D&D 5E Beast Master Ranger List of Animal Companions

TwoSix · Aug 25, 2014

trentonjoe said:
Once you have the Extra Attack feature,
you can make one w eapon attack yourself when you
com m and the beast to take the Attack action.

SO at 5th level, the gnome ranger swings once and then his badgers attacks three times?

It depends on how you read Multiattack for monsters. Is it just another form of the "Attack" action, or is it its own separate action type, which would make it not usable by the beast master? I'm kind of up in the air about it. Multi-attacking does let you add the proficiency bonus to damage twice, which is pretty strong. Especially once the ranger gets bestial fury at 11th.

Moorcrys · Aug 25, 2014

TwoSix said:
Ok, now let's compile a list for best moon druid forms! Not because I'm personally interested or anything.

Hah, that's a bit more complicated. If I have some time over the next day I'll see if I can get it together. I'd like to see what that looks like as well...

Moorcrys · Aug 25, 2014

TwoSix said:
It depends on how you read Multiattack for monsters. Is it just another form of the "Attack" action, or is it its own separate action type, which would make it not usable by the beast master? I'm kind of up in the air about it. Multi-attacking does let you add the proficiency bonus to damage twice, which is pretty strong. Especially once the ranger gets bestial fury at 11th.

The issue I see with it is that it's so good just about everyone will be running around with giant badgers. The ranger would be making 5 attacks per round after level 11.

TwoSix · Aug 25, 2014

Moorcrys said:
The issue I see with it is that it's so good just about everyone will be running around with giant badgers. The ranger would be making 5 attacks per round after level 11.

Yea, I tend to agree. The BM ranger can already get 4 attacks with TWF and bestial fury, that's pretty good, especially if the attacker is a giant snake.

Psikerlord# · Aug 25, 2014

TwoSix said:
I still like the idea of a halfling wolf-rider, although the interaction between the mounted combat rules and the animal companion rules seems a little wonky.

Haha I was thinking something similar: forest gnome on giant badger with burrowing trickiness, woot!

Paraxis · Aug 25, 2014

Psikerlord# said:
Haha I was thinking something similar: forest gnome on giant badger with burrowing trickiness, woot!

As long as the badger is called Francis, all is good.

Minions, love my minions.

Joe Liker · Oct 1, 2014

I feel that disallowing Multiattack would be kind of a kneejerk reaction that doesn't take into account all the great things other companions can do.

Giant Badger has mediocre accuracy, no skills, weak Perception, no knockdown, no grapple, no poison, no charge attack, no relentless, no wallcrawling, no swim speed, and no fly speed. Its only real trick is burrow.

Looking at just the CR 1/4 list, there are plenty of reasons to pick companions other than the giant badger, even with multiattack factored in.

A good house rule, however, might be to buff those other pets by adding the ranger's proficiency bonus to the DCs of knockdown, grapple, poison, etc. This was, IMO, a glaring oversight on the part of the design team.

I'm A Banana · Oct 1, 2014

TwoSix said:
The BM ranger

GreenTengu · Oct 1, 2014

A lot of those stats don't make any damn sense compared to one another.
Clearly whomever WotC gave this project to doesn't know the first thing about animals.

I mean, most blatantly, what the hell is up with the stupidly inflated Wolf and Boar states compared to everything else? They have about twice the hit points and higher AC and deal more damage than animals bigger and stronger than they are.

simen · Dec 6, 2015

Play a small race like halfling or gnome, and use Pteranodon as a mount. Death from above with spells or arrows. You are of course a big target yourself for archers, and if the Pteranodon gets targeted by spells etc. that knocks it prone you do have a problem though

Btw, all the needing your action to do attacks etc. might be balanced for combat, but out combat it will be very strange and the whole thing feels very 4e. The errata fixes some of it, but it's very meta that it can only think on it's own if you are not there.

I found a good source if you really want to immerse yourself in this thing:

http://librarians-and-leviathans.blogspot.no/2015/07/a-beastly-problem-animal-companions-in.html

Anyway, I quick fix to me seems to be to remove extra attack from the beast master ranger, then let the beast have it's own will and you can command it to for free. I mean, the Druid can control an entire zoo for "free" but you have to command your trained companion. The whole thing seems so meta and destroys it for me.