bugbear in guardian form using a reach weapon has a 20ft mellee range
Wow… that is sickening for some reason. I LOVE IT!
First of all, love the new rangers get a bonus spell list. I think that leaves only the Beastmaster and Hunter without, and I feel it is good enough design I'm going to have to come up with lists for those as well.
Planar warrior does make dual-wielding more difficult if not impossible, but I think that is more because it removes resistance from the enemy for your attacks. I know a lot of games end up with magic weapons, but not all of them and you can fight creatures with resistance before then. IF we calculate that in, the Walker ends up doing close to double the damage the Hunter does, because the Hunter is stuck with 1/2 damage.
I might agree Portal Lore is too much of a ribbon ability. When it comes up it can be nice, but some other effects would be nice, like advantage on checks involving Planar lore or something? Not sure.
Is Etheral Step good? Going Ghost until the end of your turn... it's not a defensive ability really, because you come back before your turn is over, and it takes an action to end early. So you attack, fly away, and reappear? I like the idea behind it, but it seems kind of like a useless ability
Love Distant Strike and Spectral Defense. Awesome abilities.
Honestly, probably go Archer with Horizon Walker, though I could see a sword and board ranger for this as well.
Guardian Soul, first of all, someone mentioned playing this with a gnome. The Guardian form is always large, so that is amazing visual hulk out. The biggest problem with Guardian Soul is 5ft of movement. It is obviously the limiting factor for this ability, and this sub-class is just going to keep building up this single tool with more power. However, the moment the enemy is out of your reach, it's over, you will never catch them. So you'll have to drop the form and all your toys.
The Guardian really wants to be in melee, you get regenerating Temp Hp, bonus max hp, create difficult terrain, and have a healing aura for your allies. It makes me regret Ranger's don't get Great Weapon style, but it does encourage using Dueling or Defensive which don't get enough love.
I would see a spear wielding (I want to use the Spear Master UA) strength based Ranger for this.
Actually... hmm... It probably needs a once per fight limit or something.
8th level Guardian Ranger (for easy math), gets fireballed in an ambush. You run up, change:
You heal 16 hp, your max increases by 16, and at the start of every turn you gain 4 temp hp.
Enemy breaks, you drop form to follow. Next turn go Guardian again, you heal another 16 hp.
If a DM allows the transformation outside of combat (which I'm inclined to do so they can take advantage of Large size), they can just pop it on and off to heal x2 their level until they are back to full health. Which is not the intent.
They need to do something about Ancient Fortitude, because the entire subclass is built around the intent of going Guardian at-will, but that much healing is too much if they can spam it all the time.
Man, that is a glaring error and I don't see a good way to fix it and keep the intent of the power. That is really sucky.
I think Scout wins the "most expertise skills" award.
It is solid, looking at it again I agree that Skirmisher becomes harder to justify past level 5, but I could see a ranged rogue really loving the ability to get out without needing to use their bonus action.
Ambush master is nice, seems a little weak.
Sudden Strike is amazing, love it. Almost too good if the Rogue can double sneak attack. They hit hard when those types of attacks hit.
