaken my position for someone else's position.

It's not a stealth re-write. It's additional options to help those who want to play a beast master with a more aggressive beast, or a less disposable beast. You don't have to take these additional options at all, and a lot of people won't because they don't play the beastmaster that way (likely either keeping the beast out of combat most of the time, or treating the beast as more disposable and replaceable).

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I'm wondering about WoTC's position. They are the people who would publish it after all. Their position seems to be that everything is fine with the Ranger, in which case why would they publish spells and feats designed specifically to fix the Beastmaster?

And, since the spells and feats would likely make the Beast more powerful and therefore better suited to combats it is already going to get involved in (remember, Vex was only able to keep Trinket fully out of combat due to a unique magic item) even people who don't want the companions in combat are going to want them, as a precaution. At least, that is my perspective on it.

Mistwell said:

Funny, I don't hear that complaint about the Champion fighter which is doing the same thing. As this edition has brought in a huge number of new players who have never played the game before, it's the new mainstream. It's what I was arguing before much earlier in this thread - I think a lot of newer players are more comfortable replacing the beast often, or keeping the beast mostly out of combat.

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Um.... that is because the Champion fighter doesn't have a mechanic for hiring henchmen?

I'm kind of confused what you think I was talking about if you think the Champion Fighter needs to get involved.As I understand there was a large tradition of torch-bearers, men-at-arms, and other low level henchman types getting hired by players in 1e or 2e and sometimes even used as minesweepers for dungeon traps. Hence why I was comparing the disposable beast with that style of play. Champion Fighter has absolutely zero mechanical support for that.

I think WotC feels like every UA for the ranger has been disruptive (although I think they bear much of the blame for that). Certainly what I like to call "the ranger identity crisis" where everyone agreed on a theme and pretty much nothing else would not have been as big a thing without the UA's. On top of that, from his other comments (like his response to what is your least favorite class?), it sounds like he is being cyberstalked by creepy ranger fans (and please don't embarrass yourself by trying to defend it on this forum, especially if you have started up more than 5 ranger threads). If you know any of them, please feel free to thank them for their part in killing any ranger reform.

cbwjm said:

I actually think it would be kind of funny for the ranger to have a new beast companion every session because they lost it the session before. The image of the beastmaster constantly getting exasperated with having to constantly replace their pet is a rather comical one.

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And now I want to play a beastmaster.

MechaTarrasque said:

I think WotC feels like every UA for the ranger has been disruptive (although I think they bear much of the blame for that). Certainly what I like to call "the ranger identity crisis" where everyone agreed on a theme and pretty much nothing else would not have been as big a thing without the UA's. On top of that, from his other comments (like his response to what is your least favorite class?), it sounds like he is being cyberstalked by creepy ranger fans (and please don't embarrass yourself by trying to defend it on this forum, especially if you have started up more than 5 ranger threads). If you know any of them, please feel free to thank them for their part in killing any ranger reform.

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Without the UAs the Ranger Identity Crisis may not have been as big, but it was always there.

I mean It was always easier to build a Rogue that was great at Naturey stuff regardless of Terrain. Which would leave me wondering why my Ranger was only an expert in the Forest but the Rogue could be the expert anywhere. The Scout Rogue compounded it further for me.

UAs may have muddied the water, but the ranger mechanics themselves kept it from being crystal clear in the first place.