D&D 5E what version of the Ranger do you use?

doctorbadwolf

Heretic of The Seventh Circle

• Jan 22, 2019

• #41

My wife is playing a revised revised ranger right now. We are talking, as a group, about switching to PHB base class with some of the variant rules from Happy Fun Hour simply added to the class (the natural explorer and favored enemy features, specifically), and then using the Revised Beastmaster, with the exception that she will have normal Extra Attack instead of the beast getting to make an attack whenever she attacks.

We may also add some bonus spells, like suggested here https://twitter.com/Dan_Dillon_1/status/935582272014704642

3rd: Animal Friendship
5th: Beast Sense
9th: Conjure Animals
13th: Dominate Beast
17th: Awaken

 

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Gladius Legis

Legend

• Jan 23, 2019

• #42

Azzy said:

Gotta say that, aside from the Beastmaster, I don't see much wrong with the ranger (any more than any other class).

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Mostly because PHB's Natural Explorer and Favored Enemy are two of the worst designed class features in 5e. Many campaigns can go without those features ever coming into play. They're not even good as ribbon features. Hide in Plain Sight isn't much better, Vanish is 1/3 of the Rogue's Cunning Action 12 levels too late, and to say nothing of that god-awful capstone.

Power-wise the PHB version of the class is within the bell curve thanks to Extra Attack and half-spellcaster status, though the base class is on the weaker side of it. Beast Master is an extremely weak subclass on top of a weak-ish base class, which is why it constantly rates in the gutter. On the other side of the power curve, Gloom Stalker (Xanathar's) is such a strong subclass that, despite the PHB Ranger base class being on the weak side, a character with that subclass is overall quite strong. Playing an archery-focused Gloom Stalker (PHB Ranger base) right now, currently at Lv. 7, and having a lot more fun than I thought I would.

 

Last edited: Jan 23, 2019

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S'mon

Legend

• Jan 23, 2019

• #43

PHB Ranger since that's what players have, but I'm happy to house rule the Beastmaster however the player wants - had a Beastmaster riding a giant spider a while back.

 

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AkaKageWarrior

Explorer

• Jan 23, 2019

• #44

PHB + archetypes from XGtE

 

Hussar

Legend

• Jan 23, 2019

• #45

UA Ranger both hunter and beastmaster. Liked them both. Worked well. Some complaints that they might be a tad overpowered, but, meh, didn't really see it.

Granted, we only played them up to about 10th level (ish), so, maybe it gets crazier down the road? But, I know that my UA hunter ranger in Ravenloft was a ton of fun to play.

 

akr71

Hero

• Jan 23, 2019

• #46

PHB & XGtE, however if someone wants to play a Beastmaster, I encourage them to play something else and put the UA Sidekicks document in front of them.

As an aside, in my campaign the party came across an Awoken bear, who they shared fish with, talked with and then parted ways. A day or two (in game) later they realized that they could have befriended the bear, taken it as a sidekick and then have had a spellcasting bear as part of the party. I have a feeling the campaign is going to take a hard 180 while the ranger tries to track down the bear...

 

Mr. Wilson

Explorer

• Jan 23, 2019

• #47

We used the UA Ranger last campaign (stretching from April 2017 thru October 2018).

No one has opted to play the Ranger in the new campaign as of yet.

 

Laurefindel

Legend

• Jan 23, 2019

• #48

PHB ranger for me, both as a player and a DM.

I'm playing a beastmaster at the moment and liking it so far, but I can see how it's not so enticing to stay in the class past a certain point...

UA ranger overcompensated big time IMO, turning the good-in-exploration-pillar ranger into a might-as-well-not-be-an-exploration-pillar ranger. As a quick homebrew alteration, I would give PHB hunter and beastmaster bonus spells like those in XGtE.

As far as alternate versions of the ranger go, I much prefer the aforementioned reddit's Consensus Ranger to the UA's.

 

Gladius Legis

Legend

• Jan 23, 2019

• #49

Hussar said:

UA Ranger both hunter and beastmaster. Liked them both. Worked well. Some complaints that they might be a tad overpowered, but, meh, didn't really see it.

Granted, we only played them up to about 10th level (ish), so, maybe it gets crazier down the road? But, I know that my UA hunter ranger in Ravenloft was a ton of fun to play.

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The UA Ranger's power level is actually fine at Lv. 10+. Where it's considered "overpowered" is at Lv. 1 because of that version of Natural Explorer giving you all those different powerful benefits all at the beginning, when those benefits could stand to be partitioned out one at a time at higher levels.

Anyway, when I DM, I replace Natural Explorer with this homebrew I came up with. It addresses the flaws of both PHB and UA versions of Natural Explorer, I feel.

If I'm a player and someone else is DM, I just use whatever Ranger is available. In my current game I'm playing, it's PHB + Xanathar's.

 

Asgorath

Explorer

• Jan 23, 2019

• #50

Gladius Legis said:

On the other side of the power curve, Gloom Stalker (Xanathar's) is such a strong subclass that, despite the PHB Ranger base class being on the weak side, a character with that subclass is overall quite strong. Playing an archery-focused Gloom Stalker (PHB Ranger base) right now, currently at Lv. 7, and having a lot more fun than I thought I would.

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I'm in a very similar situation, currently playing a level 9 Gloom Stalker using PHB + XGTE without modifications and really enjoying it. I think I've used Natural Explorer exactly once so far, and Favored Enemy has come in handy a few times (we're playing Storm King's Thunder and nobody else could speak Giant). I switched to this character at level 6 though, and so probably skipped some of the earlier pain points.