D&D 5E Ranger

[Andor]

I just noticed something interesting. Ranger spell casting does not explicitly call out their magic as Arcane or Divine. It's implied to be divine by the reference to Druids who are explicitly divine casters, but it's ambiguous.

I don't think this has any mechanical implications, but it does make it easier to fluff my high elf ranger as an arcane archer.

 

[Snapdragyn]

Hmm, just had a thought.

Ranger with Ritual Casting feat. Take Find Familiar.

Now have your familiar use the Help action - for free. Now laugh at the absurdity of the situation of going into a subclass that's arguably worse than a single spell (of several) that you gained from a feat.

 

[Sunseeker]

I don't like casting rangers, but I'll have to build one and test it. I build a pretty solid 3X ranger who just didn't use their spells. I don't like pets either, but at least this seems optional.

 

[Minigiant]

It REALLY think they overdid on the nerfs to ranger to prevent the blender rangers, turret rangers, drill rangers, and tandem spike rangers of 4e.

They switched rangers to AOE and reduced buff spells to one in order to keep rangers from being DPR machines with exploration magic.

They also seemed to weaken FEto draw attention away from it.

So 5e rangers are sneaky skirmishers with weak AOE and strong exploration magic who sometimes get a enemy or terrain skill boost.

 

[Venthrac]

Because smaller things are less likely to still be alive when you go to hit them after they've already been damaged.

We had a Colossus Slayer in our group last night for first episode of HotDQ. He didn't get to use the ability once. Not one single use as we blasted through the encounters. Everything we fought was either one-shotted, or damaged by one player then finished by another before it reached the ranger's initiative.

This might indeed be the better option for specializing in 'boss' fights, but I don't think it's going to be as good as you might expect in other encounters.

Good point. Might be that the ability grows more useful as the party levels up. At lower levels, monsters have so few hit points, there is little need for extra damage. Later on, however, I'll bet almost all monsters are going to be taking multiple hits to kill.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Ranger has been my favorite class for all of D&D, but the mechanics haven't always lived up to the concept. I loved the 1E ranger; hated the 2E and 3E rangers; came back to like the 3.5E and 4E (Beastmaster particularly) rangers. The 5E ranger I give a B-.

I do wish the fighting styles had a bit more flavor; the class overall seems to skew toward TWF as the best return on investment for the class as a whole and I'd like to see other styles be equivalent choices.

The Beastmaster seems a bit underwhelming, but I can see how it balances out in the action economy and provides a number of options in play. The Pack Tactics feature of the wolf seems to be handy for cooperative combat especially at 5th level and beyond.

The Hunter seems OK for making a specialized character ... a Hunter Dragon or Giant Slayer I can see as being quite fun.

And while spellcasting has long been part of the ranger class, I've always liked the concept of a nonmagical ranger. This ranger seems to need some of the boosts from spells, which gets me thinking: do you think a non-magical ranger variant that got both the Hunter and Beastmaster archtypes in return for sacrificing spellcasting be a reasonable class design?

[I do expect variant rangers to pop up in expansions; they seem to be popular.]

 

[Mistwell]

You're not the only one. Colossus Slayer looks great, since someone's always wounded - it's just been named stupidly, it should be Predator something. And Horde Breaker gives you an extra attack, which is a big enough of a deal that you might even want to Ready your attack to go off 'when two enemies are 5ft from each other'.

Question on the "someone's always wounded" part of this. If you get two attacks, and both hit, couldn't you use colossus slayer on the second attack...since you attacked a creature that is below it's max hit points?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Question on the "someone's always wounded" part of this. If you get two attacks, and both hit, couldn't you use colossus slayer on the second attack...since you attacked a creature that is below it's max hit points?

I'd read it that way. "When you hit a creature with a weapon attack ... if it's below its hp maximum" is how it opens, not "on your turn". So the potential is high, either from TWF or Extra Attack, to use Colossus Slayer on almost every turn.

 

[Andor]

I do wish the fighting styles had a bit more flavor; the class overall seems to skew toward TWF as the best return on investment for the class as a whole and I'd like to see other styles be equivalent choices.

I think TWF is viable for the Ranger, but I thnk an archery Ranger can be extremely powerful. The Archery feat is very powerful, and the archery styles +2 to hit offsets the penalty to an extent, which is more than GWF types get. Plus the Ranger gets some good archery boosting/based spells.

As for a non-magical ranger, isn't that a fighter with the Outlander background? Heck, go Battlemaster and you're close to an Iron Heros Ranger.

 

[Mistwell]

I'd read it that way. "When you hit a creature with a weapon attack ... if it's below its hp maximum" is how it opens, not "on your turn". So the potential is high, either from TWF or Extra Attack, to use Colossus Slayer on almost every turn.

That's how I read it as well. Our 5th level Ranger took two weapon fighting and dual wielder feat, so he is attacking with twin battleaxes and getting a second attack for three total attacks all with Str damage on them. Odds are two will hit at least, so he is able to get Colossus Slayer on the second hit. And then he usually can add Hunter's Mark to the first hit as well. So, when he hits with all three attacks, he's doing on average

First hit: Magic Battleaxe 4.5 (weapon) +4 (strength, we did rolling and he got a 16 and bumped it with his race) +1 (magic battleaxe) +3.5 (hunter's mark) = 13
Second hit: Magic Battleaxe 4.5 (weapon) +4 (strength) +1 (magic battleaxe) +4.5 (Colossus Slayer) = 14
Third hit: Normal Battleaxe 4.5 (weapon) +4 (strength) = 8.5
Total = 35.5 Average

It's not too shabby at all.