Unearthed Arcana UA subclass second chances

[SkidAce]

None of which is currently in WotC core materials (and frankly, Conan does politics just fine).

Really, no. This is very much a playstyle thing. “Favoured Enemy” is a very much “you must play this way or else” ability.

But when you choose favored enemy "snakes" you are telling the DM that you want more interaction with that theme, just like anything else in your background.

All powers don't need to be all effective all the time*


*granted if snakes never show up thats poor form on the DMs part.




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[Paul Farquhar]

But when you choose favored enemy "snakes" you are telling the DM that you want more interaction with that theme, just like anything else in your background.

Sure, but not all playstyles include “tell the DM what monsters you want to fight” as a feature.


I’ve played a considerable amount of D&D where rangers have select a favoured enemy feature, I know very well just how sucky it is.

 

[Remathilis]

That's true for a number of character choices, like fire or poison specced casters in Avernus, wizards on Athas, barbarians in a politics-and-subtlety campaign, etc. Most of the time you know what the main thrust of a campaign is.

Frankly, I don't find that to be true at all. I mean, sure, if your DM says he's running Ravenloft, you know to pick vampires/undead or maybe if you DM says he's gonna run Against the Giants you might consider true giants as a high level payoff, but lots of campaigns don't have that level of planning or structure, especially sandbox games or ones that jump module to module. You are making at best a guess on that the foe of your choice is gonna show, and if you guess wrong you don't have a class feature.

Which is why for most campaigns, the safest bet is humans. They are ever-present, scale with level, and typically the big bads of any given campaign. The true monsters of D&D.

 

[ECMO3]

I liked the Fighter/Scout. If it had been made a subclass we likely would have seen more fighter subclasses using Expertise dice. A missed opportunity.

A Fighter with expertise and Tactical Mind would be OP in 5.5E.

 

[ECMO3]

It is really just Tasha's but improved. The only part which one could say is worse is the Level 20 ability (which is awfull in 2024), but the 2014 one was also not that strong.

IMO the 2024 Ranger is not improved vs Tasha's Ranger.

Most important they have around half the spells of Tasha's Ranger.

Then they got rid of Favored Foe which IMO is better mechanically than Favored Enemy because you don't need to use a bonus action to engage it.

They got rid of Vanish

The other stuff you mentioned is an upgrade, and consistent with the general rule revisions.

• Favored Foe in 2014 the end is just a slightly different hunters mark,

No it is not. It requires no action to activate. This makes it substantially more flexible in play, FF is also not limited to 1d4-1d8 in play because you can spam it. Hit with your first attack activate FF for 1d8, hit with your second attack and activate it again and use a second use of FF for another 1d8.

• And with the new 2024 ruling you can also use this hunters mark + a spell in the same turn.

Yeah you can, as long as the other spell is not also concentration, but then if that spell is not an attack you get no value from the Hunter's Mark.

Compare this with Favored Foe where I could cast something like Zephyr Strike or Misty Step to get extra movement and get into melee range to make an attack, then activate Favored Foe once (or more) on that attack action.

 

[saviirkad]

I understand the arguments against the 2014 version of the favored enemy and terrain, about how campaigns work in their experiences and perspectives. I agree that within those contexts the class especially suffered, and those contexts were in the majority insofar as Wizards could see of the playerbase.

It's frustrating for me because it's not how my own campaigns work, or have worked. For my group, those were the features that actually worked and were what we actually liked most about the ranger class.

I wish that that it had been better supported mechanically, because even with those features functioning as intended within my own games, the ranger class still suffered. But in the act of trying to fix the problems reported at the time and repeated here, well for us it wrecked the ranger. It failed to address the problems we did experience, removed the features that we did like, and replaced them with new problems we didn't have at the time.

The bright side is just that all this effort has made what does or does not work for us pretty clear, and so building a truly fixed (for us) ranger off of the 2024 chassis was pretty straightforward.

 

[Tigris]

IMO the 2024 Ranger is not improved vs Tasha's Ranger.

Most important they have around half the spells of Tasha's Ranger.

?? 2024 can prepare the same number of spells, only difference is that only hunters mark is fixed where before more were fixed with Tashas.

And if its about number of different ranger spells: Officially you can use all spells from 2014 which are nor yet updated.

Then they got rid of Favored Foe which IMO is better mechanically than Favored Enemy because you don't need to use a bonus action to engage it.

They got rid of Vanish

Vanish was combined into the Natures Veil on level 14 and thst got an upgrade you are now invisible until the end of the next tuen not beginning. You are right you lost some part of it.

The other stuff you mentioned is an upgrade, and consistent with the general rule revisions, but the



No it is not. It requires no action to activate. This makes it substantially more flexible in play, FF is also not limited to 1d4-1d8 in play because you can spam it. Hit with your first attack activate FF for 1d8, hit with your second attack and cancel concentration on the first instance and activate it again for another 1d8 .....

This does not work. Since you only deal the damage to the favored foe "The first time on each of your turns that you hit the favored enemy and deal damage to it" so it does not matter if you mark it again you had it hit before on your turn. So if you did damage several times with favored foe you were cheating.

Yeah you can, as long as the other spell is not also concentration, but then if that spell is not an attack you get no value from the Hunter's Mark.

You can already prepare hunters mark for next turn (in case you have other uses of bonus action then)

Compare this with Favored Foe where I could cast something like Zephyr Strike or Misty Step to get extra movement and get into melee range to make an attack, then activate Favored Foe once (or more) on that attack action.

Yes in these cases Favored foe is better. So when you dont have any bonus action you deal 1d4-1d8 more damage in your turn, but whenever you can spend a bonus action and or need to change target hunters mark is way better, this especially in the early levels. You can also cast hunters mark before combat in some cases (it has non combat use) and start combat with it.

I think these is just one of these many cases where you play and grade options different to 90% of 5e players.

Yes bonus action to use is not ideal, but having an encounter long buff where you can switch targets and it counts for all your attacks not just the first will be prefered by most people.

 

[TravDoc42]

Honestly, why do I even bother?

I wonder what % of people who comment read anything but the title?

 

[TravDoc42]

Honestly, why do I even bother?

I wonder what % of people who comment read anything but the title?

 

[JusticeArman]

There was also the monster hunter subclass for the Fighter, I think that one has a bit less overlap with the ranger and with the new 2024 Battlemaster one could try to test another superiority dice based subclass again.




I would not call it "run" for the Titan circle, when it needed a 2nd unearthed arcana because the first one showed it was underpowered.

I can see how the people from that flavour wanted to be big themselves instead of having a big pet.

I think other flavours (like empowering the wild companion into a pet (and letting it grow)) would fit better for a druid pet class from flavour.

Maybe "stomp" or "lumber" would have been a better word! FWIW, the Circle of the Titan performed well enough that we could have refined that design in house, but we wanted to get more feedback on it. We are optimistic about it! And yes, those are solid suggestions for a more companion-focused subclass.