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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 7476987" data-attributes="member: 6801228">So, I know this was forever ago in this thread, but I felt this need to respond to this. In my experience, this is completely false. Every beastmaster ranger I have ever seen has wanted to take a named pet, such as Umber the Wolf from my most recent Ranger, and keep them going throughout the entire game. In fact, losing Umber would have been utterly devastating to her character. Threatening Umber with damage or death was a tool used by many an evil individual, sometimes to great success. And, this was using the Revised Ranger (she initially didn’t want to go revised, but after a session or two as a PHB Beastmaster she asked to go ahead and shift over) which meant we all knew Umber could be easily brought back to life. In fact, I’m very glad I had the revised ranger on hand. Because, after initially offering it and her not wanting to play it (she was very new to the game and figured sticking with the PHB options would be far less confusing) when she turned around and asked for a solution because the class was not performing the way she expected I had a ready-made solution. I didn’t have to take time and make a solution, which I probably would have done poorly. So, I’m keeping the Revised Ranger for myself obviously, I just don’t see a good argument not to. People keep saying this, but it has not been my experience at all. Sure, it can be fairly powerful if you multi-class or dip, but that is something I try to discourage in my games anyways. The player I’ve been talking about, she still was weaker than a lot of the other people in the party most of the time (Swashbuckler Rogue, Assassin Rogue, Zealot Barbarian, Moon Druid were some of the more notable ones) and I gave upgrades to her and her companion because of story reasons on a semi-regular basis.Now I grant, humanoids as a favored enemy, that one goes. I’ll switch back to the PHB rule of “if you pick humanoid instead pick 2 or 3 humanoid types that this applies to” but other than that, nothing I saw in the Revised Ranger dominated. I think the game was lv 5 to 20, over two years, so maybe if we had started lower we would have had problems, but I tend to get us out of the low levels relatively quickly since 5th level is such a power spike across the board. The problem, as I remember it being discussed over a year ago, was how front-loaded the Revised Ranger was for dipping. Getting Advantage on Initiative, a handful of utility abilities, bonus damage on humanoids, and a few other things was a massive list of benefits from a very small investment. In particular, I remember people talking about dipping rogues for all those goodies, and how advantage on initiative was the Assassin's thing, and they got it at 3rd level so the ranger shouldn't get it so early. However, I'm with you in that I've never seen it as a problem at the table. I've had far fewer rangers over the time the Revised Ranger has been out, but none of the multi-classed except maybe the Bard. Actually, I think my bigger problem is how I almost never see the ranger using their spells. I specifically remember one fight in which the Ranger I've talked about above used Lightning Arrow, and the spell was so disappointing in damaging the horde of enemies that I think she never used that spell again. Too many of the ranger spells are highly situational or just not effective enough to warrant using, which is why the own thing I've consistently homebrewed is giving rangers a spells prepared list like the paladin, where they can prepare from their entire list per day, 1/2 lv + wisdom mod. I've never seen player actually take advantage of that versatility, but I feel better knowing they have the option if they choose to use it.</blockquote>

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