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.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I'm going to have to insist that when the buccaneer casts Find Familiar they can have the familiar manifest as a parrot (or, perhaps, monkey).

I'm not sure why Rogue levels and Buccaneer levels shouldn't stack for sneak attack. That seems needlessly conservative, given how stingy you are with giving Buccaneers sneak dice. Personally I'd just give the Buccaneer one sneak die at each of the subclass improving levels (or at a couple of them) and simplify the math (dividing by three gives them more sneak die at levels 9 and 15 which is just a weird separate bit of progression to track).

 

[Horwath]

I like the most of it, but;

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.

sounds nice

If you also have levels in Rogue these dice do not stack.

why would they not stack?
not that sneak attack is anything that special...

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

nice selection of spells, except Gust of wind or even Levitate might be a better theme than rope trick.

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.

ok, feature

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.

this needs to be put down to 7th level as it is very weak for tier3

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

this is great for 11th level as it gives combat boost for tier3 that ranger really needs.

Thoughts?

now you need new feature for 15th level

15th level;
Master of the winds
you can cast Control Weather once per Long rest.

yes, it's an 8th level spell, but it is available to full casters at 15th level and it's not that powerful spell and it fits perfectly with your theme.