D&D General What is the Ranger to you?

I'm going to try drafting up some "Ranger as X Hunter" ideas this weekend, to see how that tracks with here and with my players. I was previously working on "all rangers have pets from 1st level", but that was really hard to balance, but not impossible; the big trouble was how strong the consensus was that all rangers shouldn't have pets.

The animal companion needs to be able to enter melee combat and survive, maybe not as primary tank, but certainly the attention of a couple of adds. And the random fireball. And still not be dying, making the pet into an ability that only adds a weak link into the party; something the other players (not so) secretly wish wasn't present at all.

In short, the pet needs to soak as much punishment as any other character that doesn't actively avoid the heat of combat (because it can fire at a range or because it can fly/blink/invis et cetera).

Without that level of sturdiness, the pet is a ribbon ability and needs to be balanced as such.

Oh, and any animal companion that is actively worse than buying a frigging war dog before each adventure is like a slap in the face.

So the PHB AC is light-years away from acceptable. I don't remember out of hand, but it needs, at the very least
a) free will (no draining master's actions)
b) significantly better hit point progression (or AC) as it levels up. Can't remember if I thought it needed twice as many or even more, only that the PHB amount was hopelessly inadequate
c) magical attacks at level ~6 or so

Ideally, there should be Ranger spells to "share life" (master takes half damage inflicted to companion, and vice versa) and a specific Revivify Companion spell.

Again, it's "fine" to keep the current pet, but only if the Beastmaster subclass is entirely rebalanced to put essentially zero value on the ability. Actually, by far the easiest complete fix is to simply give everything the Beastmaster gets to the Hunter, and then basically pretend the Ranger class got only a single subclass...

Thank you for reading

The Beastmaster pet in the revised ranger is most of the way there.

I’d simply give it greater resilience against actually dying, and add spells (as I’ve been suggesting for months) that buff and/or heal a summoned or controlled creature, availability to rangers, maybe warlocks, and Druids, and consider spell sharing at a lower level. The HP scaling needs to have a better floor, though, so you can have a hawk companion that isn’t begging for death.

I’d also accept making the Beast a spell creature like Find Steed, but a lot of people insist that it can’t be a magical creature.

doctorbadwolf said:

The Beastmaster pet in the revised ranger is most of the way there.

I’d simply give it greater resilience against actually dying, and add spells (as I’ve been suggesting for months) that buff and/or heal a summoned or controlled creature, availability to rangers, maybe warlocks, and Druids, and consider spell sharing at a lower level. The HP scaling needs to have a better floor, though, so you can have a hawk companion that isn’t begging for death.

I’d also accept making the Beast a spell creature like Find Steed, but a lot of people insist that it can’t be a magical creature.

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Does the revised beast master ranger do too much damage at lower levels? It feels like it does, but I haven't gotten to see it in action yet. Compared to, say, a Hunter with horde breaker, they're both getting two attacks bit horde breaker has limitations on when they can use it.

Or does it self balance because people baby their pets?

doctorbadwolf said:

I’d also accept making the Beast a spell creature like Find Steed, but a lot of people insist that it can’t be a magical creature.

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This has been my preferred solution from the beginning.

And I don't know how people can insist that it can't be a magical creature when the Beast Master's connection with their pet is explicitly described as "magically bonding," anyway ...

I think i'd just call it a manifest nature spirit and treat it like a familiar, summon it, dismiss it, etc. I don't have a lot of stakes in the Ranger game though, so I'm fine with the easy answer. I'd also be fine with it being a fighter subclass with no magic too (heresy, I know). Generally, I'd be against the animal companion being mandatory as I personally don't like the idea and I wouldn't want to have to kit-bash the class just to plat it without pets.

What I'd really like is a usable Urban Ranger concept. Maybe someone can point to a good one and save me some work...

Xeviat said:

Does the revised beast master ranger do too much damage at lower levels? It feels like it does, but I haven't gotten to see it in action yet. Compared to, say, a Hunter with horde breaker, they're both getting two attacks bit horde breaker has limitations on when they can use it.

Or does it self balance because people baby their pets?

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it does a little more damage, but they both have restrictions on use. PCs have more ways to get to enemies than a wolf does, for one thing. But it evens out after a while so I’m not worried about a small advantage in levels 1-3.

But people are still fairly careful, and tend to not send the pet solo against multiple enemies and the like.

Gladius Legis said:

This has been my preferred solution from the beginning.

And I don't know how people can insist that it can't be a magical creature when the Beast Master's connection with their pet is explicitly described as "magically bonding," anyway ...

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Yeah I don’t see any problem with modeling it after Find Steed tbh.

Fenris-77 said:

What I'd really like is a usable Urban Ranger concept. Maybe someone can point to a good one and save me some work...

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IMO the Scout Rogue does that very well. A custom background with the “City Secrets” background feature should fill out the rest of what you need?

Maybe drop nature from the level 3 feature, and replace it with City Secrets and an assumed knowledge of city factions?

doctorbadwolf said:

IMO the Scout Rogue does that very well. A custom background with the “City Secrets” background feature should fill out the rest of what you need?

Maybe drop nature from the level 3 feature, and replace it with City Secrets and an assumed knowledge of city factions?

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It's not a bad fix, but it's not quite what I was looking for. I was thinking more thief taker, which is more in line with the overall ranger ethos IMO. I'm currently using Gloomstalker with the Urban Bounty Hunter background, and it's ok, but I still have to massage the outdoorsy stuff form the core class. I was curious to see what, if anything, people had done to port the Ranger mechanics over to an urban environment. Maybe a floating preferred enemy that changes as he takes on new rid the streets efforts, IDK. It took me a while to realize that what I actually wanted was Batman, but that's about the size of it.

Gladius Legis said:

This has been my preferred solution from the beginning.

And I don't know how people can insist that it can't be a magical creature when the Beast Master's connection with their pet is explicitly described as "magically bonding," anyway ...

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Find Steed summons a spirit.

I want the ranger to recruit a woodland ally and grow into a team.

They can "mystically bond" sure, but its not a summoned creature or spirit. Its your partner you grew up with.

That's a different story (and what I think people want) instead of "Summon WhateverBeast"

Fenris-77 said:

It's not a bad fix, but it's not quite what I was looking for. I was thinking more thief taker, which is more in line with the overall ranger ethos IMO. I'm currently using Gloomstalker with the Urban Bounty Hunter background, and it's ok, but I still have to massage the outdoorsy stuff form the core class. I was curious to see what, if anything, people had done to port the Ranger mechanics over to an urban environment. Maybe a floating preferred enemy that changes as he takes on new rid the streets efforts, IDK. It took me a while to realize that what I actually wanted was Batman, but that's about the size of it.

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Okay, so the travel stuff is gonna be weird, but maybe they could apply to civilized regions and the roads between them? Not being able to get lost isn’t a big deal and works fine in a city too.

The combat stuff all works great.

Favored enemy could just be members of organized crime operations, perhaps? So, you’ve got advantage on Int and Wis checks to study or recall stuff about them, and to track them?

I think the rest is just making sure nothing requires natural terrain or whatever.