D&D 5E So one of the players made a ranger...

[not-so-newguy]

[title] ...and has very little experience with D&D. The last time he played was 30 years ago. Everyone at the table has little to no experience with 5e, except me, and I don't know the ranger class that well.

I'm looking for some general advice on how to build a decent Ranger with Hunter Archetype by using the PHB only . Advice on Spell choices would be very helpful.

Also, how a DM could handle Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer abilities. Eventually, we'll be exploring The Isle of Dread (Goodman Games version) and i imagine that these abilitie will become super important.

 

[billd91]

If you know the adventures you're planning on running, suggest suitable terrain types out of those for the ranger to specialize in. Same with favored enemy. Don't leave him guessing.

 

[jgsugden]

It is much maligned, but I played a Hunter when 5E first came out and had a blast. It works.

As a DM, you want to provide him with opportunities to use his exploration based abilities. As an out of practice player, you'll want to give him reminders when they can be used.

In terms of spell choice, my Ranger learned (in order) and usually stuck with: Hunter's Mark, Longstrider, Goodberry, Pass Without Trace, Lesser Restoration, (A Homebrew spell - your equivalent would be summon fey).

When I welcome someone back to the table for the first time in a long time, I find it is usually more important to make sure the story is engrossing than worry about whether the mechanics are optimized.

 

[Imaculata]

If everyone at the table has little experience with 5e except you, why worry about building a 'decent' class (whatever that means)? Part of the fun of the game is tinkering around with the class. There aren't really any 'bad' choices afaik, only perhaps sub-optimal ones depending on the sort of game you are running. But optimization really shouldn't be a concern either.

 

[iserith]

[title] ...and has very little experience with D&D. The last time he played was 30 years ago. Everyone at the table has little to no experience with 5e, except me, and I don't know the ranger class that well.

I'm looking for some general advice on how to build a decent Ranger with Hunter Archetype by using the PHB only . Advice on Spell choices would be very helpful.

Also, how a DM could handle Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer abilities. Eventually, we'll be exploring The Isle of Dread (Goodman Games version) and i imagine that these abilitie will become super important.

Give the player a heads up on the potential terrain in the adventure location and, if you're feeling generous, the types of monsters that might be found there. If it's Isle of Dread, I imagine it's coastal, forest, mountain, and maybe swamp? For monsters, I can only guess.

I recommend reading the Activities While Traveling rules in the PHB. When the PCs are going from hex to hex, they choose a pace and marching order for the party and each choose an activity. The default activity is to stay alert for danger. If they do anything like navigate, forage, track, or draw a map, they aren't looking for danger and are automatically surprised if a stealthy monster tries to sneak up on them. The ranger is the exception while in their favored terrain - they get to stay alert AND do something else. Natural Explorer adds to those "something else's" as does Favored Enemy.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Hunter ranger is fine - you'll hit pretty hard in combat and have a good array of skills. It's definitely not weak. If it has downsides, there are two:

1. Not a lot of tactical choices. Some people don't mind but rangers in general and hunters in particular tend to do the same thing every turn. If this bothers the player after a while, you may want to let them rebuild the character or bring in a new one. (Since this would be after mastering the basics, you'll likely both know what you want a lot better by then.)

2. The exploration abilities can be weak or strong depending on what the dm lets you do. If they're not in their favored terrain, they're just a guy with survival proficiency - although the feature actually says "related to your favored terrain", so you can be generous with this if you like. (tree being present = related to forests, stuff like that.) Favored enemy is in a similar place: if the enemy they pick doesn't show up or they don't get chances to track/talk to/otherwise interact out-of-combat, it becomes character sheet clutter. You'll need to proactively include situation to use this feature. (This is much easier if you follow the advice about telling the player what kinds of places and enemies you intend to use.)

 

[Rune]

If you want to save yourself (and the player) the headache of having to pick the correct favored enemies and terrain, I’d suggest allowing the player to switch them out with a little bit of (in-game) time and study. I’d think a long rest would be good for a hexcrawl, but maybe longer if you expect a significant amount of downtime in the game.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Ranger, eh? Some good advice here already - especially hooking them up with favored terrain and enemy that will be pertinent out of the gate. Hunter's Mark and perhaps one of the healing spells (Goodberry or Cure Wounds) are a good starting spell duo.

Used to be that "everyone" wanted to fix the Ranger (according to a quick search of old Ranger threads here). Now, it seems, the Ranger will obliterate your exploration pillar. Proceed with caution*!


*not really, it's gonna be ok

 

[Dragonsbane]

Rangers always did well in my games. Just make sure as people said to let the player know about terrain and enemies that might be in the adventure.

 

[Neonchameleon]

[title] ...and has very little experience with D&D. The last time he played was 30 years ago. Everyone at the table has little to no experience with 5e, except me, and I don't know the ranger class that well.

I'm looking for some general advice on how to build a decent Ranger with Hunter Archetype by using the PHB only . Advice on Spell choices would be very helpful.

Also, how a DM could handle Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer abilities. Eventually, we'll be exploring The Isle of Dread (Goodman Games version) and i imagine that these abilitie will become super important.

If you are going to play a PHB only ranger then the combination of a hunter and the Isle of Dread is more or less a best case scenario. The other PHB ranger subclass (the Beastmaster) gives you an animal companion that's a liability rather than an asset because it's very squishy and goes down easily. But you've dodged that bullet already. Hunter's bland but decent enough.

Favoured Enemy has a problem in that it's spectacularly situational much of the time - and it mostly just gives you advantage to track (which you don't do that often) against either an obscure enemy type or two subraces of humanoid, plus possibly a language. The key to why it's decent enough on the Isle of Dread is that dinosaurs are beasts. The beast specialty is normally a bad one because you aren't often fighting beasts after level three or so but this doesn't apply here (this applies in general; if you pick goblins as a favoured enemy they may be everywhere at level 1 but by level 5 not so much). The only slight flexing of the rules I'd use is "you also learn one language of your choice that is spoken by your favored enemies, if they speak one at all" to allow something some D&D animals have learned, for example Sylvan or something some have learned in the circus.

Natural Explorer is, in most campaigns, near useless for two reasons. First most of the abilities only apply "While traveling for an hour or more in your favored terrain" which is something you don't find a challenge that often most places, with the Isle of Dread being an obvious exception. The second is that for most games the two most dangerous environments are cities and dungeons, neither of which are normally helped by favoured terrain. Meanwhile most of the Isle is either mountains, forest/jungle (they're treated as one terrain type), or coast (which as a generous DM I'd count as any hex with either a speck of sea in it or a hex adjacent to a hex with a speck of sea but I wouldn't count on others being that generous.

Primeval Awareness at level 3 is so situational that it's only better than no level 3 ability at all on a technicality. In Tasha's Cauldron of Everything it's optionally replaced by Primal Awareness which gives you an extra spell known at each spell level and a free cast of that spell.

For build advice archery is the ranged fighting style while duelist is the best melee choice (two weapon fighting is just bad). I'd recommend ranged but both work, using the longbow or the rapier and shield with dex as your primary stat although the rapier and shield combo feels like a second rate fighter. For which hunter ability there aren't normally enough large foes for giant killer to be worth choosing; hordebreaker is amazing on an archer unless you've a jerk DM who always gives you solos or splits their monsters up to avoid your hordebreaker while colossus slayer is reliable. I would add that just about every post-PHB ranger subclass gives you a colossus slayer equivalent plus free spells plus an extra bonus,

Rangers don't get many spells. The standout first level spells are generally considered goodberry (healing + foraging), hunter's mark, ensnaring strike (which competes with hunter's mark for your concentration spell), and longstrider. For second level spells pass without trace is amazing, and spike growth is normally considered a stand-out but not on open ground. That said if there's a druid in the party they get both goodberry and pass without trace earlier than the ranger.

I'd still recommend using rules from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything to fix the ranger but for Isle of Dread in specific and having avoided the actively terrible beastmaster ranger things will be fine.