NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreenTengu" data-source="post: 8122196" data-attributes="member: 6777454">Honestly-- the Ranger Animal Companion rules, due to relying on the Monster Manual's interpretation of various animals, is fundamentally broken. Unless you choose a wolf as your companion-- you are naughty word out of luck. Too much of your class entirely revolves around the attack assigned to the particular animal companion.Choose something like a hawk or owl-- you are just utterly screwed. Your extra bonus attacks will do all of 1 damage forever.Choose a hyena and, simply because WotC based the hyena stats on one adventure they wrote involving Gnolls, even though you have an animal that is in real life larger, stronger and more vicious than a wolf-- your extra attacks will be garbage compared to if you chose the only animal in the entirety of the monster manual that was specifically written up with the only intention in mind to be the companion of a Beastmaster Ranger... the wolf.And let's not even talk about making a chose that is the equivalent of simply cutting one of your own arms off by choosing a fully aquatic animal like a shark or something.The whole fundamental concept of the Beastmaster Ranger was utterly dead on arrival simply based on the fact that, despite their willingness to devote a good third of the rulebook to rules on various spells that only a couple classes could use, they were not willing to devote 2 pages to writing up standardized stats for animal companions/familiars that would increase with your level and would have standardized stats based on which of 3-5 types your companion qualifies for.If you are a level 15 Ranger, then regardless of whether you have a badger, wolf or bear companion, it ought to fight exactly the same. If you have an eagle or bat then maybe it works just a little different to compensate for the fact that it can fly giving you more non-combat use. If you have a mongoose or cat or lizard, then it should still be somewhat functional in combat, but has much better non-combat use. And if you chose something super situational like a dolphin or seal that can't help you ought on most terrestrial adventures, that too ought to be accounted for.But the whole "choose something from the monster manual-- by the way, we made a singular choice ridiculously better than any other you could choose" is just stupid.Without that being fixed-- the Beastmaster Ranger is just utterly garbage. And even once fixed, it is only one semi-difficult step towards actually making it viable.</blockquote>

Verification