NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="steeldragons" data-source="post: 6429535" data-attributes="member: 92511">I think a lot of the...malaise of the ranger is due to flavor organization [if that makes sense as a thing]. I have the books, but haven't played one or seen one in play. But it seems to me, the skeleton is ok. Favored Enemy. Favored Terrain. Pick a fighting style at 2nd level. Pick an archetype at 3rd.Where they went wrong, I think, is bringing in the spellcasting. They made Rangers a full on Spellcaster...BUT then, the kind of baffling part, they made it a Half-caster: shorter spell lists, fewer slots, slower progression. So...as a class, they become significantly more dependent on spells than ever before, but at the same time, only have a few to work with.IMHO, they botched it on the flavor and archetypes. The default ranger should not have had ANY spellcasting...with the option of Magic Initiate, if you want the "lil' bit o' magic AD&D style ranger" you're all set.The Hunter archetype is fine as is, boosts combat effectiveness with favored enemies.The second archetype should have been the Caster variant/more reliant on magic/4e-ish powers model.The Beastmaster could easily have been done, and possibly done better, as an optional Animal Handler/Beastmaster feat. Have a fighter who knows how to train a loyal pet. A druid. A monk.So, as they are mechanically they look fine. I think the problem is the structure/flavor of the class and folks having to get used to the idea of playing a [arguably historically] martial character that has to depend on spell choices and proper/useful times to use their magic where, formerly, they would simply have rolled to hit and damage.And those who feel like every ranger deserves to have their own personal panther [thanks, again, Salvatore] are not happy that their animal companions don't give them extra attacks per round are, obviously, disappointed to not be getting to eat the cake they have, too.I think folks will warm up to the class once they get accustomed to playing it as it has been, quite from the roots, rewritten. That and/or when they get done tinkering with it to get something they like better. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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