Don Durito
Hero
It's worth pointing out the the failure is older than that. The 4E ranger beastmaster was largely considered failed design as well.
Absolutely.Umm... You realize there’s a planned procedure for the death of a party member, right? It’s called Raise Dead.
I would totally be down with this trade. A real full combat pet in exchange for some weak-ass magic? Sold!It's a massive conflict with the general Ranger spell list. You're almost saying it's a beast OR spellcasting but not both. Too high a price in my opinion.
But nobody expects good results from the existing design...?If that's the plan for balance, then it would have been needed in place prior to designing the spell selections for the Ranger - and not patched on years later. Right now the spells for concentration are not in any way related to the concept you're expressing. The concentration spells in place are balanced against the other concentration spells such that you are expected to have one in place but not a second one. The expectation is not none in place, and the non-centration spells are not laid out to account for that either.
Many don't care just as you say. It's not as if we're asking for something controversial and disruptive, after all.I really think pets get overthought.
Especially the Ranger/Beastmaster thing.
Trying to balance it is the issue. Is the pet really part of the character? Do we really want the Ranger to be weaker as a character because he has to leave his pet panther outside the city/or handwave the fact that he would probably have to?
It just seems easier to say that, if everyone's fine with it, the Ranger gets a secondary character and has some rules to interact with it.
How much do the rest of the PCs care? It's not as if the Ranger is more powerful than other PCs.
Just put it out there as an option - if the group isn't happy with the Ranger having a companion character then sorry no pet.
If the Paladin takes a squire do we need to rebalance the whole class?
Just make the pet a sidekick and have done with it.
I wouldn't know, but sure, absolutely.It's worth pointing out the the failure is older than that. The 4E ranger beastmaster was largely considered failed design as well.
It's not rocket science for the DM to level up an animal NPC, but I expect to see expanded sidekick rules for it in the new book.What animal?
You're not seriously suggesting the level 17 party bring along a CR 1/2 guard dog are you?
Of course we want and deserve a subclass that simplifies and codifies the pet's stat block as appropriate for my level. Right. Right?
Since 5e doesn't have PF2's action economy, the big bit (trading one of your actions for two of the companion's) would be hard to implement though.