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

[Saggo]

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.

TWF doesn't work with Beast Master. TWF specifically requires you to take the Attack Action, and BM only lets you make an additional weapon attack. Polearm Master's bonus attack doesn't work for the same reason. Your table can, of course, waive or alter the requirement (most I know do).

 

[Xeviat]

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.

I find the animal stats to be strange, too. Like the baboon; I think I'd be far more worried to fight a baboon than those stats make it look like.

 

[Azurewraith]

First of holy necromancy!

I find the animal stats to be strange, too. Like the baboon; I think I'd be far more worried to fight a baboon than those stats make it look like.

2nd off thats because your a feeble commoner your 1HD makes fighting anything troubling along with those average stats Redgar would never be afraid of such a silly monky

 

[Ken Prejean]

Why isnt the psuedodragon a legal ranger companion ?

 

[Mistwell]

Why isnt the psuedodragon a legal ranger companion ?

That's a fair question. They moved the pseudodragon over to the special category of Warlock familiars. Rangers are now restricted to more "natural" beasts while Warlocks can sometimes get the more extraordinary types.

If you are thinking about houseruling your game to allow the pseudragon as a companion for the ranger, I don't think it would break anything. Beast masters are widely considered on the lower end of the power scale, and a pseudodragon companion probably doesn't bump them up much beyond average in terms of power. And, it would probably be fun!

 

[Alex MacNabb]

Thank you!
This is a lot better than digging through the book!

 

[DrenDor]

Nice work OP, this was just what I was looking for as I just levelled up my ranger to level 3 and decided to try going with Beast Master. I converted your text into an Excel spreadsheet and formatted it for easy printing on an 8.5x11 sheet. It perfectly fits one page in portrait view.

I figured I'd give back to the community by posting my Excel file for anyone interested. Since this forum does not support uploading it directly I am sharing it as a Dropbox link. Please let me know if you have any trouble accessing it. I suggest downloading the file and printing from Excel as I have no idea how it will come out of Dropbox directly. https://www.dropbox.com/s/7o2otddwkbheeo7/Beast%20Master.xlsx?dl=0 I hope this is a helpful contribution to the community!

 

[gyor]

Thanks for the list.

For those looking at it, let me cut to the chase: overall best options are giant badger (if multi-attack works as animal attack), or giant poisonous snake (because +3d6 poison damage on every hit, half on save)

Companion AC doesn't really matter, once you can buy barding for them (300g for AC 16 chainmail, 6000g for AC 18 platemail). Because giant snake in plate armor whoo!

Multattack doesn't work the way you want as per the word of the sage, Jeremy Crawford.

 

[ClaytonCross]

Multattack doesn't work the way you want as per the word of the sage, Jeremy Crawford.

Well the new official Errata trumps Jeremy Crawford... so what he said in the past is obsolete due to what he approved as official.

Bestial Fury (p. 93). This section has been changed to “Starting at 11th level, when you command your beast companion
to take the Attack action, the beast can make two attacks, or it can take the Multiattack action if it has that action.”

But also its crazy to me that challenge rating of 1/4 is the limit for Rangers when Mechanical Servant for Artificers is "Select a Large beast with a challenge rating of 2 or less" which you use for the stats so they get Polar Bear MM p334 as an option that.

AC12 HP42(5d10+15) Speed 40ft swim 30ft Perception +3 (13 passive)
60ft dark vision - only feature from Cave bear variant
Keen smell (advantage on perception checks with smell)

Multiattack. The bear makes two attacks: one with its bite and one with its claws.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (ld8 + 5) piercing damage.
Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft ., one target. Hit: 12 (2d6 + 5) slashing damage.

Mechanical Servant adds:
• It can’t be charmed.
• It is immune to poison damage and the poisoned condition.
• It gains darkvision with a range of 60 feet if it doesn’t have it already.
• If you are the target of a melee attack and the servant is within 5 feet of the attacker, you can use your reaction to command the servant to respond, using its reaction to make a melee attack against the attacker.

While I get the Artificer is not finalized since the ranger only gets:

• Add your proficiency bonus to the beast’s AC, attack rolls, and damage rolls, as well as to any saving throws and skills it is proficient in. Its hit point maximum equals its normal maximum or four times your ranger level, whichever is higher.
• You can use your action to verbally command it to take the Attack, Dash, Disengage, or Help action.

It seems to me the Artificer companion allowing higher CR choices with attacks on reactions make it a better supplement than the Beast masters since your losing the Rangers action to attack on its own where the Artificer can play normally but use their companion to defend themselves. Seriously an Artificer fights a Beast Master ranger its going to rock its world and this is random add on feature for the Artificer while its the design for the Beast Master. If they had added just the reaction bit to the Beast master and opened up the CR for the beat master at level 6 and allowed for an upgrade that would be cool. I know parting with the CR1/4 might be a sad story moment but at the same time when that creature dies at higher level you make the change to something that can keep up, since that's likely to happen anyway.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I’d much rather increase my wolf’s effective CR with actual scaling HP and damage.