Nope, none of these are "my rules". And nope, you absolutely can have an effective animal companion as an archer - you just can't have a melee fighting animal companion. You keep claiming it's "designed" to be a melee combatant. I've disagreed with you before on that, so have others, and you've made no compelling argument that is the design intent. It's designed to be able to do a number of things. It's capable of being a melee combatant, but only if you fight alongside it like the description says. You want to do something different with it and I disagree that what you want is what it was "designed" for.
I’m sorry, if this is a joke it isn’t funny.
Way back in the thread, around post #249 it seems, I had a discussion with [MENTION=6796241]OB1[/MENTION] about how the Beast Companion for the Beastmaster ranger is clearly a combat option. Every ability they get in the Beast Master subclass is geared towards combat being a big indicator.
Even if you want to argue it is not meant as a combat ability, you have to accept that Find Familiar provides every possible utility option outside of combat that the companion does, and does so better since some of those abilities, such as seeing out of the companion’s eyes, cost the Beastmaster Ranger a spell, while the familiar just does it innately.
In fact, if you consider that the Familiar can, at level 1, use what is essentially a non-action for their master (because the familiar has their own turn) to provide the Help action, it is even more powerful in that respect than your lauded use of the level 7 ability of the Beastmaster to get the Help action via use of a bonus action.
So, the Beast is clearly meant for combat purposes, because if combat was secondary to their design, they would be outshone in their primary purpose by a level 1 ritual spell, and that is even more egregious than our current situation. But, you want me to provide more examples I’ll assume, because I can’t just make statements without examples to back it up.
Want your companion to scout ahead? It can be sent ahead to scout, but you will have no idea what it is that the companion finds unless you cast beast sense or Speak with Animals, and Speak with Animals only works if the beast returns to you, and relies on a creature with a potential intelligence of 1 to relay useful information. (Familiar can scout ahead, and you can see through it’s eyes for no cost)
Perhaps you want a mount? A viable option for Halflings and Gnomes, but only halflings and gnomes, so it is a poor thing to balance an entire class around (ah kobolds and goblins as well, but we are trying to remain within the PHB, since that was when the class was written). And that is the purview of the Paladin’s Find Steed spell, which is again superior in what it was designed to do, since it gives you a telepathic link, spell sharing, increases the mount’s intelligence (giving more options since there are two types of mount rules) and doesn’t take up your turns or actions. And paladin’s get this at level 5, only two levels after the Beastmaster.
Perhaps the companion will sneak somewhere and grab a small item? Possible, though again, commands will have to be very specific, and you will need a specific companion for that, since most companion options are far too large or do not have special movement types for that to be useful. Find Familiar can do the same thing. And actually, Find Familiar does it even one better, since a familiar’s form can be changed by casting the ritual again, while an animal companion static and unadaptable.
Grabbing an item and running away? Possible, but again, something a Familiar can do just as well. Better in fact, since it won’t take the master’s actions or bonus actions to accomplish in combat.
So, we are left with combat, where all of the subclass abilities tie back to. Where you have still been unable to tell me what a companion is supposed to do before 7th level. After all, you various suggestions of “stand and dodge, become an obstacle for the enemy” or “take the help action to give allies advantage” require the companion be capable of doing those as a bonus action for them to be worthwhile. Having the ranger use their turn to give an enemy disadvantage to hit a beast that isn’t attacking but might be a body block towards the wizard…. that is highly poor tactical play.
So, they will likely be used in combat, to attack. Why attack? Because it is the most efficient use of the Ranger’s action and because most combats don’t get resolved unless the enemy is defeated. Beasts have almost zero options for defeating an enemy via paralyzation or incapacitation via spells or effects, so they will be dealing damage. And barring one or two companions with Reach (which is a melee option anyways) and one or two companions with flyby attack (which is also a melee option) they will provide that damage by getting adjacent to an enemy and attacking them. Melee combat, or specialized melee combat via the few companions with different types of skills.
And so… since I have stated all of this before, and repeatedly, how have I not shown that the design of the Beastmaster Animal Companion was made with the idea that the Beast would be a melee combatant? I mean, why else would special mention have been made of increasing the companions AC and HP, their attack rolls and damage? What purpose would there have been in the level 11 ability to have the companion attack twice? At level 3, when you get the companion and the class features that come with it, what other things are you supposed to do with your companion other than attack? Dash? A useful combat action for getting somewhere but that getting somewhere is only useful if you do something afterwards. Dodge? It would be a rare day when I saw a character be fully useful for multiple levels of play by only taking the dodge action, and the few uses of that strategy could be done equally as well or better by the ranger themselves. Help? This is the True Strike cantrip, an ability that has been rated poorly fairly universally, since losing a potential attack for a better chance of hitting with a different attack is only worthwhile if the boosted attack is far more devastating than the first. A beastmaster can hit accurately for 1d8+1d6+dex mod with the usage of a single spell, or make two attacks via dual-weilding. It may be worthwhile to spend an entire turn to gain advantage, but it is a very specific set-up and not a commonly held tactic. Disengage? Only useful for running from the enemy, or running through the enemy, and again, getting somewhere is only useful if you do something once you get there.
Attack. Attack is the only generally viable option. It is the only option that could conceivable be worth taking in most fights for four levels of play. It doesn’t require any special circumstances, any special party compositions. Even your best arguments against my claims that beasts are melee combatants require the beast to be attacking, until the Ranger is level 7.
If all this is not enough, if all of this still amounts to me not “making a compelling argument” then you must have some amazing insight that I am lacking, some key to this whole puzzle that you aren’t sharing.
You're making it about yourself and not the positions or arguments. You claimed your position had support from many others. To know that, we have to look at the claims others were making as well. Nobody else was insisting on also being an archer (though I suspect Eric V will try to claim his was) - it was just you. So either you had the support of others and your position was not exclusive to being an archer and shifted later to that, or you were wrong when you claimed you had widespread support. It's one or the other. Either you shifted your argument, or you made a false claim earlier. You can pick whichever one it was. But my focus is on the argument, not you.
Why should I have had to specify something we weren’t talking about before we were talking about it?
If we were discussing increasing the number of rituals that druids get so that their ritual caster feature felt more prominent, should I also state that I do not want them to lose all of their evocation spells in trade? Why should I make the assumption that that is where the other side will press? Until very recently you never said that your rules (because this archer discussion came about as a critique of your fighting style suggestion) were working under the assumption that the ranger could not be a ranged combatant.
And I have no problem with the Ranger being melee if that is what the player wants. My problem comes with locking out their options, because fixing the beastmaster should not come with reducing the ranger’s choices. And I feel like if your “fix” for the Ranger subclass is to reduce their potential options to your vision of what should be allowed, then it is probably not a very good fix.
But you want to reduce all of this to a binary choice. Either I was wrong or I was lying. Either the Ranger is a Beastmaster or the Ranger is using a bow. Nevermind those have nothing to do with my critique of your fighting style, nevermind that they have nothing to do with the strength of the companion. You want to reduce this argument until I have no ground left to stand upon.
Ah, but your focus is not on me right? You haven’t accused me of shifting goalposts, you haven’t accused me of not reading posts, you haven’t accused me of being a power gamer. You’ve only addressed my arguments. Except for the ones you’ve ignored (still waiting for any actually ranged beasts, 30 ft or further).
Honestly, I am getting incredibly frustrated by constantly defending myself to you, when you refuse to address my points or even acknowledge that I have been making arguments.
Yes there is. They did a lengthy extensive playtest to measure balance, tested it internally, then with a smaller paid consultant group of third party objective creators from a wide array of experience, then with with many surveys both to a smaller professional group of playtesters, then to a much larger audience in the largest public playtest of any RPG ever, and got as much data as any company has ever gotten to measure balance perspectives on the class. It came out balanced.
And was followed two years later by the company releasing a document which said, among other things, “you’ve seen us try a number of new approaches to the ranger, all aimed at addressing the class’s high levels of player dissatisfaction and its ranking as D&D’s weakest class by a significant margin” and “The planning phase goes back to our review of playtest feedback. We review data and read anecdotes on Reddit, forums, and social media.” and of course “The class’s individual features also filled the top-ten list of lowest-rated individual character features”
This coming from the company, who by the second quote, clearly did more research, more surveys, and probably got more reports from that company they hired. All showing that the Ranger needed work.
Once you get that, the burden is on those claiming it's not balanced to provide any evidence that is the case. We've seen none. We're 5 years in, the class is no longer ranking at the bottom for popularity like it used to, and complaints about it have decreased rather than increased, and people are asserting some balance issues and acting like that needs no support other than just asserting it? Nope. You have issues with the class, I get that. But you want to claim a balance issue with the class after this long? You will need a lot more than just making that claim.
And according to WoTC that is mostly due to a larger increase in the player base of millions of new players, and the release of different subclasses which work better than the PHB subclasses.
None of which means that the original complaints and the original data was wrong, and considering they never fixed the problem, does not mean that the class does not need an overhaul.
We aren’t making these calls of balance issues out of the blue. I was making calls on balance issues with the Beastmaster back in 2015. The Ranger and the Sorcerer have been my two biggest class complaints since 5e came out. The only reason I’m back to arguing it now, instead of a year ago, was that I was under the assumption that the Revised Ranger was still being worked on, that they were still pursuing the fix they said they were pursuing two years ago. Why complain about balance issues when all I’d really be complaining about is how slow they are working?
But now they’ve gone and killed the project, and JC decided to insult those of us who’ve been talking about the Ranger’s issues this entire time. So, I’m back to the arguments, retreading the same ground over and over again, and doing my best to present the evidence again and again. Which is far more than simply “making a claim” since I am backing up my assertions.
