Second 5th Edition Survey! Plus Results of the First Survey: The Ranger Gets Some Attention!

A new survey is up on the official D&D website. It looks like its covering the classes not in the last survey and the recent Eberron material. WotC also reports on what was learned from the last survey. "For our second survey, we’re focused on the final six classes in the game and the Eberron material that we rolled out in last month’s Unearthed Arcana. If you haven’t looked at that article and want to provide feedback, read it over and come back to the survey later. Even if you don’t have a chance to use the Eberron material in your game, your reactions to it are helpful. You can also skip over the Eberron questions if you don’t want to give feedback on that material."

Here's the overall feedback from the first survey:

"So, what did we learn from our last survey? Let’s take a look at some trends:

To start with, there are a lot of you. We had more people respond to this survey than any of our playtest surveys. A lot of people are into D&D these days!

There are a lot of new players and DMs out there. Welcome to D&D!

You are playing the game in droves. Only about 10 percent of you have read the books without yet playing.

Your campaigns are just getting started. Most of you are playing at 6th level and below.

You love the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and we’re overjoyed to be able to write that. The overall assessment was incredibly positive, surpassing our results from the playtest by a significant margin."
​

The ranger, in particular, is getting some focus:

"To start with, a majority of players and Dungeon Masters are happy with the ranger overall. The game as a whole is grading well, so we don’t want to make a huge, sudden change to that class. But taking a deeper dive into the ranger, we can see that favored enemy and the beast master archetype received the lowest ratings. Our next step is to take a closer look at why that is.

We’ll start with an internal assessment mixed with feedback from our closed circle of testers. From there, we’ll work up some options and present them to you, most likely in the Unearthed Arcana column. That process allows us to determine if the track we’re on answers your concerns with the class.

The critical step is making sure that any changes we make genuinely improve the class. Remember, plenty of people are happy with the ranger, so any changes need to cover a number of options:

People who like the ranger as it is can simply keep playing their current characters.

People who don’t like the ranger should feel as though the new options allow them to play the ranger they want to create.

The new options are exactly that—new choices for ranger players to select from, as opposed to a rewrite of the Player’s Handbook.

DMs should always feel that they can take or leave the new options, just like any other material in the game beyond the Basic Rules."
​

Hop on over here to take the new survey!

 

[Moorcrys]

This is essentially the issue.

Take away the spells and the bonus attack, then what is left of the base ranger. Personally, the Hunter aspects could have been core ranger with spells, beast mastery, and more martial aspects as the subclasses. But even then I dont see enough PC resources for the beast companion people wanted.

Same with the chain warlock. No pet demon.

I haven't gotten up to higher levels yet, so I can't speak from experience, but I believe the other issue with the beast ranger's companion is that they just don't scale well enough to stand for a round at higher levels... between their saves, defenses and their hit points, they just get torn apart.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I agree. Unique classes for the win. The fighter is another example of what not to do with subclasses.

I don't think it necessarily needs to be a unique class, but I do imagine more people might be happy with the artificer subclass if it got better armor and some skills.

Like, hypothetically, if it got medium armor proficiency, and had proficiency in "artificer's tools" (which might let you make the consumable items like potions and scrolls currently taking up class feature space) and maybe one other tool of their choice (thieves' tools, artisan's tools, herbalism kit, etc.), and maybe even got a sort of tool-based expertise feature, I think you'd get away from the "I'm basically a wizard, only now I make potions" thing that the L&L artificer currently suffers from.

I think the fighter subclasses work pretty well, IMXP.

What you'd probably want to avoid is the "a new class for everything!" syndrome that 3e and 4e were plagued with. More classes => more analysis paralysis during character creation => larger chance for there to be "too many" classes => bigger newbie hump => fewer people playing Eberron (or D&D) => no new Eberron material for 10 years => saaaaadness.

 

[Minigiant]

I haven't gotten up to higher levels yet, so I can't speak from experience, but I believe the other issue with the beast ranger's companion is that they just don't scale well enough to stand for a round at higher levels... between their saves, defenses and their hit points, they just get torn apart.

And that's because its a subclass. A subclass is only 1/3 your power at maximum.
The fighter and rogue both get spells as a subclass but only as 1/3 casters.

The real question (in danger of derailment) is:

Should there have been a full pet class?

Where 50%+ of this class' powers and features run through the pet. Then rangers, warlocks, paladin, and wizards could be 1/3 "masters" and have their levels stack via muticlassing

 

[Beleriphon]

I haven't gotten up to higher levels yet, so I can't speak from experience, but I believe the other issue with the beast ranger's companion is that they just don't scale well enough to stand for a round at higher levels... between their saves, defenses and their hit points, they just get torn apart.

Yeah, nothing sucks more than than when Wuffles gets taken out by that Ancient Red Dragon's breath weapon on round one.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

QFT.

The entirety of the "problem" with the Beastmaster seems to be people up in arms that you "lose" your action to direct the animal to attack instead. You're not "losing" anything. You are using your action to do something else.

And that something else is worse than just attacking yourself. You pay too much crunch cost for a mostly fluff ability. The pet is a significant loss of damage from hunter ranger who can still also buy a dog.

 

[steeldragons]

And that something else is worse than just attacking yourself. You pay too much crunch cost for a mostly fluff ability. The pet is a significant loss of damage from hunter ranger who can still also buy a dog.

What is the "significant" loss? How much damage-per-round difference is "significant"? And why does what the hunter ranger does matter at all? You're not a hunter ranger, you're beast ranger. Does using your beast or not using your beast "significantly" effect what you're doing "per round"? What is the hunter ranger doing that is so much "better", and what makes that/who says it's "better"?

[But remember, as I've been chastised, this isn't about "powergaming stuff", it's about "fun."]

 

[steeldragons]

PS: I absoTIVely concur with whoever said upthread that the "base ranger features" should have been the "Hunter" and the archetypes, then, as "Beastmaster" and "Magic-heavy/Spell-ranger guy". Would have made things 100% better for everybody's flavor [and crunchy] tastes, I think.

 

[SirAntoine]

Wizards of the Coast has done very well with the 5th Edition. They have brought a lot of new people in, brought back a lot of veterans from past editions, and laid the groundwork for others to contribute to the game and help to shape its future. I have been most impressed by the third party products I have seen so far.

I agree the ranger, beast master, could use some improvements.

 

[Zaran]

Minor quibble: The latter point seems just as "boardgamey" as what your first point criticizes. It is arguably "boardgamey" if a ranger brings a pet to a firefight and the pet miraculously survives a fight that normal animals of its type would not. What fiction supports that? If you consider it plausible that a ranger and pet can engage in combat in a way that feels organic and not boardgamey, then it can also be plausible that a ranger's pet will die horribly in a firefight like most natural animals taken into monstrous battle out of their league. Presents a bit of a dilemma. I'm not sure that anything short of a plate-armoured magically-enhanced heroic bear will make death-defiance not "boardgamey".

I'd say it survives because of the Ranger's training of the pet. That's why it has more hit points based on the rangers level. Better saves would also be from training.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

What is the "significant" loss? How much damage-per-round difference is "significant"? And why does what the hunter ranger does matter at all? You're not a hunter ranger, you're beast ranger. Does using your beast or not using your beast "significantly" effect what you're doing "per round"? What is the hunter ranger doing that is so much "better", and what makes that/who says it's "better"?

Hunter matters because that's the opportunity cost to getting the pet. So the pet should be on par with the benefits of being a hunter ranger. All subclasses of the same class should be roughly balanced against each other.

Compared to a hunter ranger making an attack himself, the pet doesnt get colossus slayer so deals d8 less vs wounded targets (or loses out on hordebreaker if that's what you'd pick) and doesn't benefit from hunter's mark (d6) which will be up many fights. That's an average of 8 less per hit, which is pretty big drop in damage for the sole benefit of attacking from a different spot. Factor in something like sharpshooter, and its even worse.

The beastmaster is more or less a trap option in combat. You get a little more utility, but not enough over what the hunter ranger who just buys some wardogs gets to warrant the significant loss of combat power. Given that the beast's stats don't increase, its attack bonus falls behind yours (even moreso when you start getting magic weapons). It has no saving throw proficiencies, so is always at straight stats for saves, which is just terrible. Its attack is roughly balanced against a ranger with no spells, subclass abilities, magic weapons or feats. Why should that consume your entire subclass benefit package to obtain?