Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pauper" data-source="post: 7112993" data-attributes="member: 17607">Curious about the degree of Ranger/Druid commentary in this thread. I think in retrospect, the Druid and Ranger could have encapsulated different mechanical foci, and thus avoided the problems we got in the 5e PH.Speciifcally, the Druid should have been the 'pet class' and the Ranger the 'solo class'.This gives Druids three obvious paths -- the shapeshifting druid where the druid herself is the focus of the class's combat effectiveness, the beast-companion druid where the druid spends her resources making her companion as effective as any other party member (but doesn't contribute herself), and the hybrid class where the druid and the companion combined are as effective as a single other party member, or perhaps slightly less with the bonus of having a broader spell list than the other two subclasses (via a bonus spell list to incorporate things like healing magic).Rangers, meanwhile, would be focused on weapon combat (the archery or two-weapon ranger we have, which people seem to like) with little to no spell ability, a spell-focused ranger with little to no weapon ability (which would probably look a lot like the current Circle of the Land Druid), and a hybrid which blends some of the weapon capability of the first subclass with some of the spell potency and flexibility of the second subclass.Instead of having two classes where you have to balance the effectiveness of the character alone versus the effectiveness of the character with a beast gimmick, you'd put all the beast gimmicks in the same bucket (making them easier to balance with one another, because you're comparing apples to apples, and conversely freeing you up to do more interesting things with the beast gimmicks, because you no longer have to worry about broken synergies in multiclassing). I think that structure is more sound as a basis for building and expanding those character tropes.--Pauper</blockquote>

Verification