doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
OH for sure. If I decide to just fully rewrite the ranger, they'd always certainly steal the Bard's main mechanical niches by jacking the die mechanic and jack of all trades.Has me thinking that giving something akin to Bardic Inspiration might be the way to go with this, as a sort of ranger-as-commando John Wayne sort of leadership ability.
Bards should be masters of story, song, insult, curse, blessing, and boast. They should be the class that knows things, and the class that can, to quote Stephen King, "Talk the devil into setting his pants on fire". The Bard should have a curse and a blessing mechanic that it can use liberally, should have something like the playtest paladin's abjure enemies ability, and have songs/rites/performances/whatever that are minute+ aura effects they can activate by speaking or singing as a bonus action.
Rangers should be helping their allies succeed in a variety of tasks and be broadly competent in just about everything.
I have a new draft of the pack leader ranger that I'll post today, btw. I think the pets are a little overtuned, but tuning damage math up and down is one of the easiest things to adjust so I'm not too worried about it yet.
I think that I may need to take some of the special actions and special traits you can choose from, and put them into pack leader specific or "have a pet" specific wanderer's knacks, so that building your pet doesn't involve two lists of over a dozen options you choose two from.
other than those two adjustments, and obviously editing, i think it's pretty good.