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UA Ranger in STK - play report
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<blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 6936127" data-attributes="member: 20564"><p><strong>Session #4</strong></p><p></p><p>First, a bit of logistics. Our Ice-themed Sorcerer has started a new job (yea!) that has him up very early (boo) and doesn't look like he's making weeknight games anymore. We added two new players, a half-elf monk and a dragonborn cleric (life). Last session the player of our goliath barbarian couldn't attend, but she'll be back next week, just RL came up.</p><p></p><p>I'm finding a slight problem but it isn't specific to the UA Ranger. I'm playing at my FLGS*, which has multiple dedicated games, and we have a fairly stable cast, not a random group-up. Basically Garreck is well-tuned, and playing Storm Kings Thunder my favored enemies have been coming up pretty exclusively. When we started all of the character with the exception of the Goliath Barbarian were fairly well optimized, and the Barb was good enough that there wasn't a big gap.</p><p></p><p>But with the optimized sorcerer gone, and the two new player also not all that optimized, with a combat against my favored enemies my character was a lot more effective. I have +10 to Hit (+4 dex, +2 archery, +1 magic crossbow, +3 proficiency) against 18 AC opponents and they are around +6/+7 (+3 ability +3 proficiency, +1 weapon for some). And with favored enemy my damage was a lot greater, though it would be in-line against other opponents.</p><p></p><p>I bring this up because part of evaluating a class is the range of it. Are their traps that can make it sub-optimal? Are there things that can be abused?</p><p></p><p>UA Ranger at this level doesn't feel abusive. But because of the focus so far on limited foe types, favored enemy has been active fairly consistently. As a design choice I like that characters aren't very niche, but at the same time the +4 is powerful at the levels we're looking at. Maybe keeping the Advanced Favored Enemy at 6th for an additional choice is good, but push off changing the damage bonus from +2 to +4 until a later level. (And maybe grant another choice as well at that later level as your range of foes keeps increasing.)</p><p></p><p>Anyway, onward to the session.</p><p></p><p>After some good RP to meet the new characters, we decided to ..., well, to keep spoilers at a minimum I'll just say go after a side quest that we expect will take about two days.</p><p></p><p>We set out and later in the day we hear someone shouting orders in Giant. Luckily that's my brand-spanking new language from Advanced Favored Enemy: Giant I picked up when we just leveled. (Our goliath also speaks Giant, but she had to miss the session for RL.)</p><p></p><p>The sneaky ones (myself, the monk, and the halfling bard (satire)) crested the ridge to see a Fire Giant with two Ogres pulling something out of the ground. 12 hobgoblins were on guard and a bunch of exhausted goblins were about. We gestured toward the paladin and cleric who stayed behind then attacked.</p><p></p><p>The DM gave those of use who had snuck up another stealth roll to see if we got a surprise round. That's on skill list and I have +5, and I got a nat 20. Myself and the monk succeeded. This is really nice with the Natural Explorer that gives advantage on attack rolls against creates who have not acted yet. We also rolled init, something that Natural Explorer also lets me do with advantage. I rolled a 1 and a 19, quite happy for that, with a 23 final. So I went in the surprise round with the monk and then again as the first to act in the first full round of combat.</p><p></p><p>I started by one-shot-ing a bunch of hobgoblin guards. Yes, they are CR 1/2, but with an AC of 18 and some poor luck to hit and damage it took three PCs over a round to kill one, while I had six attacks (surprise + first round, 2 attacks and if either hit a bonus action from my feat. None were close enough to use Hordebreaker).</p><p></p><p>First round brought minor damage from hobgoblin arrows to several PCs, and both goblins moved to engage me as the most obvious threat. Some bad rolls protected me from damage that round. Oh, and the fire giant hit the halfling bard with a rock and knocked off over half his HPs in one hit.</p><p></p><p>The bard hypnotic patterned the two ogres, thankfully. The paladin rode in and engaged the fire giant, using his Oath of Enmity on it for advantage and attacking with Great Weapon Master, and smiting on hits.</p><p></p><p>2nd round I finished off more hobgoblins, others finished off a few leaving only 1 left. Paladin smote the Fire Giant doing big damage, but it's a sack of HPs. Fire Giant knocked the Paladin down, attacked (twice?) with advantage, and knocked him from full to negatives. Things were getting real.</p><p></p><p>We then closed on the Fire Giant, playing some positioning games. The monk engaged it; she spent Ki to dodge every round. I shot it, but I'm better suited to taking out hordes - the paladin (down) and barbarian (not attending this session) were the big bruisers.</p><p></p><p>Of the people still standing I was hitting the most so i earned a rock, and my AC of 16 was not enough. (Monk dodging probably also saved her from getting attacked.) I went to well under half in one rock.</p><p></p><p>The life cleric with a bit of help from the bard brought the paladin back to decent HPs while I peppered it with more bolts. I was doing 3 attacks for d6+9, and hitting 65% of the time, so I was wearing away at it. The monk was doing some and the bard was giving it disadvantage on one attack and minor damage. I went down to another rock anyway, at which point the paladin finally gt his initiative, stood and attacked with GWM and divine smite, hitting twice (advantage from Enmity) and doing 50-60 damage killing it.</p><p></p><p>Final was that I was a glass cannon. I did decent damage and could do so up to 30' range so I rarely wasted an attack due to no target like a melee, but in doing so the close range of the hand crossbow plus the damage output attracted a lot of attention, and the AC of 16 was not particularly daunting to my foes. I do have decent HPs (ranger and 14 CON), but giants hit hard.</p><p></p><p>We finished off one ogre, took the other prisoner. We did some things that come under spoilers, the hired the ogre for food and gold and interrogated it. Seemed like a good idea to my NG character who doesn't think far ahead, but the paladin is very concerned about where it goes from there.</p><p></p><p>We traveled on, got to our destination, and ended up splitting the party as some went into the walled town on one side of the river that locks up, some stayed with the ogre, and then those split in half to go get food from the farms on the other side of the river for the ogre who EATS LIKE CRAZY.</p><p></p><p>Then, of course, in the dark, the attack happened. Ah, cliffhanger.</p><p></p><p>--</p><p></p><p>* N&N Adventuring Company, it's actually a dedicated RPG playspace where you pay for a seat for the day that runs AL-type games on Wednesday nights and a shared-world game in AL-style called Dark Earth, two sessions each Sunday. They go have a small amount of inventory like dice you might need "right now" and will order things, but moving product isn't their focus, gaming is. Lots of good DMs, and they treat them well. AL did a write-up about them. <a href="http://dndadventurersleague.org/spotlight-nn-adventuring-company/" target="_blank">http://dndadventurersleague.org/spotlight-nn-adventuring-company/</a></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Blue, post: 6936127, member: 20564"] [b]Session #4[/b] First, a bit of logistics. Our Ice-themed Sorcerer has started a new job (yea!) that has him up very early (boo) and doesn't look like he's making weeknight games anymore. We added two new players, a half-elf monk and a dragonborn cleric (life). Last session the player of our goliath barbarian couldn't attend, but she'll be back next week, just RL came up. I'm finding a slight problem but it isn't specific to the UA Ranger. I'm playing at my FLGS*, which has multiple dedicated games, and we have a fairly stable cast, not a random group-up. Basically Garreck is well-tuned, and playing Storm Kings Thunder my favored enemies have been coming up pretty exclusively. When we started all of the character with the exception of the Goliath Barbarian were fairly well optimized, and the Barb was good enough that there wasn't a big gap. But with the optimized sorcerer gone, and the two new player also not all that optimized, with a combat against my favored enemies my character was a lot more effective. I have +10 to Hit (+4 dex, +2 archery, +1 magic crossbow, +3 proficiency) against 18 AC opponents and they are around +6/+7 (+3 ability +3 proficiency, +1 weapon for some). And with favored enemy my damage was a lot greater, though it would be in-line against other opponents. I bring this up because part of evaluating a class is the range of it. Are their traps that can make it sub-optimal? Are there things that can be abused? UA Ranger at this level doesn't feel abusive. But because of the focus so far on limited foe types, favored enemy has been active fairly consistently. As a design choice I like that characters aren't very niche, but at the same time the +4 is powerful at the levels we're looking at. Maybe keeping the Advanced Favored Enemy at 6th for an additional choice is good, but push off changing the damage bonus from +2 to +4 until a later level. (And maybe grant another choice as well at that later level as your range of foes keeps increasing.) Anyway, onward to the session. After some good RP to meet the new characters, we decided to ..., well, to keep spoilers at a minimum I'll just say go after a side quest that we expect will take about two days. We set out and later in the day we hear someone shouting orders in Giant. Luckily that's my brand-spanking new language from Advanced Favored Enemy: Giant I picked up when we just leveled. (Our goliath also speaks Giant, but she had to miss the session for RL.) The sneaky ones (myself, the monk, and the halfling bard (satire)) crested the ridge to see a Fire Giant with two Ogres pulling something out of the ground. 12 hobgoblins were on guard and a bunch of exhausted goblins were about. We gestured toward the paladin and cleric who stayed behind then attacked. The DM gave those of use who had snuck up another stealth roll to see if we got a surprise round. That's on skill list and I have +5, and I got a nat 20. Myself and the monk succeeded. This is really nice with the Natural Explorer that gives advantage on attack rolls against creates who have not acted yet. We also rolled init, something that Natural Explorer also lets me do with advantage. I rolled a 1 and a 19, quite happy for that, with a 23 final. So I went in the surprise round with the monk and then again as the first to act in the first full round of combat. I started by one-shot-ing a bunch of hobgoblin guards. Yes, they are CR 1/2, but with an AC of 18 and some poor luck to hit and damage it took three PCs over a round to kill one, while I had six attacks (surprise + first round, 2 attacks and if either hit a bonus action from my feat. None were close enough to use Hordebreaker). First round brought minor damage from hobgoblin arrows to several PCs, and both goblins moved to engage me as the most obvious threat. Some bad rolls protected me from damage that round. Oh, and the fire giant hit the halfling bard with a rock and knocked off over half his HPs in one hit. The bard hypnotic patterned the two ogres, thankfully. The paladin rode in and engaged the fire giant, using his Oath of Enmity on it for advantage and attacking with Great Weapon Master, and smiting on hits. 2nd round I finished off more hobgoblins, others finished off a few leaving only 1 left. Paladin smote the Fire Giant doing big damage, but it's a sack of HPs. Fire Giant knocked the Paladin down, attacked (twice?) with advantage, and knocked him from full to negatives. Things were getting real. We then closed on the Fire Giant, playing some positioning games. The monk engaged it; she spent Ki to dodge every round. I shot it, but I'm better suited to taking out hordes - the paladin (down) and barbarian (not attending this session) were the big bruisers. Of the people still standing I was hitting the most so i earned a rock, and my AC of 16 was not enough. (Monk dodging probably also saved her from getting attacked.) I went to well under half in one rock. The life cleric with a bit of help from the bard brought the paladin back to decent HPs while I peppered it with more bolts. I was doing 3 attacks for d6+9, and hitting 65% of the time, so I was wearing away at it. The monk was doing some and the bard was giving it disadvantage on one attack and minor damage. I went down to another rock anyway, at which point the paladin finally gt his initiative, stood and attacked with GWM and divine smite, hitting twice (advantage from Enmity) and doing 50-60 damage killing it. Final was that I was a glass cannon. I did decent damage and could do so up to 30' range so I rarely wasted an attack due to no target like a melee, but in doing so the close range of the hand crossbow plus the damage output attracted a lot of attention, and the AC of 16 was not particularly daunting to my foes. I do have decent HPs (ranger and 14 CON), but giants hit hard. We finished off one ogre, took the other prisoner. We did some things that come under spoilers, the hired the ogre for food and gold and interrogated it. Seemed like a good idea to my NG character who doesn't think far ahead, but the paladin is very concerned about where it goes from there. We traveled on, got to our destination, and ended up splitting the party as some went into the walled town on one side of the river that locks up, some stayed with the ogre, and then those split in half to go get food from the farms on the other side of the river for the ogre who EATS LIKE CRAZY. Then, of course, in the dark, the attack happened. Ah, cliffhanger. -- * N&N Adventuring Company, it's actually a dedicated RPG playspace where you pay for a seat for the day that runs AL-type games on Wednesday nights and a shared-world game in AL-style called Dark Earth, two sessions each Sunday. They go have a small amount of inventory like dice you might need "right now" and will order things, but moving product isn't their focus, gaming is. Lots of good DMs, and they treat them well. AL did a write-up about them. [url]http://dndadventurersleague.org/spotlight-nn-adventuring-company/[/url] [/QUOTE]
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