D&D General Beast Master Ranger Should Have A Familiar

[Paul Farquhar]

Maybe don't pick Beastmaster?

Maybe beastmaster shouldn’t have anything to do with rangers.

 

[Mistwell]

Maybe beastmaster shouldn’t have anything to do with rangers.

Well, that ship sailed long ago. If you don't like it, time travel back to I guess 2e?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

No, it's not. It's using it as a tool instead of a sentient being.

Which is board game thinking.

You and @Paul Farquhar, go ahead. Give it a personality. Give it characteristics. Then watch it die in combat. Watch the humdrum expression of knowing in 24 hours it will be back, good as new.

I have been using 5e familiars for over a decade now.

You can try to debate all day long about it not dying in combat because "you're careful." All that would mean is your DM is careful.

Reread what i said, because it isnt whatever you are responding to here.

Because familiars don't get death saves. And they generally have fewer hit points (and sometimes less of an armor class!) than a PC. So, if the fight is fair, they have a pretty good chance of dying each and every encounter. But so what, right? They'll pop back during the next encounter.

Again, that is not a character, that is a piece of equipment. So because you never send them down the hall, doesn't mean you are treating them any more as a character than the PC that does send them down the hall. Because if they are in a fight with you, they are likely to die, unless of course, the DM goes out of their way to make sure they don't. But it is not you doing that, it is the DM.

You didnt read anything i wrote, did you?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

@Scott Christian I get what you have against the current familiar rules. I even agree that it isnt ideal.

But dont misrepresent my arguments in order to make your own.

I have said more than once now that i do not experience the "treating the familiar as an item" behavior you are so worried about. No one is sending their cat down the hall to trigger traps, in any game i have played in or run.

But unless you have a game where the pcs spend as much time at camp as in the dungeon, and familiars have something to do at camp, people are going to take familiars into dungeons. And familiars are gonna die as a result, even when it is basically a character's subclass (or close to it).

And that is fine under only 3 circumstances.

1) the familiar isnt down foe that long. Literally just let it make death saves regardless of how much damage it takes, so that a spell slot must be spent to being it back just like a PC, and this wiuld be much less trivial.

2) The familiar doesnt matter at all in any mechanical sense. Pure flavor. (the worst option IMO)

3) The subclass or whatever gives you enough besides the pet that you arent half a PC while the pet is gone. (My oldest BM rewrite focuses on this, making the BM themself a master of teamwork, so that their abilities can be used alongside the party rogue or fighter, even if not quite as well as with the pet)


The other branch of design is to make the non deadly part of adventuring and make it require more ability checks, and design familiars to be meaningful help in those things, and then make it really easy to keep the familiar st home most of the time and call it to you when you need it's help deciphering a riddle in draconic or whatever and then send it back, making it an NPC you interact with at home base and between dangerous scenes.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Find Familiar:
You gain the service of a familiar, a spirit that takes an animal form you choose


The flavor of Rangerlore in D&D and fantasy is that a ranger's animal companion is a real animal. Not a spirit. Said animal might be buffed with training, armor, and/or Magic by the ranger.

There is no meaningful difference. It is a magic animal.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Maybe beastmaster shouldn’t have anything to do with rangers.

Nah, you can just not play the beastmaster ranger.

 

[Minigiant]

There is no meaningful difference. It is a magic animal.

The flavor of ranger companions is they arent magic animals.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Nah, you can just not play the beastmaster ranger.

You keep pointing to Dar as what you think a beastmaster should be, and Dar is quite clearly not a ranger. He can’t heal, he doesn’t have any non-animal powers, he is psionic rather than magic, he doesn’t have a favoured enemy, he doesn’t wear armour, he is not Aragon.

If you want to have better pets, you need to strip out all of the of the not-Dar powers, which means a base class, not a subclass.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The flavor of ranger companions is they arent magic animals.

Um...no. They are magical. They ar3 currently literally nature spirits, but even before then they were special animals you magically bond with and they become magical. The difference between that and a spirit that becomes an animal is completely cosmetic.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You keep pointing to Dar as what you think a beastmaster should be, and Dar is quite clearly not a ranger. He can’t heal, he doesn’t have any non-animal powers, he is psionic rather than magic, he doesn’t have a favoured enemy, he doesn’t wear armour, he is not Aragon.

If you want to have better pets, you need to strip out all of the of the not-Dar powers, which means a base class, not a subclass.

What. When have i ever mentioned Dar?

Figure out who you are arguing with please.