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I'm still picking away at this Ranger homebrew, and one feature that's been giving me some trouble is an aspect of their Spellcasting I was considering. The premise being; there are certain spells that are both thematically relevant to the Ranger's identity, and are just mechanical main-stays...

Unironically, probably. The fact that I could take it's premise, make it stronger than they dared to implement, and apply it to a 1st level spell, says a lot.

That's actually what I made base Hunter's Mark do, so it doesn't overlap with the main ability that grants an extra damage die. Yeah it's insane that it's a capstone. Even if it were on every attack, but it's not even that, it's once per turn!

I definitely like some of these! But... I'm just fundamentally resistant to the idea of Favoured Enemy as a class feature. Cannot be helped, I think.

A lot to get into here! These can be tricky, though not impossible of course. It's partially a matter of justifying them being a spell in the first place, I often see people dismissing Snare like "why is it even a spell, you could just set up a physical snare". Could work! I think Zephyr...

Well yeah, of course, but. I was just thinking, what's the difference between that and "Giant Killer" as such? The implicit flavour between Colossus Slayer and Horde Breaker is obvious, but why are there two features for Giants? It's not actually a big deal but I always thought it was a little...

True, Warlock gets some sort of choice on most of their class features, but they're not always drawing from the same pool to be fair. They don't only get Invocations.

I gathered that, just not the direction I'd personally take. No other class has this degree of variation, I think it would be weird to start now.

This is lowkey madness to me. I look at all this, and my eyes glaze over. Far, far too much for me personally. I'm sure some of it is real good! But like. I've figured out (most of) my Ranger levelling table already! Only need something for levels 14, 18 and (maybe) 20. I've got movement and...

Hunter is fine, but boring. It does not feature in any of my Ranger homebrewing. It's too translucent for this, I reckon. (also, what is the meaningful difference between a colossus and a giant in this context? do they mean like. the colossus of rhodes? is it about golems? otherwise, why is it...

You can't opt out of having a Favoured Enemy until you're allowed to take the one you actually care about. You have to have something in the meantime, whether you care about it or not. So it becomes; "I have a burning desire to take revenge on the Giants that plagued my village, but I'm gonna...

I think the limitations that imposes are more meaningful than what it brings to the table. If you're a Ranger whose village was beset by Giants, you don't want to be forced to wait till the mid-game before you're allowed to inform that backstory with your mechanics. "Favoured Enemy" doesn't just...

Even if I didn't think that Favoured Enemy and Favoured Terrain should stay in their graves, that is a lot of space on the page and just a lot to sort through, especially for new players. I'm reminded of this part of this one TF2 video.

The problem with this "oh well what if you can just change your Favoured Enemy and Terrain, that'll help" thing is always twofold; it makes your choice of enemy and terrain (potentially) meaningless as it relates to your character's identity and backstory since you're just gonna swap them out...

I think that's fair to say, but I feel like this could be done without it being especially complicated. Hell, Hex is already in a similar vein.

So let's see, let me collect my thoughts a little. I don't think I mind the idea of (my slight modification of) Hunter's Mark being the model for these theoretical new spells; A little bit of damage in a fashion adjacent to the signature ability of the class, and an additional effect that...

You lost me, personally.

This is all waaay too slight to me. Nobody cares about +1D4 damage past like, level 6! I know the Ranger UAs are very "once bitten, twice shy", but you can ask for more! (And also I don't think this should be made Ranger's signature feature, we've been down that road already and it hasn't worked)

That's just Favoured Enemy again! We've walked around in a circle!

But there are spellcasters that cannot cast Fireball or Cure Wounds. Because those spells do not fit them, outside of subclasses. But no, the class features are a better parallel to the, uh. Class features. Just like a Sorcerer cannot (and should not be able to) utilize a Spellbook, and a Druid...