Ranger Beast Master: errata will add new features to your animal companion!

5ekyu said:

Almost like balance is a subjective judgement... Odd.

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Obviously it is subjective, I have my opinion but it doesn't change randomly depending on the direction of the wind like it happens with the designers.

dco said:

Obviously it is subjective, I have my opinion but it doesn't change randomly depending on the direction of the wind like it happens with the designers.

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It may be just me but... Small erratta for the ranger after years and a playtest with feedback seems not to be on the same par as the wind changing direction.

The latter happens a lot more frequently and less obvious as to cause behind it.

But that might be subjective too.

CapnZapp said:

No, asking a player to roll 23 on a twenty-sided die is never as it should be, even if I'm the only one out of a hundred. It is bad inelegant design, and it could easily have been averted by simply saying your saves are never worse than your proficiency bonus.

The fact this gives you a 3-in-20 shot at making Graz'zt's saves changes very little from a game balance perspective.

But it does a world of difference aesthetically.

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Yes, it does make a world of difference. IMO, that difference would be negative, not positive.

You aren’t being asked to do anything. The game has some (too few IMO) epic scenarios wherein only people with proficiency and/or an ability bonus will make a specific save.

The other way to get the desired result would be to have an extra rule in the stat block that says “you automatically fail this save if your save bonus is lower than X.”, which would be a less elegant way of doing it.

The idea of always succeeding on a nat 20 is bad as well, IMO, as is “your save is never worse than prof bonus”. Especially the second one. It’s good that every character has saves that they actively suck at making.

I also definately don’t think there should always be a 1 in 20 chance of success on a save. It’s a fine house rule for groups who like it, but I’m glad it isn’t a core rule.

5ekyu said:

It may be just me but... Small erratta for the ranger after years and a playtest with feedback seems not to be on the same par as the wind changing direction.

The latter happens a lot more frequently and less obvious as to cause behind it.

But that might be subjective too.

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Again, the balancing point of 5e is not so sharp that you can’t increase or decrease the power level of most anything without it becoming unbalanced. The pre errata Beastmaster was balanced, the post errata Beastmaster is balanced.

What the errata did was take two of the biggest complaints about the Beastmaster and addressed them.

My companion is too easily killed by AOE attacks and from ranged attacks when I try to keep it out of direct combat.
My companion is ineffective against creatures with normal weapon resistance at higher levels.

The designers looked at the complaints, looked to see if changing the subclass to address those complaints would unbalance the class in the too powerful direction, decided that the class was still balanced with the change, and made it.

I’m pretty sure they also looked to see if the change made the class feel and play differently than what is presented. I would say this errata doesn’t change the feel of the Beastmaster as a companion that helps and protects you and that you in turn help and protect. The later piece of which is IMO of critical importance to many of those who enjoy the class.

Azzy said:

"Because the other kids are doing it" isn't a winning argument.

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It is when it's half of all classes. Several of which are going to be in basically every party. That ship sailed a LONG ass time ago in D&D. So you either compete with magic, or the designers need to go back to the drawing board.

My favorite encounter so far in D&D 5e was us going up against a black dragon in it's lair who was clearly more powerful than our party. Our only advantage was we knew it was there in advance, and roughly where it was. But we badly needed to scout the lair more, and the Dragon, before going in prepared.

Sneaking past it without heavy magical enhancement would have been impossible. Its perception, in it's lair, and with the senses it has, were just too high for any stealth roll to suceed without magic.

So we cast Enhance Ability: Cat's Grace on the Druid (Advantage on Dex Checks). And Pass Without Trace (+10 to Dex (Stealth) checks and leaves no tracks). And gave the Druid Bardic Inspiration (add d6 to one ability check). And the Druid Shape Changed into a Giant Wolf Spider (+7 Stealth, Spider Climb). After the roll (with advantage) the impossible stealth check was impossibly good. So good the Dragon couldn't beat the Druid's roll even with a natural 20. And the Druid scouted the dragon and it's lair and helped us come up with a plan to beat it.

That was one of the most fun encounters we've had, and it involved an impossible roll baring magical enhancement.

And I genuinely think some of those spells are there for that very kind of scenario. It was very heroic. Almost every player in the party contributed something to the effort of one party member scouting out danger. We loved it.

Impossible DCs are not a huge waste of time, they're an opportunity to make some of the magic of the game shine, and to reward groups who plan and think ahead.

OB1 said:

Again, the balancing point of 5e is not so sharp that you can’t increase or decrease the power level of most anything without it becoming unbalanced. The pre errata Beastmaster was balanced, the post errata Beastmaster is balanced.

What the errata did was take two of the biggest complaints about the Beastmaster and addressed them.

My companion is too easily killed by AOE attacks and from ranged attacks when I try to keep it out of direct combat.
My companion is ineffective against creatures with normal weapon resistance at higher levels.

The designers looked at the complaints, looked to see if changing the subclass to address those complaints would unbalance the class in the too powerful direction, decided that the class was still balanced with the change, and made it.

I’m pretty sure they also looked to see if the change made the class feel and play differently than what is presented. I would say this errata doesn’t change the feel of the Beastmaster as a companion that helps and protects you and that you in turn help and protect. The later piece of which is IMO of critical importance to many of those who enjoy the class.

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That was a wonderful write up of your feelings about this.

I do wonder why you chose to quote my comment which had nothing to do with any of it, tho.

Edit to add...

Specifically were you seeing in your games too many cases of enemies using their ranged attacks against not directly in combat animal companions so much that it was creating problems? Were there no actual combat threats to shoot at?

[MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] your argument is that balance is subjective. My argument is that it’s objective but not a single point. There is a range of acceptable power levels that can be considered balanced in the overall context of the game.
[MENTION=6780269]dco[/MENTION] argues that the errata was made for balance issues, and that the designers used to think the subclass was balanced and now say it wasn’t and needed fixing. My argument is that pre and post errata are both balanced, and that the reason for the change lies outside of actual mechanical balance and more in play experience.

OB1 said:

[MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] your argument is that balance is subjective. My argument is that it’s objective but not a single point. There is a range of acceptable power levels that can be considered balanced in the overall context of the game.
[MENTION=6780269]dco[/MENTION] argues that the errata was made for balance issues, and that the designers used to think the subclass was balanced and now say it wasn’t and needed fixing. My argument is that pre and post errata are both balanced, and that the reason for the change lies outside of actual mechanical balance and more in play experience.

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So to be clear when you say that "can be considered balanced" are you really saying "must be objectively seen as balanced" or that "can be considered" is in fact subjective, not objective?

OB1 said:

@dco argues that the errata was made for balance issues, and that the designers used to think the subclass was balanced and now say it wasn’t and needed fixing. My argument is that pre and post errata are both balanced, and that the reason for the change lies outside of actual mechanical balance and more in play experience.

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It's a mechanical change and it's an errata, it means a correction of an error. For a lot of people the mechanics were problematic and that's a part of the class balance, or at least it is for me, we are not talking about some narrative gameplay.
It's also not my invention when I talk about balance, the designers acknowledged those problems publicly in their revised ranger document, the funny thing is that three months ago they were happy to end it because those problems were not seen by the majority of players but now we have an errata.