Ranger Beast Master: errata will add new features to your animal companion!

[CapnZapp]

How exactly would warding bond help with area attacks. If both gain half the t
Damage the other one resisted isn't that exact the same overall damage output. Or do you think the ranger should stay so far away that only the beast is ever affected by aoe?

against single targets it might prove useful though, because you don't need to add more straight hp.
what would be needed even more would be hit die sharing on short rests.

Thank you for your interest.

Instead of an attack doing 36 damage to the wolf or koala or whatever, the Ranger would soak 18 of those points, with the pet only taking 18 damage.

The idea is that would make it considerably easier to keep the pet from getting downed or killed.

Hope that answers your question!

Best regards
Zapp

 

[Laurefindel]

Thank you for your interest.

Instead of an attack doing 36 damage to the wolf or koala or whatever, the Ranger would soak 18 of those points, with the pet only taking 18 damage.

The idea is that would make it considerably easier to keep the pet from getting downed or killed.

Hope that answers your question!

Best regards
Zapp

It's actually a nice compromised between avoiding that the animal companion gets one-shot all the time at higher level, and and effectively giving the ranger the hp pool of two characters. I like that.

 

[Pauln6]

Thank you for your interest.

Instead of an attack doing 36 damage to the wolf or koala or whatever, the Ranger would soak 18 of those points, with the pet only taking 18 damage.

The idea is that would make it considerably easier to keep the pet from getting downed or killed.

Hope that answers your question!

Best regards
Zapp

So, if we stick to the flaky notion of 'no errata', could a spell, Beast Ward, that lasts 8 hours and requires no concentration, cover this? And could it be folded into a Revivify Beast type spell I.e. while under the effects of the spell the ranger can use their action to... Copy text from Revivify spell?

 

[jodyjohnson]

I was a bit surprised that Warding Bond is only available to Clerics. I expected it on the Paladin and Ranger list.
The errata seems similar to my proposed fix that everything gets Mount action economy minimum (Dash, Dodge, Disengage).

 

[5ekyu]

How exactly would warding bond help with area attacks. If both gain half the t
Damage the other one resisted isn't that exact the same overall damage output. Or do you think the ranger should stay so far away that only the beast is ever affected by aoe?

against single targets it might prove useful though, because you don't need to add more straight hp.
what would be needed even more would be hit die sharing on short rests.

That was the initial thought I had - it makes the beast more survivable but the ranger less. But that ignores the remote PC which is a trope a lot of players have tried to get.

Idea is the PC sits softly out of harms way while a stand-in goes and does the fighting, preferably a replaceable stand-in.

This allows a much higher survival rate - think a carrier delivering its fighters, a technician genius sending robots, necromancer sending undead.

So with the remote ranger you pile an archer archetype with beast as its front line.

Now that bond works fine. The beast is the only piece at risk and the ranger sits out of AoE curing incoming hits and shooting as he can.

It's less "animal companion" more "animal fodder"

That's where the Bonded share damage works ok in a game with dangerous AoE - you aren't "fighting together".

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Letting the stupid wolf bite every turn still isn't going to bring a beastmaster up to paladin tier. Come on WOTC. No half measures.

Adding an extra attack for nine damage every round would push the beastmaster way out ahead of both fighter and paladin, in terms of sustained damage, at least for levels 3-5.

Paladins are only broken when it comes to burst damage, due to multi-smite. Breaking the game in Standard Play is not a good balance for the game already being broken in Boss Rush.

 

[CapnZapp]

Well, this isn't so much about "aircraft carrier rangers" as it about sheer practicality.

Per the RAW any sudden Fireball and your pet is toast.

This isn't just weak design. It's completely unacceptable design.

The first and foremost design critera for any animal companion feature must be: the pet should not require ressurrection any more often than any other valued party member (which for most groups means "very rarely").

The pet risking death from any random area effect is a bright red line that should never have been crossed and fixing this is essential to the beastmaster subclass, in my opinion.

With "resistance to all damage" the pet's hp total is effectively doubled, which helps a lot with keeping the pet alive in all but the combat-lightest of campaigns.

That the pet might be fragile and needs to be withdrawn from the combat until healed is fine. It is the "death out of nowhere" that means the pet must always be treated like a precious porcelain vase that gets a "hell no" grade.

That the Ranger itself suffers the damage the pet doesn't take is a harsh but fair way of ensuring the errata doesn't just add more hp to the class build.

Zapp

PS. The ward should be strictly one-way. Damage suffered by the Ranger should not affect the pet.

So a Fireball for 44 damage that targets both master and companion will deal the same 88 damage (before saves and resistances) as before the errata, only distributed 22 to the pet and 66 to the Ranger.

 

[Pauln6]

I'd probably give the animal its own hit points on top of the hit points gained as a result of being a companion to add a bit of variety and add a sneak attack type bonus damage die or dice to the damage done by the smaller animals to make up for the lower hp and base damage when adjacent to the ranger.

I do think the animal companion should go down unconscious fairly regularly though, using character death rules, since I think the extra damage and utility should be balanced as a long rest resource rather than an at will resource.

Maybe beastmaster feats, one that grants extra hp to medium and large creatures and one that grants sneak attack to small and tiny creatures could help.

 

[5ekyu]

Well, this isn't so much about "aircraft carrier rangers" as it about sheer practicality.

Per the RAW any sudden Fireball and your pet is toast.

This isn't just weak design. It's completely unacceptable design.

The first and foremost design critera for any animal companion feature must be: the pet should not require ressurrection any more often than any other valued party member (which for most groups means "very rarely").

The pet risking death from any random area effect is a bright red line that should never have been crossed and fixing this is essential to the beastmaster subclass, in my opinion.

With "resistance to all damage" the pet's hp total is effectively doubled, which helps a lot with keeping the pet alive in all but the combat-lightest of campaigns.

That the pet might be fragile and needs to be withdrawn from the combat until healed is fine. It is the "death out of nowhere" that means the pet must always be treated like a precious porcelain vase that gets a "hell no" grade.

That the Ranger itself suffers the damage the pet doesn't take is a harsh but fair way of ensuring the errata doesn't just add more hp to the class build.

Zapp

PS. The ward should be strictly one-way. Damage suffered by the Ranger should not affect the pet.

So a Fireball for 44 damage that targets both master and companion will deal the same 88 damage (before saves and resistances) as before the errata, only distributed 22 to the pet and 66 to the Ranger.

Baseline fireball is 8d6 at 3rd level for a 5th level character. Thats avg 28 on failed save and 14 on made save.

So, **if** you choose to keep the companion in the close proximity fireball zone *and* it fails its save *and* you did not support as a group with Aid or temp hp or save bonus effects etc etc etc it can indeed die from the avg failure.

But if it saves, at 5th level ranger, it still has HP left due to the 4hp per ranger level minimum... Right?

An avg 44 hp fireball is what...13 dice... Like 8th level spell or 15th level character so... Whats the minimum HP for the beast then?

Unless you insist on choosing beasts with lousy dex saves that make them more vulnerable to AoE and then make no effort to give them a nudge it seems like your sudden fireball toast is a tad or a smidge overstated?

Meanwhile at 5th level, a ranger with 14 con has avg 44 hp and if we believe that you are actually wanting this to not be about remote/carrier optimization then you want us to believe you want for that 28 pts fireball to be slamming your 44 rangwr to 42 and your 20 pet for 14 so that a slightly above avg roll drops your ranger instead of your pet on your both fail case?

Really, thats what your are sellin'?

Again, this "want" seems clearly focused on or at leadt lets say provides a **lot** of benefit to the remote/carrier ranger style than it does the dynamic duo sidekick side by side style you seem to be painting it as for.

Its also extremely inefficient when you consider 0 hp death saves applyingto the beast.

 

[Yunru]

But... they had there statistics that proved it was "just a vocal minority" being whiny about the Beastmaster. Whyever would they change it?

Oh right, they had another survey that probably proved them wrong.