In this video for D&D Beyond, Crawford said "So the Horizon Walker is a ranger subclass that is all about drawing on the magic of the multiverse. So many other rangers are very much tied to beasts or hunting particular prey in the natural environment. The Horizon Walker in a way, the camera pans back and it's about the whole multiverse. This is a ranger whose natural environment is the whole cosmos, and they're drawing on its magic and in the process, they're able to teleport around, they're able to draw on that planar magic to deal more damage with their attacks."
"It is a type of ranger that actually appeared in 3rd Edition for instance, so there, it also has some history in the game, and it also leans on a side of the ranger that our Player's Handbook subclasses for the ranger don't lean on, and that is the magical side.
The ranger has always had magic in D&D except for 4th Edition. That was the edition where the ranger lost its magic, but otherwise, the ranger has always had this bit of nature magic, so the Horizon Walker basically has that magic sort of turned up a little bit, and it's specifically this planar magic, having to do with teleportation and entering into the ethereal plane, which not only will have combat applications but also exploration applications, you know, being able to step into the ethereal plane can often mean you can get places other people can't get.
So this is a ranger who is going to be sort of a magical scout for a particular group. This is also a ranger who has an ability to detect portals to other dimensions nearby.
This was actually an ability in the Unearthed Arcana version of the Horizon Walker that was more powerful than the version in Xanathar's Guide because originally, the Horizon Walker when we released it in Unearthed Arcana, could detect every single portal within a particular distance and our playtesters rightly pointed out that having that ability could basically wreck certain adventures if suddenly you know where every single planar portal is within like a mile, and, so we narrowed that down where you locate the nearest portal within a mile and then you can't use this ability again until you rest. So it's now a nice flavorful ability that in certain adventures is going to be very helpful, but it's not gonna crash an entire adventure.
Imagine if we had left it in the game, going into Sigil, the City of Doors, in Planescape, and suddenly knowing where every portal is to go into another world. I imagine almost, you know, steam coming out of the ranger's ears because there's too much information at once, and now that it's just one portal, it can be very useful because if let's say the group has decided, they've learned, "All right. That strange house down at the end of that block in this city, we've heard that infernal creatures have been emerging from it," and the ranger can, "All right, I'm gonna use my ability and see is there a portal in there somewhere?" and this is the ranger who can do that, which I think is gonna be really flavorful in useful in certain campaigns.
The Horizon Walker also, given its magical quality, starts off knowing more spells, just a smidge more than the ranger subclasses in the Player's Handbook.
This is actually a common theme among the ranger subclasses in Xanathar's Guide. All the ranger subclasses have a feature that gives them a few more spells that they know tailored to their subclass beyond the number of spells that they already know as a ranger.
Now, the Horizon Walker, also for people who are familiar with it from the Unearthed Arcana series, know that it also had a capstone ability, its highest level ability, that's what we call it, we call it its capstone, had one that would halve damage, and so this is a chance for me to sort of pull back the curtain and talk a little bit about the balancing process.
A person who closely compares the Unearthed Arcana version of the subclass to the version in Xanathar's Guide will notice a slight change in wording which is actually important for how the game functions. In Unearthed Arcana, it said the damage is halved. In the final version of the feature, its says the ranger has resistance to that damage. Now to many people listening to me, like, "Oh, why does that matter? 'Cause resistance halves damage. Isn't that the same thing?" It's not the same thing because resistance doesn't stack. Because when I was working with Ben Petrisor doing, a number of our staff, doing a balance pass on everything in this book, we looked at that and we were like, "Oops. It never should have said just naked halving. Occasionally we do that purposefully, but in this case it was accidental. Because that would mean if the ranger also had resistance to that damage, that halving would stack with it, which was not our intent. It was intent for it to just be a, like all other resistance, either you're halving it or you're not, and so that's a good example of, as we refine something, as we take it from its initial draft form, we get playtest feedback, we develop it into its final form, that's the kind of subtle change that we make that can sometimes end up having, in corner cases, a large impact at the game table.
So feedback in general for the Horizon Walker was positive. I think people liked, again, this cosmic feel, the teleportation, the ranger getting to do force damage by channeling this planar magic. People just liked the feel of it, the narrative of it, because we find most often what people respond to first when they really like a subclass, is they're responding positively to its story and to its aesthetic, and then, they want to see game mechanics that back up that story, and I think they felt that the Horizon Walker's story was well-supported by its game mechanics, so it's actually an example of a subclass that did not get heavily revised from the Unearthed Arcana process, from there to the final version.
But again, there are subtle changes all over, even in the list of extra spells the Horizon Walker knows, we changed a few of those spells because our playtesters rightly pointed out that the spells had very little combat utility, that we had actually gone so far in the direction of sort of exploration and this cosmic feel that we hadn't given the ranger many new options that would see use in combat, so we swapped out a couple of the spells to do that.
Also, people rightly pointed out that for a subclass that's all about stepping between planar barriers and teleporting, all the teleportation built in to the subclass was most combat-based, so we then, this is a case where instead of putting a combat thing in the spell list, we put a non-combat thing, we made sure that the ranger had Misty Step there as one that they would know for free, and so that means it's not a spell that a ranger would have to learn by some other means."
[video=youtube;FP0g7KTSOUI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP0g7KTSOUI[/video]
"It is a type of ranger that actually appeared in 3rd Edition for instance, so there, it also has some history in the game, and it also leans on a side of the ranger that our Player's Handbook subclasses for the ranger don't lean on, and that is the magical side.
The ranger has always had magic in D&D except for 4th Edition. That was the edition where the ranger lost its magic, but otherwise, the ranger has always had this bit of nature magic, so the Horizon Walker basically has that magic sort of turned up a little bit, and it's specifically this planar magic, having to do with teleportation and entering into the ethereal plane, which not only will have combat applications but also exploration applications, you know, being able to step into the ethereal plane can often mean you can get places other people can't get.
So this is a ranger who is going to be sort of a magical scout for a particular group. This is also a ranger who has an ability to detect portals to other dimensions nearby.
This was actually an ability in the Unearthed Arcana version of the Horizon Walker that was more powerful than the version in Xanathar's Guide because originally, the Horizon Walker when we released it in Unearthed Arcana, could detect every single portal within a particular distance and our playtesters rightly pointed out that having that ability could basically wreck certain adventures if suddenly you know where every single planar portal is within like a mile, and, so we narrowed that down where you locate the nearest portal within a mile and then you can't use this ability again until you rest. So it's now a nice flavorful ability that in certain adventures is going to be very helpful, but it's not gonna crash an entire adventure.
Imagine if we had left it in the game, going into Sigil, the City of Doors, in Planescape, and suddenly knowing where every portal is to go into another world. I imagine almost, you know, steam coming out of the ranger's ears because there's too much information at once, and now that it's just one portal, it can be very useful because if let's say the group has decided, they've learned, "All right. That strange house down at the end of that block in this city, we've heard that infernal creatures have been emerging from it," and the ranger can, "All right, I'm gonna use my ability and see is there a portal in there somewhere?" and this is the ranger who can do that, which I think is gonna be really flavorful in useful in certain campaigns.
The Horizon Walker also, given its magical quality, starts off knowing more spells, just a smidge more than the ranger subclasses in the Player's Handbook.
This is actually a common theme among the ranger subclasses in Xanathar's Guide. All the ranger subclasses have a feature that gives them a few more spells that they know tailored to their subclass beyond the number of spells that they already know as a ranger.
Now, the Horizon Walker, also for people who are familiar with it from the Unearthed Arcana series, know that it also had a capstone ability, its highest level ability, that's what we call it, we call it its capstone, had one that would halve damage, and so this is a chance for me to sort of pull back the curtain and talk a little bit about the balancing process.
A person who closely compares the Unearthed Arcana version of the subclass to the version in Xanathar's Guide will notice a slight change in wording which is actually important for how the game functions. In Unearthed Arcana, it said the damage is halved. In the final version of the feature, its says the ranger has resistance to that damage. Now to many people listening to me, like, "Oh, why does that matter? 'Cause resistance halves damage. Isn't that the same thing?" It's not the same thing because resistance doesn't stack. Because when I was working with Ben Petrisor doing, a number of our staff, doing a balance pass on everything in this book, we looked at that and we were like, "Oops. It never should have said just naked halving. Occasionally we do that purposefully, but in this case it was accidental. Because that would mean if the ranger also had resistance to that damage, that halving would stack with it, which was not our intent. It was intent for it to just be a, like all other resistance, either you're halving it or you're not, and so that's a good example of, as we refine something, as we take it from its initial draft form, we get playtest feedback, we develop it into its final form, that's the kind of subtle change that we make that can sometimes end up having, in corner cases, a large impact at the game table.
So feedback in general for the Horizon Walker was positive. I think people liked, again, this cosmic feel, the teleportation, the ranger getting to do force damage by channeling this planar magic. People just liked the feel of it, the narrative of it, because we find most often what people respond to first when they really like a subclass, is they're responding positively to its story and to its aesthetic, and then, they want to see game mechanics that back up that story, and I think they felt that the Horizon Walker's story was well-supported by its game mechanics, so it's actually an example of a subclass that did not get heavily revised from the Unearthed Arcana process, from there to the final version.
But again, there are subtle changes all over, even in the list of extra spells the Horizon Walker knows, we changed a few of those spells because our playtesters rightly pointed out that the spells had very little combat utility, that we had actually gone so far in the direction of sort of exploration and this cosmic feel that we hadn't given the ranger many new options that would see use in combat, so we swapped out a couple of the spells to do that.
Also, people rightly pointed out that for a subclass that's all about stepping between planar barriers and teleporting, all the teleportation built in to the subclass was most combat-based, so we then, this is a case where instead of putting a combat thing in the spell list, we put a non-combat thing, we made sure that the ranger had Misty Step there as one that they would know for free, and so that means it's not a spell that a ranger would have to learn by some other means."
