D&D 5E Companion thread to 5E Survivor - Subclasses (Part XI: Rangers)

[Undrave]

Companion to: D&D 5E - 5E Survivor - Subclasses (Part XI: Rangers)

I hesitated before starting this thread because I don’t really know much about the Ranger in actual play. I think the number of sessions I played with an actual Ranger in the party could be counted on the fingers of one hand? And I was never really impressed or took notice of what they did…

I’m not a fan of animal companions on principle. I think we should just admit they never properly work as class feature and just make them a companion class and have the DM consider them a full character when they’re added to the party for the purpose of encounter design. Any player who wants one has to be ready to handle that extra character.

Making what is essentially 1 character in 2 bodies is always going to be a little clunky. Even worse if you have to take random monster stats for your companion (Tasha’s Primal Beasts are way better).

That said, I think Drakewarden and Swarmkeeper are some of the better incarnation of that concept so I’m upvoting either while down voting the ill-conceived Beast Master.

Ranger is one of those classes I'd love to try to redesign from the group up. It would probably work great with the Warlock frame where you can pick if you want to be a melee skirmisher, archer hunter, or a beast master and then add another element on top. The way I see it, the Ranger is the Warrior of the Border. They stand between two ‘worlds’ and protect one from the other. The Frontier the stand on should be what define them (in addition to my aforementioned style idea). You could have Ranger who stand between nature and colonist, between nations, between the material plane and a specific plane (Fey Wanderer, Gloom Stalker, etc), maybe with orders tasks with finding ‘fissures’ between the planes and getting rid of them. Maybe even an Urban Ranger who stands between two gangs to defend the little people.

I see the Ranger as a warrior who is naturally isolated, physically or metaphorically, and has to survive using whatever mean possible. My ideal Ranger would probably lean more into Rituals and exploration utility than combat casting, with the amount of combat casting you get based more on your subclass than as a general system with slots and stuff. Maybe invent a Trapsmithing Kit with actual traps you could build?

 

[Vaalingrade]

I feel like getting an animal friend is the only reason to I'd ever play a ranger over a rogue, so I kind of take the terrible efforts at making animal companions a little bit personal.

 

[Wandersails]

why is everyone downvoting drakewarden? do people genuinely dislike it? I get that it's a pet subclass but its definitely not as egregious as some other examples of that (by which I mean beast master lol)

 

[Maxperson]

I've only seen a Gloom Stalker played and it was really cool, so I'm upvoting that. Beyond that, I'm voting based on how rangery I think the name is. Drakewarden isn't at the top of my hit list, but it doesn't seem all that rangery to me, so I will eventually get around to it unless it's gone before my higher hit targets are.

 

[CleverNickName]

I feel like getting an animal friend is the only reason to I'd ever play a ranger over a rogue, so I kind of take the terrible efforts at making animal companions a little bit personal.

Same here, though I probably don't take it quite as personally. I think that WotC was on the right track with Unearthed Arcana No. 8, but they just didn't give us enough to work with (they only did the first five levels.) If they could have taken it all the way out to 20th level, and given us a full picture of where they were going to end up and how they were going to get there, it might have been better-received by the "fans."

(I put that last word in quotes because we all know people on these forums who say they love the Ranger class, yet never seem to have anything good to say about it. But "fan" is shorthand for "fanatic," so...)

Hey I get it, it was early days, and WotC was still trying to figure out this whole playtest-and-survey thing they wanted to do. They tried out a few different formats before they settled on the ones we have now. I don't think they ever tried that "five-level-preview" format ever again, thank goodness.

Maybe someone should rewrite those three subclasses from UA#8 and polish them up a bit, advance them all the way to 20th level?

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

I don't think animal companions should be represented by their own bodies and stats and hitdice etc. It's just another attempt at vaguely modelling reality rather than making a thing playable.

Swarmkeeper has the right spirit! Your animals are always present, but you're not taking two turns every round to play with them. It's just a bit too specific (you fly now) to match many concepts, and a bit too hands-off for the animals to have any personality...

Anyway, I am currently playing a Tasha-fixed Beast Master, but I am not voting for BM in this. People might think it's a vote for the subclass, rather than Primal Companion.

 

[Vaalingrade]

(I put that last word in quotes because we all know people on these forums who say they love the Ranger class, yet never seem to have anything good to say about it. But "fan" is shorthand for "fanatic," so...)

To be fair, it's possible to love a concept despite the fact that it has never been done well in D&D.

I'm a fan of half dragons, despite the fact that D&D hates me for it and will never pass up an opportunity to punish me for having hope of seeing a good half dragon in the game.

 

[DND_Reborn]

why is everyone downvoting drakewarden? do people genuinely dislike it?

For myself, two reasons:

1. Anything past Xanathar's I'll downvote. There are too many subclasses IMO and throwing on more and more "theme" subclasses is not good design. If you want a Companion, one subclass should do it, you just change the companion...

2. Dragons. Anything that incorporates dragons into the PCs is not good for me.

So, I'll keep downvoting it until it is gone.

Now, I can speculate for others: they see it as a strong contender against a subclass they want, so want to draw first blood and get rid of it so they won't be beaten by it in the end.

I feel like getting an animal friend is the only reason to I'd ever play a ranger over a rogue, so I kind of take the terrible efforts at making animal companions a little bit personal.

It is one reason I would never play one, myself. Having an animal companion shouldn't be the crux of the ranger's identity IMO. For that reason, I won't be upvoting any "companion" ranger subclass.

That's just my take, anyway. Cheers.

 

[DeviousQuail]

I've really come around on Rangers. The efforts made to fix it were finally starting to feel right with the Tasha's additions. Deft Explorer, Primal Awareness, and Primal Companion are great. Not a fan of Favored Foe or Favored Enemy but I can appreciate the effort to try and fix it. The 11+ range of levels are boring but I could say the same about other classes too.

For the Survivor thread I'm trying to show Drakewarden some love even though @Maxperson is right. It could have been a subclass for Paladin or Fighter and I wouldn't have batted an eye. But it is pretty cool that we got it and it seems good mechanically. Otherwise, I'm leaning towards Fey Wanderer and Gloomstalker.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Companion to: D&D 5E - 5E Survivor - Subclasses (Part XI: Rangers)

I hesitated before starting this thread because I don’t really know much about the Ranger in actual play. I think the number of sessions I played with an actual Ranger in the party could be counted on the fingers of one hand? And I was never really impressed or took notice of what they did…

I’m not a fan of animal companions on principle. I think we should just admit they never properly work as class feature and just make them a companion class and have the DM consider them a full character when they’re added to the party for the purpose of encounter design. Any player who wants one has to be ready to handle that extra character.

Making what is essentially 1 character in 2 bodies is always going to be a little clunky. Even worse if you have to take random monster stats for your companion (Tasha’s Primal Beasts are way better).

Idk, I think both the Tasha’s primal beast and the UA revised Ranger BM work great.

That said, I think Drakewarden and Swarmkeeper are some of the better incarnation of that concept so I’m upvoting either while down voting the ill-conceived Beast Master.

Ranger is one of those classes I'd love to try to redesign from the group up. It would probably work great with the Warlock frame where you can pick if you want to be a melee skirmisher, archer hunter, or a beast master and then add another element on top.

Something similar to warlock, maybe, yeah. I’d be Fine with BM in the base class separate from the main subclass choice, like pact boons, but I’d need them to take up a little more of the power budget than the warlocks pact boon does.

The way I see it, the Ranger is the Warrior of the Border. They stand between two ‘worlds’ and protect one from the other. The Frontier the stand on should be what define them (in addition to my aforementioned style idea). You could have Ranger who stand between nature and colonist, between nations, between the material plane and a specific plane (Fey Wanderer, Gloom Stalker, etc), maybe with orders tasks with finding ‘fissures’ between the planes and getting rid of them. Maybe even an Urban Ranger who stands between two gangs to defend the little people.

I mostly agree with this. Especially the first part.

I see the Ranger as a warrior who is naturally isolated, physically or metaphorically, and has to survive using whatever mean possible. My ideal Ranger would probably lean more into Rituals and exploration utility than combat casting, with the amount of combat casting you get based more on your subclass than as a general system with slots and stuff. Maybe invent a Trapsmithing Kit with actual traps you could build?

In 5e, I don’t see an elegant way to do this that doesn’t leverage spell slots. Having to sacrifice subclass to gain Spellcasting is a nonstarter. This is where I’d look more to the artificer than to the warlock for inspiration. I know some folks cannot abide the thought of nonmagical abilities using spells slots, so I’d be fine changing it to a monk style set of points called Hunter’s Focus or something.

why is everyone downvoting drakewarden? do people genuinely dislike it? I get that it's a pet subclass but its definitely not as egregious as some other examples of that (by which I mean beast master lol)

It’s one of my least favorite published subclasses. It doesn’t need to be a ranger subclass and would work better as a fighter, it is very weird in terms of mechanics supporting theme with the summoning, and it shouldn’t cost anything to have the pet available, all cost should be associated with boosting its efficacy.

And I’d rather not get flight than get it at that late a level. At that point it’s a waste of a feature level that could have been doing something interesting.