Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Another New Ranger Variant

*Deleted by user*

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I was about to make this exact suggestion. I think extra damage or extra attack after movement makes far more sense for a "skirmish ranger." Combine that with an ability that lets them get an extra movement at the start of combat, for positioning, and an ability to go first without necessarily going extra, and I think it'd capture the feel better and be more mechanically sound.

It doesn't even necessarily have to be damage. Maybe enemies have disadvantage on attacks against rangers as long as they're moving. That would let rangers get right in the thick of it and create more of a "wear them down with repeated attacks" style as opposed to the rogue's "surprise! you're dead" style.

Though all this is kind of melee-centric. The pattern for ranged skirmishers is pretty different. Attach to archetypes? I'm not sure I like that.

 

[Sacrosanct]

In honor of this new revision, here is the very first incarnation of the ranger class

View attachment 70189

 

[Jester David]

I just finished a reread of the 1e-3e rangers and I don't get the "rangers lost their flavour" argument. 3e spread out two-weapon fighting, stealth, and tracking but those weren't the only bits of flavour. They've had the ability to track and slay giants consistently through the editions, and the twin swords popped up in 2e, along with a wild empathy analogue.

So the major traits of the ranger seem to be: wild empathy, tracking, stealth, and being good at killing giants.

So it's not that rangers lack an identity, it's that WotC doesn't want to use the identity they have.


Favoured enemy is the "problem" in that it's inconsistant damage, making it awkward to balance. This is because it's dependent on the adventure and DM to place those monsters in adventures. But looking at 1e/2e, the category of enemy was super broad. Pretty much all evil humanoids were considered "giants".
So do something comparable and give rangers a small damage bonus to humanoids, giants, and beasts. Those foes are common enough that 75% of adventures will feature one. Just make it a small bonus, like an extra 1d4 dmg once per turn that might go up as you level. Bam. Fun and different.

Tracking is another major part of the ranger. Natural explorer covers that. Kinda. While in a favoured terrain that ability allows the ranger to "remain alert to danger" (whatever that means) and "While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area." But the wolf totem ranger can track while travelling at a fast pace, so the ranger isn't the fastest tracker in the game. Really, unless the ranger is tracking a favoured enemy or in their favoured terrain, they are no better at tracking than any other character.
Kinda a failure there.

There's also the wild empathy. Because the ranger is best with animals: that's their niche of the three wilderness classes. They can pick the best animal to buy, train animals quickly, and calm wild animals. This isn't in the 5e ranger at all.
They should have the ability to use Persuasion on animals.


How do you fix the ranger? Well, something akin to the rogue & bard expertise mechanic applied to Survival and Animal Handling would be nice. Or herbalists kits. And give favoured enemy as small damage boost, but have the enemy more set and less of a choice.
The poultice idea from an earlier UA was also neat. Maybe drop the range down to 1/3 caster rather than 1/2 and give it some poultices and similar abilities.
I'd also remove the fighting style choice and just give all rangers a small perk to two-weapon fighting and archery. They're good at both.
Plus, instead of taking an action to attack with a beast, just swapping out an attack for one of its attacks should suffice. Maybe slip in an extra attack with it at higher levels. Oh, and having animal companions automatically stabilize or have advantage on death saving throws would also be handy. So the animals go down, but can be revived after the fight. That's much simpler than making them magical spirits.

There. Simple. Not rocket science. You don't need to redesign the wheel and add spirits to the ranger or cast them into a role identical to the oath of ancients paladin.

 

[Hussar]

That's also once per day. Compare it to the wizard and a fireball.

I thought your spirit summons comes back on a short rest. Is that mistaken?

My other issue is the extra round means that melee rangers get hosed. Since you can't move and very few encounters start in meter range, what's the point? I can hide but only if I'm already in a position where hiding is possible. Again, I can't move.

Why would anyone play a melee ranger when one of his major powers doesn't work?

This is basically a free action surge every encounter. Sure it's a bit more limited than an action surge but it's still pretty darn good for any archer type.

 

[Evenglare]

Why is everyone freaking out about the 2d6 HP being better than the 1d12. Sure it might have an average that is .5 higher than the d12, but the 2d6 is on a bell curve which is skewed towards the average of 7. The barbarian is going to roll a 12 more often than a ranger, granted he will also roll 1 one more than the ranger... but coupled with the fact that your barbarian (typically) is more than likely going to have a higher CON than the ranger... I don't see the ranger keeping up in HP honestly. Let's look at the probabilities of rolling equal to or higher than number X for each set of dice..

[1d12] and <2d6>

2 - [91] - <100>
3 - [83] - <97>
4 - [74] - <92>
5 - [67] - <83>
6 - [58] - <72>
7 - [50] - <58>
8 - [42] - <42>
9 - [33] - <28>
10 - [25] - <17>
11 - [17] - <8>
12 - [8] - <3>

Those numbers are rounded off a bit, but you can clearly see that starting after 8 the barbarian has a much higher chance of rolling better numbers than the ranger. Again, I'll admit they have a larger chance of rolling smaller numbers as well but seems to thematically fit the barbarian never the less. In fact if you take into account that a barbarian is going to have +4 con and the ranger on average is going to have +2, with any single given HP gain (with con added in) from 4HP to 16 HP. The barbarian is guaranteed to roll that HP or greater every single time.

In other words the barb - statistically speaking- is going to have more HP than the ranger.

 

[Greg K]

The poultice idea from an earlier UA was also neat. Maybe drop the range down to 1/3 caster rather than 1/2 and give it some poultices and similar abilities.

I am fine with granting the poultice. I would, however, prefer spell casting to be a subclass or other feature that the ranger can opt out of and gain something in return.

I'd also remove the fighting style choice and just give all rangers a small perk to two-weapon fighting and archery. They're good at both.

I prefer to keep fighting styles. I don't want to force 2e's weapon niche of archery and/or two-weapon fighting. Some rangers might be good archery. Some might be good at two-weapon. Others, however, might be good at, sword and board, great weapon, spear fighting, thrown weapons or some other weapon and this was reflected in 1e by allowing Rangers to specialize in a weapon as could a fighter (see 1e Unearthed Arcana).

 

[Jester David]

I thought your spirit summons comes back on a short rest. Is that mistaken?

It's odd.
You regain your ability to call on your spirit companion when you finish a short or long rest, which is the call power. But, also, once per day you can command the spirit to become flesh.
So once every short rest (1-3 encounters) you can trigger the stalker spirit's power to gain 2d6+wis damage. But the wolf spirit only manifests and can attack once per day.

My other issue is the extra round means that melee rangers get hosed. Since you can't move and very few encounters start in meter range, what's the point? I can hide but only if I'm already in a position where hiding is possible. Again, I can't move.

Why would anyone play a melee ranger when one of his major powers doesn't work?

This is basically a free action surge every encounter. Sure it's a bit more limited than an action surge but it's still pretty darn good for any archer type.

Agreed. This ranger is basically ranged only.

 

[Li Shenron]

I just finished a reread of the 1e-3e rangers and I don't get the "rangers lost their flavour" argument. 3e spread out two-weapon fighting, stealth, and tracking but those weren't the only bits of flavour. They've had the ability to track and slay giants consistently through the editions, and the twin swords popped up in 2e, along with a wild empathy analogue.

So the major traits of the ranger seem to be: wild empathy, tracking, stealth, and being good at killing giants.

So it's not that rangers lack an identity, it's that WotC doesn't want to use the identity they have.

First of all: great post!

I played 3e extensively and back then I have seen (although not played myself) many Ranger PCs, and I stand strong in my opinion that the 3.0 Ranger did not lack flavor, identity or power. IMHO it didn't even need the "boost" they gave it with 3.5. But the 3.5 boosted everyone (oddly enough, except the Sorcerer) just to encourage people to jump on board with it.

Yes it was front-loaded as other classes were, but the 3e designers did not expect multiclassing to be as immensely popular as it was in 3e, and furthermore they did not expect gaming groups to totally handwave multiclassing restrictions like they did in most cases, and to let anyone freely level-dip without any relation to the story.

I don't know how Rangers were done in 4e, but I can't help but notice that from 3.0 to 3.5 the Ranger's identity with relation to HP was revised from "tough" (d10 HD) to "average" (d8 HD), while from 5.0 to 5.5 it's getting revised from "tough" (d10 HD) to "toughest" (2d6 HD). Considering there has been 15 years between this is of course a long shot but IMHO is just another symptom that not even the seasoned designers have a clear idea on the Ranger's identity, because there isn't just one -> the problem is unsolvable and changing and re-changing and re-re-changing the Ranger a million times will never solve it for good.

The best they can do in 5e is leverage the subclass system to provide as many identities they can think about, without ret-conning the base class!

Favoured enemy is the "problem" in that it's inconsistant damage, making it awkward to balance. This is because it's dependent on the adventure and DM to place those monsters in adventures. But looking at 1e/2e, the category of enemy was super broad. Pretty much all evil humanoids were considered "giants".
So do something comparable and give rangers a small damage bonus to humanoids, giants, and beasts. Those foes are common enough that 75% of adventures will feature one. Just make it a small bonus, like an extra 1d4 dmg once per turn that might go up as you level. Bam. Fun and different.

Hang on in there... If you look at the label "favored enemy", the 5e Ranger has a very small feature there: you know the language of your favored enemy, and you have advantage on tracking and knowledge checks. Not only this is tiny, but it doesn't even highlight the part about being your enemies: language and knowledge could more likely represent being friends of them!

But if you look at the substance, the broadening you want is already done, except that it is pushed under the Hunter subclass. There you can find abilities which work against your favourite types of monsters but using very broad categories, perhaps even too broad since it's hard to tell which they are

Here if I were WotC I would design plenty of additional options for Hunter's subclass features in order to support more favored enemies categories. It shouldn't even be difficult to do so, for example protections against common special attacks by undead, elementals, outsiders etc.

But the key is to see that the framework is already there, and just realize that despite the labels, favored enemies are not really a feature of the 5e Ranger base class but only of a (flexible) subclass.

Tracking is another major part of the ranger. Natural explorer covers that. Kinda. While in a favoured terrain that ability allows the ranger to "remain alert to danger" (whatever that means) and "While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area." But the wolf totem ranger can track while travelling at a fast pace, so the ranger isn't the fastest tracker in the game. Really, unless the ranger is tracking a favoured enemy or in their favoured terrain, they are no better at tracking than any other character.
Kinda a failure there.

Well this is a typical problem of D&D, which affects other classes, Fighter first. There is always someone who says "why shouldn't my Fighter (or Ranger, Rogue etc.) be able to learn this?". They want non-magical stuff to be available to everyone, and what you get is inevitably to dilute those classes' identity. You can't have both.

How do you fix the ranger? Well, something akin to the rogue & bard expertise mechanic applied to Survival and Animal Handling would be nice.

I don't think the Ranger needs to be fixed. But expertise would have been a great idea in the first place.

Plus, instead of taking an action to attack with a beast, just swapping out an attack for one of its attacks should suffice. Maybe slip in an extra attack with it at higher levels. Oh, and having animal companions automatically stabilize or have advantage on death saving throws would also be handy. So the animals go down, but can be revived after the fight. That's much simpler than making them magical spirits.

More survivability would have been nice. As for combat actions, I am actually quite pleased by what they did for all companions in core. But clearly the idea is exactly what you say i.e. you get your attacks per round and choose which ones are done by you and which ones by the animal. Their choice of defining this using action economy is an unnecessary complication.

 

[Li Shenron]

It's odd.
You regain your ability to call on your spirit companion when you finish a short or long rest, which is the call power. But, also, once per day you can command the spirit to become flesh.
So once every short rest (1-3 encounters) you can trigger the stalker spirit's power to gain 2d6+wis damage. But the wolf spirit only manifests and can attack once per day.

Yes, the way I understood it, the summoning is 1/day while the special bonus (depending on the chosen animal) is once every short rest.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Though all this is kind of melee-centric. The pattern for ranged skirmishers is pretty different. Attach to archetypes? I'm not sure I like that.

I dunno, I can see the "archer zigs, zags, looks for his shot, dives behind cover" thing playing out.

One could make it offensive and defensive both, combining it with what is now the hunter's mark spell. Something like (off the top of my head), "As a bonus action, choose one creature you can see. Any time you move more than half your speed, you gain an extra 1d6 to damage rolls against that target, and that target has disadvantage to attack rolls against you. These benefits last until the start of your next turn."

Probably needs some tweaking and balance issues--maybe disadvantage only against the first attack, that sort of thing--but as a starting point, I think it works.