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Did anyone try beastmaster with no action for beast attack?
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<blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6700597" data-attributes="member: 6677017"><p>Preface: The designer intent does appear to be that the animal companion does nothing on a turn that it isn't specifically commanded. I suppose someone could dig up tweets (and the preface to the new ranger article implies it also), but that's really how it is, you can argue the designers are interpreting the rules they've written poorly (I have done such before), and you can definitely agree with the majority of us that it is a bad rule, but it is the rule.</p><p></p><p>My house rule is that, like any other pet you can just buy off of the equipment list, the animal will act naturally according to its inclinations and training. It doesn't require any actions whatsoever (unless I rule that you need to expend effort to direct it to do something specific) to command a pet, whether you got it as a class ability or not. Instead, I say that the class ability allows you to grant your companion <em>extra</em> actions beyond its normal complement--much like certain Battle Master maneuvers do.</p><p></p><p>So to the OP, I basically do as you've described <em>plus</em> give the ranger a little bit extra beyond that.</p><p></p><p>We had one character set up to run this way in a one-shot adventure. Unfortunately the player had to miss the adventure, so it never saw play. These were 20th level characters with a few magic items each. From what I could see on the sheet (and I did a lot of analysis so the player would understand the pros/cons of giving up actions/bonus actions/attacks, etc) it was rarely very useful to trade his own actions for the animal companion's. It was usually slightly better for the ranger to keep all his actions to himself. So the primary benefit he was getting was having a slightly buffed pet. Still not as good as some of beasts he could have just purchased in an exotic market. If giving up his actions was only occasionally situationally useful, that should be some indication of the general usefulness of the subclass.</p><p></p><p>That being said, if a DM won't let a player actually acquire pets without a class feature, the subclass has some minor value in being a way to obtain one, assuming that you think a crappy pet is better than no pet.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Sword of Spirit, post: 6700597, member: 6677017"] Preface: The designer intent does appear to be that the animal companion does nothing on a turn that it isn't specifically commanded. I suppose someone could dig up tweets (and the preface to the new ranger article implies it also), but that's really how it is, you can argue the designers are interpreting the rules they've written poorly (I have done such before), and you can definitely agree with the majority of us that it is a bad rule, but it is the rule. My house rule is that, like any other pet you can just buy off of the equipment list, the animal will act naturally according to its inclinations and training. It doesn't require any actions whatsoever (unless I rule that you need to expend effort to direct it to do something specific) to command a pet, whether you got it as a class ability or not. Instead, I say that the class ability allows you to grant your companion [I]extra[/I] actions beyond its normal complement--much like certain Battle Master maneuvers do. So to the OP, I basically do as you've described [I]plus[/I] give the ranger a little bit extra beyond that. We had one character set up to run this way in a one-shot adventure. Unfortunately the player had to miss the adventure, so it never saw play. These were 20th level characters with a few magic items each. From what I could see on the sheet (and I did a lot of analysis so the player would understand the pros/cons of giving up actions/bonus actions/attacks, etc) it was rarely very useful to trade his own actions for the animal companion's. It was usually slightly better for the ranger to keep all his actions to himself. So the primary benefit he was getting was having a slightly buffed pet. Still not as good as some of beasts he could have just purchased in an exotic market. If giving up his actions was only occasionally situationally useful, that should be some indication of the general usefulness of the subclass. That being said, if a DM won't let a player actually acquire pets without a class feature, the subclass has some minor value in being a way to obtain one, assuming that you think a crappy pet is better than no pet. [/QUOTE]
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Did anyone try beastmaster with no action for beast attack?
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