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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mr Fixit" data-source="post: 6390789" data-attributes="member: 6779654">"Inspired" by all the ranger-bashing going on, I've been doing some tedious number-crunching to see how an archer ranger (hunter)--an iconic character concept as at least some of you will hopefully agree--compares to archer fighter (battlemaster). I'm no mathematician so take these with a grain of salt: for example, champion would perhaps be more pertinent here, but I'm too dense to factor in all those criticals.Anyway, at low-mid levels the two classes are generally comparable, I won't really delve into numbers here. What I find most interesting is the DPR comparison (every attack hits) over the course of 5 rounds at 20th level.Fighter (4 attacks per round), using all his superiority dice and both Action Surges is on average dishing out over 320 damage over 5 rounds. Ranger, on the other hand, has 4 attacks per round when using Swift Quiver, but he can't use Hunter's Mark as both require concentration. He also uses Colossus Slayer for an additional d8 once per turn. All this yields him around 210 damage over the course of 5 rounds. If he's using Horde Breaker instead of CS, his damage increases to around 240 to multiple enemies, but he's unlikely to achieve that number in practice as he'll need to have another opponent within 5 feet of the first one at all times.As if this wasn't enough, I haven't factored in all the additional benefits fighter will reap due to the expended superiority dice. Also, since his SD and Action Surge are essentially encounter powers, he'll start every battle good to go (provided there was a short rest, of course). Ranger, however, has only 2 5th-level spell slots for his Swift Quiver spell. Anything after that and he defaults back to Hunter's Mark which would yield paltry 150 damage over 5 rounds. Sure, there are additional spells there, like Lightning Arrow, Conjure Barrage, etc, but these are either of dubious damage boosting capability (the former) or quite situational (the latter). It just seems extremely problematic when ranger can't even get close to fighter's ranged damage. It's in a completely different ballpark.How to address it? Maybe lose the concentration requirement for Hunter's Mark? With it + Swift Quiver + Colossus Slayer, ranger would dish out around 300 damage in those 5 rounds. That's still lower than what a fighter gets even without taking into account the additional benefits of battle master's superiority dice (not to mention that, as noted, ranger can only cast Swift Quiver twice a day), but it's a start. Combined with other ranger features and spells, I feel things are about evened out. And really, how can someone be a better archer than a goddamn ranger?<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/ponder.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":hmm:" title="Hmmm    :hmm:" data-shortname=":hmm:" /></blockquote>

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