Undrave
Legend
Companion to: D&D 5E - 5E Survivor - Subclasses (Part XI: Rangers)
I hesitated before starting this thread because I don’t really know much about the Ranger in actual play. I think the number of sessions I played with an actual Ranger in the party could be counted on the fingers of one hand? And I was never really impressed or took notice of what they did…
I’m not a fan of animal companions on principle. I think we should just admit they never properly work as class feature and just make them a companion class and have the DM consider them a full character when they’re added to the party for the purpose of encounter design. Any player who wants one has to be ready to handle that extra character.
Making what is essentially 1 character in 2 bodies is always going to be a little clunky. Even worse if you have to take random monster stats for your companion (Tasha’s Primal Beasts are way better).
That said, I think Drakewarden and Swarmkeeper are some of the better incarnation of that concept so I’m upvoting either while down voting the ill-conceived Beast Master.
Ranger is one of those classes I'd love to try to redesign from the group up. It would probably work great with the Warlock frame where you can pick if you want to be a melee skirmisher, archer hunter, or a beast master and then add another element on top. The way I see it, the Ranger is the Warrior of the Border. They stand between two ‘worlds’ and protect one from the other. The Frontier the stand on should be what define them (in addition to my aforementioned style idea). You could have Ranger who stand between nature and colonist, between nations, between the material plane and a specific plane (Fey Wanderer, Gloom Stalker, etc), maybe with orders tasks with finding ‘fissures’ between the planes and getting rid of them. Maybe even an Urban Ranger who stands between two gangs to defend the little people.
I see the Ranger as a warrior who is naturally isolated, physically or metaphorically, and has to survive using whatever mean possible. My ideal Ranger would probably lean more into Rituals and exploration utility than combat casting, with the amount of combat casting you get based more on your subclass than as a general system with slots and stuff. Maybe invent a Trapsmithing Kit with actual traps you could build?
I hesitated before starting this thread because I don’t really know much about the Ranger in actual play. I think the number of sessions I played with an actual Ranger in the party could be counted on the fingers of one hand? And I was never really impressed or took notice of what they did…
I’m not a fan of animal companions on principle. I think we should just admit they never properly work as class feature and just make them a companion class and have the DM consider them a full character when they’re added to the party for the purpose of encounter design. Any player who wants one has to be ready to handle that extra character.
Making what is essentially 1 character in 2 bodies is always going to be a little clunky. Even worse if you have to take random monster stats for your companion (Tasha’s Primal Beasts are way better).
That said, I think Drakewarden and Swarmkeeper are some of the better incarnation of that concept so I’m upvoting either while down voting the ill-conceived Beast Master.
Ranger is one of those classes I'd love to try to redesign from the group up. It would probably work great with the Warlock frame where you can pick if you want to be a melee skirmisher, archer hunter, or a beast master and then add another element on top. The way I see it, the Ranger is the Warrior of the Border. They stand between two ‘worlds’ and protect one from the other. The Frontier the stand on should be what define them (in addition to my aforementioned style idea). You could have Ranger who stand between nature and colonist, between nations, between the material plane and a specific plane (Fey Wanderer, Gloom Stalker, etc), maybe with orders tasks with finding ‘fissures’ between the planes and getting rid of them. Maybe even an Urban Ranger who stands between two gangs to defend the little people.
I see the Ranger as a warrior who is naturally isolated, physically or metaphorically, and has to survive using whatever mean possible. My ideal Ranger would probably lean more into Rituals and exploration utility than combat casting, with the amount of combat casting you get based more on your subclass than as a general system with slots and stuff. Maybe invent a Trapsmithing Kit with actual traps you could build?
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