Revised Ranger update

Chaosmancer · Sep 2, 2018

Jester David said:
I'll agree that they dragged their feet. But continuing to work on a projected fewer and fewer people want isn't a good business decision. "Obligation" isn't a good reason to release a product.

Same number of people, maybe even more. Smaller percentage of people. That is an important distinction.

Jester David said:
If they started work on a trilogy and the reception to the first release was cool, they shouldn't be obligated to finish.
Especially as it will literally be coming at the expense of content that the current audience DOES want. There's a finite amount of hours in the day, and they can only log so many hours of work.

As a fan of Patrick Rothfuss, I must reject your assertion that a trilogy started is not obligated to be finished. In fact, the number of times I’ve been disappointed by a series suddenly without an end drives me to reject that line of thinking almost fully.

This is also why I would not declare “this is a trilogy” when I released book one, if I wasn’t sure I would go on to finish the rest of the trilogy. You say you are going to do something, you do it.

Jester David said:
Really, this is why WotC was so secretive in the late 3e/ 4e era. Because when they changed their plans people got upset. So, the "mistake" they made was keeping the fans in the loop.
And, personally, I'd rather have the company reactive and responsive to changes and shifting feedback than maintaining a plan years after it was devised.

You know, I agree I would rather a company keep us in the loop and be reactive.

However, if that means we can’t trust what they say they will deliver because the audience might change, then they have gone from reactive to wishy-washy.

I mean, they just announced Ravnica and Eberron a little while ago. But they could easily cancel those projects to make more time for the next FR book that the larger percentage of the audience wants. After all, they have only so many man-hours to put towards products and we might get a flood of hardcore FR fans fleeing from PF2 who really don’t care about these products WoTC just said they would do.

I don’t find that to be acceptable behavior. For myself or for a company.

Jester David said:
I could say very similar things about the PHB sorcerer given how unpopular wild magic is. Should they redo the sorcerer as well? There's a bunch of fixes they could do (bloodlines giving spells, rephrasing metamagic).
Or… they could just release more options, which largely fixes the problem.

Releasing a new subclass does not fix the problems with the sorcerer, and it especially does not fix the issues with the Wild Magic or Draconic Sorcerers.

I don’t want to get off track talking about how badly I feel sorcerers need a fix. This is a thread about Rangers. Sorcerers have been high on my list of fixes for a long time though, and I’ve looked into many solutions. I’ve also mostly given up hope that WoTC understands what I see as wrong with the Sorcerer, since they keep doing the exact same thing every time they release a new subclass for it.

Jester David said:
Regardless, the beast master isn't "half" the ranger. It's half the options, but maybe a quarter of the class features. Less if you include spells.
So redoing the entire ranger to fix the beast master is unnecessary.

Half the ranger options, you can be a Hunter or you can be a Beastmaster.

Sure, all Rangers might get a bunch other abilities, but you don’t get to choose those. You don’t get to choose whether or not you get Land’s Stride, you will get it. It isn’t a Ranger “option” it is part of the Ranger design.

And I listed some problems with the core ranger as well.

Jester David said:
What they *should* do is just offer a variant pet using ranger subclass. This skirts all the problems with releasing a variant ranger, as people are used to additive options. Drop an "animal lord" that fills the same niche but has slightly different flavour and variant powers. Which lets people play that kind of character, but doesn't confuse people with contradictory options or forces players to revise their character.
Heck, they could even have two. Have a "warg" option that is more utility and lets the ranger see through the eyes of its pet, which is more of a hardy familiar. And a combat pet option, with the beast being all about kicking butt.

Your hamburgers are awful.

There is nothing wrong with our hamburgers good sir, but if you are adamant we can provide you with some beef burgers, and make any changes you would like.

And we are supposed to accept this as a legitimate offer to our complaint. We won’t fix the thing with the problem, we will give you something that is what it should have been the first time.

Jester David said:
If the response to a poor quality product is for them to release it again and make even more money… what's the incentive to get it right the first time?

Well, it seems there is no reason to even care about your quality. If you give bad quality you either argue “where do you stop fixing things” or “we can just make something else that is similar instead”

Chaosmancer · Sep 2, 2018

Mistwell said:
The ranger attacking from range while your companion attacks from melee is not well supported by the class. But it's also vastly different from the argument you or anyone else in this thread was making earlier. You've shifted from, "I want a beast that is effective in combat" to "I want my Ranger to be an archer, nice and safe from harm away from the battlefield, while I want my beast companion to mix it up on the front line in melee, and be as effective as I would be in melee".

My position hasn’t changed, because I never assumed we were removing options from the Ranger when we said “hey this part of the ranger needs to be made better”

If I had known that asking for the beast to be improved meant that I had to specify I also didn’t want to reduce any more of the ranger’s options, then I would have said so, but then why would I have assumed that was going to be your counter-argument.

Mistwell said:
That will satisfy some, and not others. But now that we've reduced down to a much more specific an less typical strategy preference, I think it's not a very compelling argument. You want to have a combat companion instead of a scouting and helping one, you can. You just can't be an archer while doing it. If that is a big deal for you, don't choose this subclass. But it's not a strong argument to justify alone altering the entire base class.

So, to translate. Under your rules, if you want the companion to do what it was designed to do, you can’t be an archer. If you want to be an archer, you can’t have an effective animal companion.

Mistwell said:
Implied but not specified. So it's room to clarify it to provide more protection to animal companions.

True enough.

I also love how we are completely ignoring the conversation about whether or not companions are melee anymore. Instead we’ve shifted to accusing me of shifting goalposts.

Mistwell · Sep 2, 2018

Chaosmancer said:
My position hasn’t changed, because I never assumed we were removing options from the Ranger when we said “hey this part of the ranger needs to be made better”

If I had known that asking for the beast to be improved meant that I had to specify I also didn’t want to reduce any more of the ranger’s options, then I would have said so, but then why would I have assumed that was going to be your counter-argument.

So, to translate. Under your rules, if you want the companion to do what it was designed to do, you can’t be an archer. If you want to be an archer, you can’t have an effective animal companion.

Nope, none of these are "my rules". And nope, you absolutely can have an effective animal companion as an archer - you just can't have a melee fighting animal companion. You keep claiming it's "designed" to be a melee combatant. I've disagreed with you before on that, so have others, and you've made no compelling argument that is the design intent. It's designed to be able to do a number of things. It's capable of being a melee combatant, but only if you fight alongside it like the description says. You want to do something different with it and I disagree that what you want is what it was "designed" for.

True enough. I also love how we are completely ignoring the conversation about whether or not companions are melee anymore. Instead we’ve shifted to accusing me of shifting goalposts.

You're making it about yourself and not the positions or arguments. You claimed your position had support from many others. To know that, we have to look at the claims others were making as well. Nobody else was insisting on also being an archer (though I suspect Eric V will try to claim his was) - it was just you. So either you had the support of others and your position was not exclusive to being an archer and shifted later to that, or you were wrong when you claimed you had widespread support. It's one or the other. Either you shifted your argument, or you made a false claim earlier. You can pick whichever one it was. But my focus is on the argument, not you.

Valetudo · Sep 2, 2018

Sigh....Ive heard this same argument since 5th edition came out.

Eric V · Sep 2, 2018

Mistwell said:
Nobody else was insisting on also being an archer (though I suspect Eric V will try to claim his was) - it was just you.

What the hell is this? "Will try to claim?"

I'm just coming off a break because I accurately described another poster (in harsh language), so I won't speak a similar truth about you here...but this kind of statement? Yeah, you have nothing positive to offer, that's what it's showing.
[MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION], there's nothing wrong with your logic, nor are you shifting goalposts. I suspect if you keep this topic going, the PHB beastmaster will end up overpowered; people are just trying to "win" this discussion.

It's tough to be an archer with an animal companion. The PHB animal companion, if you're an archer, really isn't better than a familiar. The subclass really isn't balanced well between the two styles. My own ranger had a wolf (wanted to try Jon Snow), and I was largely melee, though had a ranged option, obviously. As a melee ranger who wanted to keep Hunter's Mark up, I went sword and shield. It was reasonably good.

I was playing a Revised Ranger, however. Even then, my character and wolf would get into trouble (no heavy armor for better AC, STR-based, so lower DEX, and no other front-line fighter to help). It was fun having the wolf actually attack; made missing Extra Attack a non-issue.

No way this works with the PHB Ranger; squishier companion, lack of extra damage from favoured enemy, no proficiency (and later advantage) in all saving throws...yeah, I would have gone through a lot more wolves.

The Revised Ranger is powerful, but not more powerful than the PHB Paladin; Rangers being powerful is classic D&D. I'd really suggest just using the RR, and don't hope for anything from WotC officially; there's no money it it for them.

dco · Sep 2, 2018

Chaosmancer said:
Don't disagree with any of these (part of the reason I like the Revised Ranger is they altered quite of few of those class features you listed) but, considering you are quoting my statement on melee rangers, none of this has to do with melee rangers. This is just generally ranger problems. Again, don't really disagree with a lot of what you are saying, just looking for context.

I agree whirlwind is highly situational, there are cases when being able to hit more than 3 enemies is going to be better than focusing fire on a single enemy, but they aren't going to come up often.

I agree, Giant Killer kind of sucks, though I hadn't noticed it competed with Stand Against the Tide. I will say, it is more of a choice than you make it out to be factors like is the large creature that missed you hitting harder than you do and/or is there an adjacent enemy you would rather hit instead of the one attacking you, would skew the choice between the two. But, I'd almost be tempted to rewrite Giant Killer and remove the size requirement, if I didn't know retaliation abilities were generally very high level abilities.

I actually used to dislike horde breaker as well, but I've seen it come up an awful lot. And since my tables tend to use flanking rules it is not uncommon for a melee type to be adjacent to two separate enemies. It can also mean that a Ranger in the right position can make 4 attacks by level 5, which is incredibly good. It isn't going to activate every turn, but that doesn't mean it is bad per se, and when it does activate, it usually means you are needing the extra attacks to help even the odds.

Saying "only 1d8 a turn" is a little disingenuous I think for Colossus Slayer. It essentially turns one of your attacks into a crit per turn (assuming you are using a d8 weapon) and if you actually crit you get to do x4 dice of damage. And it is a level three ability, so wouldn't expect it to be super-ultra powerful.

Hunter's Mark being concentration does mean it is going to be under threat while you are in melee, but until you get really high level, most enemies aren't going to hit for more than 20 damage in melee at a time. So, most of your saves are going to be DC 10, and you can take Warcaster to get advantage or resilience to buff those saves if you are worried about them (actually, resilience Con isn't a bad choice period) so you can counteract that weak point. Not playing nice with dual-wielding is a problem, but depending on how fast you are killing your targets, it might not matter much. Losing every other off-hand attack, but getting a d6 on two main hand attacks isn't a massive dip in DPR I'd imagine.

Depending on Builds and Situations, a level 11 fighter may not be better than the ranger. Battlemaster going nova, or Paladin doing the same are incredibly high damages, but a Champion, Eldritch Knight, or Barbarians who don't use GWM are going to be about the same I'd imagine. Blade Pact warlocks look better NOW, because they've just gotten a massive number of buffs, but they didn't used to look so good even at level 12. Plus, they've got the same concentration issues.

Overall, I can agree the Melee Ranger isn't as good as the Archer Ranger by high levels (whirlwind attack sucks) but I've seen plenty of them in action, and they are devastating before level 11 and that is a large portion of the game. Plus, most of your comments and concerns have little to do with the melee ranger, because they could be said about either ranger

Well, you asked why I found the melee ranger bad, the general class features are part of the melee ranger and a great reason of why I don't like the class, lots of features wasted to make the class better in some specific circumstances.

We don't use feats and they are optional, practically on 1/3 hits hunter's mark will go down without a feat. If you use them and want damage the best feats are GWF, Polearm master and sharpshooter and other classes can have hex, the gap with other classes will be bigger. I also find a bit disgusting that you need that one spell to try to keep up with other classes, if it is so important they should have designed the class better.

1d8 is good, but beyond the second attack that's all the extra reliable damage you get till you reach level 20. At that level other classes have some good powers, monk can have two more unarmed attacks, the berserker another attack, the battlemaster has his maneuvers, the paladin can make his weapon magical with +CHA to hit, or have advantage against one enemy, etc.

At level 11 a champion will have 3 attacks which can be also used at range, more initiative, general durability, better saves, action surge, etc, that makes him far better at combat. The melee ranger will be better tracking under some circumstances, moving over some plants and camouflaging, I don't find this very interesting. A barbarian can tank and will hit more often so damage is not that different unless we go to the berserker. The warlock thanks to spells and class features can deal more damage and tank better. A monk using Ki can deal more damage or have more AC, then you have the features of each subclass.

The good thing of the hunter focused on ranged attacks is that you can use volley more reliably and it should be more difficult to lose Hunter's mark if you have space to move. That makes him good at combat but as I said I don't like the class features.

Mistwell said:
I have, and I find nobody saying anything about the Hunter Ranger being unbalanced. You made a claim, I've tried to back up your own claim and found nothing, so where are you seeing this? If it's all over this forum and Google and the UA (which it's not in that UA by the way - I just checked and it says nothing even vaguely like that as all it talks about is unpopularity and the weakness of some powers, not an unbalanced nature of the class or that subclass in particular) then it should be pretty easy go link to ... but it's not. WHO says the Hunter Ranger is unbalanced?

Seriously?
You only have to read the first pages of this thread. And if it was balanced what was the point all the discusions and people talking about tweaks?, they want to make the class unbalanced?
From the UA:

Many players want to play rangers, but few were happy with the class, which held its place at the bottom of class power rankings by a significant margin. The class’s individual features also filled the top-ten list of lowest-rated individual character features.

Do I need to explain what means balance?

Mistwell · Sep 2, 2018

dco said:
Seriously?
You only have to read the first pages of this thread. And if it was balanced what was the point all the discusions and people talking about tweaks?, they want to make the class unbalanced?
From the UA:

Do I need to explain what means balance?

Weak relative to other classes is not the same as unbalanced. SOMETHING will be the weakest compared to the other classes by definition. It could be perfectly balanced and still rank lowest, because something must rank lowest when you do a ranking. So yes, there is no evidence anything is unbalanced.

People want it to do more in a certain aspect of the game, hence suggesting some additions. That's also not the same as people claiming it's not balanced.

dco · Sep 2, 2018

Mistwell said:
Weak relative to other classes is not the same as unbalanced. SOMETHING will be the weakest compared to the other classes by definition. It could be perfectly balanced and still rank lowest, because something must rank lowest when you do a ranking. So yes, there is no evidence anything is unbalanced.

People want it to do more in a certain aspect of the game, hence suggesting some additions. That's also not the same as people claiming it's not balanced.

I can play the same game, the number of people playing a class doesn't mean it's balanced, someone not having trouble doesn't mean it is balanced, people saying it is balanced doesn't mean it is balanced.
There is no evidence of it being balanced, as you are so eager to ask for evidence why don't you offer some evidence?

SkidAce · Sep 2, 2018

I still say, add the beast companion rules from the REVISED into the PHB ranger, replacing them, and you are good to go.

UngeheuerLich · Sep 2, 2018

dco said:
I can play the same game, the number of people playing a class doesn't mean it's balanced, someone not having trouble doesn't mean it is balanced, people saying it is balanced doesn't mean it is balanced.
There is no evidence of it being balanced, as you are so eager to ask for evidence why don't you offer some evidence?

That is not how it works. You need to show that something needs an overhaul. It is wasted time to prove that something has to stay as is. The work hypothesis should be everything is ok if it does not interrupt the game. Otherwise you don't get anywhere.
Look at 4e. The constant revision because some people abused rules that worked in 99 percent of all cases and only broke if you interpreted rules in a very twisted way.

Revised Ranger update

Chaosmancer

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Chaosmancer

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Mistwell

Crusty Old Meatwad (he/him)

Valetudo

Explorer

Eric V

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dco

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Mistwell

Crusty Old Meatwad (he/him)

dco

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SkidAce

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UngeheuerLich

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