D&D (2024) Ranger 2024 is a bigger joke than Ranger 2014:

[Horwath]

A very basic part of the game is deciding what action and bonus action to use when. Most classes face this choice regularly, or can depending on build choices.

agree on that.
but give rangers a choice to pick something beside HM so they can willingly or not have conflict with their bonus action/concentration slot.

 

[mellored]

agree on that.
but give rangers a choice to pick something beside HM so they can willingly or not have conflict with their bonus action/concentration slot.

Can we go with a false choice?

Choose HM, Detect Posion, or Sky Writing.

 

[ECMO3]

Editions do not exist in isolation from each other. The 5e warlock is a pew pew blaster because the original warlock was a pew pew blaster. Eldritch blast is intimately associated with the warlock identity. They are not going to come along and present the warlock as a class that turns constructs, because what a D&D warlock is has already been established.

Nothing in the Warlock's class features is centered specifically around Eldritch Blast. There are no class abilities that key off Eldritch Blast specificically (or Hex for that matter).

 

[ECMO3]

The problem is there is no single way to boost Goodberry for those who want that and Hunter's Mark for those who want.

And if someone wants Speak with Animals....

Sure there is. We can cover all three of these easily within the bounds of the current rules:

1. Replace Favored Foe with Arcane Recovery
2. Replace the 13th and 17th level abilities with metamagic
3. Replace the captstone with something worthy of a capstone.

IF you did this you would have a boost for any spell you wanted to cast, including Hunters Mark, goodberry and Speak with Animals.

 

[ECMO3]

Can we go with a false choice?

Choose HM, Detect Posion, or Sky Writing.

Detect Magic every time .... especially if I can cast it free twice, but even moreso if it is at will.

 

[ECMO3]

What specific features are you talking about?

Favored Foe
Primal Awareness
Nature's Viel at level 10-13

I'm not saying whether you should be disappointed or not, that's a personal thing. What I am asking for is justifiable reasons to be disappointed and so far the common refrain boils down to, 'i might sometimes need to cast hunter's mark and i don't want to'.

Because they totally screwed up the class thematically by tieing it to a specific spell that has little flavor and largely only serves to boost damage. This is especially true when they even included Fey Wanderer as a core subclass, a subclass that strongly encourages a max wisdom, spell focused build that plays like a Gish that leans into magic as opposed to a Gish that leans into weapons.

Primal Awareness in particular is a huge loss as free castings on SWA, Beast Sense and SWP in are going to be much more useful to the default Fey Wanderer than Hunter's Mark is going to be and in addition to the free castings, Primal Awareness gave you a ton of extra spells prepared and making room on a cluttered spell list is going to be difficult.

On the occasions where a Fey Wanderer or Beast Master would want to boost damage, Favored Foe is usuallt more effective (due to action economy).

I think there's only a small handful that are.

From what I have read on this forum, the Ranger is the lowest 2024 class in terms of satisfaction at 11% of players satisfied. I don't know if that is true or not but I find it believable.

 

[FrogReaver]

Favored Foe
Primal Awareness
Nature's Viel at level 10-13

If that’s the only features we are talking about then seems a pointless discussion point for me.

Because they totally screwed up the class thematically by tieing it to a specific spell

They didn’t tie the class to a specific spell. I promise your spell focused rangers will still be just as good or better than hunters mark focused rangers.

that has little flavor and largely only serves to boost damage.

I find it very flavorful?

This is especially true when they even included Fey Wanderer as a core subclass, a subclass that strongly encourages a max wisdom, spell focused build that plays like a Gish that leans into magic as opposed to a Gish that leans into weapons.

You mean a ranger subclass that is stronger than a hunters mark ranger without class features devoted to hunters mark?

You mean a favored foe feature that mostly added damage to ranger types that didn’t actually need it?

 

[ECMO3]

Oh, so if rangers got free casts of a single non-concentration spell that would be fine? Maybe that's your take, but that's not the vibe i'm getting from others.

IF they got free castings of a spell of their choice and then power buffs on that spell through later class features then yes it would be fine ..... or at least better.

 

[FrogReaver]

IF they got free castings of a spell of their choice and then power buffs on that spell through later class features then yes it would be fine ..... or at least better.

I think that would make hunters mark rangers terrible.

When other options end up being way better in comparison an option becomes bad.

 

[ECMO3]

Ranger is at half caster. Ranger does not have the number of spell slots to consistently concentrate on two spells for all of the combat they have in 7 combat encounter adventure day along with exploration challenges until level 10 or so.

That is not necessarily true IMO, especially when you consider spells you get with species and feats. This is moreso true because those 7 encounters are not all typically of uniform difficulty. Given the choice I would rather cast 3 concentration spells on the toughest encounter and none on the weakest three.

I regularly find concentration being a barrier to what I want to cast with a Ranger, this is what makes Fey Reinforcements so powerful in play and I have used it to have 4 concentration spells up at once (3 without using concentration).