D&D 5E (2024) Homebrew Ranger subclass: The Buccaneer

[ECMO3]

Buccaneer - A Dashing scoundrel who sails the seas

Level 3
Poly Want a Cracker: You can cast the Find Familiar spell as a ritual without any material components. You can't cast this spell except as a ritual.

Dead Men Tell No Tales: Once a turn you can Sneak Attack as a Rogue. Your number of sneak attack dice is equivalent to a Rogue of one-third your Ranger level rounded down. If you also have levels in Rogue these dice do not stack.

Bucaneer Spells.
The following spells are always prepared:
Level 3: Fog Cloud
Level 5: Rope Trick
Level 9: Call Lightning
Level 13: Evard's Black Tenticles
Level 17: Destructive Wave

Level 7:
Weapon Finesse: You are particularly good at fighting with light weapons. All light weapons have the finesse property when you wield them. All light weapons also have Vex and Nick weapon masteries when wielded by you, in addition to any mastery properties they normally have. You can only use one mastery property with each attack.

Level 11:
Sea Legs: Difficult terrain does not slow you down, additionally you have advantage on any save against being knocked prone or grappled, and getting up from prone only costs you 5 foot of movement.

Level 15:
Yo Ho Ho: Your Buccaneer spells can be cast as a bonus action

Thoughts?

 

[Laurefindel]

Ohhh, homebrewed subclasses! We haven’t seen that in a while!

A+ for flavour.

Deadmen Tell no Tales: it may be balanced, or not, but it’s unoriginal. Go back to the drawing board and make a new not-sneak-attack feature. Then stacking won’t be an issue.

Weapon Finesse: What, no witty ability name? Seems like you want that ranger to stick with light weapons. I think it requires more incentives; light, finesse, nick and vex weapons are not hard to come by. So the real value of this feature is to use another light weapon other that isn’t a scimitar or a short sword. Unless I’m missing an obvious exploit, it sounds weak.

Yohoho: sounds strong, but late-game ranger is often deemed feeble. Also I usually don’t play at these levels so im a bad judge of those. Most of them are also concentration spells so they compete with hunter’s mark. So probably fine?

 

[ECMO3]

Thanks for the feedback.

Yohoho is a definite buff, but both the bonus action and the concentration compete with HM so I think it will be balanced.

I think the idea in weapon finesse is versatility among your light weapons, it makes a club and pistol, two classic pirate weapons, much better mechanically and lets you use different masteries (so a vex-scimitar, vex-dagger or nick-pistol) and no I could not think of a cool name for it.