Revised Ranger update

[Yunru]

With a wolf next to a melee Ranger, now her opponent takes two AoOs if it leaves.

The companion can't take actions unless instructed to by the Ranger.

 

[Mistwell]

And is a Wizard supposed to be a frontline combatant like the companion?

I don't know where that conception comes from. Nothing about the beastmaster's animal companion reads to me that it's "supposed to be a frontline combatant". They can be used in combat, but mostly to help the ranger and to do some special things like knocking foes down, poisoning foes, doing a flyby attack on foes, and those sorts of things the ranger has more difficulty doing. These usually set up advantageous situations that the ranger and his allies can take advantage of, but it really doesn't feel like a front line attacker.

Wouldn’t people who had seen them played have actual experience? At that point you have actual experience versus actual experience, which is where theorizing can be useful to see which scenario is more likely to occur, since both have been observed.



Kind of hard to find their HD if you don't know where to look, and since we are usually talking about 1 or 2 dice, it is very different from the 5 dice a player has and is expected to use.

What? How is it hard to look at their hit dice? And why are you still claiming 1 or 2 when in this very response we covered that it's 2 or 3?

And Flyby attack is great, as long as you don't care about damage since owls and Pteranodon's have pretty low damage. Also, until the enemy readies an attack to knock them out of the sky since they generally have poor AC and Hp too.

In my opinion animal companions for combat are best used for helping the ranger and other party members attack. But if you want them to do damage it's usually better to not just leave them out there in combat as if they are a fighter.

*Sarcasm* Another tax upon the ranger, let’s give them feats to allow them to heal their companions better too. *End Sarcasm*

Most feats do three things and what I had in mind, if you're not going the Fighting Style or Spell route, would be a feat that would cover a lot of ground that people seem to complain about the most with th beastmaster ranger. Like let it open up higher CR animals, allow the ranger to take a hit intended for the animal instead, heal them, give them hit dice equal to your ranger level, etc..

And, those 1 HD animals include some of those with Flyby attack, like the flying snake, which is kind of a cool companion to have. Of course, having something for the good of the story is against the ranger’s ethos right?

It’s almost like people are arguing different points based upon which point is better for the moment of defending the status quo.

My perspective is that the beastmaster could use some boosts and I have suggested three, but that it's not nearly as bad as people here often say it is right now. You've been dismissive of those fixes, and blatantly sarcastic, while simultaneously suggesting my position is to simply defend the status quo. You're not even internally consistent in your response to me (dismissing proposed fixes while claiming I am defending status quo). Which suggests it's almost like you're disagreeing with everything I say just to disagree. See how that works?

 

[OB1]

The companion can't take actions unless instructed to by the Ranger.

From the class feature description. “The Beast never requires your command to use its reaction, such as when making an opportunity attack.”

 

[Jester David]

So how is “There are classes that aren’t liked as well as the ranger is liked” a good rebuttal to the call to fix the ranger? If everyone has their favorites and least favorites and representative answers require massive amounts of polling to even get close… then why do you insist that those rankings should matter to us? If my opinion doesn’t matter unless it matches some massive, impossible to know super opinion… then your opinion doesn’t matter either. Plus, you admitted there is a mechanical fix, it isn’t even a question for you that that is possible, so this is just a smokescreen to hide behind “popularity”.

The point is that deciding to fix the ranger because it scored poorly is entirely arbitrary.
It's singling out a single class based on single data point (how unpopular the class is with a random bunch of nerds on the internet) and deciding that's the reason it should be remade.
Again, you could just as easily pick other reasons to remake a class. It's the least popular. It's the least played. It has the least flavour. It's wasn't in OD&D. It doesn't match historical fiction.

You could justify reworking the monk because it doesn't match the rest of the western medieval European tone of the game.
You could drop the barbarian because the term "barbarian" is super not politically correct and is a poor descriptor of what the class actually does.

You can ALWAYS find a reason to justify a change or a revision. That's easy.

At the end of the day, the PHB ranger is popular with the PLAYERS. It is being played. A lot. What a small fraction of a fraction of the audience whines about online DOES NOT MATTER.


Right now, the ranger not breaking anyone's game. People who don't like the ranger have eleven (and soon to be twelve and then thirteen) other choices. Included a scout ranger. Or multiclass fighter/ druid. It's not ruining campaigns or causing problems at game tables.

But the fix could.
After all, two of the reddit posts you linked weren't people complaining about their ranges being weak. They were people asking if rangers were weak BECAUSE they saw people talking about the ranger and the revised ranger. The revised ranger is making things WORSE. It is causing people to question the game and causing people to wonder if their character could be doing *better*.


Could they fix it? Yes. They probably will with a 6th Edition of the game.
Y'know, the equivalent of designing a new car because it performs poorly in wintery conditions. Recalling every single car of that model sold to improve it would be ridiculous. As would selling people a "fix" that they have to install themselves. The company waits for the car to run out its lifespan and uses the small bug as a selling feature for new cars.

And I'm not ready for 6th Edition yet.


And, really, there's a bajillion ranger fixes online. If people want a fix, they can find one. And likely ones that might be better than WotC's. It's not like WotC has some magical design powers that make everything they touch perfect. After all… they've taken three cracks at the ranger and people still seem unhappy. Do you REALLY think a fourth version of the ranger will solve everything.
If you're not happy and satisfied with the ranger…. MAKE YOUR OWN. Take a bunch of the existing options and build a ranger that rubs you the right way. Stop looking to external sources for happiness.

 

[Yunru]

I don't know where that conception comes from. Nothing about the beastmaster's animal companion reads to me that it's "supposed to be a frontline combatant".

So "Fight alongside" doesn't mean "fight alongside" it means "briefly help and then run away"?

 

[Mistwell]

The companion can't take actions unless instructed to by the Ranger.

" The beast never requires your command to use its reaction, such as when making an opportunity attack."

It's RIGHT THERE in the text.

When I said earlier it helps if you've played the class, I meant it. It really does help.

 

[Mistwell]

So "Fight alongside" doesn't mean "fight alongside" it means "briefly help and then run away"?

It means "fight alongside" as in, in my opinion, giving the help action to the Ranger it's next to. Which is the focus of the 7th level ability. Running in, attacking the thing near the Ranger, and then running out using the disengage action as a bonus action from the Ranger is also another favored tactic from that 7th level ability.

 

[Satyrn]

The companion can't take actions unless instructed to by the Ranger.

I don't know if this is true. An opportunity attack isn't an action, at least not in the game mechanic sense where Dodge or Dash are actions, so whether or not it can take that opportunity attack without being commanded isn't addressed by the rules.

 

[Mistwell]

I don't know if this is true. An opportunity attack isn't an action, at least not in the game mechanic sense where Dodge or Dash are actions, so whether or not it can take that opportunity attack without being commanded isn't addressed by the rules.

Of course it's not true, the text of the class itself contradicts what he said. "The beast never requires your command to use its reaction, such as when making an opportunity attack."

 

[Yunru]

" The beast never requires your command to use its reaction, such as when making an opportunity attack."

It's RIGHT THERE in the text.

When I said earlier it helps if you've played the class, I meant it. It really does help.

My apologies, I keep forgetting because it never comes up, what with one or two hits taking out the animal companion.