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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 7683384" data-attributes="member: 1465">Just choosing your post for some considerations, nothing personal...Backgrounds are a major part of 5e. A lot of people asked for separating skills from class in the past, and that's what the current does and why so many people like backgrounds. That they take something away from the class is their intended purpose! But notice how all skill-based classes are affected, not just Rangers but also Rogues and Bards. Everyone can be an outdoor expert, a trapfinder, a performer, an athlete, a knowledge expert etc. There is no way of going back, unless you are willing to restrict the choice of backgrounds by class in your campaign.To be honest, I always hated that Rangers had to be associated to these fighting styles at the expense of other classes and at the expense of other fighting styles. Just because two famous Rangers were dual-wielders and one was an archer doesn't mean every Ranger should. None of the other classes was ever pushed to 1-2 fighting styles only.I am not yet sure it's as weak as people think. I want to see one or two at my table before judging.Yes, the action economy restricts the pet's effectiveness in combat. If the pet itself can only do 1 attack with its Attack action, then the Ranger+pet can together do only as many attacks as the Ranger alone when not commanding the pet, until level 10. But then at level 11 the Ranger+pet "team" does get 1 more attack than the Ranger alone IIUC (2 pet attacks + 1 Ranger attack). I don't think multiattack can be applied to get even more attacks (IIRC it's an action of its own, not an Attack action), but anyway I doubt that there is any CR1/4 animal that has multiattack...You could also think of the pet as a 'bag of extra HP' for the Ranger, although from a roleplay POV that's probably gross <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The pet's attack might be less valuable than the Ranger attack. It depends on the chosen creature, e.g. a Hawk does very little damage but a Panther will do a decent 1d6 + 2 + your Prof bonus. So it kind of works like this:levels 3-6: very marginal combat utility (distractions, opportunity attacks...)levels 7-10: moderate combat utility (free Help action mostly)levels 11+: significant combat utility (free Help + 1 more attack than normal)The only oddity is how Help is incompatible with 2WF because they both require a bonus action.That said, do not forget the out-of-combat usefulness of having a pet, especially if it has pretty good perception capabilities!I certainly think that there would be nothing wrong in allowing CR to scale with Ranger level. But notice that the pet already scales: attacks, damage, saves and AC all benefit from the Ranger's scaling Prof bonus, and its HP scale by Ranger level.IMHO they just decided to keep it simple, because when allowing to pick higher-CR animals, then probably adding the Prof bonus would be too much, since they already have higher statistics (the HP rule may be fine). With now more 5e experience under their belt, they could publish some guidelines for higher-CR creatures to be used as Ranger's pet.It already has something like that: min HP equal to 4 times your Ranger's level. The ranger has on average 5.5+Con HP per level, so maybe on average the pet's HP is a bit less than half your HP, but not too far away.Here I cannot agree more <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />And just to realize how schizofrenic the community is about the Ranger, let's recall how enthusiastic it was when the 3.0 Ranger was revised by 3.5 to have less HP than before "because it's supposed to be a light fighter". So it's supposed to be both a light fighter and a heavy taker? Then just leave it to HD d10 to take both into account <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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